Blackmagic Forum

Posted: **Sat Dec 12, 2020 10:44 pm**

Editing:

1. Do you always 'normalize' the volumes on the edit tab, on Fairlight, or do you rarely normalize?
And if you don't normalize, what would be the reason?

2. Do you then adjust the clip volumes or adjust the track/mixer?

Editing/Sound design

3. When delivering the audio to a sound designer, are the audio volume adjustments, fx within the clips embedded when exporting and importing to say Pro Tools and such? How about the track volume adjustments on Resolve? Are there any Resolve adjustments that will not be embedded when exporting audio to sound design that I should know of?

Context:
I'm editing a documentary and I'm in the habit of trying to fix the sounds as much as I can every time I've edited a scene, since I can't fully immerse in the flow of the scene if the audio is all over the place.
However I would like to think that any tweaking I do beforehand with the 'dailies', would be helpful to the sound designer so they don't have to start from scratch.

4. Then again, would a sound designer in fact want to start from scratch? Does it make a difference in their workflow?

If you can articulate your audio workflow I would love to hear it both from editors and sound designers.
Mostly interested in the context of feature-length documentary projects as one aims at an efficient workflow since there is so much material to compile and look at. But all insights from any project will be appreciated.

Also any tips tricks, fx, links that might contribute to efficiency would be very valuable.

Thanks!

Posted: **Sat Dec 12, 2020 11:28 pm**

The sound mixer.....documentaries don't really need enough 'sound design' to qualify for the application of that term, at least not here in the UK, will strip all of your levels off and 'start again'. It's rare for the editor to remove the gain adjustments himself
and though.
The editor wants to present a good video right up to the time that he hands it off to audio post; not only for his producer and director to view, but also to give the audio mixer a good audio guide track. Added FX though are best removed as they rarely come across accurately via an audio AAF file transfer and getting useable audio passed over to the mixer is the most important thing.
The mixer will commence with tracklaying; checker boarding the dialogue for ease of mixing so that consistent EQ and any compression, can be given to each separate person talking. The sound FX the editor has supplied from the shoot, plus any the editor had added, will be split to new tracks as required and the music likewise.
The mixer will then work through, either changing gains and EQ on individual clips or leaving that to faders and eq channel controls depending on their own mixing preferences .
Obviously adding sound FX will now be involved but most documentaries are nowhere near as heavy in 'sound design' as a drama would be.
Dave Taylor

Posted: **Sun Dec 13, 2020 7:29 pm**

1. Both, depending.

2. Both, depending.

3. I'm a one man shop.

4. Ask your sound guy what he prefers.

Posted: **Mon Dec 14, 2020 12:41 am**

As David says, it's normal to strip off all level adjustments and eq etc, and start again. A rough guide mix with the edit is fine but I would always want all the separate components as well. For instance I may want to replace any sound fx added by the editor if I have better or more appropriate ones for the scene. I don't even like to be supplied with dialogue to which compression has been applied.
In answer to your questions,
1: I never use normalization on anything.
2: I use clip gain to roughly match levels and then adjust properly using faders and automation.
3: If sound design has been done by someone else, I would prefer, in my case, to have a Pro Tools
session AAF of the tracklay provided, or stems supplied.
4: The sound designer will start from scratch as well.

To put things into context, up until my retirement I had been doing audio post and sound design professionally for 25 years, and sound recording and mixing since the 1970s. Video editing I do as a hobbyist, but still do audio post on my projects in Pro Tools.
As Jim says, ask whoever is doing the audio post what they need you to deliver.

Posted: **Mon Dec 14, 2020 12:48 am**

This is my Pro Tools setup. My Resolve setup is much more humble.

05A.jpg

Resolve .jpg

Posted: **Mon Dec 14, 2020 2:26 am**

I agree with David, he said it well I think.

ardelle wrote:4. Then again, would a sound designer in fact want to start from scratch? Does it make a difference in their workflow?

The only time I as a "sound mixer" or re-recording engineer / editor use preexisting work from the edit is if I really have extremely little time to do my work. But normally I take into account starting from scratch whenever I'm asked how long something takes.

If you leave things in that's often ok since we can erase pretty much everything (except for rendered effects, which we generally don't want (without a clean backup)), though it does take a few minutes.

One thing I'd say is generally not great is audio fades on track volume automation (in Fairlight I suppose). The problem with that is that if we get rid of all automation in order to start from scratch then all of the long fades to indicate artistic intent get lost, as well as all the short fades to deal with dissolves between music edits across tracks or simply soften a hard edit . In the former case we'll then have to reference the rough mix you output or just use our own taste for that. In the latter case we have to redo all those fades to deal with what's more of a technical issue. So for fades and x-fades I'd say certainly try to do those on the clips rather than automation.

