Re: Final Cut Pro & BWFs

Hi Ryan,

FCP reads BWF fine with quite a lot metadata.
But you have to be very careful on what you are doing already during import. FCP 6 does use the current project settings to interpret the playback speed and the timecode. So be very very careful with that. It's always a good idea to create a project with a setup you need match the easy setup and relaunch Final Cut. Then import all your BWAVs, open the project they should belong to and drag the files over. Final Cut will cache the BWAV settings from the "Import Project" and write to your work project. So if you don't import all BWFs in one day, this works easily. If they come a day by day you should do this procedure each day.
Another thing with BWAV files, they don't have a Quicktime Timecode, which is used in FCP to sync clips. You will see a timecode though in FCP with BWAV files, it based on the audio timestamp and is generated on the fly.
If your work includes synching video with external audio you can't do that by timecode even if you spent money and time to keep cam and audio running running in sync on the set. Same is valid for multiclips and for a certain extend also for subclips.
Be careful when you media manage projects.

That's why there is BWF2XML. I takes the audio data and puts them into QT wrapper including a matching QT timecode. This is the same process as Log & Transfer for tapeless media.
This way they always will playback with correct speed independent from the project or import process. Furthermore you can use sync by timecode then. In it will be in sync even after a crash of the project.

Regards
Andreas

Spherico
http://www.spherico.com/filmtools