Changing angles gives a slight click/pop

Hey guys,

I'm slightly pulling my hair out over this. I only have one audio track active but switching between 3 angles. it doesn't happen every time, but there's an audible pop. and as i'm recording acoustic music it's really obvious.

i have no effects on as i thought that might be the problem.

Any ideas?

Many thanks

Sam,

Yes I get the same as sometimes this cuts a waveform in half giving the pop.

Slipping the audio edit left or right tends to fix it for me. (expand the audio track/s)

Peter

Cheers, do you mean just slightly panning?

This common in multicam edits. To avoid this many users expand the audio of the first clip and stretch to out for the length of the clip, or they detach the audio. Either way, when the picture is cut the audio is not cut, avoiding the pop sound you sometimes hear, particularly in soft passages.

I've tried to detach the audio from the compound clip i made but i still get the pops

DO NOT DETACH THE AUDIO!!!!

Expand the audio so you can see both the video and audio tracks.
Then move the audio edit left or right slightly.
That should fix it

Peter

The audio should not be cut when you detach it or expand it correctly. Unless you're getting sound from the camera pics as well there never be a pop on a cut point. It's not possible. With the detached audio the timeline should look something like this.



With expanded audio it would look like this




The audio of the first clip is extended out the length of the piece, so subsequent cuts don't effect it.

Tom,

I NEVER do this as it means you cannot remove or reorder/lose stuff without losing sync.
I can see it if you are doing a music video, but you are probably going to use a single track anyway.
I've done 100's of cuts using the FCPX multicam and pops do occur sometimes because the 'ghost edits' can clip a waveform badly.
Slipping the audio edit by a frame (or less) usually fixes it

I updated the message to show it using the same technique with expanded audio. A lot of event productions use detach audio. I prefer expanded audio.Had to do hours of classroom seminars. It's the only way to get clean audio without having to fix each cut.

Hi Sam
Not totally sure I'm following what exactly you are doing. You say you only have one audio channel active. Is this continuous audio with no cuts on the audio portion of multicam clip? If so then make sure to set volume to zero or deactivate all other audio on the other angles. It may be possible that audio from the other clips is what is causing the pops.
If you are cutting through the audio portion of the clip, then you need to apply a short cross audio fade between each cut. You can now do this in the latest version of FCPX from the modify menu, or you can expand the audio clips from the video then slightly extend the ends of each clip and apply fades on the top and tails of each audio clip with the cross over lined up. Manual fades override automatically applied fades of video transitions. You can set the duration of fades in the Preferences. Default I believe is one half second.
To go backwards and explain what causes a "pop". Sound is a sine wave with a full cycle based on the the recorded sampling rate, 4800kHz is typical for video. When you cut a clip, if the cut happens when the sine wave is not at zero amplitude, (zero crossing point) or the incoming audio is not at zero, you will generate a pop as the waveform is cut off and it generates digital pop. This is indeed more prevalent in quieter passages like acoustic music. So you either need the cut to line up with the zero crossing point or you need to apply a fade to both clips to "hide" the pop.
Since there are thousands of crossing points per frame of video, you can extend audio and move down to 1/80 of a frame in the audio lane.
Wish FCPX always created an audio cut at zero amplitude like most DAWs and Sound Trac Pro could do. Feature request I suppose.
Hope this helps, Greg

Would you guys mind looking over this so you can see what i mean?



There's 3 angles in total but i've muted the audio on 2 of the angles and i just cant explain why it clicks.

Could we see your timeline?

I uploaded a short video that shows how I set up expanded audio so it doesn't cut when the video is cut.

www.fcpxbook.com/ExpandedAudio.mov

Set the first shot with the audio channel you want. Expand the audio. Then make the first video cut. Collapse the audio for the remainder of the video and mute it. Stretch out the audio for the first shot so you have a long L cut. Now when you cut the rest of the video only video cuts, never the audio, and the continuous is continuous throughout the piece.

Here you go

I assume the audio is continuous. Collapse all the audio except the first shot. Mute all the collapsed audio. Stretch out the expanded audio for the first shot the length of the piece.

Amazing, i'll give the try in a bit! If this works this will save my bacon. Such an annoying feature! Never had this problem before but never done acoustic music before..

Hi Sam
From your Timeline screenshot it is apparent that you are indeed blading (cutting) through the audio portion of the clips. This can and most likely will produce "pops".
As Tom has laid out, if all of the audio is from the same source, do as he suggested and expand the audio of the first clip, drag the tail all the way the end of the Timeline or the portion for the music, then mute audio on all the other clips. You can drag select all and pull down the audio.
Now you should not have any pops because the audio from the first clip is continuous with no cuts. If for any reason you do have pops, check the audio from the original media, it may be possible that the pops were created during recording.
Recently I had done some recording of an acoustic guitar and it had lots of clicking that I could not figure out. Turned out the guitar had an elevated rosette around the sound hole and was slightly unglued. When the player strummed in a certain way his pick would click on the edge of the rosette producing the clicking sound. Wasn't consistent enough for me to figure out right away and I was mixing the tracks in Logic. Wasn't until I watched the video and looked at the guitar I figured out what it was. Able to reduce it some with a narrow band graphic equalizer and side chained limiter. Later he got a new guitar and issue resolved for good. Maybe not for whoever bought his old guitar.

Hope this helps, Greg

This was a great tip, Peter... thank you!  You saves me TONS of frustration!!!