I also normally adjust clip gain and essentially zero it out. Different deliverables have different requirements, so if you're delivering to a network that wants an undipped music stem for example it can often be better for us to have all music on music tracks as flat as possible. So any clip gain and automation on there gets 'nuked'.

There are definitely things you could do to make the job faster for your audio post guys, but you should ask them what their preferences are.

Posted: **Mon Dec 14, 2020 7:39 am**

1) I don't normalise. Most of my audio ist already in the ballpark, when it comes in. And those few clips that don't are quickly adjusted by ear.

I started audio mixing in the analog days and when digital came along the only normalisation we had was peak normalisation, which is useless for mixing. Bur perhaps I should start experimenting with loudness normalisation to see what it can do for me...

2) I do most of the level balancing on the clip level. It's faster and more flexible for me than fiddling with automation. EQ and Dynamics are done on the track (each character and each location on its own track). I use the faders for a bit of fine tuning at the end many projects end up with all faders still at zero.

3) I don’t have much experience with ProTools round tripping. I did round trips to Logic and Mixbus (as stems and as AAF). I never expect any adjustments to come over. But lately we do everything in Fairlight.

4) When I do the final mixing I start from scratch, even if I have done the edit myself. I listen again to every clip on every track. If clip level adjustments are there, I don't reset them to zero and adjust as needed. But I always reset Compressor, EQ and effects. (if you round trip to another DAW non of those things will translate).
The point of starting from scratch is that I have to know what is going on and why. Mixing is all about context: an EQ set during edit to match the rest of the scenes's dialog might not help at all in the final Mix when all the SFX and music have been added.

Finally - as always – communication is king. Work flows best when those who work together speak with each other :-)

If I would be your Re-Recording Mixer I would say: Adjust audio where it is needed to have a smooth editing, but don’t waste time on details. Before we start, send a test file. And then we talk what speeds things up on both ends and where not to waste our time.

Posted: **Tue Dec 15, 2020 5:15 am**

This thread of handing projects to sound mixers is SUPER helpful. One thing my mixer and I can't figure out: I use audio keyframes ("automation", my mixer calls it) in my audio files and for whatever reason, he isn't seeing them in ProTools.

HOW can I export this project (or how can he import it) so he can see my audio keyframes? Those little white dots are like "my children" and I want him to see my children, even if he kills them at his discretion.

Dennis

Posted: **Wed Dec 16, 2020 4:29 am**

Great to hear all the experience talking.

David, the ‘checkerboarding’ is an interesting area, I guess there is also a great variety of approaches there depending on the quality of the audio in a given project. One documentarian said he would assign tracks by the type of microphone used...

Personally I’ve been confused in this realm as I’m thinking about how to categorize all the diffferent audio I have. There is great variation in the quality of the recordings, since the project is a verite-type documentary with no voiceovers.
It’s all recorded on location with some well-placed lavs and some not so, couple of different shotguns, sometimes in-camera mics.

There are four main characters in my film (ABCD) and when they interact, they group up in every conceivable combination (AB, AC, AD, CB, CBD etc..) in 30 + different locations, sometimes they whisper, they sing, scream, shout, snore, the whole repertoire.
I’ve discovered a new dimension to patience during this journey.

In my commercial work it’s all clean, controlled and professional.
This is a different beast. I really enjoy the challenge however.

If you may, I have more questions:

Question 5.
How would one approach this type of a project? What type of categorization would you go for?
I guess there would also be a track or two for ’Misc, Random, X-files’?

Normalizing is an interesting topic too, depends and depends or as Charles and Johannes mentioned - no normalization at all. This seems to be common as well.
It really takes time to weed out everything the internet throws at you.
Also the fades Mattias pointed out, do they help in the mixing? Do they even survive the transfer?

Question 6.
How many tracks (roughly) would a well-prepared editor have in their project at handover?
For documentaries, for dramas?

If you have screenshots to share of your tracks, timelines, layouts would love to have a look.
(Sometimes a picture is worth more than a thousand hours of clicking things that I don't understand.)
Charles, thank you for sharing your set-up. When you have Darth Vader and Homer looking over you, your bases are truly covered.

Question 7.
How many days would you need/budget, for an ambitious feature-length documentary with passable to average audio (that in some cases needs to be 'fixed', de-noised, cleaned) sound design, mixing?

Question 8.
(for sound-designers, mixers)

What is the best way for an editor/director to frustrate a sound-designer or a mixer? What are the worst people to work with like?
What are the things that editors/directors never seem to understand about sound designers, mixers?
What would be the single most important thing to take care of (add, remove) that would have the most positive impact on your work?

