FCPX Audio Roles - What are they and why should you use them?

[@GeekDetour]

Thank you SO MUCH! My videos use a lot of music and effects... Geez, I should have watched your video YEARS ago!

[@AndrewMasters]

Dang, I found this way later than I should have. This is what I've been looking for! Thank you Scott.

[@scottmckenna]

Glad it was helpful.

[@sherliemaematthews]

Your voice is so soothing, i went to sleep during your tutorial and had to listen to it twice in order to get what I came here for! LOL Thanks for a great learning session.

[@philkoolemagic]

Hi Scott, great video. The check box for the rolls has it's power when your project is actually nothing but comps. You hear everything in the project timeline because all your rolls are on, but as you go into comps to edit their video, they have their own state of on/off. So you will for example edit inside a comp, listening to only dialog and effects, music and other rolls off. Regardless of their state, (forget to turn them back on, or just don't care to turn them back on) when you go back to your project timeline, you hear the entire mix etc. You hear a section you want to edit, double click to go in the comp, you only hear dialog and effects. You do your edits, go back to the project and Bam! You are right that they are for editing purposes only, but their power is when you project is comp heavy. :) Keep 'em coming. Phil.

[@LucasRider]

Excellent lesson, Scott. Thank you. I had no idea about the roles feature of FCPX.

[@USDskateshop]

Hi Scott! I would love to see a tutorial on how do you process a wedding audio ! I'd love a tutorial on that!

[@stevenkralovec]

I don't know how I didn't see this sooner. This is SO HELPFUL!! Thanks, Scott!

[@malo_840]

Hey Scott i just want to say Thank You so much for sharing this info, you have no idea how much this has helped me. THANK YOU and I WISH NOTHING BUT THE BEST FOR YOU. Thank you

[@scottmckenna]

Really appreciate the message. Thanks so much. Glad it was helpful

[@TaoCovillault]

9:49 "You can't put a plugin or an effect on a specific role" Yes off course you can, by turning it into a compound clip, then you have your roles clearly separated and for the entire video. Then by selecting a clip and looking into the Audio panel, you can change his representation from "Roles" to "Sub-Roles" and you get the same thing with sub-roles too. That is very handy when doing sound design for example, I usually create sub-roles in my "Sound Effect" Role, to have: Wind, waves, birds, steps, fire etc Then I can adjust them one by one, all together (editing the role "Effects") or by type (all the winds together for example) ;)

[@TaoCovillault]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/oJeZfaOpi6epf7M

[@krishnansrinivasan830]

@@TaoCovillault Thank you so much Sir :)

[@martydenson_mfm]

Ok, great how you use audio. I usually drop my audio straight into protools HD 1st, sync, add Vocal Rider plugin and all levels are even. EQ if needed, carefully set a noise gate on dialogue tracks. Then drop into fcpx - I might add roles when I need to breakup the mastered audio that came from protools. Question: what freq & bit rate do you record audio to your HD recorders? I'm always at 48k/24bit.

[@scottmckenna]

Always 48/24 when doing video for audio as well.

[@KindoMalay]

Thank you for taking the time to make this video. My current project doesn't have any external audio, all captured on camera, so in that scenario do you detach your audio from the video in fop x?

[@scottmckenna]

Nope, you can still export as audio only.

[@KindoMalay]

Thanks for your reply, but it's funny how often what we write isn't sufficiently well articulated to make sufficient sense. I'll try to do better. What I meant was, do you leave a clip's audio attached to its video component for editing, or do you detach it. I've realised a few things since, so the question is moot. :-)

[@scottmckenna]

I leave things attached while editing.

[@lusw]

Hi Scott, I think you know but you can add an entire Role to a Compound Clip and apply everything you want to it (effects, change volumes and etc). Cheers.

[@scottmckenna]

Yea, but you should be able to just add something to a role like a plugin or effect.

[@lusw]

That's for sure! Something that would not be very difficult to do I reckon. And it's for sure many people's top feature requests. One thing I'm curious (since I'm more FCPX driven and would like to know what drive people to PP): besides the faders, what do you would like FCPX to do in order to feel comfortable editing audio? I ask that because I'm not from an audio background and I was reading this: forums.creativecow.net/docs/forums/post.php?forumid=335&postid=18954&univpostid=18954&pview=t and even though is 2011, to this guy it seems a game changer. What I'm curious also is that you've said you don't want to use a plugin or external software, but on the last videos you've showed that you use iZotope a lot. Cheers,

[@scottmckenna]

+Lucas Saldanha I want faders with true read write automations like premiere and other audio workstations has. That’s it ha.

[@user-qp2hj7sg9c]

Another great and helpful video thank you.

[@MarcusFenixGears]

Very helpful thanks!

[@makharacinesy]

Very clear and useful video. Thanks !

[@travisandjonifilms]

Izotope, i'm new to that. what version do you use? We are just starting out with wedding films and I'm basically clueless on audio and how to edit it...would love a basic tutorial on that! (we have tascams...good equipment, just don't know how to edit it for the best quality!)

[@scottmckenna]

RX 5 Advanced

[@krishnansrinivasan830]

Awesome & Thanks Sir :)

[@chriscardoso]

It looks like you have the same song going throughout the entire film. Did you just chop it up to allow replication of certain parts of the song?

