Vordio does not yet support full time stretching but I am working on it for the next release.

If you have manually altered the speed of clips during editing, for example slowed one down to 50%, Vordio will create audio that is at the normal 100% speed, not 50% the speed.

Also, for certain combinations of mixing frame rates within the same timeline, FCP X will time stretch some clips automatically without explicitly informing you this has happened. Under these circumstances, Vordio may produce audio that seems to be very slightly out of sync. For instance if you put a clip recorded at 29.97fps onto a 30fps timeline, FCP X will automatically ‘conform’ it to play 0.01% slower to fit the new timeline. FCP X calls this process ‘conforming’ a clip but often does this behind the scenes without telling you.

NOTE: Vordio 3.0.2 now does support conform

This affects a few projects more than others when it comes to the way Vordio extracts & maps the sound. There are ways to avoid problems until the time stretching version is ready. In the meantime there are workarounds if you understand how FCP X manages time.

To avoid this happening, you should set the timeline to be the extact same frame rate as the recorded clips you are using on it. This means they will play at their native speed and Vordio audio will be in sync.

Here is a handy chart that shows when FCP X will automatically conform a clip without telling you.

Vordio 3.0 gives a summary report of the conversion process after it finishes that looks like this.

The numbers it reports are as follows:

Found – Audio items found in the original final cut project
Used – Audio items that were used when building the converted reaper project
Unused – Audio items that were discarded when building the converted reaper project
Sync – Audio items that were not synchronized with original & so need to be synchronized manually
Missing Refs – Audio items with missing asset references could not be added to project

Assets – Files that were referred to in the original final cut project
Missing – Files that were referred to in the original final cut project but offline so unavailable
Copied – Files that were copied to the reaper project without transcoding
Transcoded – Files that had to be transcoded to make them compatible with reaper

Out of these the most important to understand are ‘Unused’, ‘Missing’ & ‘Sync’ as these may indicate problems and require further explanation.

Unused indicates that an audio item has been cropped so much that it has effectively disappeared from the project. There are legitimate reasons this can happen during editing, for example putting many items inside a compound clip and then trimming the compound clip down so much that some of the contained items would never actually play. If this is not the case then unused items may indicate a problem and you should contact support.

Missing indicates that required audio is offline so simply unavailable or that it could not be transcoded to make it compatible with reaper. The most common scenario is a drive with required media is not mounted. If so make sure it is and try again. The other reason is that the transcoder could not understand the stream within the file which may be due to a missing or unsupported codec or a corrupt file. If it is the latter of these you should contact support.

Sync indicates that clips were time stretched in the original project and the stretching has not been translated. These clips are muted & marked with *SYNC* to make this obvious in the pro version.

If your Mac is running the latest Mac OS X versions 10.8 or 10.9 (Mountain Lion/Mavericks), you might run into a problem where your computer reports that the downloaded Vordio file is damaged. This message is actually badly worded and misleading. It should really say something like “this disk image is not apple certified, are you sure you want to open?”. Mountain Lion has added a feature called Gatekeeper which prevents users from opening applications from unknown developers. I hope apple change this misleading message to something more accurate in future. However, it is not broken and there is an easy workaround, so read on if this applies to you.

To install Vordio without issue on a Mountain Lion system, you have to first make some changes to the Gatekeeper settings.

Go to the System Preferences and choose the section Security & Privacy.

The Gatekeeper settings are under the ‘General’ tab which lies just below the password settings. There you can see three options to choose from.

You can either choose to let your Mac open applications downloaded from trusted developers or anywhere. Check ‘Anywhere’.

Now when you open Vordio again Mac asks you whether you want to open the application since its developer is not known. You can drag it to Applications the usual way from here.

NOTE: The Gatekeeper feature is pretty useful to prevent malware on your computer through non apple certified applications. I suggest you to change the settings back to ‘Mac App Store and identified developers’ section. Otherwise be sure which apps you’re downloading.

Many thanks to Eemeli Ylinen who informed me of this problem and took time to do the research for a solution (I don’t use Mountain Lion)