All in all I am of the opinion that audio does not merely ‘matter’, rather it’s imperative.
But trying to understand it is the hard part for me at this moment. It’s very deep dive so thanks again for these educational perspectives.

Adjust audio where it is needed to have a smooth editing, but don’t waste time on details.

Johannes, this is an art. To know the difference...

Posted: **Sun Dec 27, 2020 7:26 pm**

ardelle wrote:
Adjust audio where it is needed to have a smooth editing, but don’t waste time on details.

Johannes, this is an art. To know the difference...

At the end it is art. Yes. And knowing the difference is the difficult part when you start any art.

But I meant that sentence very down to earth and practical. When I am editing I focus on the story and ignore most audio and color related things. I am quite tolerant here. I can edit an interview with listening to one lav (that with the important answers). Especially on long documentaries with lot of materials I don't want to waste time in adjusting things that never make it into the cut. But when I get distracted by issues then I do some quick fixes (like adjusting levels or slapping some eq/denoising on the track/clip). So to know the difference is easy and simply personal: if it annoys me more than it takes time to fix it, I fix it during editing.

Question 6.
How many tracks (roughly) would a well-prepared editor have in their project at handover?
For documentaries, for dramas?

That depends on so many things. But in most of my projects it where only a few tracks: One or two dialog tracks, one atmosphere/room tone, maybe some scratch music. Thats it.

Question 5.
How would one approach this type of a project? What type of categorization would you go for?
I guess there would also be a track or two for ’Misc, Random, X-files’?

When I got the tracks mentioned in question 6, I would start distributing those to a simple track layout: Each character one track, + one atmosphere/room tone, + music. When I go through the material I might find that character A works fine because it was recorded consistent in one locations, character B has a windy outdoor part that needs different treatment, character C has five locations that sound very different and character D has four locations that sound almost identical. So I would stick with one track for A and D, but add additional tracks for C and D as needed. If everything is fine except one clip I would do the fixes on clip base.

Question 7.
How many days would you need/budget, for an ambitious feature-length documentary with passable to average audio (that in some cases needs to be 'fixed', de-noised, cleaned) sound design, mixing?

Difficult to say without having heard the material. It also depends what level you expect. And how close the deadline is ;-)

Question 8.
What is the best way for an editor/director to frustrate a sound-designer or a mixer?

First and foremost: Not talking with me
On Set: No paying attention to audio (background noise, no room tone, no time to set up audio properly, bad mic placement, no sync, no audio person at all...)
On edit: trying to do my job or telling me how to do my job ;-)

What would be the single most important thing to take care of (add, remove) that would have the most positive impact on your work?

Having all available mics for a scene at the right place in the timeline, properly labeled/documented.

All in all I am of the opinion that audio does not merely ‘matter’, rather it’s imperative.

Sound is at least 50% of the movie. The audience will forgive many visual imperfect things but people are very sensitive to bad audio.

Johannes

Posted: **Mon Jan 11, 2021 12:26 am**

Appreciate the answers.

If it annoys me more than it takes time to fix it, I fix it during editing.

Might just frame this.

On the art of not wasting time;
looking back, every time after I have learned something, the more valuable lesson ends up being whether learning that new thing mattered or not.

My current workflow in my documentary has each scene in it's own timeline (sequence). Then I assemble those timelines into what I call my ‘chrono’, that is the full cut/assembly for viewing purposes.
Towards the end, in the last cuts, all the material goes into one timeline.
As of now, my audio tracks in the scenes are a mixed bag. However since I'm still in the draft phase I still have good time to set up a uniform track architecture.

So my takeway from this thread is that I better decide now at the scene-phase who I assign tracks to uniformally across the project. That would mean I would leave a track empty in my scene-timelines if the character that the track 'belongs' to is not present in that scene.

I guess I will assign tracks exclusively only to 2-3 main characters. For the mixed situations I will probably create two 'mixed/other/group' tracks.

Question 9. Technical: When a character needs a couple of seconds of his 'own' ambience to bridge the gap to the next soundbite, will you add that bit to the room tone/atmo track or (crossfade) it to the character's track? Or some other way?

Question 7.
How many days would you need/budget, for an ambitious feature-length documentary with passable to average audio (that in some cases needs to be 'fixed', de-noised, cleaned) sound design, mixing?

Difficult to say without having heard the material. It also depends what level you expect. And how close the deadline is

I'm trying to be realistic with my expectations regarding the audio, but I'm wondering what the possibilities are.
My film is targeting broadcast distribution and cinema, (given there are any cinemas left after this thing is over). So the technical requirements would have to be up to par with any broadcaster or cinema requirements. (Including 5.1 if needed?)

