ThinningPatience
Level 1 (4 points)
Video

Q: Audio Popping On Imported Clips

Hi,

 

I am very new to Final Cut Pro and am experiencing 2 significant problems:

 

Firstly, I am hearing regular, loud audio pops throughout my clips.

 

Secondly, my exported files are far too large, coming in at over 9GB for a 9 minute clip.

 

My business is online music tuition videos. I used to edit using an old version of Premiere Pro, but switched to Final Cut, since I heard it was easier to sync clips for multicam editing.

 

I recently finished filming months of tutorial footage for a new online course, using a 2 camera setup, with all of the sound (lav mic, guitar signal and backing track) going into one of the two Sony HDR PJ-620 cameras via a Mackie mixer, in order to save recording the audio separately.

 

I am a professional musician and know a fair amount about getting a decent sound in the studio, so my raw MTS video files sound good in their untouched state, with good level balance and EQ. I managed to tweak everything the way I wanted before I began filming.

 

However, when I import the files into Final Cut in order to edit them, I experience loud pops during playback. This is extremely noticeable and occurs every 3 or 4 seconds.

 

Initially, I assumed the issue was caused by my system struggling to keep up. I am using proxy media when editing. However, the pops are still on the video after export.

 

My audio levels in the project are not clipping. They peak at around -3 db. I have made no adjustments to the EQ or any of the sound parameters and there is no audio compression or effects, just the raw audio from the MTS file.

 

Secondly, as I mentioned above, when I export my project via the Master File default settings, the file size is huge. It looks amazing, but it weighs in at approximately 9GB for a 9 minute video.

 

My videos are intended for online streaming via a content delivery service such as Amazon S3 or Vimeo Pro (not YouTube). I need them to be of decent quality, but considerably smaller than they currently are.

 

Can you recommend a decent export setting? Should I have first converted the MTS files to Mov before importing them into my project? I used to do this with Premiere Pro, but was told that I wouldn’t need to in Final Cut.

 

I am running El Capitan 10.11.5. My version of Final Cut is 10.2.3.

 

I am using a mid-2014, Retina 15” Macbook Pro with a 2.8 GHz Intel Core i7 processor, 16GB memory. My graphics card is a NVDIA GeForce GT 750M 2048.

 

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks in advance.

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X El Capitan (10.11.5)

Posted on May 25, 2016 8:53 AM

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ThinningPatience

Q: Audio Popping On Imported Clips

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  • Helpful answers

  • by Tom Wolsky,Helpful

    Tom Wolsky Tom Wolsky May 25, 2016 12:31 PM in response to ThinningPatience
    Level 10 (118,152 points)
    Apple TV
    May 25, 2016 12:31 PM in response to ThinningPatience

    IF you're working with .mts files from the camera, the media has not been imported properly. If you import from the camera through the import window the files get rewrapped to QuickTime and the tracks processed for production. .mts is a horrible format and should not be used in production. You could try optimizing the media. This creates ProTes files that are very large and require fast drives, but are very high quality.

     

    EXport master file file and set the format to H.264.

  • by David Bogie Chq-1,Helpful

    David Bogie Chq-1 David Bogie Chq-1 May 25, 2016 12:31 PM in response to ThinningPatience
    Level 7 (25,772 points)
    Video
    May 25, 2016 12:31 PM in response to ThinningPatience

    The real wonks will be along in a while and hopefully they can help you slog through this. Your machine is up to the tasks. Editing using native camera codecs and formats is an FCPX feature, but MTS is really processor intensive and proprietary audio codecs complicate things further. A "regular, loud pop" suggests a transcoding issue to me. While you're waiting for better advice, try converting one of your audio files to AIF. Or, as Tom suggests, create ProRes files from your native Sony stuff. Sony, like Apple likes to things their own way.


    Exporting from FCPX requires tweaking the settings. See the line manual. But if you're bringing in 1080HD footage, you're exporting 1080HD footage and, yes, it will be huge. You can share using H.264 and get a very good looking file that is about 1/10th the size.

  • by ThinningPatience,

    ThinningPatience ThinningPatience May 25, 2016 12:27 PM in response to Tom Wolsky
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Video
    May 25, 2016 12:27 PM in response to Tom Wolsky

    Thanks, Tom.

     

    Optimising the media didn't eliminate the popping issue. However, I had a long conversation with a very helpful guy at Apple support, who suggested a workaround which seems to work. I've since come up with a shortcut to his workaround which involves exporting the audio from the raw MTS file in Quicktime, importing it into FCP and syncing it (along with my duel camera clips), to a multicam clip.

     

    It worked with my dummy run. Hopefully, it'll sync just as effectively with subsequent clips.

     

    With regards to the exporting issue, that was pilot error on my part. I thought I'd selected H.264.

     

    Thanks again.

  • by ThinningPatience,

    ThinningPatience ThinningPatience May 25, 2016 12:30 PM in response to David Bogie Chq-1
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Video
    May 25, 2016 12:30 PM in response to David Bogie Chq-1

    Thanks, David.

     

    I'm pretty sure that the issue was codec related too. I've replied to Tom's post too. Hopefully the workaround might help somebody else having similar issues.

     

    Exporting the audio file seemed to do the trick.

     

    Thanks again for the advice.

  • by Tom Wolsky,

    Tom Wolsky Tom Wolsky May 25, 2016 1:57 PM in response to ThinningPatience
    Level 10 (118,152 points)
    Apple TV
    May 25, 2016 1:57 PM in response to ThinningPatience

    Hope it works. You really need to look at importing so the media is rewrapped and the audio correctly converted to linear PCM.

  • by David Bogie Chq-1,

    David Bogie Chq-1 David Bogie Chq-1 May 25, 2016 2:15 PM in response to ThinningPatience
    Level 7 (25,772 points)
    Video
    May 25, 2016 2:15 PM in response to ThinningPatience

    Glad to try to help out although it's guys like Tom who usually have the definitive answers long before Apple support.

     

    I have no idea what Sony's codecs are like but you can spend a few hours researching MTS workflows. Seems most of the FCPX users who have Sony cameras use Son'y's conversion software but I might not be remembering that accurately since, frankly, I didn't need the information.

     

    Come back to thee thread when you get a clip publicly posted so we can see what you're up to with your music instruction.

     

    best.

  • by Tom Wolsky,

    Tom Wolsky Tom Wolsky May 25, 2016 2:20 PM in response to David Bogie Chq-1
    Level 10 (118,152 points)
    Apple TV
    May 25, 2016 2:20 PM in response to David Bogie Chq-1

    TThis camera seems to be a standard AVCHD format camera, not one of Sony's exoticer formats.