How Multichannel Audio Clips Appear in the Viewer
The order in which channels are grouped in the Viewer depends on the type of clip. A
master clip displays audio channel groupings in the same order they are stored in the
clip’s media file (unless the master clip was created from a sequence clip). Sequence
clips’ audio channels display stereo pairs followed by mono channels, regardless of
their order in the original media file or their order in the sequence.
For example, suppose you have a surround sound multichannel audio file that contains
the following channel ordering: stereo, mono, mono, and stereo. When you import this
audio file into Final Cut Pro, the master clip’s audio channels appear in the same order
as the audio file. However, if you edit this clip into a sequence and then open the
sequence clip in the Viewer, the channels will appear as stereo, stereo, mono, and
mono because the stereo pairs are displayed first.
The Viewer has a separate tab for each stereo pair or mono clip item. The example
below shows an eight-channel sequence clip open in the Viewer. The stereo pair is
displayed first, followed by the mono clip items.