IntroductionWelcome| 00:04 | Hi I'm Scott Hirsch, and this is
Audio for Film and Video with Pro Tools.
| | 00:08 | An evocative sound mix is what
transforms a video with basic audio collected
| | 00:12 | during the shoot into a
deeply layered final product.
| | 00:15 | In this course, I'll show you an
overview of the audio-for-video production
| | 00:18 | workflow, as well as how to set up and
optimize a Pro Tools session template to
| | 00:22 | efficiently work on projects
with unique video requirements.
| | 00:25 | I'll cover recording Foley and ADR and
how to layer sound effects, combining all
| | 00:29 | these elements for fully
realized soundtracks.
| | 00:32 | (video playing)
| | 00:35 | I'll demonstrate how to reduce the
noise in your session, eliminating those
| | 00:38 | annoying crackles and
hums that kill any good video.
| | 00:42 | I'll explain how to mix both in stereo
and 5.1 surround and properly deliver
| | 00:46 | your final mixes for film,
broadcast, DVD, or the Internet.
| | 00:50 | We'll also be exploring industry-
standard plug-ins like the Waves 360 Bundle and
| | 00:55 | iZotope RX to take our
audio mixes to the next level.
| | 00:59 | So if you're ready, let's get
started with Audio for Film and Video with
| | 01:02 | Pro Tools.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the exercise files| 00:00 | If you are a Premium member of the
lynda.com Online Training Library, or if
| | 00:04 | you're watching this tutorial on a
DVD-ROM, you have the access to the
| | 00:07 | exercise files used throughout this course.
| | 00:10 | The exercise files are named after
the titles of each movie, and inside the
| | 00:14 | folder for each movie, you'll
find Pro Tools session files.
| | 00:17 | You also find audio files that
relate to those session files.
| | 00:21 | At the bottom of this list, you'll find
two folders that contain essential files
| | 00:24 | that relate to all of the sessions we use.
| | 00:26 | You need to install these folders for
all of your sessions to work, and you
| | 00:29 | shouldn't go hunting around in these
folders or taking any files out unless
| | 00:33 | you're directed to, in a movie.
| | 00:34 | If you don't have access to the
exercise files, you can follow along from
| | 00:37 | scratch or with your own assets.
| | 00:39 | Let's get started!
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using this course with Pro Tools 10| 00:00 | This course was originally recorded
using Pro Tools 9, but we've ported the
| | 00:03 | exercise files to Pro Tools 10 and have
made sure the course is still consistent
| | 00:07 | with both versions 9 and 10 of Pro Tools.
| | 00:11 | In the Working with Audio for Video
chapter of this course, I made two movies
| | 00:14 | that cover new features of Pro Tools 10
that I find to be particularly suited for
| | 00:18 | audio for video post-production.
| | 00:21 | Before we get to that though, I'll
just walk you through a few of the most
| | 00:23 | striking differences in Pro Tools 10 from the
previous version, Pro Tools 9 or Pro Tools 8.
| | 00:28 | Session files now have a different
suffix. Even though the icon is still the
| | 00:32 | same, it's called .ptx, as we can see
here, which is different from the previous
| | 00:36 | PTF and PTS versions you're used to seeing.
| | 00:40 | Also, Pro Tools 10 session files are not
backwards compatible with older versions.
| | 00:45 | So if you want to share your Pro Tools
10 session with another system running
| | 00:48 | Pro Tools 9 or 8, you can go to File > Save
Copy In and here up where it says Session Format,
| | 00:57 | Latest would save under 10, but if you go
in this menu, you can save for Pro Tools
| | 01:00 | 7 through 9 Sessions, 5.1 to 6.9, all the way
down through 3.2 versions to Pro Tools.
| | 01:07 | Next, there is some renaming going on.
| | 01:09 | Most obviously, the name Avid is
now used over the old Digidesign name.
| | 01:13 | Along with this change, Pro Tools
naming follows the naming conventions used in
| | 01:17 | Avid, the video editing software.
| | 01:19 | And over here, where we used to see the
Regions list, we now see the Clips list.
| | 01:24 | Also, in the top menu, instead
of Region now we have a Clip menu.
| | 01:29 | In addition, the AudioSuite plug-ins
where we go to process the file, it
| | 01:33 | used to say Process, it now says
Render, to apply the effect to a clip.
| | 01:38 | In addition to the name changes,
there're many awesome new features and
| | 01:41 | enhancements in Pro Tools 10, and
like I mentioned, we'll get into the more
| | 01:45 | audio-for-video-worthy
ones later in this course.
| | 01:48 | But for a detailed overview of all
the new features, be sure to check out
| | 01:52 | another lynda.com course, Pro
Tools 10 New Features, by David Franz.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Relinking audio files| 00:00 | As you're working through the exercise
files for this course, you may very well
| | 00:03 | come across sessions with offline files.
| | 00:06 | If this happens, don't panic.
| | 00:07 | Take a deep breath and follow these
guidelines to relink your files easily.
| | 00:11 | Pro Tools keeps a behind-the-scenes
database that tells it where the audio files
| | 00:15 | for your Pro Tools session live.
| | 00:17 | If the files have been moved, renamed,
deleted, or they're offline, such as on an
| | 00:23 | unmounted drive, you'll be prompted
with the Missing Files dialog box.
| | 00:27 | Here's what that looks like.
| | 00:28 | I'm going to go ahead and
try to open up this session.
| | 00:31 | Here's the Missing Files dialog box.
| | 00:33 | So this is telling me that 55 audio
files and 1 video file are missing. And we
| | 00:39 | have a choice to either skip them all,
which in that case, the Pro Tools Session
| | 00:43 | will open with a bunch of offline
clips, or we can automatically find them and
| | 00:48 | relink, so Pro Tool would just search
any mounted drives and if it finds the
| | 00:52 | file, it'll automatically relink.
Or you can choose Manually Find & Relink,
| | 00:56 | which I'll demonstrate here. If I click OK,
| | 00:59 | that'll take us right to the Relink
dialog box, and here we see a long list of
| | 01:03 | all the offline files, down at the bottom.
| | 01:06 | Notice they each have a unique ID,
which is a long string of letters and
| | 01:11 | numbers that we don't have to know about.
| | 01:13 | It's just Pro Tools' way of identifying them.
| | 01:16 | Now, what I want to do here is go up
to the top and I can see any mounted
| | 01:20 | drives. And in this case I know that
these files actually exist; they're on my
| | 01:24 | internal hard drive.
| | 01:25 | So I would check that drive, and I can
even go a step further and choose Users,
| | 01:31 | which is the folder that I know that they're in.
| | 01:33 | So once I've got that checked, I'm
going to go ahead and go down at the bottom
| | 01:37 | here and select all of these files.
I did Command+A; that would be Ctrl+A for
| | 01:41 | Windows. And once I've got them all
selected, go up to the top and say Find
| | 01:46 | Links. And here it'll give us some
linking options. We can ask Pro Tools to find
| | 01:50 | them by name and ID, which I usually
choose and I think that's the default.
| | 01:55 | Match Format, sure.
| | 01:57 | Match Duration, yes, that sounds good.
| | 01:59 | I am going to hit OK, and it's
going to search the file system.
| | 02:02 | It's going to look in this folder,
and there we go. It found them all.
| | 02:05 | We know it found them because they
have an orange link icon on the left here.
| | 02:10 | And if I scroll down, it looks
like it found all the files there.
| | 02:12 | Now once they're all selected to relink,
I just go ahead and click Commit Links
| | 02:17 | and say Yes. It commits
the links and we're done.
| | 02:20 | If I go back into the session,
all the files have now come online.
| | 02:24 | The best advice with audio files are to
keep them in the associated audio file
| | 02:28 | folder in your session folder, and not move them.
| | 02:30 | This'll prevent files from
going missing as much as possible.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
1. Getting Ready to Build Audio for VideoUnderstanding the new audio for video features in Pro Tools 9| 00:00 | The move from Pro Tools 8 to Pro Tools 9
is huge for all users, involving
| | 00:04 | major revisions to not only the software,
but the hardware requirements as well.
| | 00:09 | In this video, we'll go over,
point by point, the most relevant new
| | 00:12 | software features in Pro Tools 9 that will
specifically impact working on audio for video.
| | 00:17 | First, let's talk about the global software
changes that affect everyone using Pro Tools.
| | 00:22 | Pro Tools 9 is now one big installer,
no matter what version of Pro Tools
| | 00:25 | hardware you're running.
| | 00:26 | There used to be a discrepancy between LE and
HD versions of the software. Not anymore.
| | 00:32 | Pro Tools HD and LE are now merged
into a singular software package.
| | 00:37 | No specific hardware is needed.
| | 00:39 | When you're working on a system
containing an HD core, Excel, or Native Card in
| | 00:43 | a PCI slot on your computer, the
software will run as Pro Tools HD 9, with the
| | 00:48 | full Pro Tools HD feature set.
| | 00:51 | In all other cases, it will run as
simply Pro Tools 9, with a slightly smaller
| | 00:55 | track count and some of the
advanced features turned off.
| | 00:58 | No version needs any specific Avid or
Pro Tools hardware, only an attached iLok
| | 01:03 | USB key with your authorization installed on it.
| | 01:07 | If you're using regular Pro Tools 9
software and want to unlock some of the
| | 01:11 | higher-end features available with Pro
Tools 9 HD, you can purchase or upgrade a
| | 01:16 | software add-on, called the
Complete Production Toolkit 2.
| | 01:19 | This is authorized also with a USB iLok,
and it gives you access to all the HD
| | 01:23 | features without the
necessity of using an HD PCI card.
| | 01:27 | Most importantly in audio for video,
this means more tracks, advanced surround-
| | 01:32 | mixing capabilities, and
post-production specific plug-ins like XForm and
| | 01:36 | Neyrinck surround tools, all of
which we'll cover in this course.
| | 01:40 | If you thought your music Pro Tools
sessions have a lot of tracks, you'll see
| | 01:43 | that in audio for video
you'll need even more tracks.
| | 01:45 | The good thing is that all Pro
Tools 9 users get more tracks.
| | 01:49 | You now have 96 playable tracks at
the video standard sample rate of 48 kHz.
| | 01:53 | You can see here in this session I've
got, if I scroll down all the way to the
| | 01:58 | bottom, 96 active tracks.
| | 02:01 | If you have the Complete
Production Toolkit 2, you get even more.
| | 02:05 | You get 192 tracks, which is the
same for an HD system with two HD
| | 02:09 | hardware cards installed.
| | 02:11 | In addition to more tracks, you
also get more internal connections.
| | 02:14 | The busing capability is now up to
256 internal buses for all versions.
| | 02:19 | If I go here in the output of one
of these tracks, I can see under bus,
| | 02:23 | I have two bus menus.
| | 02:25 | Bus menu a, shows me down at the bottom,
| | 02:29 | I can see that I have 128 active buses.
| | 02:34 | Bus menu b shows me the remaining.
Starting at 129, it goes all the way down to 256.
| | 02:40 | That's a lot of internal
connections for routing capabilities.
| | 02:43 | Another cool feature for Pro Tools 9 is the
new Track and Send Output Selector command.
| | 02:48 | Scroll up to the top here.
| | 02:51 | If you go to track 1's output menu, we
can choose a menu option called Track.
| | 02:55 | Here I can route the
output of this track to Aux 1.
| | 02:58 | As you can see, it automatically routed
the output of this track on a bus called
| | 03:02 | Aux 1, and it routed the input
of my Aux 1 track to the same bus.
| | 03:06 | This is an extremely helpful
timesaver for sending and routing your tracks
| | 03:10 | quickly, something you'll do a lot of
in post-production mixing, as we'll see.
| | 03:14 | Now also included as standard in Pro
Tools 9, we get frame accurate time code
| | 03:18 | reference, including Feet+Frames.
| | 03:23 | We also get industry-standard video time
code rates and pullup/pulldown features
| | 03:28 | for conforming tune from the film.
| | 03:30 | You can see this in our Session Setup window.
| | 03:33 | Here are all of our different time
code rates, and we also have the Pull
| | 03:37 | Up/Pull Down features.
| | 03:40 | Also in Pro Tools 9, we can import
and export OMF and AAF file types.
| | 03:45 | Under the File menu, if I go to
Export, you can see that option here.
| | 03:49 | OMF and AAF file types are two ways to
link your Pro Tools session to an Avid or
| | 03:53 | Final Cut Pro video-editing software.
| | 03:56 | This is an absolute must-have if
you're working in audio for video.
| | 03:59 | We also get the advanced DigiBase Pro
features, which we can see under Window > Workspace.
| | 04:04 | I'll close the Session Setup window,
and here, if I click on the Search tab, we
| | 04:09 | can see that you have a way to store,
manage, search, and audition your sound
| | 04:13 | effects libraries that you might be
using in your audio for video sessions.
| | 04:16 | We also get delay compensation.
| | 04:18 | I'm going to hit Command+Equals
to show the Mix window.
| | 04:22 | Here down at the bottom,
we can see these numbers.
| | 04:25 | This is a visual representation of
Pro Tools's delay compensation engine.
| | 04:29 | Delay compensation automatically
time-aligns all of your tracks.
| | 04:32 | It takes into account any delay
offset your real-time plug-ins might cause.
| | 04:36 | So, for example, track audio 1, if I
insert an Expander/Gate plug-in, which
| | 04:43 | because it has a Look Ahead feature,
incurs a certain amount of delay on the track,
| | 04:47 | you can see this visually represented
by this number 96, which means it's 96
| | 04:52 | samples late, since the
plug-in is incurring that delay.
| | 04:55 | But we can also see the delay
compensation engine at work, because all the other
| | 04:59 | tracks are now 96 samples later.
| | 05:01 | This is a must-have for keeping your
scenes in perfect sync with the video if
| | 05:05 | you're using plug-ins.
| | 05:06 | So now you've seen some of the new
goodies we have to look forward to
| | 05:08 | exploring in this course.
| | 05:10 | If these features look exciting, stay
tuned. We'll learn how to make the most of
| | 05:13 | them, as we get into using Pro
Tools 9 audio for video professionals.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Exploring the hardware requirements for Pro Tools 9| 00:00 | One of the biggest changes in Pro Tools 9
is that it now works with any Avid or
| | 00:04 | third-party hardware interface, and
what's even cooler: it now works with no
| | 00:07 | interface at all, just the
native sound card of your computer.
| | 00:11 | This opens up so much flexibility to
aspiring sound designers, audio editors,
| | 00:15 | and video makers who want to enhance
and optimize their soundtracks for video.
| | 00:19 | In this video, we will go over the
specifics of audio interfaces and also
| | 00:22 | other hardware peripherals that come
in handy when you're using Pro Tools 9
| | 00:26 | for audio for video.
| | 00:27 | As you may already know, the iLok
is a crucial item you'll need to have
| | 00:30 | connected to run Pro Tools 9.
| | 00:31 | It's got your software authorization
on it, as well as authorization of any
| | 00:35 | plug-ins you've purchase for Pro Tools.
| | 00:37 | It's a cool way of taking your
belongings with you and without having to take
| | 00:40 | your whole rig, if you want to work in
another studio, in a cafe, or even in the
| | 00:44 | subway or an airplane.
| | 00:45 | If you're using your native sound card,
you'll be using the one built in on your computer.
| | 00:49 | The audio quality is not great,
but it will get you by in a pinch.
| | 00:52 | On a Mac, this is managed by CoreAudio.
| | 00:54 | This can be configured with the
Audio MIDI Setup utility application.
| | 00:59 | If you haven't seen where this is, it's
located in Applications/Utilities and
| | 01:06 | there it is, Audio MIDI Setup.
| | 01:07 | It's the little keyboard icon.
| | 01:08 | When we open this, it shows controls
with any connected audio devices, including
| | 01:13 | our built-in core card which is
represented by anything called Built-in.
| | 01:17 | The physical inputs and outputs are on the
side of your laptop or on your CPU tower.
| | 01:22 | Another cool thing you can do in Pro
Tools 9 is mix and match interfaces and use
| | 01:25 | more than one connected device.
| | 01:27 | This is called aggregate devices.
| | 01:29 | It's for Mac only and set up also
in the Audio MIDI Setup application.
| | 01:33 | If I click on Aggregate I/O, I can see that
I could add the Hammerfall DSP device, as
| | 01:38 | well as our built-in inputs and outputs.
| | 01:41 | When it's time to get serious about
your audio, you'll want an external audio
| | 01:44 | interface to input and output sound
from microphone and speaker monitors.
| | 01:48 | These come in all shapes and sizes and
range from FireWire and USB connections
| | 01:52 | to connecting via installed
cards in the tower of your computer.
| | 01:55 | Let's go over a few of the
popular interfaces out there.
| | 01:58 | Avid, the company who makes Pro Tools,
manufactures some quality interfaces.
| | 02:02 | The Mbox series is
portable, and it connects via USB.
| | 02:05 | The 003 series has more inputs and
outputs, and it operates over a FireWire cable.
| | 02:10 | Then we have the high end
of Pro Tools interfaces.
| | 02:13 | These interfaces such as the new
Omni or HD I/O offer high-end converters,
| | 02:17 | and they're connected via installed
cards in the available PC IE slots of
| | 02:21 | your computer tower.
| | 02:22 | Remember, Avid HD interfaces also allow
you to run the HD version of Pro Tools
| | 02:27 | 9, but unlike before, one great thing
about Pro Tools 9 is you can use any
| | 02:31 | third-party audio interface.
| | 02:33 | It's a free world, finally, for Pro Tools users.
| | 02:35 | RME makes a number of
affordable and flexible interfaces.
| | 02:38 | Apogee makes a full range of highly
vetted products from the two-channel Duet up
| | 02:42 | to the high-end Symphony system.
| | 02:44 | Then there are audio file high-quality
interfaces out there like Metric Halo and
| | 02:48 | Prism Sound, just to name a few.
| | 02:50 | Which is best for you?
| | 02:51 | It's best to weigh the cost, the
inputs and outputs you need, and what
| | 02:54 | your requirements are.
| | 02:56 | For surround sound mixing remember
though, you'll need at least outputs.
| | 02:59 | Now, what about other
peripherals besides audio interfaces?
| | 03:02 | Control surfaces offer power and
flexibility, especially when it comes time to
| | 03:06 | mix your audio for video project.
| | 03:08 | Mixing with the mouse is no match for
mixing with real faders, especially when
| | 03:11 | you're trying to get that dialog track
to sit just right between the music and
| | 03:14 | sound effects in your mix.
| | 03:16 | Avid recently acquired Euphonix a
company renowned for its control surfaces.
| | 03:20 | Already, Pro Tools 9 utilizes Yukon
technology, which provides enhanced control
| | 03:24 | over an Ethernet connection
for these types of peripherals.
| | 03:27 | On the high end, we've got the ICON
D-Command and D-Control control surfaces.
| | 03:31 | External video is something you might
think about when you're working with video.
| | 03:35 | You can always import a video into
your Pro Tools session as a QuickTime and
| | 03:38 | preview it on your computer monitor,
but you can also free up valuable screen
| | 03:42 | space and view it in full res if
you use an external video peripheral.
| | 03:45 | Most audio for video professionals I
know use a hardware box made by Canopus.
| | 03:50 | In Pro Tools, by choosing Options >
Video out FireWire, you can attach Canopus
| | 03:56 | box to the FireWire port, and it
transcodes the signal to either S-video or a
| | 04:01 | composite signal that you can then attach to
any TV or NTSC monitor outside your computer.
| | 04:06 | One note about this though: there is delay
offset incurred by sending out via FireWire.
| | 04:11 | The cool thing is you can easily
make up for this in the Setup menu.
| | 04:14 | Here we have something called Video Sync Offset.
| | 04:17 | You can compensate for this offset here.
| | 04:18 | For instance, the Canopus box
requires 22 quarter frames offset.
| | 04:23 | One other caveat, if you're working
this way, video must be encoded with the DV
| | 04:27 | NTSC codec to do use external video.
| | 04:30 | So you have to specify this with the video
editor you're working with, prior to delivery.
| | 04:34 | We'll talk more about codecs in the
"Understanding video formats" video.
| | 04:38 | Avid also makes the Mojo. You can
use this instead of the Canopus box.
| | 04:41 | It's an external FireWire video manager
with even more features to handle many
| | 04:45 | codecs, and it interfaces with the
Avid video-editing software very easily.
| | 04:49 | Finally, let's talk about speaker monitors.
| | 04:51 | When you're working in audio for video
you're going to need accurate reference
| | 04:54 | monitors to hear what you're doing.
| | 04:56 | Also, if you're serious about 5.1 surround
mixing, then you'll need to budget for more speakers.
| | 05:01 | Many companies, such as Blue Sky and
Genelec, offer 5.1 bundles to audio for
| | 05:05 | video professionals.
| | 05:06 | All of this might seem like a lot of
gear to budget for, but compared to working
| | 05:10 | on sound for video only a few years ago,
you'll find is becoming much cheaper,
| | 05:14 | much lighter, and more importantly, much
more accessible for anybody to get in to.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding the audio components of a finished video| 00:00 | The audio-production and
post-production workflow of a video, film, or
| | 00:04 | multimedia project can be
extremely complex and multifaceted.
| | 00:07 | Understanding how and where audio and
Pro Tools fits into the overall workflow of
| | 00:12 | a video project is important.
| | 00:14 | Even when working on the simple project,
there is a certain order of events and
| | 00:17 | a flow that is crucial to producing
a well-conceived audio soundtrack.
| | 00:21 | Let's get on the same page about
what makes up a full-fledged soundtrack.
| | 00:24 | We'll get used to some terminology
and see some examples of how it works.
| | 00:28 | The elementary components to a
soundtrack are also referred to as stems.
| | 00:32 | Think of a large plant with many stems
branching off into other smaller stems.
| | 00:37 | The three main stems are
dialog, effects, and music.
| | 00:41 | Let's go through what each stem contains
to make up the components of a soundtrack.
| | 00:45 | Our dialog stems are contained in
these dialog tracks, abbreviated as DX.
| | 00:50 | We have four of them.
| | 00:52 | Dialog includes any spoken words in
the scene. These can be words recorded on
| | 00:57 | the set, or the dialog might need to be replaced
and overdubbed later after the film is edited.
| | 01:02 | This is called ADR, if the set or shot
didn't allow for clean production sound.
| | 01:06 | Voiceover narration is also
considered part of the dialog stem.
| | 01:10 | Here on the DX1 track we have an
example of dialog that was shot on the set.
| | 01:14 | I will use the T button to zoom in
and later the R button to zoom out.
| | 01:18 | (Vietnamese dialogue)
| | 01:24 | So that's some dialog in the
dialog stem there, recorded on the set.
| | 01:28 | We also have some ADR in the session.
| | 01:31 | On DX4 track down here, I will first play it with
the whole session, and we can hear how it works.
| | 01:37 | Then we'll solo it up
and listen to it by itself.
| | 01:39 | (Vietnamese dialogue)
| | 01:44 | Here it is. I'll solo it up.
(Vietnamese dialogue)
| | 01:49 | So even though it's ADR and is
recorded later, it's still part of the dialog stem.
| | 01:54 | The sound effects stem can include any
artificially placed or real background
| | 01:58 | or ambiance tracks.
| | 02:00 | These are essential in making up the
sonic world that our characters live in.
| | 02:03 | Sound effects tracks might also
include production effects, which are any
| | 02:06 | non-dialog sounds that
were also recorded on the set.
| | 02:09 | This could be actor's footsteps or
any other sound they make during a shot.
| | 02:13 | In this session, we have an example of
a motorcycle sound in one of our three
| | 02:17 | production effects tracks.
| | 02:19 | Let's listen to that.
| | 02:20 | (Vietnamese dialogue)
(motorcycle revving)
| | 02:27 | There it is with the whole
session, and here it is soloed up.
| | 02:29 | (motorcycle revving)
| | 02:29 | So that sound was recorded on the set,
but is non-dialog, so it's considered
| | 02:39 | production sound effects, and it's
still part of the sound effects stem.
| | 02:43 | On a MONO FX track down below,
FX.MONO4, we have a sound effect that's
| | 02:47 | considered sweetening.
| | 02:48 | Sweetening involves recording or
sourcing sounds that enhance action in a scene.
| | 02:53 | This particular sound effect was
sourced from a sound library and is used to
| | 02:56 | sweeten the original
production effect which we just heard.
| | 02:59 | First we will listen to it by itself,
and then we'll hear the two together.
| | 03:03 | (motorcycle revving)
| | 03:08 | Here is the two together.
(motorcycle revving)
| | 03:16 | If there is a performance involved in
making a sound effect, we call that foley.
| | 03:20 | Foley is a big part of effects work.
| | 03:22 | It's best employed to lay in the
sound of footsteps, clothing movement,
| | 03:26 | breathing, creaking, really any sound that
needs to be played to the action to match.
| | 03:31 | A foley artist records these
sounds while watching the video.
| | 03:34 | In this session, we have a foleyed sound.
| | 03:36 | I go down to our Foley track,
solo that, and we can hear it.
| | 03:40 | It's the sound of a helmet being taken off.
| | 03:42 | This is performed after the fact by a foley artist.
(clicking sound)
| | 03:47 | There it is soloed, and let's hear it with the whole session.
(clicking sound)
| | 03:52 | Other sound effects, such as explosions,
gunshots, non-musical tones, layers of
| | 03:57 | source sounds, those are also all
part of the effects tracks stem.
| | 04:00 | Then we have music.
| | 04:02 | The music stem can include any source or
prerecorded music, like a Rolling Stones
| | 04:06 | song or an Erik Satie piano piece.
| | 04:09 | Often source music is used as temp
music in place during the picture-editing
| | 04:13 | process until a composer can
write an original music score.
| | 04:17 | An original score is
also part of the music stem.
| | 04:19 | The score might be premixed at the time
of the final film sound mix, or it might
| | 04:23 | have sub-stems of its own.
| | 04:24 | In this session, we have a premixed
music track on this track called MX1.
| | 04:30 | Let's hear it by itself.
| | 04:31 | (drums playing)
| | 04:40 | And then we can hear it with the whole session.
| | 04:42 | (drums playing)
(Vietnamese dialogue)
| | 04:49 | So those drums are considered part
of the music stem and they are used to
| | 04:52 | enhance the tension of this scene.
| | 04:54 | In some cases you might have MIDI
tracks as temp music to edit, which offers a
| | 04:58 | lot of editing flexibility as you work.
| | 05:00 | We can use Pro Tools to effectively
work on all these elements of a film
| | 05:04 | soundtrack, and it's up to the size and
scope of the project as to whether there
| | 05:07 | are different Pro Tools sessions for
each of the stems or one main one like we
| | 05:11 | see here where they are all part of it.
| | 05:13 | At some point, no matter what, they are
all brought together in a final mix or
| | 05:16 | re-recording session where the stems
are combined and rerecorded to create the
| | 05:20 | final print master tracks.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding the audio production workflow| 00:00 | Let's get into the basic workflow of
an audio for video project and see how
| | 00:04 | Pro Tools integrates.
| | 00:05 | First, the production phase. The video is shot.
| | 00:08 | While Pro Tools can be used to record
audio on a set, typically location audio
| | 00:12 | recordists use a separate
hard drive or flash recorder.
| | 00:15 | Then we have the Picture edit.