The ‘level’ I would be content with is that the audience would be able to immerse themselves in the story without the sound or visual appearance causing any distractions. In other words, if nobody claims that they didn’t understand something because they didn’t hear it, I would be content. I feel that the story is the strongest aspect of the film.

What the ambitious part of me is aiming for however, is that with the help of a sound designer we would be able to create a dynamic soundscape from the existing recordings, and even with foleys, libraries that would give each scene cinematic depth that would amplify the immersion. This is something I’m willing to focus on more than I normally would, as I perceive it to be of great importance in determining whether I manage to convey the story as intended or not. That means there would be time to craft the soundscape well, time to explore the possibilities. No strict deadline at this stage.

Question 8.
What is the best way for an editor/director to frustrate a sound-designer or a mixer?
On edit: trying to do my job or telling me how to do my job.

If you have the time, could you elaborate on that?

Personal anecdote: I was once at a session with a colorist in the capacity of a director and I was communicating in technical terms as I have done some coloring myself. Nothing too fancy, just talking about highlights, tonality, different tools etc. The colorist asked me whether I have done grading, I said yes. He then told me very politely that he felt uncomfortable receiving ‘technical’ instructions as he felt that it 'mechanized' his part to an operator rather than that of an artist with a voice.

I still think about that today. I valued this feedback greatly and I changed my terminology after that and started talking like a music journalist or a weatherman would. ‘Let's explore the intensity of the landscape..’ etc. Still makes me chuckle, but I’m very glad he told me how he felt, because I would have never guessed that technical talk could be demoralising for someone. Thus I wish more people would open up about these things so that the common ‘language’ gets established without delay.

Thanks so much for taking the time to provide your insights Johannes.

Posted: **Mon Jan 11, 2021 3:08 am**

ardelle wrote:Normalizing is an interesting topic too, depends and depends or as Charles and Johannes mentioned - no normalization at all. This seems to be common as well.

One way in which normalizing may be a bit of a waste of time is that once the sound editor gets to editing the production sound he's going to have to even room tone out over transitions. And in my experience in a lot of cases tone varies greatly relative to dialog. So if you normalize by dialog the room tone may be wildly off and thus the sound editor will (may) have to redo/undo that. A way to think about it is that it's hard to just ride faders to adjust for it across edits and it really is mostly better to do it while editing and then deal with level difference in dialog differently. Add to that potential noise reduction and how it reacts when the noise level changes abruptly.

So that'd be one reason I don't do it or like it.

ardelle wrote:Also the fades Mattias pointed out, do they help in the mixing? Do they even survive the transfer?

Fades survive. When I get an AAF I almost always copy the audio from those AAF-tracks onto my tracks in an appropriate template. I keep the AAF tracks untouched as a reference, so for longer fades that aren't obvious that's the place for me to see what the intent is of the editor, if it's not clear from the mixdown from the sequence. Short fades and crossfades should also survive if they're standard fades and it helps me spend less time having to create a million fades to deal with clicks at the start/end of clips.

ardelle wrote:Question 8.
(for sound-designers, mixers)

What is the best way for an editor/director to frustrate a sound-designer or a mixer? What are the worst people to work with like?

I don't necessarily always like to be negative... I think those of us with more experience understand that we're all suffering from lower budgets and time constraints and a million different things that makes us have to cut corners or whatnot... so... But anyway;

- Each track labeled "Audio 01" or something equally meaningless. Please label each track in a meaningful way. If you have a layout where you only have one character on a track then maybe use that character's name. Or, if you have different characters on the same track label it "Dialog 01"... and so on.. and on that note;

- Each track containing more than one type of audio. That sucks for us because then we have to spend a bunch of time moving sound effects from dialog tracks to their dedicated tracks and music off of sound effects tracks etc. And not only that, but a misplaced loud sound effect while we're screening soft dialog is quite unpleasant. And 'yes', a lot of editors know this, are told this, and agree to this, but we still get things mixed.

- Stereo sources not being consistent across tracks. In other words stereo music on tracks 9/10... except later when it's on 10/11.. etc. Whether it's odd/even or even/odd being consistent is better. And on that note;

- Adjacent clips of dialog from different sources on the same track. In other words, sometimes I get actor A Lav on Dialog track 1 for a few shots and then all of a sudden on the same track it's boom mic on him instead. I prefer it if I get one mic across a 'logical' range on the same track. I think it's actually not that weird and it's really intuitive if you just look at the timeline. Imagine that you just received the audio and needed to for example EQ the dialog, and you find your settings and it works for all shots except the sixth because that happens to be the boom... and now that happens regularly throughout the content and you're on a time crunch. I do have sympathy for other people rushing to get work done and I understand that more than one person works on a project, so I'm betting sometimes it's a matter of people just ingesting to different tracks and it is what it is.. but since you asked..

