Apple Final Cut Pro 6 - Manual (Page 970)

Chapter 10 Exporting Audio for Mixing in Other Applications 185
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You might put one actor’s voice on track A1, and another actor’s voice on track A2.
Narration recorded with the Voice Over tool might go on track A3. Background
ambience clips such as wind and rain might go on tracks A4 and A5. Sound effects
could go on tracks A6, A7, and A8. Finally, four tracks for overlapping stereo music clips
would be dedicated to tracks A9, A10, A11, and A12.
If you’re working on a project that may be distributed to an international audience, you
should also keep your final mix separated into D, M, and E (dialogue, music, and effects)
and stems. This will allow foreign distributors to dub over the voices of your actors
without losing the music, ambience, and effects that you’ve edited into your program.
Exporting Audio Tracks to Individual Audio Files
If you have a lot of source audio in your sequence that wasn’t captured with timecode,
or if you need to export your audio to a video system that doesn’t support OMF import,
you can export each audio track to its own audio file. These files can then be imported
into a multitrack audio application. The disadvantage of this method is that it doesn’t
preserve your edit points because all of the audio clips on each track become one
audio file. Your audio editor then has to manually edit each track to get back to the
original clips. You also cannot include handles (additional media on either side of a clip)
on your audio clips this way.
Categories of audio tracks
Dialogue This includes most of the audio that was captured with your video.
Whether or not you place each character’s lines on a separate
dialogue track is between you and your audio editor.
Voiceover Narration should be put on a separate track from dialogue, as it will
probably have different EQ settings.
Music Stereo music from any source could use up to four tracks, if you’re
doing complicated music edits or cross fades.
Ambience Ambient tracks include background tones, atmospheric sound
effects, and possibly room tone.
Sound effects Effects include material from effects libraries as well as effects clips
you record yourself. If you’ve edited in Foley effects, they should
occupy a separate set of audio tracks.