In this step, the video, along with production
| | 00:20 | sound, is imported into video
editing software, such as Final Cut Pro or
| | 00:24 | Avid Media Composer.
| | 00:26 | During this period of time sound
engineers can gather and record other sound
| | 00:30 | effects that might be useful for the
project, or go through sound effects
| | 00:33 | libraries, storing sounds, editing, and
compositing them in Pro Tools, gearing up
| | 00:38 | for sound work that lies ahead.
| | 00:39 | When the picture editing is complete,
the picture is said to be locked.
| | 00:43 | There may be still graphic, special
effects, or other picture manipulations, but
| | 00:48 | the timing of the cuts are solid and fixed.
| | 00:51 | The next step is the OMF or AAF transfer,
where the sound is separated from the
| | 00:56 | picture and brought into Pro Tools.
| | 00:58 | OMF or AAF files are generated from the
Avid Media Composer or Final Cut Pro Timeline.
| | 01:04 | The picture editor also delivers a
separate reference video, which is imported
| | 01:08 | into Pro Tools as a video track, and
it's referenced while the work takes place.
| | 01:12 | Once the sound has been imported into
Pro Tools from the OMF or AAF files, the
| | 01:16 | audio edit begins in separate stages.
| | 01:19 | Dialog, including production audio is
edited, noise-reduced, EQ'd, and optimized,
| | 01:25 | Backgrounds, ambience tracks,
and the sonic world of the film is created.
| | 01:30 | Sound effects are placed, foley is
performed, sweetening of production sound
| | 01:35 | effects occurs, ADR, dialog replacement
is recorded if it's needed, temp or file
| | 01:41 | music is brought in, while the
music soundtrack begins recording.
| | 01:44 | Once all of this is completed, if there
are many tracks, premixes or pre-dubs are
| | 01:49 | performed to make the
final rerecording mix simpler.
| | 01:53 | Then the final rerecording mix occurs.
| | 01:55 | It's named this because stems are
combined and rerecorded to make the final
| | 01:59 | tracks, or print masters.
| | 02:01 | Various versions can be mixed.
| | 02:03 | Some may be for Internet, some for TV,
some for DVD, some for surround, and so
| | 02:09 | on, depending on the project's needs.
| | 02:12 | Complex deliverables might be asked
for also, such as versions called M&E or
| | 02:16 | Music and Effects, with no
dialog for foreign versions.
| | 02:20 | Then the final layback to tape occurs.
| | 02:22 | This is where the sound is married
back to the final picture and completed
| | 02:26 | for the final delivery.
| | 02:27 | So now you have seen how Pro
Tools fits in to a video workflow.
| | 02:31 | These days it can play significant
role in any video soundtrack, and it really
| | 02:34 | let us fine-tune all of these stems
and their individual elements as we work.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
2. Working with a Video ProjectUnderstanding video formats, SMPTE timecode rates, NTSC, and PAL| 00:00 | Before we get into the nitty-gritty of
our sound work, let's make sure we fully
| | 00:03 | understand the video
formats we are working with.
| | 00:06 | There is a lot to know about video technology,
but hey, we're here for sound, not video.
| | 00:10 | So I'll bring things down to the
key points that will affect you on the
| | 00:13 | audio side of things.
| | 00:14 | When you are working in Pro Tools with
video you're working separately from the
| | 00:17 | master video file, tape, or film.
| | 00:19 | When you finish your work it will have
to be re-married to the final visual medium,
| | 00:24 | so it's absolutely essential that we
keep everything in frame-accurate sync
| | 00:28 | as lay in our audio.
| | 00:29 | Timecode is the key to making sure
everything stays in perfect sync.
| | 00:33 | SMPTE, an acronym for Society of Motion
Picture Television Engineers, came up with
| | 00:38 | a way of counting time for
visual media called SMPTE timecode.
| | 00:42 | It's laid out the following way.
| | 00:44 | Here up in our main counter, we have it set
to timecode, and the fields go like this.
| | 00:49 | We have hours, minutes,
seconds, and finally frames.
| | 00:54 | There are several different
timecode rates we can work with.
| | 00:57 | The difference in timecode rates comes
from how many frames make up a second.
| | 01:01 | Most of our timecode settings are
found in the Session Setup dialog window, which is
| | 01:06 | located under Setup > Session.
| | 01:09 | Here on the right we have a
timecode rate ,and there are all the
| | 01:13 | different timecode rates.
| | 01:14 | When we work with film it's easy.
| | 01:16 | Film runs at a rate of 24 frames per second.
| | 01:19 | We have that setting here.
| | 01:21 | Speaking of celluloid film, people who work
with the stuff count time in feet and frames.
| | 01:26 | You can also count feet and
frames in the main counter.
| | 01:29 | Set this to Feet+Frames.
| | 01:31 | There are 15 frames per
foot on 35-millimeter film.
| | 01:34 | This is an old-school way of working,
but I have come across veteran sound
| | 01:37 | designers who still use this as a reference.
| | 01:40 | Video is a little trickier.
| | 01:42 | In North America we use NTSC video.
| | 01:45 | NTSC, named for National Television
System Committee, is the analog television
| | 01:49 | system used in both of North America,
South America, and parts of Asia.
| | 01:54 | NTSC video runs at the following rates:
| | 01:56 | 29.97 frames per second, 29.97
frames per second drop, and 23.976 frames per second.
| | 02:06 | Why these crazy numbers?
| | 02:07 | It has to do with the rate of
electricity, scan lines of video, and some other
| | 02:11 | really technical stuff.
| | 02:13 | For now, don't get bogged down
with the numbers. Just go with it.
| | 02:16 | Don't let it stump you up.
| | 02:17 | Basically, when we convert film to video it
has to be changed to these timecode rates.
| | 02:21 | The Drop frame version of the
29.97 rate accounts for real time.
| | 02:26 | By effectively cheating, it excludes and
skips over two frames every minute, except
| | 02:31 | for every 10th minute.
| | 02:32 | The net result is at the minutes and seconds
field reflect an accurate duration of time.
| | 02:37 | In other words a drop frame time
between 0 and 30 minutes means that a true
| | 02:42 | half hour, 30 minutes, has elapsed.
| | 02:45 | I can show you this here in our timeline.
| | 02:47 | We set our Main timeline back to
Timecode, and here on the Sub counter that's set
| | 02:51 | to Minutes and Seconds.
| | 02:53 | So if I enter in a value of 30 minutes,
you can see then the Sub counter it's
| | 02:58 | almost exactly 30 minutes.
| | 03:00 | It's only 2 milliseconds off.
Very close to real time.
| | 03:03 | If I go back to 29.97 non-drop frame
and I set that to 30 minutes in the
| | 03:11 | timecode field, our Sub time counter,
which is real time, shows that they we are
| | 03:16 | almost 2 full seconds, 1.8 seconds off.
| | 03:19 | So obvious uses of drop frame are
broadcast scenarios where timecode needs to
| | 03:23 | reflect a truthful time reference.
| | 03:25 | A lot of video cameras nowadays shoot
at a frame rate of 24 frames per second,
| | 03:29 | or 24 PHD, like film.
| | 03:32 | Again, once this gets imported to
video editing software and makes it your way, in
| | 03:36 | the NTSC world it becomes
23.976 frames per second.
| | 03:42 | There is a setting for that in the
Time Code Rate pulldown menu as well.
| | 03:45 | PAL stands for Phase Alternating Line.
| | 03:48 | It's used in Europe, Australia,
and many other Asian and African countries.
| | 03:52 | PAL has a nice round
frame rate of 25 frames per second.
| | 03:55 | You can set that here in the
Time Code Rate pulldown as well.
| | 03:58 | We also see frame rates of 30 frames
per second and 30 frames per second drop.
| | 04:03 | These are way rarer and used only in music
or audio only applications, not with video.
| | 04:08 | Now that we've been talking about timecode,
I want to share a little secret.
| | 04:12 | In Pro Tools, as long as you're not
syncing your Pro Tools hardware to an
| | 04:15 | external device and your clock source
is internal, as we see here, audio always
| | 04:20 | runs at the same absolute speed, and
that's determined by the session sample
| | 04:24 | rate, which is
assigned when you make a new session.
| | 04:27 | You can see our session
sample right here is at 48 kHz.
| | 04:31 | So the only thing that changes when
you alter the timecode settings in his
| | 04:34 | pulldown menu is the playback speed of
the video itself and the underline timing
| | 04:39 | grid of your timeline, the way it count frames.
| | 04:43 | If you are in grid mode, like we are
here, and you zoom way in, you can see these
| | 04:47 | timing grids in the timeline in the tracks.
| | 04:51 | So the audio doesn't change speeds when you
change a timecode rate, just the timing grids.
| | 04:55 | So how do we know what frame
rate to use for our project?
| | 04:59 | One thing is to have a really good
communication with a video editor in
| | 05:02 | the production team.
| | 05:03 | Also, Pro Tools has an awesome
feature that autodetects the frame rate of
| | 05:07 | video you've imported.
| | 05:08 | Let me zoom out, and we can see our video track.
| | 05:11 | On the left of our video
track we have some numbers.
| | 05:13 | This says 23.98 frames per second.
| | 05:17 | That's rounded up from 23.976.
| | 05:20 | You can also see that these numbers are red.
| | 05:22 | When the numbers are red it means that
our Pro Tool session is not accurately
| | 05:26 | referencing the timecode
rate of this imported video.
| | 05:29 | So if we go here in Session Setup window
and we change it to 23.976, the numbers
| | 05:35 | become white and everything is happy.
| | 05:37 | We are back in sync with the video.
| | 05:39 | Just to be even more sure, we should always
have the video editor includes sync pops.
| | 05:44 | This is one frame of tone along
with a corresponding frame of video.
| | 05:47 | If I zoom in here, it's pretty
common to do this on a flash frame of the
| | 05:53 | number 2 as a countdown.
| | 05:54 | So it goes 4, 3, 2, and 2 is 1 frame long.
| | 05:58 | You can see we have a corresponding
beep that corresponds with the frame 2.
| | 06:01 | I will play it, and we can
see what this looks like.
| | 06:04 | (beep)
| | 06:05 | That ensures that we are in sync and we
are referencing the right timecode rate.
| | 06:09 | SMPTE timecode and the different frame
rates make up some of the terminology and
| | 06:13 | concepts we will be dealing with
as we work on video and Pro Tools.
| | 06:15 | As you can see, Pro Tools has all of
its bases covered when it comes to this
| | 06:19 | complex integration with video.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding video formats, codecs, and pull-up/pull-down| 00:00 | If you have a good understanding on
how SMPTE timecode and frame rates work,
| | 00:03 | you're ready to get into some more
advanced scenarios using Pull Up/Pull Down
| | 00:07 | settings in Pro Tools.
| | 00:08 | We'll also discuss how different video
codecs can affect us as we work with
| | 00:11 | video in Pro Tools 9.
| | 00:12 | Pro Tools offers a feature called
Pull Up/Pull Down which lets you
| | 00:15 | compensate for any mismatches that can occur
during the transfer from film to video and back.
| | 00:21 | These features reside in the Session
Setup window where the other Timecode
| | 00:24 | settings you located.
| | 00:25 | Go to Setup > Session. On the bottom
right we have the Pull Up/Pull Down menus.
| | 00:30 | Just so you know, for Pro Tools
systems, when you're clocking to your system
| | 00:34 | internally, as we are doing here, Clock
Source Internal, the Pull Up/Pull Down
| | 00:38 | audio features don't actually ever
speed up or slow down your audio.
| | 00:43 | They merely play the video back
at different rates to compensate.
| | 00:46 | So when you choose to pull the audio
down in the Session Setup window, Pro Tools
| | 00:49 | is actually simulating the pull by
speeding up the video to accommodate.
| | 00:53 | If you are using an external clock, such
as the Avid sync peripheral you see here,
| | 00:59 | the audio pulldown does actually change
the Sample Rate playback of the audio to
| | 01:03 | match the slowdown video.
| | 01:05 | Either way, the option enables you
to maintain sync while in Pro Tools,
| | 01:08 | regardless of your workflow.
| | 01:10 | So beneath Audio Rate Pull Up/Pull Down,
we have Video Rate Pull Up/Pull Down.
| | 01:14 | What about pulling up
and pulling down the video?
| | 01:16 | This feature will control the video
playback, but it will do so independently of
| | 01:21 | the timecode ruler.
Since this can get very confusing,
| | 01:23 | I recommend not using this feature.
| | 01:25 | Pro Tools even states in their manual
that this feature is merely left in to
| | 01:28 | be compatible with the older
versions of the software and is not a
| | 01:31 | recommended workflow.
| | 01:33 | So when do we use audio Pull Up/Pull Down?
| | 01:35 | Here's a typical scenario.
| | 01:36 | A project is shot on celluloid film, which
runs, as we know, at 24 frames per second.
| | 01:41 | The audio was recorded on a separate
hard disk recorder at a 48 kHz sample rate.
| | 01:46 | When the film-to-video transfer is
made, called Telecine, the 24 frames per
| | 01:51 | second a film is converted to
29.97 frames per second as NTSC video.
| | 01:56 | Effectively this process slows down the
video slightly to fit the 24 frames per
| | 02:00 | second a film into 29.97
frames per second of video.
| | 02:05 | If you want to keep the audio in sync,
it must also be pulled down, or slowed
| | 02:09 | down, to a sample rate of
47.952 kHz, which is .1% slower.
| | 02:16 | So of you the imported the audio
straight from the original audio recording into
| | 02:19 | Pro Tools at 48 kHz, you would have to
go in this menu and pull down the audio
| | 02:25 | rate .1%, as you can see, Film to NTSC.
| | 02:29 | Then your audio would be in sync with
29.97 frames per second of the video.
| | 02:34 | Remember, you can always use it the
2 pops that your video editor made at the
| | 02:37 | beginning and end of your
timeline to verify that you're in sync.
| | 02:40 | By the way, if you already now you
need to do this on import, you can apply a
| | 02:44 | pull-up/pull-down
destructively as you import the audio.
| | 02:47 | If I go Command+Shift+I to open our
Import Audio window and choose a wave file
| | 02:54 | and choose to copy it, down below
there is a box that I can check to apply
| | 02:58 | SRC, Sample Rate Conversion.
| | 03:01 | Here I can change the source sample rate.
| | 03:04 | I can pull it down 1%, Film to NTSC.
| | 03:08 | This will do it destructively, and I won't
have to do it in the Session Setup window.
| | 03:12 | I can assign to my Region List, and it'll
put that new pulldown audio in my Region List.
| | 03:17 | Another thing to know about Pull Up/Pull
Down in the Timecode Rate Pull Down menu
| | 03:21 | there is an Auto Match Pull Factor setting.
| | 03:24 | This is sort of a dangerous setting
to have checked because when it's
| | 03:27 | checked, Pro Tools will automatically
set the Pull Up/Pull Down settings here to
| | 03:30 | compensate when you change the timecode rate.
| | 03:33 | This has messed me up in the past, and
personally I prefer to leave that setting
| | 03:36 | unchecked, and I do the
pull-up and pull-downs manually.
| | 03:39 | Again, if you are unsure about any of
these settings, ask your video editor or
| | 03:43 | production manager for help.
| | 03:44 | Finally, when you're finished and the
project is going back to film, you will
| | 03:48 | need to reverse the process
before doing your final layoff.
| | 03:51 | So you'll have to pull the audio
back up before doing your layoff, and you can do
| | 03:55 | this in the Audio Rate Pull Up/Pull Down menu.
| | 03:58 | Now let's talk about video codecs.
| | 04:00 | For all video playing on a computer an
algorithm is used to encode and decode
| | 04:04 | the footage into a digital file.
| | 04:05 | That's where the name codec comes from.
| | 04:07 | Example of video codecs are DV,
AVI, MPEG2, H.264, MPEG-4, and HDV.
| | 04:17 | QuickTime video is a cross-platform video
player that supports a large number of codecs.
| | 04:21 | Pro Tools natively supports
only QuickTime for video playback.
| | 04:25 | The typical rule of thumb is that if
QuickTime can play the video, it will be
| | 04:28 | able to import and play in Pro Tools.
| | 04:30 | Here are a couple of important things
to know about QuickTime and Pro Tools:
| | 04:33 | 1) QuickTime must be installed
for Pro Tools to import video.
| | 04:37 | 2) If you plan to use the video-out
FireWire from the options menu where you can
| | 04:43 | transcode the audio and play it on a TV
or NTSC monitor, you have to use the DV
| | 04:48 | NTSC codec for that to work.
| | 04:50 | If you have an Avid Mojo hardware
peripheral, your video import options are
| | 04:54 | expanded and you can use Avid
Media Composer codecs as well.
| | 04:57 | I do recommend getting QuickTime Pro,
which allows you to convert and change
| | 05:01 | codecs on your own, if they are
not delivered properly to you.
| | 05:04 | There are a lot of ins and
outs regarding video technology.
| | 05:07 | After these understanding video format
movies, we should be familiar with the
| | 05:10 | video issues that directly
relate to our Pro Tool sessions.
| | 05:13 | Now let's get on to working on the actual audio.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Setting up your Pro Tools session for video| 00:00 | In this movie, we are going to get an
audio for video session going from scratch.
| | 00:04 | We will populate our session with
tracks and get set up with an audio for
| | 00:07 | video workflow in mind.
| | 00:09 | When we're done, you will have a
useful session template you can use anytime
| | 00:11 | you work with video.
| | 00:13 | By default, when you start Pro
Tools, you will get this dialog.
| | 00:15 | I will start by creating a blank session.
| | 00:17 | We will choose Broadcast Wave Files
and a Sample Rate of 48 kHz.
| | 00:22 | Bit Depth, we will choose 16 Bit,
which is the standard video bit depth,
| | 00:26 | although you could choose 24 Bit if
you wanted to have more dynamic range.
| | 00:30 | For I/O Settings, we will choose
Stereo Mix, although we will be enhancing
| | 00:32 | that as we go along. Let's click OK
and it will ask us where to save it.
| | 00:36 | And let's call is A4V, and I will
save it into this project folder.
| | 00:40 | So, when Pro Tools open,
you get a blank session.
| | 00:43 | This is the default view set up.
| | 00:45 | Let's configure a view for optimum
working in audio for video.
| | 00:48 | Obviously, you can further customize
this to your own taste, but first let's
| | 00:51 | click the green plus arrow and
make the window nice and big.
| | 00:55 | And we will start with the main counter up here.
| | 00:57 | You are going to want to change this to
Time Code if you are working with video,
| | 01:01 | so that's the first
order of operations. Do that.
| | 01:03 | Then we are going to show subcounter.
We want to see minutes and seconds,
| | 01:07 | along with our timecode.
| | 01:09 | Next, let's deal with these rulers.
| | 01:11 | Not all these rulers are going to be
useful to us when we are working with
| | 01:13 | audio for video,
| | 01:14 | so we are going to
actually take away some of them.
| | 01:16 | We are seeing a lot of
different rulers that we won't need.
| | 01:19 | We can remove rulers from our ruler view by
Option+Clicking or Alt+Clicking on the names.
| | 01:23 | So, let's get rid of Tempo, Meter, and Samples.
| | 01:27 | We will leave behind just Time Code and Markers.
| | 01:29 | Next, let's go up to our Grid settings.
| | 01:31 | Let's change this to instead of being 1
second, to 1 frame, and also our Nudge values.
| | 01:36 | Let's make those 1/4 frame.
| | 01:37 | That way we can nudge around and stay
within the frame accurate-world, but make
| | 01:41 | finer than one-frame
adjustments when we nudge our regions.
| | 01:44 | I usually get rid of this floating
transport window because I can have the
| | 01:47 | same information up top.
| | 01:49 | I can also expand this top Transport
window by going to Expanded Transport, and
| | 01:54 | it shows me all the info.
| | 01:56 | The Mix window is behind the Edit
window, and you can always toggle between the
| | 02:00 | two with the handy key command,
Command+Equal or Ctrl+Equal for Windows users.
| | 02:05 | There is our Mix window, and I'll
go and make that nice and big.
| | 02:08 | Notice we don't have any tracks yet,
so let's actually make a bunch of tracks
| | 02:12 | that are useful for our
audio for video workflow.
| | 02:14 | Here is a key command everybody should learn.
| | 02:16 | It's Shift+Command+N or Shift+Ctrl+N for
Windows users, and that's how to make new tracks.
| | 02:22 | So, let's start out by making 18 mono
audio tracks, and then I am going to click
| | 02:26 | this Plus button to create
an additional set of tracks.
| | 02:29 | The next set of tracks are going to be
12 stereo tracks, and then we are also
| | 02:35 | going to make 1 mono auxiliary track,
and we are also going to make two more
| | 02:41 | stereo auxiliary tracks.
| | 02:43 | So, this will help us populate our session
for the kind of tracks we will need as we work.
| | 02:48 | So, when I hit Create, all these
tracks will be made, and you can see there is
| | 02:51 | a lot of tracks in the Mix window.
| | 02:53 | If we want to, we can go ahead
and narrow our Mix window view.
| | 02:57 | So, go up to View > Narrow Mix.
| | 02:59 | That helps a little bit to
fit more tracks on the screen.
| | 03:01 | Here is one other cool tip.
| | 03:03 | It's an undocumented key command tip and
that's to hold Ctrl+Option+Command on the
| | 03:08 | Mac, which will be on Windows+Alt+Ctrl
on a PC, and click on any of the meters
| | 03:13 | in the Mix window. Then you
get wide meters. Kind of cool!
| | 03:16 | You can see your meters better that way.
| | 03:18 | So, now we are going to designate a
name what the tracks will be used for.
| | 03:21 | So, going back to our Edit window. I am
going to take the first 8 mono tracks and
| | 03:25 | those are going to become our dialogue tracks.
| | 03:27 | We are going to name them DX 1 through 8.
| | 03:30 | DX is an industry naming
convention used for dialogue tracks.
| | 03:34 | So, double-click to open the first one,
and we are going to name this DX 1.
| | 03:38 | And we're going to go through and
name the next seven tracks.
| | 03:41 | So, it's going to be DX 1 through 8 total.
| | 03:43 | So, there is DX 2, and if I hold Command+
Right Arrow or Ctrl+Right Arrow, I can
| | 03:49 | go to the next track to
name it. DX 3 and finally DX 8.
| | 03:56 | The next four tracks will be the
production sound effects tracks.
| | 04:00 | Let's name them FX PROD 1-4.
| | 04:02 | So, the first one would be FX_PROD 1,
and going on to the next one, FX PROD 2.
| | 04:17 | The next five tracks will
be mono sound effects tracks.
| | 04:20 | Let's name them FX.MONO 1-5.
| | 04:27 | Then for our last mono
track, we will call it TONES.
| | 04:29 | We will use this for
reference tones and sync pops.
| | 04:33 | The first six stereo tracks will be
FX.ST 1-6. Those are going to be our stereo
| | 04:39 | effects tracks. FX.ST 1, FX.ST 2, and so forth.
| | 04:48 | The next four tracks will be ambience tracks.
| | 04:50 | We will name them FX.AMB 1-4.
| | 04:52 | So, it's going to look like this, FX.AMB 1.
Then we have our music tracks.
| | 05:01 | We have two of them.
| | 05:02 | Let's name them MX1 for Music Tracks, and MX 2.
| | 05:09 | For the three aux tracks, these are
where we will bus our three stems.
| | 05:12 | We will name them first one,
which is the mono one, DX Bus.
| | 05:16 | That's going to be our dialog bus,
and it will be our mono bus, DX. And the
| | 05:21 | second two are going to be FX Bus and MX Bus.
| | 05:26 | So, when we are done, we have
got all of our tracks named.
| | 05:29 | The next thing I like to do is
to color-code the tracks.
| | 05:32 | For my color coding, I usually
color-code dialog tracks blue, production effects
| | 05:38 | tracks purple, effects tracks orange,
music tracks yellow, tones or any other
| | 05:42 | utility tracks brown, and aux tracks green.
| | 05:46 | So, now we have got them all color
coded and I am going to Option+Click or
| | 05:50 | Alt+Click on this narrow
strip to make them small,
| | 05:53 | so I can see more of them.
| | 05:55 | And we are going to actually route these tracks.
| | 05:57 | So, we are going to send all the
dialog tracks to the dialog bus.
| | 06:00 | So if I select and hold Shift and
select all the dialog tracks--It will be
| | 06:05 | helpful before I bus them
to see the I/O selector here.
| | 06:07 | That's another option we can turn on.
| | 06:10 | Go up here in the top left of your
tracks and turn on I/O, and then we can see
| | 06:15 | the input and output.
| | 06:16 | So, with all the dialog tracks
selected, I am going to hold Option+Shift or
| | 06:20 | Alt+Shift and go into the track output
selector, and on the quick track assign,
| | 06:25 | I can assign all these tracks to the dialog bus.
| | 06:27 | As you see, all the tracks automatically
went over to the bus called DX Bus, and let's
| | 06:32 | just scroll down real quick. And we can
see that on the dialog bus itself, its
| | 06:36 | input went to the same bus.
| | 06:37 | So, now all of our dialog tracks are
routing to that dialog bus aux track.
| | 06:43 | And I am going to do the same for
all the effects tracks, including
| | 06:46 | the production tracks.
| | 06:47 | I am just going to exclude the tones track.
| | 06:49 | So, hold Command to add the next few,
excluding the tones track, and Shift to
| | 06:55 | select the rest of them, so I have
got all my effects tracks selected.
| | 06:59 | And again, Option+Shift or Alt+Shift.
| | 07:01 | I am going to use the handy track send
selector to output these to the FX Bus,
| | 07:06 | and finally, we have our two music
track, so Shift+Select to get these guys
| | 07:10 | selected and Option+Shift or Alt+
Shift and go send these to the music bus.
| | 07:16 | So, now we have got all the tracks routed.
| | 07:18 | One thing you want to do here is to
solo-safe the dialog, effects, and music
| | 07:23 | bus by holding Command or Ctrl for
Windows users on the Solo button, and that
| | 07:27 | way when we solo our tracks out here
in our session, it won't mute the bus,
| | 07:31 | so we can hear through.
| | 07:32 | And we have a template. So let's save this.
| | 07:35 | So, I am going to File > Save and
this is saved as our A4V session.
| | 07:40 | We can also save this as a template that
we can use anytime we start up Pro Tools.
| | 07:43 | So, we are going to go in here and say
File > Save As Template, and we can put
| | 07:48 | this in the Category of Post Production,
which is pre-made category from Pro
| | 07:52 | Tools, and let's name it A4V.
| | 07:55 | This is the name of this
session template, and we will hit OK.
| | 07:58 | And I want to close the session just
to show you what that will look like.
| | 08:01 | So, Shift+Command+W closes our session.
| | 08:04 | That's Shift+Ctrl+W for windows users.