- Multiple identical clips to boost level. If you do that, then in conjunction with poorly labeled clips we end up having to listen to each one to figure out what's what and make sure that two clips aren't the same. If they're the same we throw out all but one.

- Not including all sources consistently for some reason. So for example I might get lav for most of a section except for one shot where it's completely missing and replaced by a boom mic. Often I've seen this happen when the assumption by the editor is that a mic hit or electric static or some other noise can't be cleaned up, but that is often wrong. We can sometimes use a lot of that word or sentence and end up with a far better end result.

- Doing fades using (track) volume automation. Depending on the production we sometimes can't use that and it also gets in the way when we work. So a lot of us just get rid of all track automation and start from scratch. Because we do that we now lost hearing where the faders were supposed to be. If they instead were made on the clips we wouldn't have that problem.

ardelle wrote:What are the things that editors/directors never seem to understand about sound designers, mixers?

I feel like a lot of times when we make production sound a bit clearer we bring out sounds that are "new" to the editors/directors, sounds that were previously inaudible in the edit suite for various reasons. That can take them aback a bit and it's good to be understanding when that happens. In some cases it's so obvious to us that we're surprised you never heard it before. This stuff could be the sound of a room ("echo") or equipment or people talking...

I also feel like sometimes we're stuck between a rock and a hard place. We may get audio that has these issues that aren't immediately audible in the edit and once we deal with them we make sacrifices. One example is a buried lav mic with rub on it. You can't hear the scratching that well because it's muffled by virtue of being buried. The expectation in the edit is "They'll make him brighter in the mix" but we often can't really do that easily without bringing out scratches etc as well. So again they're taken aback. It's either "Why is this still muffled?" or "What's that noise?".

ardelle wrote:What would be the single most important thing to take care of (add, remove) that would have the most positive impact on your work?

Other than avoiding the nuisances; probably communicate expectations ahead of time.

Posted: **Mon Jan 11, 2021 3:41 am**

ardelle wrote:Question 9. Technical: When a character needs a couple of seconds of his 'own' ambience to bridge the gap to the next soundbite, will you add that bit to the room tone/atmo track or (crossfade) it to the character's track? Or some other way?

I actually think the answer to the above is "it depends". Some will fill on the same track, others on dedicated tracks, and yet other will do both... or sometimes all of the above.

If you want to read up on the considerations regarding that there's a book by John Purcell that's excellent:

https://www.amazon.com/Dialogue-Editing ... b_title_bk

ardelle wrote:
Question 7.
How many days would you need/budget, for an ambitious feature-length documentary with passable to average audio (that in some cases needs to be 'fixed', de-noised, cleaned) sound design, mixing?

Difficult to say without having heard the material. It also depends what level you expect. And how close the deadline is

I'm trying to be realistic with my expectations regarding the audio, but I'm wondering what the possibilities are.
My film is targeting broadcast distribution and cinema, (given there are any cinemas left after this thing is over). So the technical requirements would have to be up to par with any broadcaster or cinema requirements. (Including 5.1 if needed?)

The ‘level’ I would be content with is that the audience would be able to immerse themselves in the story without the sound or visual appearance causing any distractions. In other words, if nobody claims that they didn’t understand something because they didn’t hear it, I would be content. I feel that the story is the strongest aspect of the film.

There are still quite a few variables you have to consider. If you want a mix of the quality you describe and it goes for example only to broadcast, and the network isn't too picky, then the deliverables will be easy and that in turn means it won't take too long to do the job. If you're looking at a one-man operation I'd say a good engineer should be able to do a good job on 20-30 minutes of content per day, depending on the quality of the source audio etc. A 90 minute film will probably come in at about a week's worth of work, including one review session and rendering final audio. I'd say that could be a basic 5.1 mix with an 'automatic' fold down to stereo.

But once you get a network that's a bit more particular in their specs, or a distributor that's trying to make sure they have a fully-filled M&E track then it gets a lot more labor intensive simply because the source audio needs to get cleaned up more with better separation between dialog and other sound. A soon as there's an appropriate sound happening in the dialog track as the person is speaking (i.e. into the one mic) that presents a potential problem. If it's a documentary I've found most of the time networks can be forgiving with sounds under dialog because they're hard to get out and there's no budget for ADR, but they still need that sound for M&E. And so now you're looking at sound design / Foley.

What complicates things is that sometimes it's not really cost efficient to do a quick mix and then go back and "fix" all these things for a more elaborate version. Of course if the budget is there then it's all good... A lot of a movie's 'quality' though comes from the production sound especially if we're talking about docs, so getting that right at the start is probably the best way to move forward. And in addition to getting it clean etc you'll know what's missing once the dialog edit is done and so spotting for Foley, ADR etc is easier.

