Make Film Work — I make videos. Sometimes I write about it.

I have more problems with Soundtrack Pro than any other application on my Mac. Between crashing, and the seemingly endless file save progress indicators, I have managed to tip-toe my way through several successful projects. But it’s the looming uncertainty that puts fear in me whenever I send a project from Final Cut to Soundtrack Pro.

Recently I had the unique pleasure of being treated an an error I haven’t seen before, the curiously named CNSExceptionWrapper. I say it’s curious because most methods in the OS X frameworks start with NS, a remnant of NeXTSTEP — of which OS X is a direct descendent. The C prefix is a little peculiar however, and I wonder if it has something to do with one of the Core Services. Perhaps Core Audio? Who knows. I was only able to find a few references to the error after searching, and still haven’t found an explanation for what caused it.

Last night I ran into an issue I’ve had off and on for quite a while. Let’s say I’ve recorded a project using two different audio sources; a shotgun on the left channel and a lav on the right channel. I bring them into Soundtrack Pro and mute the left channel (I usually just use it for backup), and proceed to do my work on the right channel. When it’s ready I export the master mix back to Final Cut Pro and… WHAT?! None of my changes/edits made it through! In fact the sound I hear couldn’t have possibly come from a lavaliere microphone. So, completely confused and demoralized, I switch back to Soundtrack Pro and play the sequence. The audio now sounds the same as it did in Final Cut, but completely different than it sounded just a minute ago in Soundtrack Pro.

What’s going on?

For whatever reason, it appears that Soundtrack Pro sometimes decides that the channel you think you’re working with isn’t the one it thinks you should be working with. So it changes it for you at export. How helpful.

To correct this (and trust me, this is a huge pain) right-click on the clip in the timeline. Choose Channel Select > Mono > 1 (or whichever channel isn’t currently checked). You’re picking the channel you DON’T want. Then right-click again and choose Channel Select > Mono > 2 (bringing it back to the channel you do want).

Repeat for every single clip in your sequence.

When I discovered this solution (and I’m using that term loosely) I was working on a project that’s only 60 seconds long. You can see how this could be a major issue for projects that are something like 60 minutes or longer. Even manually changing the tracks for every clip in a five minute sequence would be a chore. It’s something I really hope to see fixed in a software update in the future. It’s hard for me to believe that I’m the only person that’s experienced this issue.

It’s clearly not a secret that Soundtrack Pro kind of sucks. But I suppose that for all my complaining I’m really just anxious for whatever is next for Soundtrack Pro; be it the chopping block or the upgrade that it, and we, deserve.

I haven’t posted anything in a while. You may have noticed. To make myself feel better about my own blogging failure I thought I’d pass along a tip that the people at Creative Cow recently wrote about; key bindings.

It’s a $10 name for describing how to create your own keyboard shortcuts within Final Cut Pro. This can be a huge time saver. For example, to get started in Soundtrack Pro I normally have to right click (or control-click) on a sequence in the Browser, select Send To, then choose Soundtrack Pro Multitrack Project. Alternatively, one could bind the action to their very own fancy-shmancy keyboard shortcut and accomplish the same task in a fraction of a second. On my system, I have this action set to Option-Shift-S.

The process of actually editing these shortcuts is as simple as you might expect something in FCP to be (meh). Start by hitting Option-H to open the keyboard layout editor, then click on the little lock icon in the lower left to allow changes. From there you can have at it by choosing the key combination tabs along the top of the window, and searching for the desired command in the search area. Simply drag the command onto the key you want to bind it to.

Creative Cow lists a bunch of great shortcuts in their post, but I’d also suggest setting Render All to the letter Y. It’s a letter that’s not used by default for anything, and it’s something you’re probably going to be doing a lot of. Consider also binding Send to Color and Send to Motion to Option-Shift-C and Option-Shift-M, receptively.

The last thing you’re going to want to do is to save your layout (and if you really want to blow your own mind, you can even set a keyboard shortcut for that too!). From the menu bar choose Tools > Keyboard Layout > Save Keyboard Layout… and give it a name. Something like, “Jason’s Keyboard,” or, “Master of space and time” would do nicely.

And finally, if things get too crazy in there, you can always hit the reset button to get yourself back to the Apple-supplied shortcuts.