And we can go ahead and save it once more.
| | 08:09 | And now, when we go into Pro Tools and
we say File > New Session, we get this
| | 08:14 | New Session dialog, and here if we scroll down
to Post Production, there is our A4V template.
| | 08:20 | And if we hit OK, it will ask us where to
save it. A4Vtest, just to see what it looks like.
| | 08:26 | Hit Save and there is our
session that we just made.
| | 08:29 | So, you can use that
anytime you go into Pro Tools.
| | 08:32 | As you have seen, the setup for an
audio for video session template like
| | 08:36 | this is complex and kind of
time-consuming, but we only need to make it once,
| | 08:40 | and once you have it, you can use it
over and over again for any audio for video
| | 08:43 | sessions you work on.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Exporting OMF and AAF files| 00:00 | Using OMF and AAF files, video editors
can send edited and synchronized audio
| | 00:05 | track to Pro Tools, maintaining the
original track's clip in and out points,
| | 00:09 | levels, panes, and crossfades.
| | 00:11 | Audio handles can also be included, so
the audio editor can still trim and add
| | 00:15 | crossfades to the audio.
| | 00:16 | For this movie, we will show how an OMF
export works in Final Cut Pro, but the
| | 00:20 | concepts we see here are very similar
for Avid Media Composer exporting as well.
| | 00:23 | So, here we are in our Final Cut Pro project.
| | 00:26 | The first thing we want to do is make a
duplicate of the sequence, just for safety.
| | 00:30 | So, I am going to right-click on
the sequence and select Duplicate.
| | 00:35 | So, let's work off this
duplicate copy as we export.
| | 00:37 | If the sequence is very long and
there is a large amount of audio content,
| | 00:41 | consider cutting it into
smaller sections, or reels.
| | 00:44 | OMFs have a file size limit of two gigs,
so if all the media you are including
| | 00:49 | goes beyond that quota,
it won't be created at all.
| | 00:52 | A good rule of thumb is to have each
reel be about 20 to 25 minutes long;
| | 00:56 | any longer than that,
| | 00:57 | you might exceed the two-gig quota.
| | 00:59 | So, next thing what we want to do is
make sure the timeline includes the two pop
| | 01:02 | on all tracks, exactly two
seconds before the action.
| | 01:05 | So, here we have the very
beginning of our sequence.
| | 01:08 | We do have a two pop. It is on all
the audio tracks, and these two pops will
| | 01:12 | ensure sync is solid when
we bring it into Pro Tools.
| | 01:15 | The next thing we want to do is make
sure all the audio tracks, in this case
| | 01:18 | there's four tracks, have a
green speaker button next to them.
| | 01:22 | That means they're currently active,
and they will be included in the OMF.
| | 01:25 | AS you can see here, we've got some
audio automation with this pink line
| | 01:30 | going across each track.
| | 01:31 | That's volume automation.
| | 01:33 | Some people choose to just wipe that out.
| | 01:36 | I like to leave it in just so that the
audio editor has a reference of where you
| | 01:39 | though the track level should
be on the video side of things.
| | 01:42 | So, now we are going to actually
go ahead and do the OMF export.
| | 01:45 | So, we will go up to File > Export >
Audio to OMF, and we get the Audio OMF
| | 01:52 | Export dialog window.
| | 01:53 | Here, we can choose the Sample Rate,
which we are going to leave at 48, which is
| | 01:57 | the video standard sample rate.
| | 01:59 | Bit Depth is usually 16-bit, but if you
were recording with a camera that could
| | 02:03 | record 24-bit audio and
that's what you're working with,
| | 02:06 | you can go ahead and keep that at 24-bit.
| | 02:07 | For this one, we are to leave it at 16-bit.
| | 02:10 | Then we have Handle Length, so right
now it's set to 5 seconds, but Final Cut
| | 02:15 | Pro defaults Handle Length to 1 second.
| | 02:18 | I like to keep it at least 5 seconds,
and that gives our audio editors a lot
| | 02:22 | of room outside the boundaries of each cut
to work and crossfade and that sort of thing.
| | 02:28 | Below that we have three more options,
one is Include Crossfade Transitions.
| | 02:33 | I can see we have a couple of
crossfade transitions in this sequence.
| | 02:36 | I usually uncheck that box because we
are going to make any crossfades we
| | 02:40 | need to make on the Pro Tools side of things.
| | 02:42 | So, I am going to keep that unchecked,
and also historically there was some sync
| | 02:46 | issues coming from Final Cut
Pro if you did check this box.
| | 02:49 | But here, we also get the option to
include levels and panning, which I do
| | 02:53 | like to keep checked.
| | 02:54 | Again, it's to give the Pro Tools
editor some reference of where you thought
| | 02:58 | the level should be.
| | 02:59 | So, once you hit OK,
It's going to ask us where to put them.
| | 03:02 | For now, I will put them on the
desktop, and we will call it Sequence NTSC OMF
| | 03:08 | and, we will hit Save.
| | 03:09 | It's a pretty fast process. It does its thing.
It goes through each track, and we are done.
| | 03:14 | So, the last thing we need to do in the
transfer from Final Cut Pro to Pro Tools
| | 03:19 | is to export a video reference movie.
| | 03:21 | So, here we are going to go up to File again,
and we are going to say Export > QuickTime Movie.
| | 03:27 | And we are going to look at the Settings here.
| | 03:29 | This is the codec we are going to be using.
| | 03:31 | I prefer to choose the DV NTSC codec.
| | 03:36 | It's going to be a bigger movie.
| | 03:37 | It's not compressed, but that's the
ideal type of movie for Pro Tools systems,
| | 03:42 | because when it's in that codec, the Pro
Tools editor can send the movie out via
| | 03:47 | FireWire to an external monitor.
| | 03:49 | If you do have a file size concern
and DV NTSC is too big, you can choose
| | 03:54 | a codec like H.264.
| | 03:56 | You want to go down to the Custom
option and here under Compressor, you can
| | 04:00 | choose say H.264, which is a fairly good
compression scheme to use for exporting
| | 04:07 | a movie, but for now we are
going to keep it on DV NTSC.
| | 04:11 | I do also always include audio and video.
| | 04:14 | That way the reference QuickTime
Movie has a scratch audio track that can
| | 04:18 | also be brought into Pro Tools as a
reference, and we wan to make movies self-contained.
| | 04:23 | I mean then here, we will just export
this sequence, took off the copy, and we
| | 04:27 | will export it also to the desktop.
| | 04:29 | We will hit Save, and it will do its thing.
| | 04:32 | So, we've now navigated the simple but
crucial steps to properly bridge the gap
| | 04:36 | between the video edit
system and Pro Tools using OMF.
| | 04:39 | I know you might not be a video editor
yourself, but it's good to be well versed
| | 04:43 | in these steps, and I also make up a
detailed document containing this info if
| | 04:47 | I can't be around during this export.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
3. Getting into the Audio for Video WorkflowImporting OMF and AAF files| 00:00 | Once you have your properly exported
OMF and the QuickTime reference movie on
| | 00:04 | hand, it's time to import them into Pro Tools.
| | 00:06 | Let's check this out.
| | 00:07 | Getting an OMF or AAF into Pro
Tools is a pretty simple process.
| | 00:11 | Pro Tools even treats an OMF as a session file.
| | 00:13 | So here we have our deliverables in our OMF.
| | 00:17 | You can double-click on it to open
it or go to Pro Tools and go to File >
| | 00:20 | Open and choose it. Let's do that.
| | 00:23 | In Pro Tools, File > Open Session. I
find it here. Click on it and click Open.
| | 00:31 | This will start a new session.
| | 00:33 | So we have to check our Audio
File Type, Sample Rate, and Bit Depth.
| | 00:36 | These are all the ones we
want to use, so we will click OK.
| | 00:39 | Then it will ask us where to put it.
| | 00:41 | So we'll put it in our 03_01, and we
will call it andinhrace, which is the name
| | 00:46 | of the OMF file to begin with.
| | 00:49 | Pro Tools immediately brings you into
this Import Session Data dialog box.
| | 00:53 | This is the same Import Session Data box
we will use to import session data from
| | 00:57 | other Pro Tools sessions as well.
| | 00:59 | On the top left you have your Source Properties.
| | 01:01 | This tells us the info we need to know
about the source OMF file we are importing.
| | 01:05 | In this case it says the source time
code format is 24 frames per second.
| | 01:10 | This is due to the original metadata
attached to the sequence settings in Final Cut Pro.
| | 01:14 | As we will come to see, the true frame
rate of this project is actually 23.976.
| | 01:19 | Below that we have our Media Options.
| | 01:22 | Some of these options would have more
ramifications if you are importing from
| | 01:24 | another Pro Tools session, not an OMF.
| | 01:27 | Here we have Link to source media.
| | 01:28 | This would be a possibility if your OMF
came from an Avid Media Composer system
| | 01:33 | because there it's possible to export
an OMF and the media file separately.
| | 01:37 | If you do receive an OMF in this
format and you don't want to double up on
| | 01:40 | media, you can choose this.
| | 01:43 | If you are given just a standard one
OMF file with embedded media, like we had,
| | 01:47 | you should choose Copy from source media.
| | 01:49 | That's probably going to be your usual setting.
| | 01:51 | In this pulldown menu you also have the
option to consolidate from source media.
| | 01:55 | I wouldn't choose that here because
you don't want to cut off any media that
| | 01:58 | you might want to use.
| | 02:00 | You also have Force to target session
format, which is irrelevant in this case.
| | 02:05 | Video Media Options here are also
grayed out, because we are going to actually
| | 02:08 | import our videos
separately from the OMF transfer.
| | 02:11 | Assuming your video editor set up the
time code correctly from the beginning,
| | 02:15 | you should choose up here in the
Time Code Mapping Options to Maintain
| | 02:18 | absolute time code values.
| | 02:20 | As we can see, it's already set to
58:30, which is the same as our start time
| | 02:24 | from our Source Properties.
| | 02:26 | You could choose to use Maintain
relative time code values, if, for example, the
| | 02:30 | video editor was using time
code starting at hour three and
| | 02:34 | you don't want all your audio
to start way down the timeline.
| | 02:36 | This way it will start relative
to the beginning of your session.
| | 02:40 | You can also customize the start
time by mapping the start time to a
| | 02:43 | specific time code.
| | 02:44 | We are going to keep it on
Maintain absolute time code values.
| | 02:49 | One other option here is you could
offset your incoming tracks to a specific
| | 02:52 | time code by choosing it in the
Offset Incoming Tracks To field.
| | 02:57 | Sample rate conversion
options are also possible.
| | 03:00 | SRC stands for Sample Rate Conversion.
| | 03:02 | If you check Apply SRC, you can choose a
different sample rate to convert as you are importing.
| | 03:07 | But since our Source Sample Rate is 48
kilohertz and our Destination Sample Rate
| | 03:12 | for our session we chose to be 48 kilohertz,
| | 03:14 | we are not going to check that box.
| | 03:16 | Next, you have all of your source tracks.
| | 03:18 | As you can see, our OMF contains five
tracks, which are all highlighted in blue.
| | 03:22 | If you wanted, you can choose to
deselect some of these tracks and not include
| | 03:26 | them in the OMF import, but for now
we are going to keep them all selected.
| | 03:31 | At the bottom, we have some more options.
| | 03:33 | Because we plan on doing significant
audio work in Pro Tools, I think it's best
| | 03:36 | to ignore any rendered effects, ignore
clip-base gain, ignore auto-gain, and we
| | 03:42 | are actually going to choose not to pan
odd tracks left and even tracks right.
| | 03:45 | Then I will just make more work for us
later when we have to reset the pans to center.
| | 03:50 | For Track Data to Import, we can choose Some.
| | 03:52 | This is all the data you
could potentially import.
| | 03:54 | I'd like to choose All.
| | 03:56 | But, for example, you can choose to
deselect Volume Automation if you wanted to
| | 04:01 | ignore the volume
settings from the video editor.
| | 04:04 | Playlists aren't supported by OMF, so
we can ignore these settings below.
| | 04:08 | When you hit OK, everything should
come into your Pro Tools session.
| | 04:11 | When I zoom out a little bit, we can
see that all of our regions came into our
| | 04:14 | session and were populated in the audio
regions list, which I will narrow a little bit.
| | 04:21 | Let's expand our window.
| | 04:23 | The next step is to import the video
reference file and make sure everything is in sync.
| | 04:26 | So we will go to File > Import > Video,
and we will go back to our Deliverables
| | 04:33 | folder, and above the OMF
we have our reference video.
| | 04:38 | Click Open and it will ask us if you
want to put it on the new track, which
| | 04:42 | is good, put it at the Session Start.
And we do want to check Import audio from file,
| | 04:46 | so we have a reference of the
original audio from the reference video that
| | 04:50 | we can use as we work.
| | 04:54 | It's going to ask us to choose a
destination for this audio, and it
| | 04:57 | automatically defaults to the Audio
Files folder of this session, which is a
| | 05:01 | good place to put it.
| | 05:01 | So we will click Open, and as it's
bringing it in, you notice that the video
| | 05:06 | window is quite large.
| | 05:07 | So we are going to want to downsize
that. Right-click on it and we will change
| | 05:11 | it to Half Size and we will further
drag it smaller from the bottom right.
| | 05:17 | And I like to put my video window in the
top right of my Pro Tools Edit window.
| | 05:21 | So now we want to make sure
that everything is in sync.
| | 05:24 | The best way to do this is, if your
video is good and included sync pops, we can
| | 05:27 | check those against the video reference.
| | 05:29 | I can see that our sync pops are
hanging out in the beginning of our sequence,
| | 05:32 | so I am going to click on
it and zoom in very close.
| | 05:35 | I also want to make sure we are in
Grid mode here and that our grid is set to
| | 05:40 | 1 frame, which it is.
| | 05:41 | I can see here that the sync pop is
actually a little bit off from the grid boundary.
| | 05:48 | This might be due to the fact that we
are referencing the wrong time code rate,
| | 05:51 | so let's check that.
| | 05:53 | We are going to open the video track
to medium size so we can see the frame
| | 05:58 | rate of the video, which we can see
here is 23.98, rounded up from 23.976.
| | 06:05 | And notice that it's red.
| | 06:06 | Whenever the numbers are red, it
means that your Pro Tools session is not
| | 06:09 | referencing the correct video frame rate.
| | 06:11 | So we will have to fix that in the Session Setup.
| | 06:13 | Go up to Setup > Session,
and here is our Session Setup Window.
| | 06:18 | You can see that because the metadata
told us that the original OMF was at 24
| | 06:22 | frames per second, it's actually off.
| | 06:25 | So I am going to go in
here and change it to 23.976.
| | 06:30 | As you can see, the numbers are
now white, so Pro Tools is happy.
| | 06:34 | It's referencing the correct time
code rate, and let's check our two pop.
| | 06:38 | Close the Session Setup Window and
look, it's right on the frame line, and
| | 06:42 | it happens to be, if I click on it,
here up to the frame line, right on the
| | 06:46 | video reference of 2.
| | 06:48 | So if I go back one frame, you can see
that was number 3. I go there, number 2,
| | 06:53 | and I go one later, and it's nothing.
| | 06:54 | So that's our two pop.
| | 06:56 | Works perfectly and we can watch it.
If I back up a little bit and hit Play, we
| | 07:00 | will hear it and we'll see it go by.
(beep)
| | 07:01 | Let's check the end of our session as well.
| | 07:06 | Zoom out a little bit. And here we
have a sync pop also, corresponding this
| | 07:12 | time to a frame of bars.
| | 07:15 | It's right on the frame border, so that's good.
| | 07:17 | I'm going to go back one frame,
no bars, forward one frame.
| | 07:21 | There's the bars, and to the next frame,
and there is no bars, so we are right in sync.
| | 07:25 | I can play that as well.
(beep)
| | 07:28 | We can also see that the reference audio,
visually, if I zoom in on the waveform a
| | 07:33 | little bit, also has its sync
pop at the same exact location.
| | 07:37 | So I will zoom out, and that's good news.
| | 07:41 | That means everything is in sync.
| | 07:42 | Now the last couple of things I
usually do here is I take the video out of
| | 07:47 | frames mode and into block mode.
| | 07:49 | This actually just conserves some DSP power.
| | 07:51 | It's nice to see the frames, but they
are not totally necessary, since we have
| | 07:54 | the video reference up here, and it
conserves some system usage power.
| | 07:59 | So now you have some good insight
into importing OMF and AAF files.
| | 08:03 | These steps are crucial to getting you
set up properly so you can launch right
| | 08:06 | into your audio editing without any trouble.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Importing and the DigiBase browser| 00:00 | In this movie, I'd like to go over
an import scenario where you aren't
| | 00:03 | working with an OMF file, but rather
importing directly from a production
| | 00:07 | audio field recorder.
| | 00:08 | These days most location sound
recordists use hard disk recorders which are able
| | 00:12 | to attach metadata, or specific
additional information, to each audio file as
| | 00:17 | broadcast wave files.
| | 00:19 | Information such as timecode stamps,
scene and take number, even circled takes
| | 00:23 | can be edited and stored along with the
broadcast wave audio files as metadata.
| | 00:27 | Pro Tools has the ability to fully
identify and display this info in a special
| | 00:31 | window browser called DigiBase browser.
| | 00:34 | Let's open the DigiBase browser.
| | 00:36 | Go to Window > Workspace, or Option+Semicolon,
| | 00:40 | to open up the DigiBase browser.
| | 00:42 | Here I am going to navigate to a
folder that was copied to my hard drive
| | 00:45 | straight from a Sound Devices Field
Recorder, which is a very popular field
| | 00:49 | recorder that a lot of
location sound recordists use.
| | 00:51 | I am going to my Mac hard drive, under
Users > scotthirsch > Desktop > Exercise
| | 00:59 | Files, and we are in 03_02,
and here I have a folder called 10B.
| | 01:04 | This is that folder that was
copied from the Sound Devices Recorder.
| | 01:07 | If I open this up, you can
see there is two files in there.
| | 01:10 | We are going to customize the view of the
DigiBase browser so we can see some of the metadata.
| | 01:14 | If I go to the right window pane over
here and I right-click at the top, I can
| | 01:18 | customize the types of
metadata that I am going to see.
| | 01:22 | So if I scroll all the way to the
bottom, I will start with NONE and I will
| | 01:25 | build out from there.
| | 01:26 | So I am going to choose to see
Scene, Take, Frame rate, Project,
| | 01:32 | and Waveform.
| | 01:45 | You can see it goes off the screen,
but I can pull the window pane over a little
| | 01:48 | bit, and now I can see the metadata in there.
| | 01:51 | I can see the waveform of the original file.
| | 01:53 | I can see the clip name, 10BT01.
| | 01:57 | I can see that it's scene 10B.
| | 01:59 | I can see that it's take 1 and take 2,
and I can see that the project name is
| | 02:04 | GRAVITY, which is the name of
the film that we are working on.
| | 02:06 | I can even use the DigiBase browser to
audition the files before importing
| | 02:10 | them into Pro Tools.
| | 02:11 | I am going to click on the Play
button and the waveform display.
| | 02:13 | (Male speaker 1: Chloe?)
(Chloe: Yeah?)
| | 02:15 | (Male speaker 1: Roll sound. Call it.)
(Male speaker 2: Ten Baker, take one.)
| | 02:22 | You can even skip around
the file as it's playing.
| | 02:24 | (Male speaker: Chloe?)
(clunking sounds)
| | 02:25 | If you click right in the 0 digit
display, you can pull the fader up and down
| | 02:33 | as it's playing back.
| | 02:34 | (Male speaker 1: Chloe?)
(Chloe: Yeah?)
| | 02:36 | (Male speaker 1: Roll sound. Call it.)
| | 02:39 | Now to import these files
into Pro Tools, it's simple.
| | 02:42 | You can drag and drop them, either into the
timeline or into the Regions list on the right.
| | 02:46 | I will minimize this window a little bit.
| | 02:48 | I am going to Shift+Click both of
these files, and drag them both into the
| | 02:52 | Regions list, and they come into my session.
| | 02:56 | If I open the Regions list a
little bit, you can seen here that the
| | 02:59 | metadata also came across.
| | 03:01 | You can see in parentheses I have
S:10B. That's Scene 10B, T1, Take 1.
| | 03:07 | You can see this information as
long as in the Regions pulldown menu
| | 03:11 | you say Show > Channel Name, and Scene and Take.
| | 03:15 | Now one more thing, back in
the DigiBase browser--Option+Semicolon--
| | 03:20 | we can customize this
view and store it for later.
| | 03:24 | So if I wanted to come back to seeing
this specific metadata, I can use these
| | 03:28 | five screen presets at the top.
| | 03:30 | All you need to do is Command+Click on say
number 2 and it will store this view for later.
| | 03:36 | So if I was looking at some different
information, such as Preset 5, I wanted to
| | 03:40 | come back to see the view I just
created, I can click on 2, and it brings our
| | 03:44 | customized view right back.
| | 03:47 | Audio with metadata can be very useful
if you need to search through original
| | 03:51 | sound reels to find specific audio as you work.
| | 03:53 | When you use the DigiBase browser to
manage these audio files, you will never be
| | 03:57 | more thankful for metadata.
| | 03:58 | It can really save you time.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Conforming the OMF import to your template| 00:00 | Here we have our OMF file and a
video reference movie imported.
| | 00:04 | All is in sync, and it's working great.
| | 00:06 | Now it's time to begin our audio work.
| | 00:08 | In this movie we'll go over the first steps.
| | 00:10 | We will try to take the audio out of
its original OMF tracks and get them into
| | 00:13 | your pre-made audio for video template.
| | 00:16 | The first thing I always do before anything
else is to duplicate all of the original
| | 00:20 | OMF tracks, lock them, and hide them.
| | 00:23 | That way I will always have the
original OMF tracks to go back to, in case
| | 00:26 | something slides out of sync.
| | 00:27 | To do this, I am going to select all the
tracks, right-click on any one of them,
| | 00:33 | duplicate them--and I am going to
keep all of this data as I duplicate.
| | 00:37 | Then with these duplicate tracks I
am going to select all of the regions.
| | 00:41 | I am going to type Command+L to lock.
| | 00:44 | That will be Ctrl+L for windows users.
And then I am going to hide the tracks,
| | 00:48 | again right clicking on any one of the
tracks and saying Hide and Make Inactive.
| | 00:53 | That way they will be hidden, and they
won't use any DSP power as you are working.
| | 00:57 | The next step is to import your
customized post-production template.
| | 01:00 | We made one together in the movie called
"Setting up your Pro Tools session for video."
| | 01:03 | So let's go up to File > Import >
Session Data, and we are going to choose, in our
| | 01:11 | Exercise files,
under 03_03, our A4V template.ptf.
| | 01:18 | Click Open, and it is going to give you
a warning that the source session time
| | 01:21 | is earlier than the
current start time. That's fine.
| | 01:23 | We are not doing anything with the timeline.
| | 01:25 | We are just bringing in track from our template.
| | 01:28 | Click OK and here we have
our Import Session Data dialog.
| | 01:32 | This should look familiar because it
was the same dialog box that we saw when
| | 01:35 | we imported an OMF, only the Source
Properties up at the top left are different
| | 01:39 | since we are looking at
a session and not an OMF.
| | 01:41 | So what we are going to do here is we not
going to worry about any of the media options,
| | 01:45 | we are just going to take tracks.
| | 01:47 | So click down here and select All Tracks.
| | 01:51 | For Track Data to Import, we
are going to include All data.
| | 01:54 | That way we will import things like track
colors that we made in our original template.
| | 01:59 | Click OK and our whole template
comes in, including all of the routing.
| | 02:04 | So up at the top we've got our original OMF,
and below that we have got our track template.
| | 02:09 | One organizational thing I like to
do is to put the video and the video
| | 02:13 | reference in between our
original OMF and our template.
| | 02:17 | That way we have a visual barrier and
we can know which tracks are OMF tracks
| | 02:21 | and which tracks are our template tracks.
| | 02:23 | I am also going to mute the
video reference track for now.
| | 02:26 | Now it's time to organize.
| | 02:28 | Our job here is to go through and
listen to every region and every sound from
| | 02:31 | the original OMF and place it
into the appropriate tracks from our
| | 02:34 | postproduction template.
| | 02:36 | That way the right sounds will already
be bussed to the appropriate stem output.
| | 02:39 | Let's take a look at one of these regions here.
| | 02:41 | I am going to click on
these top two tracks here.
| | 02:44 | And we'll see that it looks like
we have some doubled up tracks.
| | 02:47 | As you start working with OMF material,
| | 02:50 | you'll probably notice that you get
duplicates from the original video editor.
| | 02:53 | So you'll need to make sure that you're
not bringing two of the same thing down
| | 02:57 | into your post-production template.
| | 02:58 | This is the big part of breaking
out the OMF into your template.
| | 03:02 | One easy tip to help you check this is
to go into the Options menu and change
| | 03:06 | your Solo Mode, instead of Latch
where you can listen to two things at once
| | 03:10 | soloed, to X-OR, which
cancels the previous solo.
| | 03:14 | That only allows you to
solo one track at a time.
| | 03:16 | So I can solo this track and listen to it.
| | 03:19 | (inaudible speech)
| | 03:21 | Solo the next track and listen to it.
| | 03:22 | (inaudible speech)
| | 03:24 | Sounds the same, but is it?
| | 03:26 | You have to be careful here, because we
might want to take across two different
| | 03:29 | files if one was a lavalier and one was a boom.
| | 03:31 | One way to check if it's really the same
thing is to zoom way in on the timeline
| | 03:36 | and look at the waveform.
| | 03:37 | I am going to make these
tracks median to double-check this,
| | 03:40 | so I can see it better, and I am going to
zoom out a little bit on the waveform height.
| | 03:47 | Now you can see here,
| | 03:48 | it looks like it's identical.
| | 03:51 | There's no variation between the
top waveform and the bottom waveform.
| | 03:54 | This is a clue that this
really is the same material doubled.
| | 03:56 | Now I want to show you
another way to check this,
| | 03:59 | and that's to bring something
like this onto a stereo track.
| | 04:03 | So I am going to take the grabber tool,
select both of these, and I am going to
| | 04:07 | drag it down to a stereo track.
| | 04:09 | As I drag these regions down, I am
going to hold a helpful key command, which
| | 04:12 | is the Ctrl button on a Mac
and the Windows button on a PC.
| | 04:16 | That will ensure that it doesn't move
from left to right as I drag it down.
| | 04:19 | It will stay in sync.
| | 04:21 | So I am just going to drag this down to an
available stereo track, like this FX.ST1 track.
| | 04:28 | Now I want to use the help of a
plug-in called PhaseScope to check if this is
| | 04:32 | truly a mono file or stereo file.
| | 04:35 | Go into my Inserts > multichannel plug-in.
| | 04:38 | Phase Scope is under Sound Field.
| | 04:41 | This plug-in actually shows us a PhaseScope,
which helps us check if it's mono or stereo.
| | 04:45 | Let's see what this region
looks like on the PhaseScope.
| | 04:52 | We saw a vertical line.
| | 04:54 | That's an indication that it
really is not a truly stereo file.
| | 04:57 | Just to see what a stereo file would
look like on the PhaseScope, I am going to
| | 05:01 | drag one in from the
Finder, and we can check it out.
| | 05:04 | And here I have a stereo file
that I can bring into Pro Tools.
| | 05:07 | I am just going to drag
it right into stereo track.
| | 05:12 | So this was recorded with a stereo pair
of microphones, and it represents what a
| | 05:16 | stereo region should look like if it
was truly stereo on the PhaseScope.
| | 05:24 | Whenever we see that scattered display,
it means that it has a true left/right
| | 05:28 | content, as opposed to the
straight line from this multi-mono file.
| | 05:34 | Once we are done assessing that, we are
going to grab this region, I am going to
| | 05:37 | Ctrl+Drag it back up to its original
OMF, and from here we'd want to bring this
| | 05:42 | into a dialog track.
| | 05:44 | So what we are going to do is grab the
first region, include the second half of it,
| | 05:48 | and Ctrl+Drag this down into our DX1 track.
| | 05:52 | The other one we are not going
to use since it's the same thing.
| | 05:55 | So we are just going to Command+M,
Ctrl+M on a Windows system, and mute
| | 06:00 | that track for now.
| | 06:02 | So for the rest of the OMF we are
going to go through each of these
| | 06:04 | regions, assess what it is, make sure it's not
a duplicate, and drag it down to our template.
| | 06:09 | So, here's what we will see when we are done.
| | 06:11 | We will see a bunch of muted regions
that we didn't use because they were
| | 06:14 | doubled in the original OMF tracks,
and we will see that we have pulled down the
| | 06:18 | regions to the appropriate tracks.
