My Soundtrack Pro Headache
Update: Commenter Cameron points to this Apple Kbase article that should resolve this problem. So hooray for that. And for Cameron.
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.
oh i feel your pain….
i’m dealing with a 20 minute piece of music, which, for certain reasons was edited in soundtrack “pro” —there’s a fair number of edits between takes— all recorded to a 744T and a 722T in synch…
soundtrack imported the poly-wav files no problem and seemed to have no probs..
but
ALL I FUCKI9NG WANT IS TO DUMP ALL THE ORIGINAL CHANNELS (with edits) INTO INDIVIDUAL MONO FILES…. BUT IT’S (so far after huge hassle) IMPOSSIBLE.
!!!!GHAAAAAA!@
… so here was the work around…
i batch split all my (4 mono channel & 2 mono channel) wave files using a very nice audio utility.
then in soundtrack, replaced each edit, clip for clip.
you can do this with the ‘select all occurrences of’ option…
then control-click the file you want to replace with in the browser window.
worked out and the damn software only crashed 3 times : /
finally could get my mono-files safely out of that software and can no find something else to do a proper mix with… (something that doesn’t suck so hard)
Hi,
I read your suggestions here and thought I’d been saved form this audio fate worse than death. I tried it, several times, and with two different projects – but, it didn’t work. I like Soundtrack, but this is such a big error. At last I know its soundtrack and not me.
thanks,
Jim
@B.M. Douglas – Yikes, that sounds horrible. I’m glad you were able to figure something out though.
@Jim – I’m sorry my suggestions weren’t much help for you. If you want, I’d be happy to try and help you troubleshoot the problem further, though.
Hi Jason,
I just had this problem too. For me, quitting and reopening the project made it select the proper channel for playback. However, this did not stop it from selecting the wrong channel for export. I did discover that if I selected “All Submixes” instead of “Master Mix” in the exported items dropdown I got the proper channels selected on the export. What a buggy piece of junk this program is! Anyway, in case that helps someone, it’s something to try…
Michael
hello guys,
have to join in to the general – disappionted – soundtrack choir boy group…
feel just like you – app seems to be set up Apple-wise but then, in
the middle (or worse, the end) of the workflow…KA-BOUM.
i repeatedly keep getting export error:
“offline files” – cannot export, reconnect files” etc, tho all (3!) files
are in their place. App locates and saves collected files with the
project perfectly, but i can’t seem to get the audio/video export working.
ANY HELP is HIGHLY APPRECIATED.
thanks, kids!
Michael (Hawk)
Yes, I too have had, and am having this missing clip audio during export, but not during editing. I’ve tried panning the audio to just the left channels, with no luck; changing the track the clip is on, with no luck; copied the clip on to a new clip with no luck.
I will try your suggestion of forcing the mono mode back and forth. One question though, Do you need to save the individual mono selections each time?
FYI I have found so many other frustrating export bugs with STP, but I haven’t had the errors in Logic Pro of any version. I think I need to go directly to Logic in the future but the tools for going from FCP to STP make it easy until you have to actually get the product out of the box.
Thanks.
Another follow up posting on this missing audio on export issue.
I found the best way to fix this is to export just the audio clip(s) in question to an external audio file (aiff or wav). Then drag the new file on to the time line on a seperate track, sync it to the original problem track, disable the original track, adjust the level of the replacement track, do a test of the export and it should show up this time.
I don’t like having to do fixes like this when putting out a final mix, but with STP it is just part of the protocol. Good luck with yours, I’m mixed down and happy.
FYI did you know that STP sets the number of channels it will down mix and export by the first setting of the first sub mix?
So, if you have surround sub mixes as sub 2, 3, 4, 5, Master, etc. The surround channels will never appear at the exported output if sub mix 1 is set as stereo.
This one took me a while to figure out and it appears that Apple knows about this one too!
Have fun with your projects.
I am so frustrated with STP. I have yet to make it work. All my work is always lost. half the files, or edits disappear, the audio doesn’t pass from and to FCP as it should… I follow the books, i search online, and i hit my head against the walls. Finally, i realize i’m not the only one who’s no longer using this crazy software… at least until they fix major problems that make the simplest of tasks totally morbid! thanks for making me feel like i’m not alone.. graaaaaggg
Reading this was very reassuring towards my suspicions…the ones about Soundtrack sucking, which it does. At the same time it was the kiss of death. I’m that new guy to Final Cut Suite. I’ve already taught myself FCP and Motion at school, but purchasing the entire suite, I felt as if the Apple store staff was right in the next room, suppressing laughter. My most recent project depended on Soundtrack for the basics…I had some background noise on my clips and wanted to mix with surround. To this day my project is unfinished because this application just lacks so many vital basic things. On long videos, zooming precisely is impossible. The is no keyframe/envelope accuracy, no snapping to clips or even frame-by-frame jogging. The timeline is optimized for “music recording.”