----
Mind you: A lot of times editors and directors underestimate just how 'rough' production audio is, and what is called 'decent' actually isn't. Then the dialog / production sound edit all of a sudden takes much longer.
----

One more note on this: A mix for a theater in my opinion should probably be 5.1 or 7.1 and ideally it should be done on a proper mix stage. It's then probably better to take that mix and adapt it for broadcast since the dynamic range for a broadcast mix is likely going to be lower, and it's easier to reduce dynamics than increase them. So since that's the case the most efficient way of going about it is to do theater mix first and then broadcast - in my opinion.

ardelle wrote:
Question 8.
What is the best way for an editor/director to frustrate a sound-designer or a mixer?
On edit: trying to do my job or telling me how to do my job.

If you have the time, could you elaborate on that?

Personal anecdote: I was once at a session with a colorist in the capacity of a director and I was communicating in technical terms as I have done some coloring myself. Nothing too fancy, just talking about highlights, tonality, different tools etc. The colorist asked me whether I have done grading, I said yes. He then told me very politely that he felt uncomfortable receiving ‘technical’ instructions as he felt that it 'mechanized' his part to an operator rather than that of an artist with a voice.

I still think about that today. I valued this feedback greatly and I changed my terminology after that and started talking like a music journalist or a weatherman would. ‘Let's explore the intensity of the landscape..’ etc. Still makes me chuckle, but I’m very glad he told me how he felt, because I would have never guessed that technical talk could be demoralising for someone.

I think that can be pretty personal though, or on a case-by-case basis with some people.

Certainly if you hire a creative person to take care of an "artistic" aspect of your work then they want to be able to express that artistic side of their work. The more you get technical the more you restrict their ability to let their artistic expressions out so to speak. I can sometimes relate with that.

On the other hand there are also cases where the job is really just getting stuff done on a tight deadline. In those cases I personally don't mind someone telling me what they need using technical terms if it gets the job done faster. To me that's fine.

Really the problem for me is either as I said before that they want me to be "artistic" about it by throw technical terms at me, or that they use technical terms but don't fully understand what they mean and now I have to guess - in which case it would have been better to just use 'artsy' language in the first place instead...

Posted: **Mon Jan 11, 2021 8:41 am**

There is not much to add to what Mattias has already pointed out nicely.

On edit: trying to do my job or telling me how to do my job.

If you have the time, could you elaborate on that?

If an editor tries to sweeten everything beforehand and throws in EQ, dynamics, plugins, fades and automation – then he/she has done my work. If he/she is good: fine. Then I am perhaps only needed for some feedback or a few mastering task. Thats fine. But in most cases it means more work and a big discussions why it took so long when everything was already so well set up. Audio is weaving a very fine net. Starting with an almost finished net, that has a lot of bad/unknown threads is risky. That's why I prefer to start from scratch when mixing.

Your anecdote with the colorist hits the nail. For me technical language is okay, if the knowledge behind the term is there (and the awareness that any issue can be solved in different ways). I don't mind the producer saying: there is an annoying frequency in that room about 250 HZ. Kann you get rid of it? The problem with technical terms ist: often they limit the solution (and sometimes misses the real issue). Thats why I usually ask back a lot to understand where the issue really is.
Anecdote from my work: While discussing the first mix of a song the producer came to me "everything okay, we only need to make the base 2dB louder." After half an hour we had a much better mix. The only thing I have done was lowering (!) the base 3 dB.

So the technical requirements would have to be up to par with any broadcaster or cinema requirements. (Including 5.1 if needed?)

The most important part of it is the Center speaker. If budget is low have at least a LCR Mix (Dialog to the Center, Music and Atmo to LR). If you work work with the usual stems/sub-busses this should be already set up.
The second most important thing for cinema is the wider dynamics (see posts of Mattias).

What the ambitious part of me is aiming for however, is that with the help of a sound designer we would be able to create a dynamic soundscape from the existing recordings, and even with foleys, libraries that would give each scene cinematic depth that would amplify the immersion.

This will give your documentary a huge boost. Do it! It is amazing to "see" how a good soundscape can fix a mediocre shot or an "unavoidable" bad cut.

Johannes

Posted: **Tue Jan 12, 2021 9:41 am**

Johannes Hoffmann wrote:...
The most important part of it is the Center speaker. If budget is low have at least a LCR Mix (Dialog to the Center, Music and Atmo to LR)....

Is this technique possible if I use music from stock?
Duplicating a track and panning, or using buses and panning, does not change the final sound image.

Posted: **Tue Jan 12, 2021 2:51 pm**

Not sure, whether I understand fully what you mean. But I try to answer.