| | 06:19 | We have got dialog regions in our dialog tracks.
| | 06:22 | And we've got ambience that was
recorded on set in our FX production tracks.
| | 06:27 | At this point, I want to make sure we
didn't forget anything in our original OMFs.
| | 06:31 | It looks like we have got everything.
| | 06:33 | Now we can go ahead and
right-click and also hide these OMF tracks.
| | 06:36 | As you can see, our work is done.
| | 06:38 | We've broken out the
original OMF into our template.
| | 06:41 | Along the way, we listened to every
production sound element, which is a good
| | 06:45 | place to be, because now you are even
that much more familiar with the sounds
| | 06:48 | you are going to be working
with as you finish this project.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Setting up groups and windows | 00:00 | Audio for video sessions have many, many tracks.
| | 00:03 | In this movie, we will go over some
quick ways to group tracks by type and
| | 00:06 | display them quickly and easily.
| | 00:08 | Groups are managed in the box in the
lower left of the Edit window and Mix window.
| | 00:12 | By default, Pro Tool starts you off
with an All group, which can be used at any
| | 00:15 | time to control all the tracks in your session.
| | 00:18 | If I click on the All group and I go to
Mix window, you can see that all faders
| | 00:23 | are being controlled.
| | 00:26 | Deselect the All group.
| | 00:28 | To create a group, we can type Command+G or
Ctrl+G. This is the group's dialog box.
| | 00:33 | Instead of the All group that's in
there by default, I want to make an All
| | 00:36 | my tracks group to control the tracks that
are just in our current view, not everything.
| | 00:41 | Remember, we have some hidden OMF
tracks over here that, as you can see by this
| | 00:45 | display, aren't part of the tracks that
are currently in the All my tracks group
| | 00:49 | that we are about to create,
and we want to leave it that way.
| | 00:52 | So in this tracks tab we can see all
the members that are about to add to
| | 00:56 | your group, plus any available tracks that
you could potentially add if you wanted to.
| | 01:00 | You also see that there's a group ID.
| | 01:03 | This is ID a from bank 1.
| | 01:05 | There are four groups of alphabetical
list of groups you can make, with a total
| | 01:09 | of 104 groups for any Pro Tools session.
| | 01:11 | Then we can go over to the Attributes tab.
| | 01:14 | Here, I would think that we would
probably want to control Volume and Mute.
| | 01:18 | Those are kind of the default things
that you'd like to control with a group.
| | 01:21 | So I am going to check those for now.
| | 01:22 | You can also add send levels for
any of your 10 available sends.
| | 01:26 | You can add send mutes.
| | 01:28 | You can add pan to your group attributes.
| | 01:30 | For now I am going to keep these
two checked, and we'll click OK.
| | 01:34 | You can see the All my tracks
group appeared in our groups list.
| | 01:37 | Let's make some more groups.
| | 01:39 | Let's make a group just for
the dialog tracks, for example.
| | 01:42 | Command+Click or Ctrl+Click to unselect
that dialog track, click again to select
| | 01:47 | it, and we'll Shift+Click to select
just the dialog tracks, and we will type
| | 01:52 | Command+G or Ctrl+G to start a new group.
| | 01:54 | We will call this one 'dial' for our
dialog group, and you can see its ID b. Click
| | 01:59 | OK and let's make one for all of our effects tracks.
| | 02:03 | Select the top FX track all the
way down to the end of our FX tracks.
| | 02:07 | Command+G or Ctrl+G, 'All FX'.
| | 02:10 | Now we are going to make some
subgroups within those all FX groups.
| | 02:15 | So we'll make one just for production FX.
| | 02:17 | We'll call that Prod FX. Click OK.
| | 02:24 | And we will make one for just the
mono FX, and we will make one for the
| | 02:32 | stereo FX as well.
| | 02:36 | So we would go on and make different
groups for even things like music tracks,
| | 02:39 | ambience, and so on.
| | 02:42 | Now let's take a look over at the
Mix window so we can see what these
| | 02:44 | groups look like here.
| | 02:46 | Right now, we are in Narrow Mixed
view, so we can't fully see this little
| | 02:49 | pulldown window here that
tells us about our groups.
| | 02:51 | Let me get us out of Narrow Mix view
by going to View > Uncheck narrow mix, and
| | 02:56 | now we have our wider mixed tracks.
| | 02:57 | We can see this pulldown menu, for
example, on the DX1 track shows us that this
| | 03:02 | track is part of the All my tracks
group, and we can see those tracks here.
| | 03:06 | You can see that it's also part of
group b, the dialog tracks group.
| | 03:09 | You can see those tracks
containing the eight dialog tracks.
| | 03:11 | You might also notice here that it has
a capital A. Whenever you see a capital letter
| | 03:16 | as a group ID it means that that
track is in more than one active group.
| | 03:20 | In this case, the dialog track is in the
All my tracks group and the dialog group.
| | 03:24 | For example, the reference movie is just
in the All my tracks group, so it has a lowercase a.
| | 03:31 | Here is where it gets cool.
| | 03:32 | Setting up these groups is a little
tedious, but you can now use the groups to
| | 03:35 | quickly show, hide, and
even select members of a group.
| | 03:38 | Let's go back to the Edit
window to see how this works.
| | 03:41 | So in our groups list at the left here,
if I click on this narrow colored strip
| | 03:47 | to the left of any group, I can quickly
select just the members of that group.
| | 03:52 | If I click on the green strip next the
dialog group, scroll up a little bit to
| | 03:57 | see what happened, all my
dialog tracks got selected.
| | 04:00 | I am going to do the same for the production FX.
| | 04:03 | Just those tracks get selected.
| | 04:05 | This is really handy if you want to
select tracks quickly and route them to a
| | 04:08 | different output or a bus.
| | 04:10 | You can use this trick to quickly
select all the members of that group.
| | 04:14 | You can also use the groups list here to
show and hide different members of a group.
| | 04:18 | To do this, you hold down Ctrl or the
Windows key as you click on the group name.
| | 04:22 | So, if I do this for the dialog group,
every other track quickly gets hidden, and
| | 04:27 | we just see the dialog tracks.
| | 04:29 | You do it for same Mono FX, Prod FX, or
All FX, and then we can use the All my
| | 04:36 | tracks group to get back to original view.
| | 04:38 | Again, I was holding down Ctrl or Windows
to do that as I clicked on the group name.
| | 04:43 | Now let's select all the FX groups.
| | 04:45 | You might notice these odd little circles
on the left-hand column of the groups list.
| | 04:50 | These tell you what members of
the group are currently selected.
| | 04:52 | So right now we have all
of the FX tracks selected.
| | 04:56 | If we see a close dot, it means that
all members of that group are selected.
| | 05:01 | If we see an open dot, like we are
seeing in the All my tracks group, it means
| | 05:05 | that some, but not all
members of that group are selected.
| | 05:08 | Finally, if we see a filled-in open dot,
like we see on the Prod FX, Mono FX,
| | 05:14 | and Stereo FX, that means that all
members of a group are selected, plus
| | 05:18 | additional members outside that group.
| | 05:21 | So it's a handy way to tell what
members of the group are currently selected.
| | 05:25 | One last thing: if you need to edit
the members of a group, you double-click
| | 05:29 | also in that leftmost column.
| | 05:30 | So if I wanted to edit the members
of the dialog group, for example, I
| | 05:33 | double-click next to dialog in that
column and I get the group dialog window again.
| | 05:39 | Here now, for example, if I wanted to
take dialog 8 out of this group, I can
| | 05:43 | remove it, and it no longer
becomes member of that group.
| | 05:46 | I can click it again and add it back.
| | 05:49 | So you can edit the
members of the groups that way.
| | 05:52 | When you're working, the faster you can
get an idea from your mind to your Pro
| | 05:56 | Tool session, the better.
| | 05:57 | So using groups like we did in this
video really helps you speed up your
| | 06:00 | audio for video workflow.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Spotting film and using markers| 00:00 | Early on in audio post-production, you
want to call a meeting with the director,
| | 00:04 | producer, music composer, and any
other creative forces behind the film.
| | 00:08 | This type of meeting is
called a spotting session.
| | 00:11 | Let's go over some techniques and ideas
on how to document the spotting session
| | 00:14 | with markers or memory locations.
| | 00:17 | It's called spotting because that's
what you will be doing with the filmmakers,
| | 00:19 | spotting exact places in the
video where sound ideas can develop.
| | 00:23 | Markers, also known as memory
locations, are a good way to document and place-
| | 00:27 | hold exact frame-accurate
spots for sound events to occur.
| | 00:31 | Command+5 on the numeric keypad
opens the Memory Locations dialog box.
| | 00:36 | Before you have your spotting meeting,
it's incredibly useful to make frame-
| | 00:40 | accurate marks at the scene boundaries.
| | 00:42 | Most film scripts have
specific numbers of scenes,
| | 00:45 | so if you have access to the script,
I advise you use these numbers, as the
| | 00:49 | director and producer will
already be familiar with those numbers.
| | 00:52 | So, let's go into the timeline
and make markers at each scene.
| | 00:55 | You should go into grid mode and be
exact to the frame boundaries of each scene.
| | 01:00 | Before doing anything, I usually make
a home marker somewhere between the two
| | 01:03 | pop and the start of the movie.
| | 01:05 | I will zoom in a little bit and
there's our two pop, so if I make it right
| | 01:09 | around here, hit Enter on the numeric keypad to
make a marker, and I am going to call this Home.
| | 01:15 | I am also going to give it a
couple of different attributes.
| | 01:18 | As you can see, Zoom Settings, Track
Show/Hide, and Track Heights are selected,
| | 01:23 | so those will come back anytime
I bring up this marker. Click OK.
| | 01:27 | You can see we have our first marker in there.
| | 01:29 | Now, I am going to timecode hour 1,
which is the start of the movie.
| | 01:34 | So, I am using the Plus and Minus keys
on the numeric keypad to nudge back and
| | 01:38 | forth and get it exactly at hour 1.
| | 01:40 | This is the start of our first scene.
| | 01:43 | This is called Scene 1A.
| | 01:44 | Here, I am going to type Enter, type in SC 1A.
| | 01:49 | All of our scene markers
are going to start with SC.
| | 01:51 | Now, I am going to find the end of this
scene and the beginning of the next scene.
| | 01:56 | So, I am just kind of clicking around,
and this scene ends when we go to the
| | 02:00 | crowd here, so I am going
to go back a few frames.
| | 02:04 | Again, we want to get it
exactly on the frame boundary.
| | 02:07 | That will help us later when we lay in ambiences.
| | 02:11 | We can use these markers to help guide us.
| | 02:13 | So, right there is the frame boundary.
| | 02:14 | That's the previous scene.
| | 02:16 | If I hit the Plus sign, I've got the next scene.
| | 02:18 | Enter again and this is going to be called SC 2.
| | 02:21 | We'll do one more of these, which is
the end of this crowd scene, and it's the
| | 02:28 | beginning of the race.
| | 02:30 | And it's right around here.
| | 02:31 | There is the end of the crowd scene.
| | 02:35 | The next frame is the race.
| | 02:36 | So, on the first frame of the next
scene is going to be SC 3A.
| | 02:42 | So, once we are done with our scene markers,
we are going to get even more specific.
| | 02:45 | We are going to do this for sound
effects, we are going to do it for music
| | 02:49 | markers, and we are going to spot these
places where these events should occur.
| | 02:54 | So, let's, for example,
make a sound effects marker.
| | 02:58 | When the crash occurs in the motorcycle
race would be a good point to do that.
| | 03:01 | So, there's the crash and again, I am
going to zoom in really close and I am
| | 03:07 | going to find out the exact moment when
we are going to want to lay in the sound
| | 03:11 | effects for the crash.
| | 03:12 | So, I think it's right around here.
| | 03:14 | Again, I am using the plus and minus
keys to nudge forward, and it looks like the
| | 03:20 | crash starts right about there.
| | 03:25 | So, it's kind of like that shot.
| | 03:28 | Before I lay in a marker here, I'm
going to actually change my view, and I'm
| | 03:34 | going to do Ctrl+Click to show only the
effects tracks in my group, for one, and for two,
| | 03:40 | I am going to make all of those
effects tracks by holding Option and Shift,
| | 03:44 | make them all large.
| | 03:45 | So, I am just kind of changing my view
a little bit, because I am going to be
| | 03:49 | doing some fine-tuning sound effects work here.
| | 03:51 | So, I did that before I made the marker.
| | 03:53 | Now, I am going to hit Enter, and
since this is an effects marker, I am going
| | 03:57 | to demarcate it with an FX,= before
I make the names=, and this one I am
| | 04:01 | going to call FX crash.
| | 04:03 | Now, also there's a Comments field.
| | 04:05 | This can be pretty useful.
| | 04:06 | In this case, I received a comment via
email from the director, which I saved in
| | 04:11 | a text document here.
| | 04:12 | He said he wants to hear the
crash sound to be very traumatic.
| | 04:15 | So, I am going to copy
that, paste that into here.
| | 04:19 | So, if someone else was working on
sound effects, or I needed a reminder, I can
| | 04:23 | paste that into the Comments field. Click OK.
| | 04:26 | So, now if I go back to my Scene 1A,
notice that the track view changes back
| | 04:32 | since we have added those
attributes of track size and show and hide.
| | 04:37 | And if I go to the crash, it
snaps me right back to that view.
| | 04:40 | So, we are going to want to go
on and create markers for any
| | 04:43 | significant effects.
| | 04:44 | We are going to create music markers.
| | 04:46 | We will demarcate those with an M.
We are going to maybe do some ambience
| | 04:50 | markers, ABR markers, all of the
spotting things you need to do to spot places
| | 04:55 | in your session where things occur,
and you can make up some nomenclature like
| | 04:58 | I did to differentiate between the
different types of markers that you are laying in.
| | 05:02 | And when you're done, it's going
to look something like this session.
| | 05:05 | So, here I have made a bunch of
markers and I've done all of the scene
| | 05:08 | boundaries for this whole sequence.
| | 05:10 | I've done some music markers, M start and M end.
| | 05:13 | I have done some FX markers
and even some ambience markers.
| | 05:17 | Now, another thing you can do with
memory locations, or markers, is to use the
| | 05:21 | numeric keypad to quickly
snap to different markers.
| | 05:24 | To do this, it's a
combination of a couple of keys.
| | 05:26 | You use the decimal point, then the
number of the marker, which we can see
| | 05:30 | on the left-hand column, then decimal point
again, and your cursor will snap to that marker.
| | 05:36 | So, Scene 1A is number two.
| | 05:39 | So, if I zoom in a little
bit, we'll see this happen.
| | 05:41 | I am going to type '.2.', and you can
see that their cursor automatically
| | 05:47 | snapped to Scene 1A. So if I do '.7.',
it snaps me right to the FX crash, and
| | 05:56 | then I can always go home, '.1.'.
| | 05:59 | That's a quick way to use markers to
navigate to different spots in your session.
| | 06:03 | You can also click directly in the
markers timeline and then once you're in
| | 06:08 | there, you can hit Tab, and that will
just move you to the next marker, and
| | 06:12 | Option+Tab moves you to previous marker.
| | 06:14 | So Tab to the next marker,
Option+Tab to the previous marker.
| | 06:18 | Deleting a marker is really simple.
| | 06:20 | You just Option+Click or
Alt+Click on the marker to delete it.
| | 06:24 | You can do that here in the marker
timeline--undo that--or you can do it in the
| | 06:29 | Memory Locations window.
| | 06:30 | You can see when I hold down Option or Alt, I
get a little eraser tool. I can delete that and undo that.
| | 06:38 | One other cool thing you can do with
markers is you can display some color here
| | 06:41 | in your markers timeline.
| | 06:42 | So to do that, we go into Pro Tools >
Preferences and under Display, we can
| | 06:47 | check Always Display Marker Colors.
| | 06:50 | Once I hit OK, you can see that Pro
Tools puts a color between each marker.
| | 06:54 | It can be kind of helpful to see
visually where markers begin and end.
| | 07:00 | So as you can see, it takes a little
time to set up these markers, or memory
| | 07:02 | locations, but it sure beats having a
spreadsheet or scribbled note that's
| | 07:06 | offline from your Pro Tools session.
| | 07:08 | This way it's integrated, and you
can recall the spotting notes and
| | 07:11 | locations lightning fast.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
4. Working with Audio for VideoOrganizing the dialog tracks| 00:00 | If audio for video is a battle then the
dialog edit is on the front lines.
| | 00:04 | The overall success of your soundtrack
will hinge on the effectiveness of the
| | 00:07 | dialog, and all the other elements in
your session will be built around it.
| | 00:11 | Here we'll discuss your overall
approach to your first dialog pass.
| | 00:16 | As you see here, we have a pre-made session.
| | 00:18 | It follows the template ideas we worked
on before, but it's slightly different,
| | 00:21 | since we're using it just for dialog.
| | 00:23 | As you can here, we have dialog A 1-4,
which we'll use for this scene, and then
| | 00:28 | for the next scene, we would use dialog
B 1-4, and then in the following scene
| | 00:32 | we would go back to dialog A 1-4.
| | 00:35 | This way of checkerboarding can
maximize your dialog tracks to keep you with
| | 00:38 | the fewest amount of tracks
through your entire session, but a lot of
| | 00:41 | flexibility for your mix.
| | 00:43 | As you can see also, we've already
duplicated, hidden, and locked our original
| | 00:47 | OMF tracks to get back to them if we need to.
| | 00:51 | So on these four dialog tracks that
came in with the OMF, we have in our first
| | 00:55 | track a boom mic track.
| | 00:57 | Second and third tracks are lavalier mics
and the fourth track is a roomtone track.
| | 01:02 | At this stage our goal is to look
through all of these tracks, decide which
| | 01:06 | regions we want to use, and bring them
down into our dialog tracks, and keep
| | 01:10 | the unwanted ones in some alternate tracks we
have below, just in case we need them later.
| | 01:15 | Typically, I prefer the sound of the boom
mic, providing that it is recorded well.
| | 01:19 | It usually sounds the most natural.
| | 01:21 | When you're pulling regions into your
dialog tracks, you also want to try to
| | 01:24 | avoid doubling anything.
| | 01:26 | That means twice the background noise,
and you can run in the phasing problems
| | 01:29 | if you have more than one source.
| | 01:30 | So let's listen to some of these tracks,
and we'll compare the boom mic sound
| | 01:34 | versus the lavalier track sound.
| | 01:36 | Here we'll solo the top track,
and we'll hear the boom mic, and then we will
| | 01:39 | compare the bottom two tracks.
| | 01:40 | (Male speaker: So, what did you bring me here?)
| | 01:43 | That's the boom mic. Here's the lave1.
| | 01:46 | (Male speaker: So, what did you bring me here?)
And here is lave2.
| | 01:50 | (Male speaker: So, what did you bring me here?)
| | 01:52 | As you can hear, lave1 and lave2 are
kind of muffled and not as clear as the
| | 01:57 | boom track, and as it turns out for this
entire sequence, which is pretty short,
| | 02:01 | the boom track is the desired take.
| | 02:04 | We still might need to use the
lavalier tracks for some things, so
| | 02:06 | we'll keep them handy.
| | 02:07 | Let's select them, and using Control or
Windows key, we use the grabber tool to
| | 02:13 | drag them down to our alternate tracks.
| | 02:17 | Here we can use Command+M
or Ctrl+M to keep them muted.
| | 02:21 | That way we can grab them if we need
them and they'll be in a timeline, but
| | 02:24 | we won't hear them.
| | 02:26 | So, back up to the boom mic track.
We are going to now look through the regions
| | 02:29 | in this track, and we're going to
split or separate it and bring it into the
| | 02:32 | appropriate dialog tracks.
| | 02:33 | Let's start at the beginning.
Click Solo to hear just this track.
| | 02:40 | (paper shuffling)
| | 02:43 | So it's seems like the first
region is actually not dialog at all.
| | 02:46 | It's production sound.
| | 02:48 | So using Control or the Windows
key, click and drag this down to the
| | 02:51 | production effects track.
| | 02:54 | Let's take a look at the next region.
| | 02:55 | Zoom in a little bit.
| | 02:56 | (Ken: Hi Charlie)
(Charlie: Ken!)
| | 02:59 | (Ken: Good to see you.)
(Charlie: Good to see you!)
| | 03:02 | Okay, so here we have two things going on.
| | 03:04 | At the beginning of the region we have
the cup going down, which is technically
| | 03:07 | a production effect.
| | 03:08 | So we're going to click into this
region, and we're going to use the B key to
| | 03:12 | split this region at this point.
| | 03:14 | Go back to the grabber tool and
we'll Ctrl+Drag this region down to our
| | 03:18 | production effects track.
| | 03:22 | Now the second half of the region--
| | 03:23 | (Ken: Hi Charlie)
(Charlie: Ken!)
| | 03:25 | (Ken: Good to see you.)
(Charlie: Good to see you!)
| | 03:27 | That's a wide shot.
| | 03:29 | So we'll designate DX A1, our first
dialog track, as the track we'll put anything
| | 03:33 | that has the wide shot of the two
characters. Ctrl+Drag that down to DX A1, and
| | 03:39 | let's look at the third region here.
| | 03:40 | (Ken: So, what did you bring me here?)
| | 03:41 | So this one is a close-up of
character one, in the red shirt.
| | 03:46 | So for this one, we'll designate DX A2.
That will be any close-up shot of that character.
| | 03:52 | So Ctrl+Drag that down to DX A2, and
let's take a look at the third region.
| | 03:58 | (Charlie: Well, just what you suggested.
We've cut back to save on expenses.)
| | 04:02 | Okay, so that's a wide shot again,
| | 04:04 | so that will go on the first track.
| | 04:05 | So we'll continue on, listening, editing
where necessary, and dragging the regions
| | 04:12 | into their appropriate tracks, depending
on if it's a close-up of character 1, a
| | 04:16 | wide-shot, character 2, or the production sound.
| | 04:19 | When we're done, we should
have something like this.
| | 04:22 | So, here's our finished broken-out tracks.
As you can see, we've split them when
| | 04:26 | necessary and put them on the appropriate track.
| | 04:29 | One other thing that we'll do in this
first pass is just a general level pass.
| | 04:33 | So as you can see, I already brought
down the wide shot a couple of decibels
| | 04:37 | from zero, just because it's a little
farther away, as you can see visually,
| | 04:41 | than the close-up shot.
So compensate that just generally by levels.
| | 04:44 | We'll probably get more specific with
that when we get to the mix stage of this
| | 04:47 | project, but we can do that for now.
| | 04:50 | So this first pass to dialog
is strictly organizational.
| | 04:53 | Remember, the work that you put it now
will pay off a lot later, and we'll get
| | 04:56 | more specific into our
dialog edit as we progress.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Optimizing the dialog in the first pass| 00:00 | As you work through your first dialog
pass, sometimes you'll find that some of
| | 00:03 | the dialog regions come in way
too quiet from the original OMF.
| | 00:07 | You may need to use the AudioSuite Gain
plug-in to get them in the same ballpark
| | 00:11 | as the other regions.
| | 00:12 | In this movie, I'm going to
show you a special way to do this.
| | 00:14 | You can maintain handles for later crossfading.
| | 00:17 | So this region here is a little bit
quieter than some of the other dialog regions.
| | 00:21 | Let's take a listen.
| | 00:22 | (Character 2: And that adds ten seats
to the theater. And that adds ten seats.)
| | 00:27 | Okay, so here's how we're going to do this.
| | 00:28 | We're going to copy this
region down to our Edit track first.
| | 00:32 | Use the Grabber tool, F8, and I'm going
to Ctrl+Option, which is Windows+Alt on a
| | 00:37 | PC and drag this down to one of our Edit tracks.
| | 00:40 | That way we held control so it didn't slide left
to right and by holding Option, we copied it down.
| | 00:45 | Next, what we're going to do is
pull out some handles on this region.
| | 00:48 | So I'm going to get the Trimmer tool
and pull out a little bit of a handle on the
| | 00:52 | left, a little bit of a handle on the right.
| | 00:55 | Now if I zoom in really close here,
you'll notice that there's some crossfades
| | 00:58 | at the beginning and end. I'm going to select
those and just delete them by clicking the Delete key.
| | 01:03 | So now we've pulled out the handles from the
original region and it's on our Edit track.
| | 01:10 | So we're going to go up to the AudioSuite. We're going to
go to Other and choose the Gain AudioSuite plug-in.
| | 01:15 | So you have to ask yourself how much
we're going to gain this region up.
| | 01:18 | There's a handy button on the Gain
plug-in called Find Level. Let's click that.
| | 01:23 | It tells us where the
peak level of this region is.
| | 01:26 | In this case, it's at -14.9 dB.
| | 01:30 | So if I use the slider, I'm going to drag this
up till that reaches about 10 DB. -9.5 is fine.
| | 01:36 | So we're going to gain it up 5.4 dB.
| | 01:38 | That's a good spot for dialog
to be peaking out at about -10.
| | 01:41 | So I'm going to hit Process, and
you can see the waveform got bigger.
| | 01:45 | Let's take a listen to it. Solo the track--
| | 01:48 | (Character 2: Good!)
(Character 1: And that adds ten seats to the theater.)
| | 01:51 | Sounds good. So now I want to trim it
back to its original size.
| | 01:55 | So I'm going to go back up to the original
region, double-click it, and I'm going to
| | 01:59 | use the semicolon to move the
selection down to that Edit track.
| | 02:04 | At this point, I can hit Command+T or
Ctrl+T to trim the region to its original
| | 02:09 | size, and before I drag it back up--I'm
going to close the AudioSuite plug-in--
| | 02:13 | I'm going to make an alternate track in the
alternate track playlist on this dialog track.
| | 02:18 | So I'm going to select Duplicate.
| | 02:20 | It will make a duplicate track.
| | 02:21 | It will be called DX A3.01.
| | 02:24 | That way we can keep the original region
just underneath, on a playlist right below.
| | 02:29 | So we'll go down to our edited gained-up
region, holding Ctrl on the Mac to drag
| | 02:33 | it up, and it takes the place of the old one.
| | 02:36 | So now if I listen through, it seems
to match the level a little better.
| | 02:39 | Unsolo that guy down there.
| | 02:41 | (Character 1: Took out the kitchen.)
(Character 2: Good!)
| | 02:44 | (Character 1: And that adds ten seats to the theater.)
| | 02:47 | So, there we go, and we also now if I
use the Trimmer tool, have handles on this
| | 02:50 | region, which we wouldn't have
had unless we did this workflow.
| | 02:53 | That's through your dialog pass.
| | 02:58 | Another thing you might be looking for
is you want to identify the best single
| | 03:01 | source for each bit of dialog.
| | 03:03 | So if I go and do about 28 seconds of
this sequence, I hear another problem.
| | 03:07 | Let's take a listen.
| | 03:08 | (Character 1: More money.)
(Character 2: Exactly.)
| | 03:10 | (Character 1: Right.)
| | 03:11 | Okay, so that 'right'.
| | 03:12 | That's on the close-up of character
two, and it's character one that says it.
| | 03:17 | Let's hear that again.
| | 03:18 | (Character 1: More seats, more money. Right.)
(Character 2: Exactly.)
| | 03:18 | It sounds a little off camera.
| | 03:23 | So let's see if we can pull out the
region from dialog one and find a better
| | 03:28 | version of that piece of dialog.
| | 03:29 | I'm going to use the Trimmer tool and
I'm going to pull this region out, and
| | 03:34 | let's take a listen. I think I see
visually which might look like the word right.
| | 03:37 | (Character 1: More money. Right.)