Sony Vegas is a basic basic basic PC video editor that doesn’t hold a candle to FCP, but it can actually edit audio for video.
Googled ‘soundtrack pro sucks’ and here I am. I have picture lock on a 15-minute broadcast piece and thought it’d be nice to sweeten it since we have time. Nothing major – get some really tight compression, add some EQ and add safety with limiters. Edits get lost, changes forgotten or just dumped. Doesn’t help that I’m using a Mackie Control Universal board and the faders are presently being operated by a ghost or spirit as they’re crawling all over. Mind you, there is no automation gain in this show. There isn’t even any mixing. Just adding compression, EQ and limiting. That’s it.
Nor are these noob problems. Been cutting for 16 years on Avid, 4 on FCP. Now I’m remmbering why I never use STPro. f’in sux.
So I just spent 2 hours on every forum, and doing everythign in my power, thought I was loosing my mind almost reminaged the entire mac. Why would the exports not match what is on the timeline in soundtrack pro as a “master mix” really stupid. I’ma “professional” and just looked like A giant idiot cause soundtrack has these limitations. I have yet you mix out video from it, like use it to do audio as the last step in a project, and export a video file from it in its native format.
Roudtripping, ha forget it, the changes simply dont live update like they would in live type. Oh, yeah they end of life that too. Lets take one of the best titler out there, and really just kill it, when post houses have THOUSAND of hours of footage and can’t use the .ipr files anymore.
Stupid.
Hi Jason,
Thanks for posting this. What a nightmare. I’m using Soundtrack Pro and have the same issues. I was loosing my mind through this 14 minute short film I just finished. Work that should have taken me 10 minutes literally turned into 8 to 10 hours at a time. I would estimate Soundtrack Pro added a good 40 hours to my work. I was working with 4 and sometimes 6 tracks of dialog audio from our production sound (4 track recorder plus 2 channels from camera all merged into the video clips as one of the first parts of my workflow). I would select a specific “good source” for whoever was talking and Soundtrack Pro would arbitrarily change my selection to a crappy source (i.e. camera mic). This film was filled with dialog and I had score tracks, foley etc… all got screwed up on export. Not to mention if I changed a fade point on a clip it would put everything out of sync (lip movement wouldn’t match the audio track). When I tried to record my foley directly into a track it was hit and miss. Sometimes I’d get doubling and feedback issues. I’d reboot, didn’t change a setting, and it would work. Then other times the reboot didn’t help. It’s the buggiest software I have ever used in my life, and I’ve worked in the I.T. industry for 18 years. I used to own a recording studio and I used ProTools. It has it’s bugs as well, but it works overall. There is so much room here for Apple to come and do a better job than ProTools, but man… did they ever miss the target here. What really sucks for me, is that the way Soundtrack Pro is laid out and the features it boasts, it could be way better than anything out there. It’s just that it doesn’t actually work.
That being said, I do love the noise reduction features and will dump a single file out to it to clean it up. But roundtriping,…. as someone else here said… FORGET IT! Or even working with multiple tracks in anyway… FORGET IT! The sound library is good though, and I’ll use that. Other than that… I won’t be doing another project with Soundtrack Pro any time soon.
Jim
Hey Guys,
I’ve been having the exact same problem with Soundtrack as Jason, but none of the solutions in this thread worked for me for some reason. After a few hours of trying everything I could think of, I found this Apple support document:
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3154
Turns out, if the Sample Rate of your export and the Sample Rate of your Sound Output device in Audio/Midi Setup aren’t the same, this happens. I was exporting a 48khz file (the Soundtrack default) and my Line Output was set to 44.1khz (the Mac default.) Why these default settings conflict with each other, I have no idea. But I changed my output to 48khz, and it worked. Hope this helps everyone!
Cameron
thank you so much, Cameron!!!
Nice… now that was a helpful link. I have spent hours, over weeks and months looking for a resolution to this issue. I’m so glad we all never gave up.
It would seem that I am not alone in my quest to implement a full on post production work-flow.