In a simple (budget) mix I would have the music LR and leave the Center to my dialog and foley. So stereo stock music is no issue at all. You can go a little bit further and mix a mono version of the music slightly to the center (at least -6dB lower than LR). You can do this manually or simply by using the spread parameter in the panner.

If you want to remix the song and have for example the singer in the Center and the rest of the band LR – that's of course not possible when you only have a stereo track.

Johannes

Posted: **Tue Jan 12, 2021 3:06 pm**

I agree. I actually feel LCR is better than stereo generally speaking.

Also, it's easy enough to bleed a bit of music back into the rears as well. So what I've done on "cheap and quick" 5.1 mixes is just take the stereo music and have most of it front left/right, and then bleed a bit into the surrounds. It's not like it's a huge change, but it gives you a bit of a 'blanket' and it also makes it "clear" that you've made an aesthetic choice and so you won't get someone from a QC department asking why the LS/RS channels are empty.

Posted: **Tue Jan 12, 2021 5:06 pm**

Johannes Hoffmann wrote:Not sure, whether I understand fully what you mean. But I try to answer.

In a simple (budget) mix I would have the music LR and leave the Center to my dialog and foley. So stereo stock music is no issue at all. You can go a little bit further and mix a mono version of the music slightly to the center (at least -6dB lower than LR). You can do this manually or simply by using the spread parameter in the panner.

If you want to remix the song and have for example the singer in the Center and the rest of the band LR – that's of course not possible when you only have a stereo track.

Johannes

Thanks for the answer.
No, I didn't want to remix. I have a music track and a speaker's voice. If I take a track, spread it on the buses, and pan the first bus to the left and the second bus to the right, I get the same track.

Posted: **Tue Jan 12, 2021 7:00 pm**

Can you post a screen shot of your Mixer?

Johannes

Posted: **Wed Jan 13, 2021 11:31 am**

Johannes Hoffmann wrote:Can you post a screen shot of your Mixer?

Johannes

Sure

Posted: **Wed Jan 13, 2021 2:50 pm**

Thanks for the screen shot. Why are you using two separate busses (Music L, Music R)? I guess you use the Stereo Fixer plugin to get one channel only into each bus. But with this you end up having a mono mix of both channels in Main.

To accomplish a LCR Mix I set up the Main as 5.1. If you route tracks directly to the Main you will get mono tracks in the Center and stereo tracks in L&R. The same for busses: mono busses (e.g. a Dialog bus) go to the center and stereo busses (like Music etc) to L&R.

If you want to feed stereo tracks to the Center you need to use the spread control in the Pan window (in case you want to go through a bus with this, the bus needs to be 5.1).

Hope this helps.
Johannes

Posted: **Wed Jan 13, 2021 3:00 pm**

Johannes Hoffmann wrote:Thanks for the screen shot. Why are you using two separate busses (Music L, Music R)? I guess you use the Stereo Fixer plugin to get one channel only into each bus. But with this you end up having a mono mix of both channels in Main.

To accomplish a LCR Mix I set up the Main to at least LCR (or more channels like 5.1). If you route tracks directly to the Main you will get mono tracks in the Center and stereo tracks in L&R. The same for busses: mono busses (e.g. a Dialog bus) go to the center and stereo busses (like Music etc) to L&R.

If you want to feed stereo tracks to the Center you need to use the spread control in the Pan window (in case you want to go through a bus with this, the bus needs to be LCR or more).

Hope this helps.
Johannes

Posted: **Wed Jan 13, 2021 6:22 pm**

Johannes Hoffmann wrote:Thanks for the screen shot. Why are you using two separate busses (Music L, Music R)? I guess you use the Stereo Fixer plugin to get one channel only into each bus. But with this you end up having a mono mix of both channels in Main.

To accomplish a LCR Mix I set up the Main as 5.1. If you route tracks directly to the Main you will get mono tracks in the Center and stereo tracks in L&R. The same for busses: mono busses (e.g. a Dialog bus) go to the center and stereo busses (like Music etc) to L&R.

If you want to feed stereo tracks to the Center you need to use the spread control in the Pan window (in case you want to go through a bus with this, the bus needs to be 5.1).

Hope this helps.
Johannes

My bad. After I changed the format of the main bus to LCR everything was much better. Thank you.

Posted: **Tue Jan 26, 2021 8:14 pm**

Really appreciate it Mattias & Johannes, for sharing your craft.
I'm really keen to dig into the potential of my collaborators. Your experiences are helping me map out the realm. Mattias, cheers for the book tip, It's on my reading list, just gotta get through with the current books.
Had a peek inside, looks very well written that one. I might even understand some of it.

communicate expectations ahead of time.

This. Such sound advice, saves so much fuss.