(Character 2: Exactly.)
| | 03:40 | Solo up the track to hear it by itself.
| | 03:41 | (Character 1: More money. Right.)
(Character 2: Exactly.)
| | 03:44 | That's a much better 'right'
than the one that's down here.
| | 03:47 | So we'll do a couple of simple editing tricks.
| | 03:49 | We're going isolate this.
| | 03:50 | Just actually chop it off by hitting
B on the keyboard so it has its own
| | 03:55 | region. And using the Trimmer tool, F6,
I'll drag this back to where it was, and
| | 04:01 | I'll use the Trimmer tool to take off the old
'right', and let's make sure it's in the right spot.
| | 04:06 | Unsolo the track.
| | 04:09 | (Character 2: More money. Right. Speaking of money...)
(Character 1: Exactly.)
| | 04:12 | Well, that works pretty well.
| | 04:14 | So you can use some simple editing
tricks like that to kind of reveal other
| | 04:18 | parts of other takes which might be more
appropriate to clean up your dialog edit.
| | 04:21 | These small tasks you do in your first dialog
pass are the foundation you'll be building on,
| | 04:26 | so it's good to take your time and be
diligent in this stage of post-production.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using room tone| 00:00 | In this movie, we'll explore some
tools and techniques to use while you're
| | 00:03 | cleaning up dialog and putting that
all-important room tone in between your
| | 00:07 | regions, so you can smooth your edits out.
| | 00:09 | One important thing to know about
dialog editing is that you will never want there
| | 00:12 | to be in empty space where no sound occurs.
| | 00:15 | So when there's no talking or there is an
edit, you must fill it in with room tone.
| | 00:20 | If you aren't given room tone, you
can usually find some hanging past the
| | 00:23 | boundaries on the end or beginning
of some of the regions, but there are
| | 00:27 | some do's and don'ts.
| | 00:29 | You may have the idea that you can
just grab some tone off the end of a
| | 00:31 | region and loop it.
| | 00:32 | So like right here, it looks
like we have some room tone.
| | 00:36 | This seems cool, but it rarely works.
| | 00:38 | Let's see if it works here.
| | 00:39 | I am going to hit C to copy this,
and using semicolon, go down to an edit
| | 00:44 | track and V to paste.
| | 00:48 | Let's use the Option+Command+L or
Alt+Ctrl+L to loop this eight times.
| | 00:54 | Now, let's see if this
actually works as a room-tone loop.
| | 01:00 | (room tone)
| | 01:03 | So we can hear some clicking or
something going on that was repeating.
| | 01:06 | That's not going to work that well as room tone.
| | 01:09 | So I am going to show you a better way
to make room tone out of the ends and
| | 01:12 | beginnings of regions.
| | 01:13 | You can use Strip Silence to do it.
| | 01:16 | Click on this and delete it.
| | 01:17 | So to do this, I am going to grab the
whole entire original boom track sequence,
| | 01:22 | and I'm going to get that from the hidden OMF
track. So I just showed the inactive
| | 01:29 | and hidden OMF track.
| | 01:30 | I am going to select it,
and I am going to unlock it--
| | 01:33 | Command+L or Ctrl+L--and I am going to
drag these regions down to my Edit track.
| | 01:37 | So now I've got this whole sequence,
and I know that there's room tone hiding in
| | 01:42 | here between all these takes.
| | 01:44 | If I can find a way to extract it out
and slide it all together, it would be much
| | 01:48 | more usable room tone that
won't repeat like our looped region.
| | 01:51 | To do this we are going to use Strip Silence.
| | 01:53 | So let me make this track nice and
large, so we can see what's going on,
| | 01:57 | zoom in a little bit, and under the
Edit window I am going to show the Strip
| | 02:02 | Silence dialog window.
| | 02:03 | It's also Command+U. So here it is.
| | 02:07 | So this usually is used to
actually take silence away.
| | 02:11 | We are going to invert it and
use it to leave the silence behind.
| | 02:14 | So you really have to
work with the Threshold here.
| | 02:16 | It's going to be different in every
case, but you can visually see where it's
| | 02:20 | planning to cut the region.
| | 02:22 | In this case, it works best if I zoom in.
| | 02:24 | You can see around -50, maybe a
little higher, -59, or something like that.
| | 02:30 | So basically I'm just trying to get it
so that the ends of these regions are
| | 02:35 | leaving some silence in between.
| | 02:37 | Then we can change the duration
around also to further fine-tune it.
| | 02:41 | If you go like this, that's too
much, and you kind of back it off.
| | 02:46 | So somewhere around there looks pretty good.
| | 02:49 | So I'm keeping, again,
just the stuff in between.
| | 02:51 | I'll make this up a little higher.
| | 02:54 | So now instead of saying Strip, I am
going to say Extract, and that will take
| | 02:58 | everything with sound away,
and it will leave just the silence.
| | 03:01 | So now we want to snap all the silence together.
| | 03:04 | So we can go ahead and close our Strip
Silence window, and we are going to go
| | 03:07 | into Shuffle mode to do this.
| | 03:09 | So with the grabber tool, I'm just
going to take each of these regions on
| | 03:12 | this track and slide it together.
| | 03:14 | So a couple of more down here.
| | 03:16 | There wasn't too much silence in there,
but you can see we had a pretty healthy
| | 03:20 | length of pretty usable room tone.
| | 03:22 | Let's take a listen and make sure it works.
| | 03:26 | So even though you might hear some
minute sounds in there, they don't repeat
| | 03:30 | like the loop region did.
| | 03:31 | So now we want to put this all together.
| | 03:34 | Before we consolidate it into a single
region, we are going to use Batch Fades.
| | 03:39 | So if I have a bunch of reasons
selected, and I type Command+F or Ctrl+F for
| | 03:42 | Windows, I am going to
get the Batch Fades dialog.
| | 03:45 | So here it wants to do a 10-millisecond fade.
| | 03:48 | I am going to change that to
something even smaller, say five milliseconds.
| | 03:52 | And now we want to
consolidate it into a singular region.
| | 03:55 | To do this we can go Edit >
Consolidate Region, or it's Option+Shift+3 or
| | 04:00 | Alt+Shift+3 for Windows.
| | 04:02 | Now we have a new region.
| | 04:03 | We can call this 'room tone', and we
can use this wherever we see fit during
| | 04:09 | our session.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating fades to smooth out audio edits| 00:00 | Fades and crossfades are huge
helpers we can use as we smooth over the
| | 00:04 | transitions in our dialog tracks.
| | 00:06 | But before we use any fades, let's
look at our default fade preferences.
| | 00:10 | Go to Pro Tools > Preferences and in the
Editing tab we have our Default Fade Settings.
| | 00:16 | Let's take a look at the
Crossfade, for example.
| | 00:19 | By default, Pro Tools sets it
up as an Equal Gain crossfade.
| | 00:22 | Actually, what we want to be using mostly in
post-production is an Equal Power crossfade.
| | 00:27 | On an Equal Power crossfade, the
midpoint attenuates 3 dBs, and we should use
| | 00:32 | this for crossing two regions
that contain separate material.
| | 00:36 | There may be a time when we use Equal
Gain crossfades, but we really only want to
| | 00:39 | use them when we are cutting two
sections on the same piece of audio, fading and
| | 00:43 | overlapping the same sound.
| | 00:46 | It attenuates 6 dBs at the midpoint and
prevents any unwanted increase in volume at the cut.
| | 00:51 | So let's change that back to Equal Power,
and we will change our fade in and our
| | 00:57 | fade out to Equal Power
as well. Let me hit OK.
| | 01:02 | Now to get the most out of your fades,
you have to memorize the following key
| | 01:05 | commands: D, F, and G.
Let me show you how these work.
| | 01:10 | If I make a selection over two regions,
even across separate tracks, I can hit
| | 01:15 | the F button and it automatically
creates an Equal Power crossfade based on the
| | 01:19 | default fade type we just set.
| | 01:21 | The D and the G keys come in handy
when you're fading in and out of a region.
| | 01:25 | So if I go to the beginning of this
region I want to fade in, I set the cursor
| | 01:29 | at the point I want to fade in to, and I
type D. It does an Equal Power fade in.
| | 01:35 | Same with the end of regions.
| | 01:36 | If I go to a region I want to fade
end out of, type the cursor into that
| | 01:41 | region where I want to start the
fade, type G, and it does an automatic
| | 01:45 | Equal Power fade out.
| | 01:47 | Now if you do want to change to an
Equal Gain crossfade, you can. Just use the
| | 01:51 | grabber tool and double-click on a fade,
and then you get back into the Fades
| | 01:55 | dialog box and you can change
it to Equal Gain, if you want.
| | 01:59 | Now I want to show you another
handy technique while dialog editing.
| | 02:02 | When you're using your nice room tone to
cut into a particular spot, you can use
| | 02:06 | a special clipboard paste
command called Paste Special.
| | 02:10 | So, for example, here in this region
| | 02:12 | we have got a little breath we
need to take out. Let's solo this.
| | 02:16 | (Character: We're losing one of the best--)
| | 02:18 | So let's take out that breath,
and it will leave a gap there.
| | 02:22 | But we can fill that with room tone.
| | 02:24 | So let me zoom out and grab a bunch of
our room tone, which is down in our Edit
| | 02:28 | track, and I don't need to
worry about how much I am grabbing.
| | 02:31 | I am just going to grab more than I would need.
| | 02:33 | So I select that much, type C to copy it to
our clipboard, and let me go back up to that gap.
| | 02:39 | So there is a gap there.
| | 02:43 | So with the Special Paste command, I can
just select over the boundary and use
| | 02:48 | Edit > Paste Special > Repeat to Fill Selection.
| | 02:52 | It will actually just size the room
tone on my clipboard to fill this gap.
| | 02:56 | If it's too long, it will shorten it.
| | 02:58 | If it's too short, it will actually repeat it.
| | 03:01 | This one is probably going to be too long,
| | 03:02 | so I will show you what this looks like.
| | 03:03 | So there, it just fit it to fill the gap.
| | 03:06 | Now, the next thing I want to do, again,
using our fades that we just learned,
| | 03:10 | select, a little selection between the
two, after crossfade, and again on the
| | 03:15 | other side, after crossfade,
and we have a seamless fill.
| | 03:19 | (Character: Expenses. We're losing one of the--)
| | 03:22 | So what happens if we want a
paste longer than our selection?
| | 03:26 | Let's say I needed to paste room tone
in to fill this whole area here.
| | 03:30 | I will go back to Edit > Paste Special.
| | 03:33 | It's also Option+Command+V, Alt+Ctrl+V.
In this case, Pro Tools asks us to put
| | 03:39 | batch fades because it has
to repeat the room tone twice,
| | 03:43 | maybe three times, to fill that gap.
| | 03:45 | So again, let's choose Equal
Power, and five milliseconds works.
| | 03:49 | So we will hit OK, and what it did is it
pasted it in there and did a crossfade
| | 03:55 | where it needed to repeat.
| | 03:56 | Again, remember, repeating
room tone can be dangerous,
| | 03:58 | so watch out for repeating sounds.
| | 04:01 | One last thing I wanted to
show you is when you're nudging.
| | 04:04 | Say you have piece of fill like we have
here and you have fades on either side.
| | 04:09 | You can still use your Plus and Minus
keys to nudge this room tone around.
| | 04:13 | I am going to set my
Nudge value to quarter frame.
| | 04:16 | You can see as you're nudging, the
fade will actually lengthen and shorten to
| | 04:20 | compensate as you nudge
your piece of audio around.
| | 04:24 | Another cool trick to know is
to hold Ctrl+Plus or Ctrl+Minus.
| | 04:28 | This actually doesn't move the audio
from left to right, but it moves the
| | 04:31 | contents inside a region.
| | 04:34 | Much like a slip edit in Pro Tools, this
technique slips the internal content of
| | 04:38 | your region without
changing its location and time.
| | 04:41 | It's perfect for finding room
tone without artifacts in a region.
| | 04:43 | So, if I hold Ctrl and I hit plus or minus, it's
hard to see because there is not a lot
| | 04:48 | of waveforms to look at, but what it's
actually doing is moving the contents of
| | 04:53 | the region inside without
moving it left or right.
| | 04:56 | As you've seen, good solid
transitions between our tracks are essential.
| | 05:00 | Now we can quickly use fades to
make those transitions seamless.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding sound effects, ambiences, and backgrounds| 00:00 | It's time to begin working with sound effects.
| | 00:02 | This is where you get to really
establish the sonic world of your video.
| | 00:06 | In this movie, we will go over the five
different types of effects, and then we
| | 00:09 | will look at databases for managing
sound effects libraries, and we'll begin to
| | 00:12 | lay in some ambience and
background tracks of our own.
| | 00:15 | First, let's just make sure we understand
the different sound effects and what they do.
| | 00:18 | There are five main categories of sound effects.
| | 00:21 | First we have hard effects.
| | 00:23 | These are single sounds
placed exactly on action.
| | 00:26 | Here is an example of a hard effect,
or where a hard effect is needed.
| | 00:29 | I am going to mute the track and
we'll see where it's needed first.
| | 00:32 | (clip playing)
Did you see when that bike was laid down?
| | 00:36 | I will play it one more time.
| | 00:37 | (clip playing)
That's a good opportunity for a sound effect.
| | 00:42 | As you can see, we've laid one in.
| | 00:43 | Let me solo the track, and we will hear
what that sound effect sounds like by itself.
| | 00:50 | (clunking sound)
| | 00:50 | Then I will unsolo the track
and we can hear it in context.
| | 00:53 | (clip playing)
(clunking sound)
| | 00:56 | So that's an example of a hard effect.
| | 00:58 | Again, a sound placed exactly on an action.
| | 01:00 | Foley effects are effects that
have to be performed by an actor and
| | 01:04 | rerecorded to a scene.
| | 01:06 | It's in fact easier and faster to
record foley to match a specific action than
| | 01:10 | to take pre-existing sound and try
to make them match a lot of times.
| | 01:15 | We have a foley track in this session,
and this is the sound of a helmet being taken off.
| | 01:20 | So again, I am going to play
this without the sound at all.
| | 01:22 | (clip playing)
So you see the action, but you don't hear anything.
| | 01:27 | Then I am going to solo the sound up,
and we will hear just the foleyed sound of
| | 01:30 | the helmet being taken off.
(sound of helmet being removed)
| | 01:34 | Now we will hear it in context.
| | 01:36 | (clip playing)
(sound of helmet being removed)
| | 01:40 | The third type of sound effects
are backgrounds and ambiences.
| | 01:43 | These are layers of sound and specific
noises that build up the sonic space of a scene.
| | 01:48 | Most often these sounds make up
for what we cannot see in the frame.
| | 01:51 | They add depth in reality.
| | 01:53 | They can be washes of sound, but they
can also be specific, like an offscreen
| | 01:56 | car horn or thunder.
| | 01:58 | In this sequence, we have some
background noise that we laid under the race that
| | 02:03 | just kind of gives it a
little bit of depth and reality.
| | 02:06 | So let's play this section
of this without the ambience.
| | 02:09 | I am also going to mute the music for effect.
| | 02:11 | (motorcycles revving)
| | 02:20 | Now let's hear the ambience by itself.
(ambience)
| | 02:33 | So, again, it's just sort of an outdoor noise.
| | 02:35 | Then let's hear it in
context with the rest of the film.
| | 02:42 | (motorcycles revving)
| | 02:47 | So again, here this ambience just
provides a separate layer of reality to this
| | 02:51 | race scene that wasn't there previously.
| | 02:54 | The fourth type of sound effect
element is called sound design elements.
| | 02:58 | These refer to sound that are built
and designed, or layered, around an event.
| | 03:03 | They're not just one hard effect or an
ambience track, but a bunch of layers
| | 03:06 | that make up an actual sound design piece.
| | 03:09 | We have an example of this in
this movie where the car crashes.
| | 03:13 | As you can see here, during the
car crash, there are several different
| | 03:16 | sounds that are layered.
| | 03:18 | Some of them are deep sounds.
Some of them are metal against metal, but they all
| | 03:21 | add up to make up the
sound design of this crash.
| | 03:25 | So I am going to play a couple of
these by themselves, and then we will
| | 03:26 | hear them altogether.
(crashing sound)
| | 03:30 | There is one. Here is a different one.
(pinging sound)
| | 03:32 | Here is another one.
(crashing sound)
| | 03:37 | Here is another one.
(whooshing sound)
| | 03:43 | So all of those together in
context of the scene sounds like this.
| | 03:49 | (crashing sounds)
| | 03:51 | The last type of sound effect
element I don't have an example of here.
| | 03:54 | They're called production elements.
| | 03:56 | Those are those bleeps, blips,
and whooshes you hear in advertisements a lot.
| | 03:59 | They're useful little sounds and often
they occur on action, but they aren't
| | 04:03 | really the sound of a real thing.
| | 04:04 | So how do we get all of
these sounds into Pro Tools?
| | 04:07 | A lot of them come from maybe a
personal library that you've built up over the
| | 04:10 | years, or a sound effects CD library.
| | 04:13 | Most audio for video professionals have
driver or drives with libraries and
| | 04:18 | tons of sound effects that they've
either recorded, or they might be from
| | 04:20 | different collections.
| | 04:22 | A very popular third-party program
to do this is called Soundminer, but
| | 04:26 | Soundminer is a pretty
high-end tool, and it's expensive.
| | 04:28 | Luckily, Pro Tools has its own
DigiBase browser that also performs a similar
| | 04:33 | function as a database.
| | 04:34 | Let's open to DigiBase browser.
Options+Semicolon or Alt+Semicolon on the PC will open it up.
| | 04:40 | You can also get it from Window > Workspace.
| | 04:43 | Here we have our DigiBase browser.
| | 04:46 | So this actually works pretty well.
| | 04:48 | We can search through our
drives to find sound effects we want.
| | 04:51 | All you have to do is click the
magnifying glass in the upper left and that
| | 04:55 | enables the search functions.
| | 04:56 | So we choose the drive or
drives we want to search on.
| | 04:59 | In this case, we are just going to
search on our main Mac hard drive, and we are
| | 05:02 | going to look for motorcycle race.
| | 05:06 | When I click Search, Pro Tools
will go through and look at either the
| | 05:09 | metadata or the file names of different files
to find anything relating to motorcycle race.
| | 05:15 | And as you can see, it found a whole
bunch of sound effects that are on the
| | 05:17 | drive that relate to motorcycle race.
| | 05:20 | So another thing you can do to in
a DigiBase browser is make a catalog.
| | 05:23 | So here as you can see catalogs, they
are kind of like favorites, or collections,
| | 05:28 | that you can assign to a session.
| | 05:30 | So if I go up to the top right of the
DigiBase browser and I say new catalog, I
| | 05:35 | can name it, let's say, race sounds.
| | 05:39 | If I open up the catalogs, I
should say race sounds in there.
| | 05:42 | Now I can grab all of these race
sounds I just found and drag them up into
| | 05:46 | that race sounds folder.
| | 05:47 | So this is the favorites
of all of my race sounds.
| | 05:51 | Now from here we can audition them.
| | 05:52 | Let's listen to a couple of them.
| | 05:54 | I'm going to drag this windowpane out,
so I can see the full names, and let's
| | 05:58 | listen to a couple of them.
| | 05:59 | (motorcycle revving)
| | 06:03 | So you can click on any of these
speaker icons and the Digi browser will
| | 06:06 | play back the sound for you.
| | 06:08 | To get it into Pro Tools, it's really easy.
| | 06:11 | So let's say I wanted to add some
background ambience of a race over this
| | 06:15 | beginning scene here, where these guys
are talking. I'll play it for a second.
| | 06:19 | You will see that it's kind of empty.
| | 06:24 | (Vietnamese dialogue)
(motorcycle revving)
| | 06:24 | So let's add some ambience down here on
our ambience tracks of a background race.
| | 06:30 | So let me get back to the DigiBase
browser, and I'm going to drag and drop this
| | 06:35 | into our ambience tracks,
and we will see if it works.
| | 06:38 | So just dragging it. I can watch
the video and find the end point, about
| | 06:42 | there looks good.
| | 06:43 | Do a quick little fade in and a quick
little fade out, and let's see if that works.
| | 06:50 | (motorcycle revving)
| | 06:55 | That's great! It provides a background
racing sound for that scene.
| | 07:00 | So, working on sound effects is a
very fun part of audio for video.
| | 07:03 | If you're really into it, you should start
building your library as soon as possible.
| | 07:06 | The more sounds you have to work with,
the better, and you can use the DigiBase
| | 07:10 | browser to help you manage it all.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Sweetening and hard effects| 00:00 | Remember that on the set location
sound recordists are preoccupied with
| | 00:04 | recording the best dialog possible.
| | 00:06 | They're armed with very focused
shotgun microphones that hone in on one area.
| | 00:11 | It makes sense then that the other
production sounds, such as a door closing,
| | 00:15 | putting a glass down, or hanging up a
telephone, will naturally be off access to
| | 00:19 | the microphones, and maybe a little dull.
| | 00:22 | Sweetening is the process of making
these dull recordings come to life.
| | 00:26 | You can use sound effects to give
dimension and weight to sonic events that were
| | 00:29 | recorded on the set
but are a little flat sounding.
| | 00:32 | Here we're going not sweeten the
coffee cup sounds in this scene.
| | 00:35 | Let's watch the scene.
| | 00:36 | (paper shuffling)
(coffee cup clinking)
| | 00:45 | (Character: Hi Charlie.)
| | 00:46 | So there are two sounds
we're going to work on there.
| | 00:48 | He takes a sip of coffee, which we can
barely hear, and he puts the cup down,
| | 00:52 | which we could make a little more exciting.
| | 00:54 | So I've dropped in some markers
already to indicate where these two
| | 00:57 | sound effects need to go.
| | 00:58 | So first, we're going to locate the
sound effects. Then we're going to look at
| | 01:02 | some different ways to sync them to the events.
| | 01:04 | Let me use the DigiBase Browser to
find first the coffee sip. Option+Semicolon
| | 01:09 | or Alt+Semicolon to bring that up.
| | 01:11 | So here I'm going to search
specifically in my directory by clicking the Search
| | 01:18 | tool on the left, and I'm
going to look for 'coffee sip'.
| | 01:24 | So there's a coffee sip.wav file;
| | 01:26 | let's take a listen to it
and see if it will work.
| | 01:28 | (sipping sound)
That sounds good.
| | 01:33 | So now I'm just going to drag it
loosely and drop it somewhere on an
| | 01:36 | effect track below.
| | 01:39 | So I can get back to the Edit window.
| | 01:42 | So the first thing I'm going to want to
do before I sync the effect is actually
| | 01:45 | edit the head of the region so
that it starts right on the sip sound.
| | 01:48 | So I use F6 to get my Trimmer tool and
drag right up to the beginning of that sound.
| | 01:55 | And the next thing I can do is use these
markers to get my cursor in the right location.
| | 02:00 | So there, I clicked on the marker
and my cursor went right to that spot.
| | 02:03 | Now I'm going to use a quick key to
snap this region right to that location.
| | 02:07 | I'll hit F8 to get my Grabber tool and
Ctrl or Windows on a PC, click on the
| | 02:13 | region, and the region
snaps right to that location.
| | 02:16 | That's a really easy way to sync up a region.
| | 02:18 | If the head of the region needs to go to
a specific location, you can put your
| | 02:21 | cursor there and Ctrl+Click on it with the
Grabber tool, and it snaps right to that spot.
| | 02:25 | Let's take a listen.
| | 02:29 | (sipping sound)
| | 02:31 | That looks pretty well.
| | 02:32 | Now the next sound effect we're going
want to attack is the coffee cup down.
| | 02:37 | (coffee cup clinking)
(Character: Hi Charlie.)
| | 02:39 | So that's the production track.
| | 02:41 | It's not as exciting as it could be.
| | 02:43 | Let's first, again, find that sound.
Go back to the DigiBase Browser, and this
| | 02:48 | time we're going to search on cup down,
and there's a couple of Cup Down sounds.
| | 02:54 | Let's listen to one of them.
| | 02:54 | (coffee cup clinking)
| | 02:56 | Okay, that will work.
| | 02:57 | So again, I'm just going to drag it
loosely into my track and close the browser.
| | 03:02 | Now this sound is a little different
than the sip sound, because you can see
| | 03:06 | there's some sound that happens at the
head of the region, and then there is the
| | 03:10 | sound that you could actually use to
sync up, and there's some sound after.
| | 03:13 | So in this case we want to use
something called the sync point
| | 03:16 | to make a sync point right where the
actual action occurs, but we want to keep
| | 03:20 | what's before that sync point.
| | 03:21 | So if I click into this region, I can
use a feature called Tab to Transient
| | 03:26 | in Pro Tools, and then I will get the cursor
located right to the first transient event.
| | 03:31 | So Tab to Transient you can turn on and
off on the top of the Edit window.
| | 03:36 | Make sure that button is blue.
| | 03:37 | And now if I hit Tab, it'll take us
right to the transient event that's nearest
| | 03:42 | where our cursor was.
| | 03:43 | So right there is right where I start
to hear some sound of the cup going down.
| | 03:48 | So that seems like a good
place to drop a sync point.
| | 03:51 | To do that, we'll hit Command+Comma,
which is also Ctrl+Comma on a Windows system.
| | 03:57 | So a little green triangle
appears at the bottom of that region.
| | 04:01 | That's our sync point.
| | 04:03 | Now if I zoom out a little bit, I can
again get the cursor right to the location
| | 04:08 | we want to drop that sync point to,
which is where the cup-down occurs.
| | 04:13 | So we're going to use Spot mode to do
this, and to use Spot mode, we need to
| | 04:16 | know the exact time code.
| | 04:17 | So before I do this, let's look up at
the main Time Code reading and find that
| | 04:22 | it's at 1 hour, 9 seconds, and 14 frames.
| | 04:26 | So let's keep that in mind, go to
Spot mode, click the Grabber tool, click
| | 04:31 | on the region, and we'll type in where it
says Sync Point, 01 hour, 09, and 14 frames.
| | 04:38 | I'm going to hit OK.
| | 04:40 | The region will slide right to that
location, and Pro Tools put that sync
| | 04:44 | point right on that mark.
| | 04:46 | Now let's see how that sounds
together with the original track.
| | 04:50 | (coffee cup clinking)
(Character: Hi Charlie.)
| | 04:52 | That sounds pretty good.
| | 04:53 | I can hear by itself.
(coffee cup clinking)
| | 04:54 | Just to make sure and
let's play them together again.
| | 05:00 | (coffee cup clinking)
(Character: Hi Charlie.)
| | 05:02 | Great! Another way to sync a region with a
sync point without using the Spot mode to
| | 05:09 | specific location is to use a key command.
| | 05:12 | So let me move this off a little bit
again, and again, I'm going to get the
| | 05:16 | cursor to the location I want to
move it to, and here I'm going to use
| | 05:20 | Ctrl+Shift+Clicking once with
the mouse on the Grabber tool;
| | 05:25 | that automatically spots the
sync point to that location.
| | 05:28 | So that's a real quick way, instead
of going into Spot mode and typing in
| | 05:31 | numbers, where you can snap
a region right to a location.
| | 05:35 | So one more technique I want to show
you for sound effects is that you might
| | 05:38 | want to use some EQ to even heighten
the impact of some of these sounds.
| | 05:42 | For this, you can use the
equalizing capabilities of the AudioSuite.
| | 05:46 | So let's go into the AudioSuite,
and we'll choose the 7-Band EQ.
| | 05:51 | And here I'm going to make this Cup
Down sound a little brighter, so basically
| | 05:56 | I'm just going to go in and give it
some high end there on the top there.
| | 06:00 | Now before I process this, I want to
keep my old version, so I'm going to
| | 06:05 | make another playlist.
| | 06:07 | Just go into the Track Playlist pulldown menu.
