Q:They shot double system and imported the video and audio clips into FCP. Because of timecode breaks the users had to "Capture Now" for their audio clips and then make subclips of each individual shot. To add to the confusion they imported the audio clips as video+audio.

Now I'm having problems figuring out how to Merge these subclips with their corresponding video clips. Doesn't seem to be an option. Looks like FCP only merges audio clips with video clips and doesn't allow the merging of video clips with audio from another Video+Audio Clip.

A1:That's correct. A single clip can be 24 tracks of audio, but there must only be one video track in a merged clip. You do have a bit of mess that you have to cobble together.

You have to separate out the audio from the video. Put the audio clips in the timeline with the video, unlink video from audio, delete the video, and then drag the audio clips back into the browser.

Or put video and audio for the two pieces in the timeline. Again unlink the audio from the video of the audio material and delete the video. Link up the clips in the timeline to the video+audio clips and then drag back into the browser.

A2:you have audio from one source and video from another, and you want to merge them so they act as a single clip containing both audio and video. Correct me if I am wrong...

In FCP, I was able to take audio from one clip and video from a different clip, and merge them like you want. I put the video and audio into the timeline and synced them up, meaning when the guy moves his mouth, the correct words are heard (for example). You may need to delete the video track from your good audio track. From there I selected (highlighted) the audio and video clips in the timeline, and from the Modify menu, selected Link. Doing so seemed to marry the audio and video. I then dragged the clip from the timeline to the browser. You may want to set up separate bins (folders) in the browser because you will have multiple clips with the same names.

Q:The Microsoft Word Toolbar and menues for converting docs to pdfs are gone. Word2003 and Acrobat 9.0.

A1:Have searched the hard drive for pdfmaker.dot without success. Finds pdfmword.dll in the pdfmaker folder. Is this the right file instead of pdfmaker.dot? How do we connect the addins from the harddrive to word again? In word - tools addins, we only search for dot's...

Q:I'm trying to create an animation but it is not working due to problems with my assembly mates.  SW is saying there are many mates over defining the assembly.  I guess I'm doing something wrong with my mating process.  Is there a qucik fix as the assembly contains many mates and it will take ages to go through them all and satisfy them..

 A1:You just need some degrees of freedom in your mates. You might want to create another configuration first and go through the mates and suppress the ones which constrain your parts too much. That way you haven't lost your restrained assembly.

A2: make sure that if you use multiple parts, you create a contact (it's the drup with a hole, or whatever it is). if you do this, the assembly study on the left comes up. change it to physical study and then add the contact and gravity if needed.

Q:How to disable 3D orbit on Shift+mouse wheel?

A: If you want to switch off the 3D rotate view function (3D-orbit) assigned by default to the combination Shift+wheel (rollerwheel), you can change or disable this assignment in the CUI command.

You can find this function in the CUI dialog under Mouse buttons > Shift+click > Button 3: Transparent orbit (assigned command 3DORBITTRANSPARENT).

If you want to use this combination (Shift + dragging with mouse-wheel pressed) for orthogonal panning in 2D, you need to press first the wheel, then the Shift key.