We only need to make the base 2dB louder." After half an hour we had a much better mix. The only thing I have done was lowering (!) the base 3 dB.

That’s a short film for a team-building day.

By the way do color labels (on clips) or flags survive the transfer to audio post?
This will be key for me, because I think the biggest headache I will cause to audio post, will be with the dialogue placement.
Not that I want to mix it up on purpose, but I think there are just too much diversity in the quality of my audio that there will be a lot of categories.
But as I pondered earlier, it’s probably better to have more tracks than less.

Somebody here asked about audio keyframes, do they survive the transfer, are they useful, or a headache?
Also does it matter whether we use keyframes or ‘transitions’ to fade in/out?

The most important part of it is the Center speaker. If budget is low have at least a LCR Mix (Dialog to the Center, Music and Atmo to LR). If you work work with the usual stems/sub-busses this should be already set up. The second most important thing for cinema is the wider dynamics,

Interesting, I’m completely clueless about this and, will do an intensive crash course later on this so that I’m better equipped to realise the potential.

This will give your documentary a huge boost. Do it!

Thanks for the encouragement. Can’t wait to get the edit done.

Posted: **Tue Jan 26, 2021 8:32 pm**

ardelle wrote:By the way do color labels (on clips) or flags survive the transfer to audio post?
This will be key for me, because I think the biggest headache I will cause to audio post, will be with the dialogue placement.

As far as I know neither color labels nor flags transfer. I'm not entirely sure though how that would help us in editing.

ardelle wrote:Somebody here asked about audio keyframes, do they survive the transfer, are they useful, or a headache?
Also does it matter whether we use keyframes or ‘transitions’ to fade in/out?

I don't think key frames transfer, but audio track volume automation does.

As for transitions to fade in/out as opposed to track volume I prefer the former. I think I touched on that earlier. When a lot of us receive your work we might - depending on the circumstances - simply 'nuke' all of the automation, simply because it's faster to start from scratch. So if we do this we lose your fades if they are keyframes or volume automation rather than fading the actual clips.

Some networks require that music stems are delivered completely undipped for dialog and narration, and so some of us prefer to not have automation on those music tracks. Instead music goes to a separate group and we do automation there. However, fades should still be done on the music tracks, and so it's pretty much a huge waste of time if you were to create volume automation that fades in, ducks for dialog, comes back up and then fades out. We would lose all of that when we start working, and would then have to re-do the fade i/o on the actual clips.

So better that you do it on the clips themselves I think.

Posted: **Sun Jan 31, 2021 12:34 am**

Thanks,

As far as I know neither color labels nor flags transfer. I'm not entirely sure though how that would help us in editing.

In a situation like mine where there is great variety in the quality of the soundbites, rather than create 20 different audio tracks based on 'quality' or similarity, I thought labeling audio by character might help identify who's talking if there are no visuals for example. But i guess time-saving wise in the end it's a zero-sum endeavor.

As for transitions to fade in/out as opposed to track volume I prefer the former.

I meant to ask the difference between (A) fade that you can 'drag' on to a clip vs (B) manipulating audio keyframes to create the same effect? I've always used the former but now I'm starting to like playing with the keyframes. I do rough keyframe edits for my dailies but it does take up a bunch of time.

With this project I think will only tweak track volumes and adjust clip volumes individually to adjust to the rough 'editors mix'.

Posted: **Sun Jan 31, 2021 2:20 am**

ardelle wrote:
As for transitions to fade in/out as opposed to track volume I prefer the former.

I meant to ask the difference between (A) fade that you can 'drag' on to a clip vs (B) manipulating audio keyframes to create the same effect? I've always used the former but now I'm starting to like playing with the keyframes. I do rough keyframe edits for my dailies but it does take up a bunch of time.

With this project I think will only tweak track volumes and adjust clip volumes individually to adjust to the rough 'editors mix'.

Ah. I think opinions vary on the use of keyframes on clip volume lines. I've seen some Pro Tools / Nuendo engineers use it, but I personally don't and I also don't like them. The one problem I have with them is that regular editing tools don't function the same in PT on them.

So as I said earlier some of us will likely just get rid of any existing automation and redo it, but IF clip gain keyframes carry over in an AAF (not sure they do) then it could very well be that getting rid of that might be really time consuming. I honestly don't know if that's how it works. I might try it out at some point if I get enough energy...

Anyway: I'd say do regular in/out fades using "A" above as you describe it, and rough level by adjusting clip gain, and then finally 'fader' level automation. That way we get the fade i/o carried over for sure, we get ballpark clip gain, and we can easily get rid of the automation if we don't want to keep it.

Posted: **Mon Feb 01, 2021 10:28 am**

Will do just that. Thanks Mattias!

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