I'm going to click Duplicate and hit OK.
| | 06:12 | And let's preview this
and see what it sounds like.
| | 06:14 | (coffee cup clinking)
| | 06:16 | So it's a little brighter.
| | 06:17 | I can even push it even more.
| | 06:19 | (coffee cup clinking)
That's great!
| | 06:20 | Hit Process, and we have our EQ'd
region, and let's hear it in context.
| | 06:26 | (coffee cup clinking)
(Character: Hi Charlie)
| | 06:28 | Great! Now remember, if I ever wanted to go
back to the original one, I can always
| | 06:32 | go back to the previous playlist and hear
the original region before it was processed.
| | 06:38 | So, playlists are a useful way to
keep your older versions intact.
| | 06:42 | Using sound effects to strengthen and
give dimensionality to the sound is a
| | 06:45 | great way to motivate narrative storytelling.
| | 06:48 | These tips should help you sweeten
audio and add hard effects quickly
| | 06:51 | and efficiently.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Processing tips for sound effects| 00:00 | In this movie we'll get started on a
few ideas on how to generate our own sound
| | 00:04 | effects to create
evocative and dramatic soundtracks.
| | 00:07 | One way of generating sound effects
is to start with a conventional sound
| | 00:10 | already being used in the session
as a catalyst to create a new sound.
| | 00:13 | The benefits of this is that the
introduction of a new tone, or sound, is rooted
| | 00:18 | in the sound of the scene, so
it's not too foreign, or out of place.
| | 00:21 | Here we have a transition that goes from
motorcycle race into a hospital, then into a lake.
| | 00:27 | It's kind of a dreamy sequence,
and we want to have an ominous tone run
| | 00:30 | throughout to bridge the three scenes.
| | 00:32 | We're going to use the background
ambience that's already laid in to stimulate
| | 00:36 | a heavy reverb, and we're going to print
that reverb return effect back into Pro Tools.
| | 00:41 | The result will be an ominous
sound effect that carries the scene.
| | 00:43 | So let's listen to the
scene without any effects.
| | 00:46 | We're going to be just hearing the ambience now.
| | 00:48 | (ambient sounds)
| | 00:55 | (people shuffling and talking)
| | 01:07 | (water splashing and birds chirping)
| | 01:20 | So as you can see, those
ambiences work really well.
| | 01:22 | But here we're going to actually tap
into them and make them generate reverb
| | 01:26 | that will give us a more ominous
tone that bridges the transition.
| | 01:29 | So let's add three sends on our three FX tracks.
| | 01:33 | Let's go over to the Mix window,
Command+Equal or Ctrl+Equal, and on our three FX
| | 01:39 | tracks, FXA1, FXA2, and FXA3,
we're going to create a send.
| | 01:44 | Start with FXA1, and we're going to
put this send on a bus, and the bus will
| | 01:49 | return to our VERB1 track.
| | 01:52 | VERB1 is an aux track that's
over here on the far right.
| | 01:57 | So we're sending A1 over a bus and
returning it on VERB1, the aux track.
| | 02:04 | Now on this send, which showed up as a
pop-up send here, we're going to select PRE fader.
| | 02:10 | That means that this send level won't be
influenced by the volume control on the track;
| | 02:14 | it'll have its own independent level.
| | 02:16 | And we're actually going to copy
the same send to the other two tracks.
| | 02:20 | To do that, you can hold Option or Alt
and just simply drag the send over to
| | 02:24 | the other two tracks.
| | 02:27 | Another way to view the send in the Mix
window is to go up to View > Sends A-E,
| | 02:33 | and show just that send.
| | 02:34 | That way we get a little mini fader in
each of these tracks, instead of having
| | 02:38 | to deal with these big pop-up send.
| | 02:40 | So now we'll go back to the Edit window.
| | 02:43 | On our return track, or returning the
send--let me just go ahead and make it
| | 02:47 | medium so we can see--
| | 02:48 | we're going to insert the actual reverb.
| | 02:50 | So I'll go into to the Insert slot,
and we're going to over to Reverb and
| | 02:54 | we'll choose, TL Space.
| | 02:56 | It's one my favorite post-production reverbs.
| | 02:58 | So here we're going to call up
a pretty dramatic reverb effect.
| | 03:01 | On TL Space you've got your presets
located on the upper right, and we'll go
| | 03:06 | into our presets here, and we're going
to choose Chambers > Concrete Stairwell >
| | 03:11 | Two Floors up, so that'll
give us a dramatic reverb effect.
| | 03:14 | Remember, double-click on the
effect to load the actual reverb.
| | 03:18 | It's not loaded until you
see this little dot next to it.
| | 03:22 | So we can close our reverb.
| | 03:23 | We've got that loaded up.
| | 03:25 | And now we're going to automate the
send on all three of these tracks to pump
| | 03:29 | out reverb into that aux track.
| | 03:31 | So we want to show the send automation playlist.
| | 03:34 | To do that, we'll go into the Playlist
pulldown window and we'll choose (snd a)
| | 03:38 | VERB1 > level, and we can
see the automation line there.
| | 03:42 | So we're going to just do this
manually with the Pencil tool, which you can
| | 03:46 | get by typing F10, and we're going to draw
in a send over the course of that section.
| | 03:52 | So we'll just go ahead and draw a
send automation move, something pretty
| | 03:56 | dramatic like that, and we'll do
that for all three of these tracks.
| | 04:00 | So again, going into automation
playlist send level. Send level.
| | 04:09 | I'm just kind of eyeballing it.
| | 04:12 | Reverb is pretty washy, so it
doesn't have to be too exact.
| | 04:15 | And I'm go back to my Selector tool and
let's take a listen to what this sounds like.
| | 04:20 | (ambient sounds)
| | 04:31 | (people shuffling and talking)
| | 04:45 | (water splashing and birds chirping)
| | 04:57 | So my only criticism is that it
should end a little sooner, at least on the
| | 05:01 | track with the outdoor noise.
| | 05:03 | So I'm just going to go ahead and edit
that move a little bit and make it end
| | 05:06 | kind of before that bird is out there.
| | 05:08 | So remember, Option+Click or
Alt+Click to erase automation keyframes, and
| | 05:15 | something like that should work.
| | 05:17 | I can just rewrite the end here to go flat.
| | 05:19 | So let's listen to that ending one more time.
| | 05:20 | (people shuffling and talking)
(water splashing and birds chirping)
| | 05:42 | Great! I like that!
| | 05:44 | So it provides a nice
bridge between all three scenes.
| | 05:47 | So the next thing we're going to want to
do is print just the reverb effect on its own.
| | 05:52 | And that way it'll free up system resources.
| | 05:54 | We don't have to have these sends
running through this heavy reverb.
| | 05:57 | It'll just be a printed effect.
| | 05:59 | So to do that, we'll route the output
of the VERB track into a track I've made
| | 06:05 | below, called FX Print, and we'll
use our Handy Track Output selector,
| | 06:10 | go into the track output and choose
track, and there is our FX Print track.
| | 06:14 | So just with one action, it
automatically routes the output of this track over a
| | 06:19 | bus to the input of our FX Print track.
| | 06:22 | And we'll record-enable that track.
| | 06:24 | We'll take the playback to before this
effect happens, and I like to use numeric
| | 06:30 | keypad 3 to start recording.
| | 06:31 | (ambient sounds)
| | 06:50 | (people shuffling and talking)
| | 07:05 | (water splashing and birds chirping)
| | 07:12 | So we've just printed purely that
reverb effect onto this FX Print track.
| | 07:17 | Un-record-enable it, and now we have
just the stand-alone effect here, and we
| | 07:22 | can actually disable the sends and the reverb.
| | 07:25 | Let me go back to the Mix window for a second.
| | 07:28 | A lot of people would just go in here
and take them out, but I like to save it
| | 07:32 | for later in case I needed to go back
and edit that effect, maybe you want it
| | 07:35 | to be a little less dramatic,
or a little shorter, so forth.
| | 07:38 | So there's a way that we can use a
keystroke combination to just simply
| | 07:41 | disable the sends and the reverb,
and that's Ctrl+Command for Mac and
| | 07:47 | Windows+Ctrl for PC;
| | 07:49 | Ctrl+Command+Click just right on the
send, and you can see it keeps all the
| | 07:53 | settings there and just disables them,
and will do the same with the reverb effect.
| | 07:58 | The reverb plug-in is now disabled.
| | 08:00 | So all of our DSP usage for those
actions are freed up and if we got back to the
| | 08:05 | Edit window, just go back to our
regular waveform playlist, and we're hearing
| | 08:10 | now the effect that we printed go along
as its own track, and just the original
| | 08:17 | dry signal from the
ambiences on the original tracks.
| | 08:20 | (ambient sounds)
| | 08:29 | So as you can hear, it sounds the
same as a printed track, but we have the
| | 08:32 | option of going back later and fixing it.
| | 08:34 | So making these kinds of sound
effects tracks is some of the most fun part
| | 08:37 | of audio for video.
| | 08:38 | Hopefully, this tutorial got your mind going.
| | 08:41 | You're able to see how open ended Pro
Tools can be when it comes to making
| | 08:44 | unique sound effects.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Bringing emotion to the mix with music tracks | 00:00 | Music tracks are a key component to any
audio for video project and part of our
| | 00:04 | three main mixing stems.
| | 00:06 | A lot of the time, music will come in as temp
music from popular CDs from the picture edit.
| | 00:11 | While this provides a soundtrack to edit to,
it's not always possible to get the rights.
| | 00:15 | Therefore it's called temp music.
| | 00:17 | It does, however, put us sound
people in a bind, because we're left with
| | 00:21 | trying to fit music we do have the
rights to in the edit originally intended
| | 00:24 | for the temp music. Here's an example.
| | 00:27 | After removing the temp score, we
secured the rights to this drumbeat for
| | 00:31 | the motorcycle race.
| | 00:32 | Let me solo the track and let's take a listen.
| | 00:34 | (drums playing)
| | 00:48 | As you can see, the intro part doesn't
quite match up with the beginning of the
| | 00:51 | race, and let's even check
the end to make sure it works.
| | 00:53 | (drums playing)
| | 01:01 | So this music might sound right in context,
but its timing doesn't quite match up.
| | 01:06 | So our job here as a music editor in
this case is to make this music work in
| | 01:11 | time with the track.
| | 01:12 | So here are some tips to making it work.
| | 01:14 | First of all, find a beginning,
a middle, and an end to hit.
| | 01:18 | As you can see, I've already dropped
some markers in here of significant events.
| | 01:22 | The music begin should be about this point.
| | 01:27 | The race should start about this
point in the video, and the end should hit
| | 01:32 | right about when the crash is about to start.
| | 01:35 | So we are going to do just some simple
editing to this music track and see if
| | 01:39 | we can make it work.
| | 01:40 | We are going to move the start point
over just a tiny bit, and we are going to
| | 01:46 | take the Selector tool and make a quick edit
right before the drumbeat starts to get faster.
| | 01:52 | I am going to use b to make an edit
there, and let's see if we can move
| | 01:56 | that over a teeny bit,
| | 01:58 | so it will start right at
that second marker I dropped.
| | 02:01 | And then the last hit we want to happen
right when the crash is about to occur.
| | 02:06 | So here we are going to have to get a
little tricky and kind of make an edit
| | 02:09 | right there before that last beat.
| | 02:10 | I used b again to make that edit.
And using the Grabber tool, I'll pull this
| | 02:15 | over, and we might have to do a
couple of crossfades to make this work.
| | 02:19 | So using the g key, fade out and maybe
a quick fade-in here, using the d key,
| | 02:26 | and let's see if this works.
| | 02:28 | I'll play it with the whole track.
| | 02:30 | (motorcycles revving)
(drums playing)
| | 02:37 | (Vietnamese dialogue)
| | 02:39 | So that intro seems to be working.
| | 02:41 | Let's check the middle section.
| | 02:41 | (motorcycles revving)
(drums playing)
| | 02:53 | Okay, that works pretty well, and let's
check the end to make sure that works.
| | 02:56 | (motorcycles revving)
(cymbals playing)
| | 03:02 | Good! We have the hits in all the right places now.
| | 03:04 | So in this case we got pretty lucky.
| | 03:06 | We were able to edit it and it worked.
| | 03:08 | Another approach we could've attempted
would have been to time-stretch the audio
| | 03:11 | out so it's a little longer.
| | 03:13 | When you do any kind of time-stretching
to audio files, the sound quality really
| | 03:16 | goes out the window.
| | 03:18 | Another way you might be dealing with
music in post-production is with MIDI tracks.
| | 03:22 | A lot of composers write temp scores
using score-editing softwares like Sibelius
| | 03:27 | or Finale. Some use Logic or
Digital Performer to compose.
| | 03:30 | In all these cases, you could be given MIDI
tracks to import into your Pro Tools session.
| | 03:35 | MIDI features work pretty handily
along with video in Pro Tools, and they're
| | 03:38 | much easier to edit than audio
files in terms of stretching.
| | 03:42 | Here I have two MIDI files.
| | 03:44 | I am going to mute this music track,
and I am going to make the MIDI files
| | 03:49 | active again by right-clicking on them.
| | 03:51 | So these MIDI files also contain a
drumbeat, but I just want to show you how
| | 03:55 | easy it is to work with MIDI in Pro Tools.
| | 03:57 | Again, they are kind of out of sync
like our original audio track was.
| | 04:00 | (drums playing)
| | 04:06 | So let's watch the end and we
can see how it's out of sync.
| | 04:08 | (cymbals playing)
| | 04:13 | Okay, so in this case, instead of
editing like we did with the audio, we could
| | 04:16 | actually use the Timestretch Trimmer tool.
| | 04:19 | That's the Trimmer tool with the little
clock in it, and because we're dealing
| | 04:23 | with MIDI notes and not actual audio
files, we should be able to time-stretch
| | 04:27 | this out and we won't have any audio
artifacting, and it should land somewhat in sync.
| | 04:32 | Let's try it.
| | 04:33 | Hold Shift and pull out both of these
tracks a little bit, somewhere around there.
| | 04:37 | Now let's see if that works in time.
| | 04:39 | (drums playing)
| | 04:48 | So there you can see MIDI is very
flexible, and you can just seamlessly stretch
| | 04:51 | it or shrink it with the Time Trimmer
and you don't lose any audio quality like
| | 04:55 | you would with the audio file.
| | 04:56 | Another thing you can do with MIDI
tracks in Pro Tools 9 is print out a score.
| | 05:01 | So if you really liked how this is
working, you could actually open the Score
| | 05:04 | window, which is in our Windows
menu, called the Score Editor.
| | 05:09 | So we have a lot of rest, but eventually
we get to the music, and here are those
| | 05:13 | MIDI tracks presented as a musical score.
| | 05:16 | Now if you wanted to print this out
because you were going to have musicians
| | 05:19 | perform this, it's pretty easy to do that.
| | 05:21 | You can go up to File and go to Print
Score, and you can actually have a written
| | 05:25 | score to give to musicians to play this music.
| | 05:29 | As you can see here, there are some
powerful tools for editing music to
| | 05:31 | picture with Pro Tools.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Leveraging clip-based gain in Pro Tools 10| 00:00 | The final mix or re-recording session
is the first time all your post-production
| | 00:04 | elements will be heard
together at the same time.
| | 00:07 | A game-changing new feature of Pro
Tools 10 called Clip-Based Gain can help
| | 00:11 | facilitate this type of workflow.
| | 00:13 | Ideally, the Re-recording Mixer will
start with all track volumes at unity gain
| | 00:19 | or zero on the mix fader.
| | 00:21 | That way he or she has enough headroom
to pull any sound up or down and is
| | 00:25 | starting the final mix in a level playing field.
| | 00:28 | In practice though, this is difficult,
because each of the stems may need
| | 00:32 | their own internal volumes from track to
track to sound right together during editing.
| | 00:37 | This is where Clip Gain comes in.
| | 00:40 | In Pro Tools 10, Clip-Based Gain allows
you to have an independent volume tied
| | 00:45 | to each clip, which is what
regions are now called in Pro Tools 10.
| | 00:50 | These Clip Gains come before the clip
signal is routed to any plug-ins on the
| | 00:54 | track, and before it hits the track fader.
| | 00:57 | They're independent clip volume controls
associated and contained only within the
| | 01:02 | clip, not the track the clip is on.
| | 01:05 | To view Clip Gain, go to the View
menu and choose Clip > Clip Gain Line.
| | 01:13 | Also, View > Clip > Clip Gain Info.
| | 01:17 | Now we see some volume
information associated inside the clip.
| | 01:22 | To adjust Clip Gain up and down, I can
choose the Trimmer tool and click right
| | 01:26 | on the volume line, up or down.
| | 01:28 | If I go up, I'm increasing the volume,
and you can see the waveform reacts to
| | 01:32 | show that the volume is
increasing. Or I can decrease Clip Gain.
| | 01:35 | You can do the same thing by clicking on
the fader in the lower left of the clip.
| | 01:39 | I move the volume up or down.
| | 01:41 | What I'm doing here is called Static
Clip Gain, since the gain applies to the
| | 01:47 | whole clip, but with the Grabber Tool,
you can make more individual Clip Gain
| | 01:52 | by using break points.
| | 01:53 | Pull the Clip Gain up or
down within the clip itself.
| | 01:58 | You can also use the Pencil tool to
draw in Clip Gain, just like you would draw
| | 02:02 | in volume automation on a mix track.
| | 02:06 | Remember, these changes are tied to the
clip wherever it moves and they'll come
| | 02:10 | along with clips as their imported from
OMF and AAF sequences, and they can be
| | 02:15 | exported to AAF sequences but not OMF sequences.
| | 02:18 | You can edit Clip Gain by selecting a
portion of the clip and then going to the
| | 02:23 | Edit menu and choosing Copy Special >
Copy Clip Gain, and then you can make
| | 02:28 | another selection elsewhere and go to
the Edit menu and choose Paste Clip Gain.
| | 02:34 | By allowing clips to have their
independent volumes, editors can now have
| | 02:38 | the freedom to control the volumes
of there individual elements without
| | 02:41 | affecting the overall track volume,
which is kept untouched for the
| | 02:45 | re-recording mix session.
| | 02:46 | It's a very powerful technique
enabled by Pro Tools 10 for post-production.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Exploring AudioSuite enhancements in Pro Tools 10| 00:00 | Applying AudioSuite processing, or
rendering as it's now called in Pro Tools 10,
| | 00:05 | to regions or clips as they're now called can
be problematic for post-production. Here's why.
| | 00:11 | Let's say I need to apply an EQ to this clip.
| | 00:12 | I'm going to select it and go to the
AudioSuite, choose a simple 1 Band EQ as an
| | 00:17 | AudioSuite plug-in, and I'll do a
high pass here, and I'll click Render.
| | 00:24 | Now, if I go and zoom in on the clip a
little bit, let's say I wanted to crossfade
| | 00:28 | this clip with the clip above.
| | 00:29 | So I would take the Trimmer tool and
attempt to pull out the clip a little bit
| | 00:34 | and hey, I have a problem here.
| | 00:35 | I can't pull the clip any farther
out because I rendered it already.
| | 00:40 | In the Optimizing dialogue, in the
First past movie, I showed you how to
| | 00:43 | manually work around this limitation.
| | 00:45 | But in Pro Tools 10, there's some new
AudioSuite features that can do that work for you.
| | 00:50 | Here's how to tap into that functionality.
| | 00:52 | It has to do with the
processing output and input settings.
| | 00:55 | That's these guys here
in the AudioSuite plug-in.
| | 00:58 | We have our output window, and we're
going to choose Create individual files in
| | 01:02 | this case, and we have our input
window, and we'll choose create clip by clip.
| | 01:06 | With those selected, you should have
some numbers lit up now on the bottom of
| | 01:09 | the AudioSuite plug-in.
| | 01:10 | This is your handle length.
Currently, it's set to 0.
| | 01:13 | But I can double-click in here and type
in 2 and that'll give me 2-second handles.
| | 01:19 | You can also click and drag up or down on this.
| | 01:22 | Let me undo my last render setting,
Command+Z, and I'm going to re-render the clip.
| | 01:28 | Now I should be able to take the Trimmer
tool and have handles on the outside of
| | 01:31 | my rendered clip, and as you see, I do.
| | 01:34 | I have handle on the front side and on the end.
| | 01:37 | I have two seconds of handles.
| | 01:40 | Defaults for this handle length can be
set up in the Pro Tools Preferences menu.
| | 01:43 | That would be into the Processing tab.
And here, I can set a Length default of 2 seconds
| | 01:50 | so that every time an AudioSuite plug-in
opens, it'll default to a 2-second handle.
| | 01:54 | You can also bypass handles
altogether and just process the whole file, by
| | 01:58 | clicking Whole File.
| | 02:00 | In addition to handles, if your clips
already have crossfades or Clip-Based
| | 02:04 | Gain metadata, you can process more than
one clip and preserve crossfades in Clip Gain.
| | 02:09 | Here's how to do that.
| | 02:10 | You can see above, I have a couple regions
that have a crossfade and Clip-Based Gain.
| | 02:17 | I select over all of those, and in this
case, I'm going to choose to Overwrite
| | 02:22 | files, and I'll keep the input on clip by clip.
| | 02:26 | Now when I click Render, it's
going to ask me if I want to make a
| | 02:28 | Non-Destructive or Destructive process.
| | 02:31 | I'm going to choose Non-Destructive,
and now the clip has been rendered and
| | 02:34 | as you can see, it kept Clip Gain data and the
crossfade, and the whole region has been rendered.
| | 02:40 | These AudioSuite features are huge in
speeding up post-production workflow, and
| | 02:44 | they're one of the main reasons I would
consider the upgrade to Pro Tools 10 if
| | 02:48 | you're involved post-production.
| | 02:49 | For a more in-depth look at all the
features in Pro Tools 10, be sure to watch
| | 02:53 | another title in lynda.com audio
series called Pro Tools 10 New Features.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
5. Recording to PicturePreparing the session for foley and ADR recording| 00:00 | In this movie, we are going to build
and work through our Pro Tools session
| | 00:03 | that's optimized for
recording or referencing video.
| | 00:06 | ADR or Automated Dialogue Replacement
is a process where production dialogue is
| | 00:10 | replaced by the original
actors in a controlled environment.
| | 00:13 | Foley is the act of performing sound
effects by a Foley artist to match specific
| | 00:17 | movements on the screen.
| | 00:18 | Both of these processes
require similar Pro Tools workflows.
| | 00:21 | So here we'll learn how to set
up this specific type of session.
| | 00:25 | As you can see, I have a
pretty customized session here.
| | 00:27 | I have got the video in the top track
and then I've got four tracks below that.
| | 00:31 | I've got my Beeps track, which is
where we are going to put beep cues.
| | 00:35 | This is a way to cue
actors to know when to perform.
| | 00:39 | Then I've got my Record track, which is
where we are actually be recording to.
| | 00:43 | Then we have our Edit/Process track and
that's where we can pull recorded takes
| | 00:47 | that we like and edit them, and
finally we have our Hero track.
| | 00:51 | That's where we put our
final edited takes at the end.
| | 00:53 | So as you can see, we have two
spots marked with memory locations.
| | 00:57 | Foley (FLY) footsteps and Foley (FLY) Helmet.
| | 01:00 | These are two spots where
we want to record some Foley.
| | 01:03 | So here in addition to having the
markers hold the place, we are actually going
| | 01:06 | to create something called a
slug, which is a place marker.
| | 01:09 | It's an actual region with nothing in it.
| | 01:11 | It's going to hold the place of where
the recording will occur and this will let
| | 01:15 | us line up, create a duration,
and name our recordings easily.
| | 01:20 | So I am going to walk you through
on how to make this kind of slug.
| | 01:22 | The way to do it is to actually just
record a bunch of silence somewhere at the
| | 01:26 | end of your session.
| | 01:28 | So I am going to put the
cursor in the Record track.
| | 01:30 | Record enable it and go ahead and hit
numeric keypad 3 to start recording.
| | 01:35 | So basically, it doesn't
matter what's in this Record track.
| | 01:38 | We just need to have something.
| | 01:40 | It's just going to be silence right now.
| | 01:43 | We want probably about ten seconds or
so of some type of recorded media, in
| | 01:49 | this case, just silence.
| | 01:52 | So once that's done, we are going to
actually go ahead and take your Grabber
| | 01:55 | tool, double click, and name it slug.
| | 01:58 | We actually don't want there
to be any media in this region.
| | 02:02 | So here's a little trick to make that happen.
| | 02:04 | It kind of tricks Pro Tools into doing this.
| | 02:07 | We are going to actually save our
session here, Command+S, and we are going to
| | 02:11 | close the session and go
ahead and save it one more time.
| | 02:14 | So in our session folder Audio Files, we
should see the slug media we just recorded.
| | 02:20 | I am going to actually go ahead and
just trash that and when we reopen the
| | 02:25 | session, it's going to complain
that it's not there and that's fine.
| | 02:28 | We can just go ahead and skip it.
| | 02:29 | What we have is what we wanted.
| | 02:31 | just an offline region.
| | 02:33 | See, it's grayed out.
| | 02:34 | it's offline in our REGIONS list. That's fine.
| | 02:37 | We are going to go ahead and
copy this to our clipboard.
| | 02:39 | So select it and type C. And we are
going to lay it in where we want the
| | 02:44 | Foley action to occur.
| | 02:46 | So clicking on the marker
gets us right to the spot.
| | 02:49 | I am going to type V to paste that
slug in there and here we are going to
| | 02:52 | use the Trimmer tool, F6, to create this
slug for the exact duration of the footstep.
| | 02:58 | So you can see this guy's footsteps
start there and end somewhere around there.
| | 03:04 | And we are going to do the
same thing for the Helmet audio.
| | 03:07 | So we are going to Foley in the taking
off of this helmet and agai, get it to
| | 03:12 | the start point, which I've
already designated with my marker.
| | 03:14 | Type V to paste in our slug and I am
going to trim for the exact duration of the
| | 03:21 | helmet, so it starts about
there and it ends right about there.
| | 03:25 | So we are going to go a little longer
with that because the helmet is still
| | 03:28 | going to be rolling around in the ground.
| | 03:30 | Next thing I am going to do is name these slugs.
| | 03:32 | So double-click on it and this first
one was going to be called FLY, for Foley,
| | 03:37 | footsteps and the second one is
going to be called FLY helmet.
| | 03:43 | So now, instead of just having a marker
to mark the start point, I am going to
| | 03:47 | actually have a blank slug that gives
us duration and a name for each of these
| | 03:51 | Foley effects we are going to record.
| | 03:53 | The next order of business is to line up
our Beeps track, the cues I was talking
| | 03:57 | about earlier that cue the actor went to record.
| | 04:00 | So I have a pre-made Beeps track in
my REGIONS list and basically what it
| | 04:04 | is, I'll drag it out here, if we listen to
it, it's just tree beeps and then a second.
| | 04:09 | So it sounds like this.
| | 04:10 | (Beep beep beep...)
| | 04:14 | So the actor will hear beep, beep, beep
, so they'll have an audio reference of
| | 04:18 | when to start recording.
| | 04:19 | So in order to line up these beeps to
where the action will occur, we can use a
| | 04:23 | key command and to do that, we are
going to take the Grabber tool, select the
| | 04:28 | region we are going to record to and
then by holding Command+Ctrl on the Mac,
| | 04:33 | single-click on the Beeps track, and it
back aligns the end of the Beeps track
| | 04:38 | region to the front of the currently selected
region, which was the slug. I'll do it again.
