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Editor’s note: The following tip on importing CD tracks into Final Cut Pro 6 is excerpted from Apple Pro Training Series: Final Cut Pro 6 by Diana Weynand published by Peachpit Press.

Importing CD Tracks

From: Professional Editing in Final Cut Studio 2; pgs. 464-467

Almost all projects are enhanced by the addition of a music track, and CDs make a handy delivery system for these tracks. You may be using a CD from a stock music or sound effects library, a CD of a temp track your director handed you, or something off your personal music shelf. Using CDs as a source of additional audio tracks is convenient, but there will most likely be a discrepancy between the quality of your CD and your primary audio sources. There are steps you can take, however, to remedy this.

Standard CD audio is recorded at 44.1 kilohertz (kHz) sampling rate, whereas high-quality audio for video - including DV, XDCAM, HD, and so on - is recorded at 48.0 kHz. Although Final Cut Pro will play a CD track in the Timeline without rendering it, it would be better to convert the CD tracks to 48.0 kHz so the sampling rate of the CD tracks will match the sampling ate of the audio tracks from your video source. In this lesson, you will load your own CD and convert it to 48.0 kHz.

NOTE: In digital audio, a sampling rate represents the number of times each second that a sample is taken from an audio source to create a good representation of that sound. The more samples taken, the more accurately the audio is represented in digital form. Audio sample rates are measured in Hertz and written as Hertz (Hz) or kilohertz (kHz), such as 48000 Hz or 48.0 kHz.

1. In the Browser, press Command-B to create a new bin. Name the bin CD Tracks.

2. Select the bin, and choose File > Batch Export.
An Export Queue window opens with the empty bun selected. This window is a portal for exporting or converting a group of clips at one time. Although you will learn other exporting options in later lessons, for now you will use this window to convert your own CD tracks to 48.0 kHz.

3. Arrange your interface so you can see the Export Queue window and the desktop. Insert your own CD into the computer. Open a Finder window, and drag several audio tracks from the CD into the Final Cut Pro Export Queue window and drop them into the CD Tracks bin.
NOTE: It may be that your computer is set to import tracks directly into iTunes when it detects a CD. It an iTunes dialog opens, close it, along with the iTunes interface, and open the CD in your desktop Finder window.

4. With the CD Tracks bun selected, click the Settings button.
A Batch window appears with several options.

5. Click the Set Destination button, and select a location where you want to save the new music tracks. Click Choose.

6. Click the Format pop-up, and from the menu choose AIFF as the file type.

7. Click the Options button. When the Sound Settings window appears, change the Rate to 48.0 either by entering it in the Rate field or by clicking the lower arrow to the right of the field and choosing 48.000 from the pop-up menu. Click OK.

8. Leave the other settings in the Batch window at their defaults and click OK. In the Export Queue window, click the Export button.
An Export Queue progress bar appears, indicating that the CD tracks with the current settings are being exported to the selected destination. When this process is complete, you can import those tracks into the project and edit them into your sequences.

Project Tasks
Use Clip Enable to disable the music track in the Believe Mix_v3_keyframes sequence and import into the project one of the CD tracks you just converted. Mix this new sound track into the sequence.

Excerpted from Apple Pro Training Series: Final Cut Pro 6 by Diana Weynand. Copyright © 2007. Used with permission of Pearson Education, Inc. and Peachpit Press.