5 min read
How to work with poly WAV files in Final Cut Pro
Final Cut hides multichannel audio behind one control. Once you find it, eight tracks appear.
Final Cut Pro imports multichannel WAV files without complaint and then shows them as a single audio component. The channels are all there, they are simply grouped until you separate them.
Configure audio, separate channels
Select the clip, open the Audio inspector, and under Audio Configuration choose to separate the channels into individual components. Each microphone then has its own level, pan and enable state.
Use roles, not track numbers
Final Cut organises audio by roles rather than fixed tracks. Assign a subrole such as Dialogue Boom or Dialogue Lav to each component and exports, stems and mixes follow automatically.
Syncing
- Synchronise clips uses audio waveform analysis and works well with camera scratch.
- Timecode based sync needs the camera and recorder jammed to the same clock.
- Check the resulting synchronised clip before disabling the camera audio.
When to split first
Component names in Final Cut are generic. If the shoot has many takes, splitting the poly files into named mono stems first means the browser shows Boom and Lav1 in the filenames, which is far easier to search.
Keep the project at 48 kHz
Set the project audio to 48 kHz so nothing gets resampled on playback or export, and long interviews stay locked to picture.