| | 04:43 | Let me Option+drag or Alt+drag the
Beeps track to do it for the second cue.
| | 04:48 | Again, you select the region and Ctrl+
Command, click once, and it back aligns
| | 04:54 | the Beep track to that spot.
| | 04:56 | So now when the actors are about to record,
they'll hear-- (Beep beep beep...) Action!
| | 05:04 | For both of the Foley spots.
| | 05:06 | So we are going to actually start
with recording the Foley helmet sound and
| | 05:11 | another cool use of these slugs is
that you can double-click on it to get the
| | 05:17 | name to appear and Command+C to copy
that text and go to our Record track and
| | 05:24 | actually double-click there, paste that
text in there, and now our Record track
| | 05:29 | is quickly named what the
actual item we are going to record.
| | 05:32 | So as we record, all of our regions
that we are going to record will have the
| | 05:36 | name FLY helmet 01, FLY helmet 02.
| | 05:39 | So another great use of these slugs is
that you can use it to quickly rename the
| | 05:43 | track every time that you record.
| | 05:45 | So, a couple more items of business
before we actually roll and that is to show
| | 05:49 | our Transport window and set up a
couple of recording options here.
| | 05:54 | We do want Pre-roll and Post-roll and
we want those to be three seconds long.
| | 05:59 | So just turn those on by clicking
on them and type in 3, Enter, and 3
| | 06:05 | seconds here, Enter.
| | 06:07 | It will give us some Pre-roll and Post-roll.
| | 06:09 | 3 seconds is the best option because it
will roll back 3 to the beginning of our
| | 06:14 | beeps and then recording will start here.
| | 06:16 | The next thing we want to do is make
sure that our record mode is in Punch mode.
| | 06:20 | See the little P inside the red dot.
| | 06:23 | To toggle through that, it's
Control in Windows and you get to all the
| | 06:26 | different Record modes.
| | 06:27 | We want to make sure we are in Punch mode.
| | 06:29 | That way even in pre-roll, Pro Tools
will secretly be recording and if the actor
| | 06:34 | jumps the gun a little bit, we'll
actually still have that in the recording.
| | 06:37 | So once we've got that taken care of,
we are ready to roll our takes and I am
| | 06:41 | going to record enable the track.
| | 06:43 | We are in Punch mode and we've got the
Pre-roll lined up three seconds back.
| | 06:48 | So I am going to type 3 in my numeric
keypad to initiate recording and here we go.
| | 06:53 | (Beep beep beep) Great!
| | 07:01 | So that's our first Foley and it came in nicely.
| | 07:05 | Here's our second record take.
| | 07:06 | (Beep beep beep) And let's do one more take.
| | 07:15 | (Beep beep beep) Okay, great!
| | 07:23 | So we've just done three Foley takes.
| | 07:25 | I am going to show you a quick way to
look through these takes so you can find
| | 07:29 | which one you like the most and that's
to use something called matching takes.
| | 07:33 | If I take the Selector tool and I Command
+click on this region, I actually get a
| | 07:39 | list of related takes.
| | 07:43 | Now you can actually change the match
criteria, so that Pro Tools knows what you
| | 07:47 | are trying to match.
| | 07:48 | So let's look into the Alternate
Match Criteria for a second here.
| | 07:52 | And if we match Track Name and Region
Start, since these all started recording
| | 07:57 | at the same spot, we should
get even easier to look at list.
| | 08:00 | So again Command+click or Ctrl+click on
this region and there're our three takes.
| | 08:05 | We can actually look at
and listen to the first take.
| | 08:07 | I am going to take off pre-roll.
| | 08:08 | That's Command+K, Ctrl+K
on a PC. So I have Take 1.
| | 08:14 | And Command+click, Take 2.
| | 08:19 | Command+click, Take 3.
| | 08:24 | So I think I like Take 2.
| | 08:26 | It'll take a little editing, but that's fine.
| | 08:31 | So I am going to take the Grabber tool
and pull it down to thetrack below, which
| | 08:35 | is our edit track and record enable there.
| | 08:38 | And we'll do a little editing here.
| | 08:40 | so we basically just need to cut out a
little bit and make the helmet hitting
| | 08:45 | the ground line up a little
better, something like that. Great!
| | 08:51 | That looks good.
| | 08:52 | So we are done recording, we are done editing,
then I would take this and just drag it down.
| | 08:57 | I can even Option+drag it, so it makes a
copy into my Hero track, and we are done.
| | 09:02 | So now at the end of this workflow,
you can import your Hero track items into
| | 09:07 | your main session using session data import.
| | 09:10 | So these tips should make your ADR or
Foley sessions as productive as possible
| | 09:14 | and you should use this workflow.
| | 09:15 | It makes things very easy
and very straightforward.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Recording ADR and editing with VocALign LE| 00:00 | Once you have your automated dialogue
replacement or ADR recorded, you might
| | 00:04 | not be able to decide the best take until
you hear it with the rest of the sound design.
| | 00:08 | This is why it's important to use dummy
regions in your original record session
| | 00:12 | and always record at the same start point.
| | 00:14 | By doing this you ensure that you can
use matching takes as you bring them into
| | 00:17 | your final session and you can
audition all the takes you have and find out
| | 00:21 | which one works the best.
| | 00:22 | While you're editing you also might want
to lay in tone underneath the ADR so it
| | 00:27 | fits with the rest of the scene.
| | 00:28 | As you can see here in this session
I've got our original guide track up top, DX 1.
| | 00:33 | That's what we're replacing.
| | 00:34 | Let's take a listen to that and just
hear why we might want to replace it.
| | 00:38 | So I am going to solo that track.
| | 00:38 | (Women speaking: 230 StarLight Road?)
| | 00:41 | So you can hear the line is 230
Starlight Road and the actress actually said it
| | 00:47 | very quietly and there happens to be a
bit of noise, so that's a prime candidate
| | 00:51 | for something that we'd want to ADR.
| | 00:53 | But some of that noise we are going
to want to put back in because when we
| | 00:57 | hear just the ADR alone it's going to sound like
all of a sudden she is not in any space at all.
| | 01:01 | So I've gone ahead and laid in some
tone underneath that will match the track
| | 01:07 | and here's where we brought in our ADR.
| | 01:09 | Let's take a listen to the
first ADR take. Solo that out.
| | 01:12 | (Women speaking: 230 StarLight Road?)
| | 01:15 | So it's a much more clean recording and
going back to the matching takes, to hear
| | 01:19 | all of those I can double-click to
select the track and Command+Click or
| | 01:23 | Ctrl+Click this region.
| | 01:25 | I can see there is our alternate
take, so we heard the first one.
| | 01:28 | Let's listen to the second one.
| | 01:28 | (Women speaking: 230 StarLight Road?)
| | 01:32 | And we'll hear the third one --
| | 01:34 | (Women speaking: 230 StarLight Road?)
| | 01:37 | So my favorite for this is the second
take. I like that one the most and I think
| | 01:41 | it will line up the best, so
we're going to go with that one.
| | 01:44 | It matches fairly well if you watch it.
| | 01:46 | Let's hear it with the tone and I
will mute the original guide track.
| | 01:49 | (Women speaking: 230 StarLight Road?)
| | 01:52 | It's pretty good but we can get that better.
| | 01:55 | So first thing we're going to do is
just a little straight up audio editing and
| | 01:58 | kind of match it as good as we can, so
I am going to grab the Trimmer tool and
| | 02:03 | trim up the head of this ADR take and
I will trim the tail a little bit and I am
| | 02:08 | going to zoom in a bunch and even just
usually using the guide track you can see
| | 02:13 | where the words land and kind of get
it a little closer to where that is.
| | 02:19 | But it's not going to be perfect because as
you can see if I zoom out a little bit,
| | 02:22 | the end is a little short it seems like.
| | 02:25 | Again, you can also listen to both
tracks together to hear how are they working.
| | 02:30 | (Women speaking: 230 StarLight Road?)
| | 02:32 | So it's fairly close at this point, but
we can use another tool to get it even
| | 02:36 | closer and that tool is called VocALign.
| | 02:38 | VocALign a lot of people use in music
for background vocals to get them to line
| | 02:44 | up perfectly with the lead vocal.
| | 02:46 | Here we're going to use it just to go
that extra mile with our ADR and get it to
| | 02:49 | line up exactly perfect.
| | 02:51 | So VocALign uses an algorithm where
it kind of looks at a guide track and
| | 02:55 | stretches or shrinks your
audio to match that guide track.
| | 02:59 | So let's go up into the AudioSuite and
we're going to open VocALign and we're
| | 03:03 | using VocALign Project LE here, which
is part of the original DV Toolkit.
| | 03:08 | When I upgraded to the Complete
Production Toolkit 2 on my system, I already had
| | 03:12 | the authorization for this plug-in on
my iLok and how this works is you have to
| | 03:17 | load in your guide track and then you
load in what VocALign calls your dub track,
| | 03:21 | which is the track that
we're going to be affecting.
| | 03:24 | So a couple of settings
you need to go through here.
| | 03:26 | It says Stereo Dub. We are actually
working with the mono file, so we want to
| | 03:29 | change that to a Mono Dub and we want
to select the destination track, which in
| | 03:34 | this case a destination
track is the ADR track here.
| | 03:38 | So let's go up and say ADR.
| | 03:41 | And we're going to select the guide
track or the guide region. Click on Guide to
| | 03:47 | make sure that's active and I am going
to hit Capture and that will load in our
| | 03:52 | guide track. So that's the
visual waveform of our guide track.
| | 03:56 | Then we're going to go down and select
Dub in the VocALign and select Capture.
| | 04:01 | So we've now got our guide track
loaded and our dub track loaded.
| | 04:05 | The next step is to click the Align
button on the left and you can see a
| | 04:10 | visual representation on the guide track of
how it's going to stretch the dub track to match.
| | 04:15 | The next thing we're going to look
at is there are few settings to how
| | 04:18 | VocALign processes this algorithm to
stretch or shrink and right now it's in
| | 04:24 | Normal Flexibility.
| | 04:25 | If we go higher, it goes to High
Flexibility or even the highest is Maximum Expansion.
| | 04:30 | So you'd use that if you're
actually stretching your audio out.
| | 04:33 | If we go to the beginning or the lower
number, it's Maximum Compression, so in
| | 04:38 | that direction if you're shrinking your audio.
| | 04:40 | The only way to really know what these are
going to sound like is to listen to them.
| | 04:43 | So let's hear what Maximum
Compression sounds like first.
| | 04:46 | We'll click Align again and preview it.
| | 04:48 | (Women speaking: 230 StarLight Road?)
| | 04:50 | So to my ears I can hear a
little bit of artifacting in that setting.
| | 04:54 | Let's try Maximum Expansion.
Click Align again and preview that.
| | 04:57 | (Women speaking: 230 StarLight Road?)
| | 05:00 | Yeah, I definitely heard some artifacting there.
| | 05:03 | And let's try Normal Flexibility, which is
usually the default setting that I start with.
| | 05:06 | (Women speaking: 230 StarLight Road?)
| | 05:08 | Okay. So let's go with that for now and
see what we end up with when we process.
| | 05:13 | So everything is good. We've clicked
Align, Normal Flexibility, and the last
| | 05:18 | step is to click Process and you see
it renamed our region adr-VOAI.
| | 05:24 | That's our VocALign region and we'll go
in here and zoom in. Close the VocALign
| | 05:30 | plug-in for a second.
| | 05:30 | You can see how well it
actually went and lined up our audio.
| | 05:35 | So the beginning and end now look
pretty good, but seeing is not as good as
| | 05:38 | hearing, so let's actually take
a listen to both tracks together.
| | 05:42 | (Women speaking: 230 StarLight Road?)
| | 05:44 | So they're even tighter combined and let's
now hear the ADR just by itself in the track.
| | 05:51 | (Women speaking: 230 StarLight Road?)
| | 05:55 | So that matches pretty well.
| | 05:56 | It's ironic that when you're working
on ADR the best outcome is that no one
| | 06:00 | notices the work you've done.
| | 06:02 | Editing ADR is definitely thankless
work, but tools like VocALign and some
| | 06:06 | careful editing can really make a
huge difference in dialogue tracks.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
6. Learning Audio for Video TechniquesNoise-reducing hums, rumbles, and buzzes| 00:00 | Noisy tracks are one of the most
common problems encountered in producing a
| | 00:03 | video and a lot of the time it's the
reason why someone came to you in the
| | 00:07 | first place for audio help.
| | 00:08 | In the next few movies we'll go over a
workflow and some techniques for dealing
| | 00:12 | with some of these common audio problems.
| | 00:14 | The first of these problems we'll deal
with is hums, buzzes, and rumbles that
| | 00:18 | might occur during your audio.
| | 00:19 | These are harmonic tones that range
anywhere across the frequency spectrum and
| | 00:24 | they're continuous throughout.
| | 00:26 | First region here is a pretty common
hum scenario where we've got a tone going
| | 00:31 | through an otherwise well recorded voiceover.
| | 00:34 | Let's take a listen --
| | 00:36 | (Woman speaking: Here's an example of bad audio hum.
For this type of type of audio problem, start with an equalizer.)
| | 00:41 | So as the voiceover artist suggests,
we should start with an equalizer.
| | 00:45 | Equalizers are a good way to deal with
this kind of problem because they are able
| | 00:47 | to notch out any of the frequencies
that are causing the problem, and since they
| | 00:52 | are continuous we can use it
throughout the course of the region.
| | 00:55 | So let's start with an equalizer.
| | 00:57 | I am going to go in to the Real time
plug-ins and choose the EQ 3 7-Band EQ that
| | 01:03 | comes with Pro Tools.
| | 01:04 | So this type of hum is a very common
type of hum that you will find in countries
| | 01:10 | like the US who use
electricity based on 60-hertz cycles.
| | 01:14 | It's actually called 60 cycle hum and
that gives us a pretty big clue of where
| | 01:20 | to start putting our EQ notches at.
| | 01:22 | So actually the first place we're going
to look is at 60 hertz in the Frequency
| | 01:27 | Spectrum and that's usually where I
start if I am not sure where the problem is.
| | 01:32 | So I am going to go into my lowest
band. I am going to change it to its
| | 01:36 | parametric setting, which is this icon here.
| | 01:40 | And I am going to set the frequency to
60 hertz. You can do this with the knob
| | 01:44 | or you can just double-click in
here, select it and type 60, Enter.
| | 01:50 | The Q is this knob above.
| | 01:51 | That has to do with how
wide or narrow the band is.
| | 01:54 | So in this type of notching out EQ,
we're going to want this Q to be a very high
| | 01:59 | value. The highest it goes in this case is 10.
| | 02:02 | So the higher the value, the
narrower the notch is, which we'll see as we
| | 02:07 | introduce the EQ with the Gain knob.
| | 02:09 | So the Gain knob lets us actually
increase the level at that frequency or
| | 02:13 | decrease the level at
that frequency of 60 hertz.
| | 02:17 | So just to hear, a lot of times what I
do is I increase it and play back the
| | 02:22 | audio and see if that's where the problem lies.
| | 02:25 | So I can play back the audio and I can
even sweep the frequency back and forth
| | 02:30 | and here 60 hertz is really the
center frequency of this noise problem.
| | 02:35 | So I am going to go ahead and play it
back and I will be sweeping the frequency.
| | 02:38 | Right now we're introducing
higher gain at that frequency.
| | 02:42 | (Woman speaking: Here's an example of bad audio hum.
For this type of type of audio problem, start with an equalizer.)
| | 02:49 | So you might have heard as I sweep the
frequency, as I left and went higher than
| | 02:53 | 60 hertz, it didn't get as loud as when
it was right at the center of 60 hertz
| | 02:58 | and when it went below,
it was also little quieter.
| | 03:00 | So that gives us a pretty good idea
that this is indeed a 60 cycle hum.
| | 03:03 | So at this point what I would do is I
just back off the gain all the way down.
| | 03:08 | Let's listen to it and this time I'll
be bypassing the plug-in in and out.
| | 03:11 | (Woman speaking: Here's an example of bad audio hum.
For this type of type of audio problem, start with an equalizer.)
| | 03:17 | So it does sound better when the
equalizer is in but you still heard the hum.
| | 03:22 | Well, that's because actually
sounds like this are harmonic in nature.
| | 03:26 | So above 60 hertz we also have the
doubling of that, which would be 120 hertz,
| | 03:31 | and above that we are going to have 240 hertz.
| | 03:34 | So those are all different nodes
along the frequency spectrum where this
| | 03:37 | hum will repeat itself.
| | 03:39 | So I am going to set the EQ to deal
with that and go ahead and make the same
| | 03:43 | types of settings and a low mid band here,
and I am going to set this to 120 and
| | 03:50 | I will notch that down and I will set
this one to 240. So that's double that,
| | 03:57 | and I will notch that down.
| | 03:59 | So let's hear it with just these three bands in.
| | 04:01 | (Woman speaking: Here's an example of bad audio hum.
For this type of type of audio problem...)
| | 04:06 | Now I will bypass it.
| | 04:07 | (Woman speaking: Here's an example of bad audio hum.
For this type of type of audio problem, start with an equalizer.)
| | 04:13 | So as you can hear it, our EQ
moves are being pretty effective.
| | 04:16 | We might even want to go one more band
higher. So this one would be set to 480 hertz.
| | 04:22 | So that's 60, twice that's 120,
twice that is 240, twice that is 480, and
| | 04:28 | again narrow band and we'll notch that down.
| | 04:30 | Let's listen to this.
| | 04:32 | (Woman speaking: Here's an example of bad audio hum.
For this type of type of audio problem, start with an equalizer.)
| | 04:38 | So that's sounding pretty good.
| | 04:39 | We're taking care of a lot of the hum
and one last move I would do here on an
| | 04:44 | equalizer is I would clear up
anything at the very lowest frequency.
| | 04:48 | So that could be a rumble or it could
actually be even lower than 60 hertz
| | 04:52 | frequencies, and because this is a
female voiceover artist her voice is going to
| | 04:56 | be up in the higher ranges.
| | 04:58 | So we can actually effectively take out
anything below say 50 hertz would be fine.
| | 05:04 | So I'll click this in, and it's the
High Pass filter, so it's letting the high
| | 05:08 | frequencies pass. Turn this up to the
highest slope, which is 24 dB/octave, and
| | 05:15 | I will move this up into say
somewhere around 45 or 50 hertz.
| | 05:19 | And we'll hear this one more time and I
will bypass it and unbypass it and you can hear
| | 05:23 | the difference we're making.
| | 05:24 | (Woman speaking: Here's an example of bad audio hum.
For this type of type of audio problem, start with an equalizer.)
| | 05:30 | So that's pretty effective there.
| | 05:32 | Now, the next hum region we have in
the session doesn't have any voice but
| | 05:36 | it's just hum by itself.
| | 05:37 | Go ahead and take off this EQ for now and
let's listen to it by itself for a second.
| | 05:42 | (White noise)
| | 05:47 | So that could be some good background
noise for a scene except it has some lower
| | 05:50 | frequency hum in it.
| | 05:52 | This one is a little more illusive.
| | 05:53 | It's not at 60 cycles.
| | 05:55 | So how can we find out
where the center nodes are?
| | 05:59 | Well, one way is we could sweep around an EQ.
| | 06:01 | I want to show you another visual way
to look at audio and that's to use a
| | 06:06 | separate application that comes really
in handy when you're doing any kind of
| | 06:10 | noise reduction and it's called
the iZotope Noise Reduction RX.
| | 06:13 | What I am going to do is export this
audio. This is a typical workflow that
| | 06:17 | you can use while you're
doing any kind of noise reduction.
| | 06:20 | So I am going to actually go Shift+
Command+K or Shift+Ctrl+K for PC and we export
| | 06:26 | this file. Export it as a WAV, Mono, 16
bit, 48 kilohertz file and I am going to
| | 06:32 | actually go to the desktop
and make a folder called NR.
| | 06:36 | That stands for Noise Reduction.
| | 06:38 | So open that folder and export this file.
| | 06:42 | And now I am going to tab over. I have
the RX application open and from here I
| | 06:46 | can go ahead and go File > Open and I
am going to go to the Desktop, back to
| | 06:50 | that folder, and there is that region that I
exported. And I will open that in iZotope.
| | 06:54 | Now the reason I wanted to show you
this is because iZotope offers you another
| | 06:58 | way to look at audio.
| | 07:00 | In Pro Tools you see audio
visually like this, like a waveform.
| | 07:04 | It's amplitude versus time.
| | 07:07 | Now iZotope RX gives you another way to
look at sound and that's by looking at
| | 07:10 | frequency versus time.
| | 07:12 | So across the X-axis we have time and
across the Y-axis we don't have amplitude
| | 07:17 | like we see in Pro Tools, but rather
frequency, ranging from 0 hertz to 20,000 hertz
| | 07:23 | and we can even zoom
-in on this a little bit.
| | 07:25 | So if I do that and I scroll down to
the lower frequencies, we can see pretty
| | 07:30 | obviously here that this audio has
some continuous hum type noise at 100 hertz,
| | 07:35 | as we see this horizontal line, 200 hertz,
300 hertz, and somewhere up here at 600 hertz.
| | 07:42 | So we can use EQ now that we know
those bits of information, just like we
| | 07:47 | did in the first example, but this gives us
a visual representation to find those bands.
| | 07:52 | So it's a nice tool to have to
just see visually where some of your
| | 07:56 | offending frequencies are.
| | 07:58 | So that's a good way to deal with hums
and again EQs are pretty effective if
| | 08:02 | you can get EQs with a high Q setting,
meaning a very narrow notch, and in the
| | 08:07 | next couple of movies we'll deal
with some other noise problems.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Eliminating crackles and digital clicks| 00:00 | In this movie we are going to go over
some audio problems such as crackles
| | 00:03 | or digital clicking.
| | 00:04 | These can occur from lavalier mic
radio interference or in the lavalier mic
| | 00:08 | scratches against clothing, digital
clock errors, or even when the audio
| | 00:13 | overloads the preamp.
| | 00:14 | Digital clicks from clock errors a lot
of times may be seen in the waveform data
| | 00:18 | in a Pro Tools track in a very zoomed in level.
| | 00:20 | So here we have a piece of audio that
does have a lot of digital clicks in it.
| | 00:23 | Let's take a listen to it.
| | 00:25 | (Woman speaking: In this example there are some digital clicks present.
This can be due to a clock issue with a digital audio recording device.)
| | 00:32 | Even from zoomed this far out you can
see some digital clicks in this waveform.
| | 00:36 | Let me zoom in a lot more and we can
really take a look at what these look like.
| | 00:40 | See that spike right there? We have a
pretty normal waveform and then a very
| | 00:45 | violent spike right in the middle of it.
| | 00:47 | So one of the ways we can deal with
this in Pro Tools is actually to physically
| | 00:51 | draw out each of these
intermittent little spikes.
| | 00:54 | It could be tedious but it does work.
| | 00:56 | One of the things we should know
before we draw out any of these waveforms is
| | 01:00 | that this is one of the few operations
in Pro Tools that actually destructively
| | 01:04 | alters your original source audio file.
| | 01:06 | So to be safe what we want to
do is make a copy of this file.
| | 01:10 | The best way to do that is to double-
click the region and we are going to go up
| | 01:14 | into Edit and just say Consolidate Region.
| | 01:16 | That's also Option+Shift or Alt+Shift+3.
| | 01:20 | And it'll make a new region and we will
name it whatever our track is named,
| | 01:24 | in this case Audio 1, but in this case at
least we will have a new whole file to
| | 01:28 | be working on. Now there is two files, the
old one on our hard drive and this new one.
| | 01:33 | So we have the old one left behind.
| | 01:36 | It has the clicks in it, but now we will
be working on a different copy of the file.
| | 01:40 | So let me zoom in real close here
and I am going to tackle this pretty
| | 01:44 | obvious spike here.
| | 01:46 | You can even make the waveform
view a little bigger, zoom in there.
| | 01:50 | Actually that went off the screen so I will
zoom back. This seems like a pretty good view.
| | 01:54 | So here I am going to use the Pencil tool.
| | 01:56 | You can grab it up here or you can type
F10 to change your cursor to the Pencil tool.
| | 02:01 | The idea here is just to draw the
waveform as if it would've normally
| | 02:05 | gone without this spike.
| | 02:06 | So it's going to start over here
and draw it out something like that.
| | 02:13 | You have to be zoomed in to a pretty
high level to get it to the point where you
| | 02:17 | can draw the waveform.
| | 02:18 | In other words you can't start drawing
out here. You have to be this far zoomed in.
| | 02:23 | Let's take a listen to that.
| | 02:24 | I am going to just do a quick highlight
over this section and we will hear it to
| | 02:29 | see if the click is gone.
| | 02:30 | (Inaudible)
| | 02:31 | Okay, that's with the drawing I just did.
| | 02:33 | Let's undo to hear the
click and see if it's there.
| | 02:36 | (Inaudible)
| | 02:37 | So I definitely heard the click that
time and I will redo that pencil draw.
| | 02:42 | So it's real quick but we can
tell that it got rid of that.
| | 02:45 | So now if I wanted to do this, I will
have to go in and do a lot of redrawing,
| | 02:49 | because there is a lot of clicks in here,
but it is possible to deal with some
| | 02:53 | of these noise issues with the
Pencil tool at a very zoomed in level.
| | 02:57 | Another way that we can deal with this
also involves the iZotope suite of noise
| | 03:02 | reduction, the Rx suite. Again, a
standalone application. So what I am going to
| | 03:07 | do is export this piece of audio.
First let me name it, so it makes sense.
| | 03:10 | I am going to call this crackle audio
dupe since I duplicated it, so we are not
| | 03:15 | working in the original whole file,
and then I am going to Shift+Command+K or
| | 03:21 | Shift+Ctrl+K on a PC and that gets it
out of Pro Tools into this folder I made
| | 03:26 | on the Desktop called NR for Noise Reduction.
| | 03:29 | Click Open and Export and I am going
to tab over to my isotope application
| | 03:35 | and from here we'll File > Open and let's open
the crackle audio and it comes into isotope.
| | 03:42 | Now double-click on the waveform here to
select it all and isotope has a Declick
| | 03:49 | & Decrackle function.
| | 03:51 | So take it from over on the right-hand
side and we will use the Declick tab.
| | 03:56 | The Strength goes all the way up to 10, but
that will give you the most artifacting.
| | 04:00 | So let's keep it down around 4 or 5 for this
and we'll preview it and see if it's working.
| | 04:06 | (Woman speaking: In this example there are some digital clicks present.
