3rd Day of Editing Evaluation

What went well:

• On this day,  I started to edit the sound for the transition from opening scene to title sequence of my documentary. This involved fading out the diegetic music of the opening scene, as well mixing this sound into the non diegetic music of the title sequence. This was simple as all I had to do it fade the sound out from the end footage using an audio transition. Furthermore, all I had to do is put the same audio transition on the start of the non diegetic music and position the two pieces of audio correctly so that it sound smooth and natural. Considering this is the first time I have felt with editing sound, it was fairly easy and I had no problem making sure that it sounded good. 
• As a result of a problem I encounter with the sound, which will be explained later, I discovered a new feature that allows you to see the in-depth details to the sound. This features shows the waveforms, where the base increases and decreases, as well as the volume of the sound through the whole audio. Despite this not being a major a tool on this particular day, I am aware that it'll be very helpful in the future when I need to manipulate the sound I am using in the future and will help me understand further the ins and outs of sound. 
• On this specific editing day, I discovered a new way of converting and exporting music files so that they are compatible to Final Cut Express. Once again, because of the problem I experiences, I had to find a way of converting the music so that I could get rid of the challenge I was facing. Learning how to convert and export music into different files was help because it made the process easier and it will help me in the future if I find myself in a similar position to what I was in today. 

Problem I encountered: 

• I only experienced on major problem on this day of editing. As mentioned before, I successfully editing and transitions the diegetic sound soon of the first clip with the non diegetic music of the title sequence. However, around 3 seconds after the base drops on the music, the sound just cuts out for around one and half seconds, and then continues as if the sound didn't stop. At first I though it was to do with the file I had received from the supplying of the music. Because of this assumption, I check my laptop and played the music to see if it was same on there, however the music was fine and there were not problems at all. After this, I went back onto Final Cut Express and tried cutting the music so that I eliminated the pause and put the two cut piece together so that is was as if I didn't even tamper with it. This failed once as it just didn't sound natural one bit. Still confused as to what was wrong, I tried looking at the waveforms of the sound to see exactly where the sound went silent. This proved to be unhelpful as it just didn't provide me with enough information as to why it stopped playing.

          I informed my teacher about my problem, with he hope that she'd know exactly what was     wrong. I left the problem with my teacher and came back later to see if it had been solved. She found a website that advised me to upload the audio onto iTunes and export it in a certain from there. The setting that had to be set followed. 

This worked in the end and allowed me to upload it onto Final Cut Express without any audio silences. Despite eventually finding a way to solve it, it proved to be very time consuming and some what frustrating as I had no clue how to fix the situation. I feel that I could have got a lot more audio edited if I hadn't encountered this problem, and I hope that in the future I don't face it again. 

In general, the editing process is taking a bit longer than I thought. However I feel this is only because I don't have enough experience with Final Cut, and due to this, it is causing thing to take much long than expected. I am planning to conduct more filming in the next couple of weeks, and it should help the editing become more efficient as it'll help gage where I am in the documentary and what scene needs to come next. Before then, I may edit more of the documentary. This will be the scene of the first interview and I have decided to edit this because I believe I have all of the footage needed to completely edit it all. The next editing day should bet much more successful than today's.