Final Cut skews audio to the left channel -- why?

[mjfe2]

Bit of a long shot but does anyone know why Final Cut is skewing the audio of its videos to the left channel? I've done a couple of video projects with two different friends and in both cases I sent the audio off, happy with how it sounded, and both times the finished result came back with the sound panned disproportionately to the left. Does anyone know why Final Cut might do this by default and if there's an easy way to avoid it? Thanks in advance.

[BJG145]

So, you're sending off a sound file, someone else drops it into FCP, sends you back the finished video, and the audio is skewed...? It's impossible to know what they're messing up without knowing what their setup is / what they're doing.

[mjfe2]

Yes, as I said it was a long shot! I was hoping someone says 'oh yes, that's a common side effect of FCP's audio compression algorithm, you just need to ask them to do this....' At first I thought it might be down to the way Youtube encodes audio but then I got hold of the original .mkv and realised that had the same problem too.

So it's not something you've come across? This is the first project I noticed it on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNN-jWE9e_Q (I wasn't in a position to change this once it was uploaded) But I'm doing another project now where I can get hold of the person putting the audio to the video, so it would be nice to fix it this time.

[BJG145]

From some Googling, it does sound as though some people get confused with the way FCP handles stereo, resulting in this kind of problem, though I haven't fully grasped it.

http://joelyeaton.wordpress.com/2011/05/22/fcp-7-audio-pan-b...

I'm wondering if the problem might arise in the course of adding further audio tracks for foley, dialogue, etc., and getting in a muddle with the track linking/panning. At any rate the video editor needs to keep a close eye on how the panning for the various audio tracks is set.

Perhaps you could explain that you've suffered this problem in the past, and could you check the video before they release it.

[muzines]

I've never had an issue with audio panning done wrong in FCP (any version), other than user error.

[mjfe2]

Thanks guys, I figured it out! The original audio recorded with the footage, though muted, was being 'silently' panned to the right so that the overdubbed audio, despite being stereo, was being skewed to the left. Anyway, it's all fixed now.