Hi, complete newb here, looking to understand how to best use WLM Plus in Final Cut Pro on a timeline with a huge variety of audio clips and different music tracks to prep for broadcast. Condense into compound clips? I’ve read the manual and it’s not much help. Don’t see much YouTube videos on the topic. I’m willing to pay someone for an hour consult who has real-world experience working with Final Cut and WLM Plus delivering videos for clients. Thanks so much.
Yeah its not as easy in FCPX as many still easily await a Role Mixer.
Either Compound clip, The problem with using a basic copy & paste preset for each cup is that your long term readings will only be as long as the clip. That’s of course not a desirable outcome sine you really want to be measuring average the audio level of the whole project.
Without a Role Mixer the only way to feasibly do this is wrapping everything in a compound clip. The advantage of using a compound clip is you can also add your final color treatment there too, bringing that into spec as well.
What spec you use for WLM will depend a little on where it’s destined for, as with image specs.
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Thanks so much Simon, that was my hunch on how to proceed. Would you recommend wrapping the soundtrack into the compound clip, or leaving that as a separate file to maintain its level continuity throughout? If I do that, I’m not sure how that affects the LUFS.
Its an interesting prospect. Ultimately though, dialogue music and effects all have to go out the same set of speakers, so to speak. So one thing that is certainly worth considering is making sure ALL the audio is wrapped in a single compound clip so you can manage the final output. This is also where I would put WLM
Outside that you could wrap dialogue, effects and music in their own compound clips. This would allow you to mack changes to them as groups, but separately. It certainly makes volume management easier too.
You could make the video clip as dialogue only and move everything else to a separate compound clip. It gets a bit tricky though as you also want to keep things synced to image, especially dialog, foley and some effects and you don’t want anything to fall out of line when there is some editing done. In that respect, these effects are best left attached to the image, the trouble is, you’re now treating the effects along with the dialog… Unless I’m missing something.
This is where a Role Mixer would be a great idea, so it won’t exactly matter where you put things, it will come out the assigned “mixer strip” and you would be able to treat the audio elements separately and easily by assigning it roles. Sadly that doesn’t exist… yet.
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Really appreciate your thoughts here. So what I ended up doing was first I ensured all the clips with dialogue were at the same audio level, and then wrapped them into one compound clip, and applied the app to get to the ballpark LUFS. After that, I adjusted the music track (which I had left separate) on the timeline to pair aesthethically with that leveled clip. Once the desired ratio of dialogue and music was reached, I created a second compound clip of both the music track and the compound dialogue clip and applied the app again to reach the precise LUFS needed.
That sounds like a really good approach.
If you have a moment and would find the feature useful, log in to Apple’s feedback and request a “Role Mixer”. The more people that ask for it, the more Apple will listen. It should make managing audio in FCPX a lot easier.
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