[@scottmckenna]

Chop

[@EdwinRucci]

I needed this!!! Thank you! 🙌🏼

[@scottmckenna]

Glad it was helpful

[@friedpicklezzz]

I am frustrated with roles. With the power of roles, why would you organize it to export an audio role as one big wave file, edit it, reimport it back into FCPX, losing the power of being able to manipulate individual clips? I have a ton of dialogue files and they all have different volume settings. Being able to normalize a role as if it were one element would be so much easier.

[@asmundma]

Hi sorry to say, you need still to learn more about roles. You can make a compound clip and then each role become a track and you can drop a plungin on it. And you need to learn about xml, import into logic do all you audio work and round trip back.

[@scottmckenna]

+Asmund Maeland I understand exactly how it works but I don’t like compound clips. Not a fan of them and it still doesn’t allow me to do things the way I truly prefer. I’m not saying it’s not a decent system, it’s just not my preference

[@brandonkrick9503]

Hey Scott. Thanks for this explanation. One question kind of regarding a separate topic but still to do with audio. My last wedding I filmed a week or so ago, I used my Zoom H5 to record the full ceremony. I had it plugged into the headphone port of the church's sound system mixer because that was the only available output. when doing a sound check I set my levels fairly low because when the musician's were playing it was sounding distorted but still not peaking on my recorder. I turned the headphone level jack down a little bit too. The dialogue audio sounded decent. When I reviewed the audio on my computer though, the pastors dialogue is distorted in certain places and then even cuts down low in other places but never peaks. I'm not sure what happened. I'm kind of thinking it was the sound board or maybe I just did something wrong. Any ideas or have you had anything similar happen? Is there anyway to possibly fix it? Thanks for your help and I'm learning a ton through your videos.

[@scottmckenna]

Headphone outputs aren't your best option for sure. They typically have limiters in them that can sometimes get you not so desireable results. As you said, that was your only option so I understand that. Most likely it was simply that the wireless mic that the pastor was using was very cheap (99% of the times they are very cheap at a church because they but the cheapest thing they can). I would never rely on a church sound system or feed, or wireless mic. I would always lav them up myself as I do with something like the Tascam DR10L. I can't tell you the amount of weddings in where the wireless mic cut in and out throughout the whole service, but I had my great lav audio and it worked perfectly. Always the best way to do it if you can. If you know audio, it's easy to fix unlevel audio, but if you don't have the right software, it can be a hassle. Luckily that's one thing I know very well.

[@brandonkrick9503]

Thanks for the advice. I think I learned my lesson on this one. The audio is not trash, just not what it could have been. I did notice that the church's lav was popping a lot throughout the ceremony. Oh well.

[@scottmckenna]

If you were looking to have it repaired, I can do some magic audio fix for relatively cheap. Let me know. Shoot me a DM on Twitter or IG

[@Emiliotakas]

Brandon Krick have you fixed the audio issue Brandon?

[@commercialand]

So when you are at " Roles As": can I put 4 different people's dialogue on separate tracks so when I go into Pro Tools to edit audio I can have each talent's dialogue on separate tracks? and will it put all the audio as little clips into protools, I think it's called, XML files, OR does it consolidate all the clips on each track as one big long file?

[@scottmckenna]

Yes

[@commercialand]

@@scottmckenna , would you happen to know why my compound clips are greyed out? Not disabled, but a lighter grey and I cannot hear anything in the master timeline. Only when I go into the scene where everything is broken down, then I can hear. I have been also putting all the dialogue into roles, so not sure if that is causing issues or not. I'm honestly not finding compound clips to be very useful, they seem to be bogging down my system and I have an updated Mac, SSD and plenty of power.

[@e.leewhite7907]

Thank you. Your exolaination & work flow was very helpful! Can you recommend some good sites to help me with my use of RX5

[@scottmckenna]

KZbin and Google.

[@e.leewhite7907]

Scott McKenna c

[@certainlyjoel]

Thanks man!!

[@MS-hw8mv]

excellent job.

[@scottmckenna]

Thanks a lot.

[@germanprofoto]

Thank you!

[@mattinuk]

Great tutorial.

[@Travisharger]

how did you make an adjustment layer?

[@JosiahVaughan]

Travis Harger you download it from the internet and install it as a title. Do a quick google search for “fcpx adjustment layer download”

[@scottmckenna]

Plenty of options available. Google adjustment layer fcpx

[@pmexplore]

Can I put audio effects to a role?

[@pmexplore]

Spoke to soon. Just wish they would bring it soon. Especially the faders

[@scottmckenna]

+pmexplore yes with compound clips but not ideal like Premiere.

[@pmexplore]

hopefully they come up with one soon.

[@scottmckenna]

+pmexplore yes

[@scottburrow8293]

Looks,like they fixed the role issues in 10.4.1.

[@seethelittlethings]

this is horrible when you understand audio production with logic. I need a Bus that gets fed by a role so I can edit the audio effects for a whole group of clips . Without exporting and importing again.

[@scottmckenna]

Agreed. I’d love more audio control as well. It’s frustrating since apple owns logic and it can’t be integrated more.

[@seethelittlethings]

​@@scottmckenna my workaround is cmd-option-c and -v to copy effects from one voiceover clip to the other to ensure the same levels when recording the same session. I can mark the previous clip and copy effects, then mark the whole new recording/clip and apply the effects and values. better than nothing

[@doogieball2464]

Stopped watching after 3 minutes. Using "basically" way too much.