This can be due to a clock issue with a digital audio recording device.)
| | 04:14 | So as you can hear it's very
effective and it told me that 135 clicks were
| | 04:18 | repaired in that pass.
| | 04:20 | So again this is without it. If I just
hit Spacebar it'll play the original audio.
| | 04:23 | (Woman speaking: In this example
there are some digital clicks present.)
| | 04:27 | And I'll preview it with.
| | 04:28 | (Woman speaking: In this example
there are some digital clicks present.)
| | 04:33 | So that sounds pretty good.
| | 04:34 | I'll process it and the next step is
to go File > Save As and I will just put a
| | 04:41 | -NR, so this is my new noise reduced
version, into the same folder, and what I do
| | 04:46 | here is I go back to Pro Tools and
from Pro Tools I can just simply go the
| | 04:50 | Finder, find that NR folder and grab my
noise reduced region, drag it right back
| | 04:57 | into Pro Tools and I can
line it up at this stage.
| | 05:01 | So we'll hear the original one.
| | 05:02 | (Woman speaking: In this example
there are some digital clicks present.)
| | 05:05 | And our noise reduced one.
| | 05:07 | (Woman speaking: In this example
there are some digital clicks present.)
| | 05:11 | You can hear it's not perfect but a
lot of them are gone, so I might actually
| | 05:14 | have to go back in and use the Pencil
tool on some of these areas just to
| | 05:18 | clean it up even further.
| | 05:20 | So those are two methods to deal
with crackles or clicks in audio and
| | 05:24 | sometimes the combination of the two
methods, the Rx and the Pencil tool, that
| | 05:28 | might yield the best results.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Taming plosives and sibilance| 00:00 | In this movie, let's take a look at two
other problems that you're very likely
| | 00:03 | to run into as you work on audio.
| | 00:04 | These are called plosives and sibilance.
| | 00:07 | Plosives happen when syllables like
P or B create some wind that actually
| | 00:11 | strikes the capsule of a microphone, and
it causes a lot of low-end to be heard.
| | 00:16 | Let's take a listen to some plosive audio.
| | 00:18 | (Woman speaking: The principal ate the potatoes
prior to the presentation. The principal ate...)
| | 00:24 | That's a pretty extreme example where
there are four plosives in one sentence.
| | 00:28 | But sometimes that occurs.
| | 00:30 | I mean the way to avoid this really is
to have a screen called a pop filter in
| | 00:35 | front of the talent's mouth when
they are speaking into a microphone.
| | 00:38 | In this case, obviously, there was
no pop filter and that wind struck the
| | 00:42 | capsule and we have these plosive sounds.
| | 00:45 | So we're left to deal with it in post-production.
| | 00:47 | There are some methods we can
use to deal with these problems.
| | 00:50 | So let's zoom in on the first
plosive here and get into it.
| | 00:53 | If we zoom in pretty close,
this is the first plosive.
| | 00:55 | I think it's the word principal.
| | 00:57 | Let's take a listen.
| | 00:58 | (Woman speaking: The principal? The principal ate?)
| | 01:02 | Okay, so let's zoom in
right on the problematic area.
| | 01:05 | You can see there is a percussive part of
the P represented by these smaller waveforms.
| | 01:10 | We'll zoom in a little bit so we can
see what we're doing, and then we have
| | 01:12 | these larger waveforms.
| | 01:13 | That's where the problem is, because
that's all the low-end right there.
| | 01:16 | So just by editing, we can
effectively grab just those few
| | 01:21 | problematic waveforms.
| | 01:23 | We're going to leave in the percussive
part of the P, because we want that, and
| | 01:26 | we can actually just edit
those out. We'll just delete them.
| | 01:29 | And we'll grab the other part of the
audio and we'll just kind of snap it up
| | 01:32 | against it, and then
we'll do a quick cross-fade.
| | 01:34 | With the Selector tool, I click in here
and I'll type D. Do a quick cross-fade.
| | 01:40 | In fact, actually let's try a-- take
my Grabber tool and double-click on this
| | 01:44 | fade, and let's try an Equal Power
fade here instead of an Equal Gain.
| | 01:48 | Now I know we cut out a little tiny bit
of the audio, but let's see if this works.
| | 01:52 | (Woman speaking: The principal
ate the potatoes... The principal ate...)
| | 01:56 | So yeah, that worked pretty well.
| | 01:58 | We still have the percussive part of the
P and all the low-end offensive part of
| | 02:02 | the plosive is gone.
| | 02:04 | And this type of editing works
most of the time but not always.
| | 02:07 | And I want to show you another
way you can deal with plosives.
| | 02:09 | To do this, we'll go to the last one.
| | 02:11 | (Woman speaking: ?presentation...)
| | 02:13 | So presentation. You can see already
visually there is a big fat plosive right
| | 02:17 | there as indicated by the larger
waveforms. All that low-frequency energy is
| | 02:21 | negatively impacting the audio.
| | 02:23 | So in this method, we're going to
actually make a selection a little longer than
| | 02:27 | the plosive itself, and we're going to
go up to the AudioSuite. We're going to
| | 02:30 | actually use EQ to deal with this.
| | 02:32 | In this case, we can just
use the EQ 3 1-Band EQ to deal.
| | 02:36 | So all we need is a High-Pass filter, which
is represented here in Type by this symbol.
| | 02:41 | Now the High Pass filter, we
want a pretty steep filter.
| | 02:45 | 18 dB/octave should work, and we're going
to actually go down to about 500 or 600 Hz.
| | 02:51 | So again, getting rid of everything
below all the low-frequency energy and we're
| | 02:55 | keeping what's above.
| | 02:57 | So once we get our settings there,
we'll hit Process and you can see those big
| | 03:01 | waveforms went away once we processed.
| | 03:03 | Now since we made the selection a
little bigger, I did that on purpose so we
| | 03:07 | could actually trim the old audio back
from either side, and we'll apply a quick
| | 03:13 | little cross-fade on either end.
| | 03:15 | F and F and let's take a listen to our work.
| | 03:21 | (Woman speaking: ?to the
presentation...prior to the presentation.)
| | 03:25 | So presentation. N ow we've got the
plosive gone and it sounds natural again.
| | 03:30 | So those are two ways to deal with plosives.
| | 03:32 | Let's go on to the next
audio example which is sibilance.
| | 03:35 | Now this happens when syllables like S
or C negatively impact the capsule of the
| | 03:40 | microphone and become enhanced
beyond the point where it's acceptable.
| | 03:44 | So they're kind of harsh sounding,
and we'll take a listen to this.
| | 03:47 | (Woman speaking: Seven skeletons
bicycled over to the cemetery.)
| | 03:51 | So we've got a lot of sibilance going
on there, and there is a couple ways to
| | 03:54 | deal with sibilance.
| | 03:55 | One way is just by simple volume automation.
| | 03:58 | So if I hit the minus key to see my
volum automation playlist, we'll zoom in
| | 04:03 | kind of close here and say for the first S
syllable, which I think is just this section here--
| | 04:09 | (Woman speaking: Seven?)
We can just do a quick volume dip.
| | 04:13 | So, just a real quick volume dip
over to that syllable can help to alleviate
| | 04:19 | some of that problem.
| | 04:20 | (Woman speaking: Seven?)
| | 04:24 | So it just lessens the
impact of that S slightly.
| | 04:27 | It doesn't always work
and it's not for every time.
| | 04:30 | So I want to show you another way to
deal with sibilance and that's by using a
| | 04:33 | special type of plug-in called a
De-Esser, pretty appropriately named.
| | 04:38 | So let me get rid of this volume
automation and I'll click the minus key to go
| | 04:42 | back to Waveform view and I'm
going to insert a De-Esser plug-in.
| | 04:46 | So this one also comes with Pro Tools
and it's actually found under the
| | 04:50 | Dynamics category because it is
in fact a compressor like any normal
| | 04:55 | compressor, except it works
selectively on specific frequencies.
| | 05:00 | So when it hears high frequencies,
which you can attenuate here, hit the
| | 05:06 | threshold, that's when the compressor works.
| | 05:08 | So it's a selective compressor.
| | 05:09 | It's kind of a combination
between an EQ and the compressor.
| | 05:13 | I like to use some of the
presets here in the De-Esser.
| | 05:15 | They actually have a Female De-Ess
and a Male De-Ess already set up for us,
| | 05:19 | so we can start there.
| | 05:21 | And I'm going to use the Female De-
Ess HF what stands for High Frequency.
| | 05:25 | So that kind of sets us
up to a good default value.
| | 05:27 | The Range, since this has a lot of
sibilance in it, I'm going to pull that down
| | 05:31 | a little bit and let's take a
listen to how this is working.
| | 05:33 | (Woman speaking: Seven skeletons
bicycled over to the cemetery.)
| | 05:38 | So as you can see, the compressor was
working only when the sibilance sounds
| | 05:43 | were happening and when the audio was normal
| | 05:45 | it kind of moved back up.
| | 05:46 | Let's hear it with and
without the De-Esser. So here is without.
| | 05:50 | (Woman speaking: Seven skeletons
bicycled over to the cemetery.)
| | 05:53 | And here's with.
| | 05:54 | (Woman speaking: Seven skeletons
bicycled over to the cemetery.)
| | 05:59 | So that's kind of helping us take
out some of the edge off the De-Esser.
| | 06:03 | So those are some techniques to help us
deal with plosives and sibilance as we
| | 06:07 | work through our audio projects.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Reducing broadband noise| 00:00 | Of all the audio problems you'll encounter,
broadband noise is the toughest to work with.
| | 00:04 | Broadband noise is characterized by
noise spanning the audio spectrum in
| | 00:08 | unpredictable frequencies in
varying amplitudes over time.
| | 00:12 | In this movie, we'll learn what we
can do to tackle these types of noise
| | 00:14 | problems the best we can.
| | 00:16 | We're going to be using a broadband
noise eeduction tool here used by iZotope
| | 00:20 | called Denoiser, but there are few
different tools out there in the market
| | 00:23 | that do the same thing.
| | 00:24 | Waves makes X-Noise, Pro Tools makes
one called BNR, Broadband Noise Reduction,
| | 00:30 | and all of them work in a similar fashion.
| | 00:32 | Let's take a listen to the audio we
are working with, so we can identify the
| | 00:36 | type of noise we're talking about.
| | 00:37 | (Male speaker: The Ventura Improv Company started in 1989. There were
some of us who had been doing some improv but never really quite got it.)
| | 00:46 | (Male speaker: We just kind of
knew it was something we wanted to do.)
| | 00:49 | The recording of the voice sounds fine
but you can hear this sort of background wash
| | 00:53 | going on that we're going to try
to attenuate through noise reduction.
| | 00:57 | So we're going to first make a copy of
this track as an alternate playlist, so
| | 01:02 | we can always go back to the original
after we've done our noise reduction work.
| | 01:05 | It's always good to do that to make
sure that the work you've done is actually
| | 01:08 | better than the original.
| | 01:10 | So I'm going to go into the
Track playlist and choose Duplicate.
| | 01:13 | So we'll make another version of that
track and we can always go back and forth
| | 01:18 | between the two, and we'll
work on the second version.
| | 01:21 | And the second thing we're going to do
before actually getting into the Noise
| | 01:24 | Reduction plug-in is to try to remove
as much audio problems as we can through
| | 01:29 | other means like EQ.
| | 01:31 | For example, if we can get out any low
frequency rumble before we get into the
| | 01:35 | Noise Reduction that will be totally
beneficial to us, because the less the
| | 01:40 | Noise Reduction plug-in has
to work, the better off we are.
| | 01:43 | So let's start with on
the first insert slot here.
| | 01:47 | Let's choose a EQ 3 1-Band EQ and we're
going to actually just use a High-Pass
| | 01:53 | filter at a fairly steep slope, 18 dB/
octave, and we'll get this down low.
| | 01:59 | So again, we're just trying to
remove any unwanted low frequency noise.
| | 02:02 | So we can probably get away
with somewhere around 80 Hz.
| | 02:05 | That will be below the actor's voice
but just enough to remove any rumble.
| | 02:11 | So let's hear what the
sounds like with this EQ in.
| | 02:15 | (Male speaker: ?.Company started in 1989. There were some of us
who had been doing some improv but never really quite got it.)
| | 02:20 | Okay, so we still hear the broadband
noise going on but again, here we're
| | 02:25 | just trying to get rid of anything we can
before we get into the Noise Reduction plug-in.
| | 02:29 | So on the second slot after this we're
going to first start out by using the
| | 02:33 | iZotope Denoiser plug-in in real-time,
and here it is called RX 2 Denoiser.
| | 02:38 | You have to remember that these types
of plug-ins incur a lot of latency, so
| | 02:44 | it's actually not practical in the
end to use a real-time broadband noise
| | 02:48 | reduction plug-in, but we'll use it now
just to get our settings right and then
| | 02:52 | as you'll see, we will move over to
an AudioSuite version of the plug-in.
| | 02:55 | So all of these noise reduction
plug-ins work in a similar fashion.
| | 02:59 | You need to actually sample a bit of
the sound that has just the pure noise and
| | 03:04 | not any of the voice or not any
of the sound you're trying to keep.
| | 03:08 | There's not a whole lot of space in
this sequence where there is just the noise
| | 03:12 | out in the open but I found a small
section here towards the end where we have a
| | 03:17 | sampling of just the noise,
which is what you need to do.
| | 03:20 | You have to actually have the plug-in
learn or capture this sound and then it
| | 03:24 | will work off that sound to noise
reduce the rest of the sequence.
| | 03:28 | So I'm going to make a selection over
this section and I'll just to hear it,
| | 03:33 | let me bypass the plug-in. We can hear
what just the noise alone sounds like.
| | 03:36 | (White noise)
| | 03:40 | So you want to get a decent
sampling and that should be long enough.
| | 03:44 | It doesn't have to be too long, as long as
it's a good representative example of sound.
| | 03:49 | So let me un-bypass the plug-in and I'm
going to click the Learn button and all
| | 03:54 | I need to do is play it back once and
hit Stop, and you can see that the iZotope
| | 04:00 | now has a noise print that it will work off of.
| | 04:04 | So at this stage, I'm going to go
back to the beginning or close to the
| | 04:08 | beginning of the sequence.
| | 04:10 | Just move the plug-in out of the
way so I can see what I'm doing.
| | 04:12 | And I'm going to grab a section of it.
| | 04:14 | We don't listen to the whole thing.
| | 04:16 | Just grab a good section of it,
something like this, and that will loop and my
| | 04:20 | playback is in Loop mode.
| | 04:22 | So we'll hear the same section over and
over again as we work but it would be a
| | 04:25 | good way for us to tell how we're going.
| | 04:27 | So the name of the game when you're
using this type of plug-in is you're
| | 04:31 | going to have to find kind of a sweet
spot between where the noise is gone and
| | 04:36 | you have artifacts and where you're
just not noise reducing enough. And I'm
| | 04:41 | going to keep it simple.
| | 04:42 | We're going to have two sliders here.
| | 04:43 | We have Noise reduction.
| | 04:44 | So higher this slider is the more noise
reduction we're doing. And then there is
| | 04:48 | the Smoothing fader.
| | 04:49 | So this actually helps to kind of
decrease some of the artifacting.
| | 04:53 | If I move the Noise reduction
all the way up and we listen,
| | 04:56 | (Male speaker: You know why? And in that year we met a woman
named Barbara Scott from San Francisco who did a workshop.)
| | 05:03 | You can hear all the noise is gone,
but the actor himself sounds like he is
| | 05:08 | kind of underwater and that's one of the
negative artifacts that these types of plug-ins have.
| | 05:12 | So we're going to have to
find a compromise like I said.
| | 05:14 | I'm going to play it and I'm going
to back this off until I feel like
| | 05:18 | I've gotten a good spot.
| | 05:20 | (Male speaker: You know why? And in that year we met a woman
named Barbara Scott from San Francisco who did a workshop in Santa Paula.)
| | 05:27 | (Male speaker: Right just down the street here and
suddenly a lot of this stuff starting making sense for?)
| | 05:32 | I'm going to pick an earlier version
when you can hear that car passing, just
| | 05:37 | because that's throwing in another third
variable that we have to deal with. So get back here.
| | 05:43 | (Male speaker: ?been doing some
improv but never really quite got it.)
| | 05:47 | (Male speaker: We just kind of knew it was
something we wanted to do. But when a scene failed?)
| | 05:52 | So it seems to me that the sweet spot
in this case is somewhere around 9 or
| | 05:56 | 10 in Noise reduction.
| | 05:57 | Anything above that we start hearing
artifacting and anything below that we
| | 06:02 | just still hear the noise.
| | 06:03 | So it's not working.
| | 06:04 | It seems like around there is a
perfect spot and then I'm going to move the
| | 06:08 | Smoothing around and see if I can
kind of even further enhance that.
| | 06:11 | (Male speaker: ?had been doing some
improv but never really quite got it.)
| | 06:15 | (Male speaker: We just kind of knew it
was something we wanted to do. But when?)
| | 06:19 | So it seems like a Smoothing of 7 takes
care of a little bit of the artifacting.
| | 06:23 | One other approach you can do when
you're trying to find that sweet spot that
| | 06:26 | we've been talking about is to click
this box where you just output the noise
| | 06:30 | only and then we're kind
of inverting the whole thing.
| | 06:33 | So we're hearing just the noise and
not the original audio. Just the noise
| | 06:39 | that we are reducing.
| | 06:40 | So if I'm hearing just the noise
and I move the Noise reduction up,
| | 06:43 | we should start then hearing the voice
which means that we're going too far
| | 06:48 | with that noise reduction.
| | 06:49 | (Inaudible)
| | 06:53 | So you can hear then if I go too high
with the Noise reduction, I'm getting
| | 06:57 | some of the voice into the noise I'm
trying to attenuate, which is a bad thing,
| | 07:00 | as we're trying to leave the voice alone
and we're trying to just get the noise out.
| | 07:05 | So, again.
| | 07:06 | (Inaudible)
| | 07:09 | When I'm around 9, when I listen to the
output of noise only, I'm just hearing a
| | 07:13 | bit of noise, which is kind of
where you want to be with that setting.
| | 07:16 | So I'm going to uncheck that.
| | 07:17 | So that's just a helper tool, just to
kind of help you find that sweet spot.
| | 07:21 | (Male speaker: ?who had been doing
some improv but never really quite got it.)
| | 07:26 | So let me bypass the plug-in and see if
what we're doing is actually effective.
| | 07:30 | (Male speaker: ?who had been doing
some improv but never really quite got it. We just...)
| | 07:35 | So that sounded good.
| | 07:35 | When I had the plug-in
bypassed, I heard some of the noise.
| | 07:38 | When I put the plug-in back in, the
noise went away but his voice sounded okay.
| | 07:43 | So I'm going to go with these settings.
| | 07:44 | Now remember, I said that you
can't use this as a real-time plug-in.
| | 07:48 | So we're going to actually now
copy these settings to the clipboard.
| | 07:52 | So in the Preset menu, just like in any
plug-in, copy these Settings and I can
| | 07:57 | close this plug-in and I'm actually
going to take the plug-in off of the
| | 08:01 | real-time inserts, and I'm going to
select all of the audio and go into the
| | 08:07 | AudioSuite plug-in and open up
that version of the Denoiser.
| | 08:13 | Now the AudioSuite version because it's
offline actually has some better algorithms.
| | 08:17 | We can go to the best algorithm,
algorithm D. It's slowest but it works the best.
| | 08:21 | We choose that one and then I'm going to go
up to the Preset menu and paste my settings in.
| | 08:27 | So there is the settings. Remember
Noise reduction is 9, Smoothing is at 7, and
| | 08:32 | I'm going to process the
audio with this plug-in.
| | 08:41 | Okay, so here's our
final noise reduced sequence.
| | 08:45 | (Male speaker: ...in 1989. There were
some of us who had been doing some improv...)
| | 08:48 | And I can compare it to the original.
| | 08:50 | (Male speaker: ...in 1989. There were
some of us who had been doing some improv but never...)
| | 08:56 | (Male speaker: ...in 1989. There were some of us...)
| | 08:58 | So as you can hear, it's a little
bit cleaner and we've got some of that
| | 09:00 | background wash out of the way.
| | 09:01 | So using any type of broadband noise
reduction plug-in is always kind of a compromise.
| | 09:06 | You're trying to find the best spot
between the artifacts and the noise
| | 09:10 | reduction and you kind of have to move
the sliders around and use your ears to
| | 09:13 | tell you if your work is being effective or not.
| | 09:15 | And if you get stumped, it's best to
put it down for a few and come back to it
| | 09:19 | and see if you can get it back to a
spot where you're actually able to reduce
| | 09:24 | some of the broadband noise.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Conforming to video changes| 00:00 | No matter how hard you try to get a
truly locked picture edit before the video
| | 00:04 | editor transfers materials to you, some
editorial changes will inevitably occur.
| | 00:08 | Of course, these new picture edits
will throw your audio session out of sync.
| | 00:12 | When you have your full-blown Pro
Tools session running, it's never fun to
| | 00:15 | conform to a new picture edit.
| | 00:17 | But with the right techniques, it could
be a pretty simple and painless process.
| | 00:20 | Let's see how it works.
| | 00:22 | The real key to conforming your session
to a new video edit is to have the best
| | 00:26 | communication possible with the video editor.
| | 00:28 | For everything to work right, you
are going to need to know these crucial
| | 00:30 | bits of information.
| | 00:32 | You need to know the exact timecode
locations of all edits that were made and
| | 00:36 | the exact timecode durations of all edits.
| | 00:39 | Both Pro Tools and Avid Media Composer can
generate a document that shows this information.
| | 00:44 | It's called an EDL and
this is what an EDL looks like.
| | 00:47 | It's a pretty complicated set of
instructions containing all timecodes for all
| | 00:52 | the edits in a sequence.
| | 00:54 | So this is a little hard to read.
| | 00:56 | If you wanted to find what the
difference is with this new edit and the old
| | 00:59 | edit, we have to compare the two and
we could use it to find the changes.
| | 01:03 | As you can see, it's kind of hard to
read, and usually what I do is I will just
| | 01:06 | ask the editor to make a Word doc or
a simplified, even an email, that just
| | 01:11 | details only the edits that were made
in exact durations in timecode locations
| | 01:15 | for all those edits.
| | 01:17 | So in this case I've done that and
the editor made me this Word doc, which
| | 01:22 | just has three changes.
| | 01:23 | It has two changes that are cuts
where they are tightened, the edit is actually
| | 01:27 | shortened, and it has one
addition cut where 10 frames were added.
| | 01:32 | So we are going to
conform to this new video edit.
| | 01:35 | So back in Pro Tools we have our
original video edit here and we are going to
| | 01:39 | import the new video.
| | 01:40 | So I will go to File > Import > Video and
here we are going to bring in this video
| | 01:46 | that's called Sequence NTSC_After.
| | 01:48 | So we have a before video. This is the
after video after the edits have been made.
| | 01:52 | Click Open and Pro Tools brings in the video.
| | 01:56 | If you remember in the complete
production toolkit and in Pro Tools HD, you can
| | 01:59 | have more than one video track running.
| | 02:02 | So we are going to import this as a
new track and we will bring it to the
| | 02:05 | session start and we will also
import audio from the file as reference.
| | 02:09 | If we click OK, it asks us where we
want to put the audio files and we choose
| | 02:13 | the audio files folder for
this project, and it comes in.
| | 02:17 | So here's our new video and
our new video reference file.
| | 02:20 | You can see the edit is
shorter from the original video.
| | 02:24 | So let's actually color code this new
video and the reference movie just so we
| | 02:28 | know which one is the new one and
which one is the old one at a quick glance.
| | 02:33 | Okay, now the tool we are going to use
to actually make the edits in Pro Tools
| | 02:37 | is called the Time Operations Window and
you can find it in the Event's menu up here.
| | 02:42 | So under Time Operations, we just open
up the main Time Operations Window and
| | 02:47 | then from this window, we
can actually go to Cut Time.
| | 02:50 | Since our first two edits involve removing time,
| | 02:53 | this is the window we
are going to want to be on.
| | 02:55 | Now, before making any changes, you
have to know that Cut Time operates on any
| | 03:01 | tracks that are currently
showing in the edit window.
| | 03:04 | So for that reason we are going to
actually hide the newly imported video and
| | 03:08 | the audio reference from that because
we don't want to make any edits to that.
| | 03:12 | So with these tracks selected, we are
just going to actually hide them in our
| | 03:16 | Tracks list there, so that they are not showing.
| | 03:18 | But everything else here, we
do want to make the edits to.
| | 03:22 | And remember, if you do have some
hidden tracks that you want to make the edits to,
| | 03:25 | you might want to show
those at this time as well.
| | 03:28 | So in the Time Operations Window here,
I am going to go back to our file and
| | 03:32 | reference. The first edit is
at 33 and it ends at 33:07.
| | 03:37 | Here's another pointer though before
you make any edits, is you want to start at
| | 03:40 | the end of the session and work from the
end to the beginning when you're making
| | 03:44 | these kinds of edits.
| | 03:45 | If you start at the beginning and you
made the first edit, then everything from
| | 03:49 | that point forward will be out of sync
because it will be a different timecode.
| | 03:53 | So you have to start at the end and
work forward to make all of your changes
| | 03:56 | work according to any EDL that you are
going to receive from the video editor.
| | 04:00 | Luckily here our video editor was aware
of this and they made their document in
| | 04:04 | the order from the end to the beginning,
so the first cut is the last cut and
| | 04:09 | it starts at 01:00:33 and it ends at
33:07. So it's a seven frame tighten edit.
| | 04:17 | Back in Pro Tools, we are going to enter
those values in our Time Operations Window.
| | 04:21 | 01:00, into this field 33.
| | 04:23 | I am going to tab over to the End field.
| | 04:27 | I am going to type 01:00:33:07.
| | 04:32 | Make that seven frame edit and hit
Enter, and you can see the total length is
| | 04:36 | going to be seven frames.
| | 04:38 | And if you zoom in to Pro Tools here,
you can see there is a seven frame
| | 04:42 | selection already made. And when we hit
Apply, it's going to make the cut across
| | 04:46 | all of our tracks that are showing.
| | 04:48 | So there is our first cut and what I
like to do is I like to hit Enter here at
| | 04:52 | this point and I like to say edit 1.
| | 04:54 | Just make a marker there because we
want to go back and check all of our edits
| | 04:58 | to make sure that there's no audio
glitches where the edit occurred and we will
| | 05:02 | do that after the fact.
| | 05:03 | So let's go to our second edit which
is in here in the Word doc. We've got
| | 05:07 | from 25:03 to 29:27.
| | 05:11 | So back in Pro Tools, we've got 25:03
and Tab over and its 01:00:29:27 and hit
| | 05:23 | Enter to lock that in. And that's a 4
second and 24 frame edit and hit Apply.
| | 05:29 | And you can see all the tracks
snapped together at that point.
| | 05:32 | Drop another marker there. Call this edit 2.
| | 05:35 | And there's one more edit to be made
and in the Word doc remember this is an
| | 05:39 | insert of a time, not a cut time.
| | 05:42 | So back in Pro Tools in the Time
Operations Window, we are going to actually go
| | 05:45 | over to Insert Time, which allows us
to insert a certain amount of frames.
| | 05:49 | And let's look at frame that starts on.
| | 05:52 | It starts on 08:07 and it goes to 08:17.
| | 05:56 | So back in Pro Tools here we are
at 08.07, and tab over so we are at
| | 06:04 | 01:00:08:17, and hit Enter to lock that in.
| | 06:10 | Again, it's a 10 second insert
that's going to happen and hit Apply.
| | 06:14 | And you can see that the tracks move down a
little bit by 10 frames across all tracks.
| | 06:20 | And we are done making our conforms.
| | 06:22 | Go back to our edit window and drop the
marker in there and call this edit 3, so
| | 06:27 | we know where that one was. And
close the Time Operations Window.
| | 06:33 | And now let's show our hidden video
that we are conforming to and here we want
| | 06:37 | to make sure that everything lines up.
| | 06:39 | So let's take a look. And you can
see the audio is lining up perfectly.
| | 06:42 | If we go into Grid mode, everything
looks in sync and we want to check just the
| | 06:47 | end of the movie here.
| | 06:48 | Yes, everything looks good. Everything
is in sync and we are happy the edit is
| | 06:53 | conformed correctly.
| | 06:54 | So we can actually hide the old videos
and we have our newly imported video and
| | 06:59 | our Pro Tools is conformed.
| | 07:01 | Now we just want to go ahead
and like I said check our edits.
| | 07:04 | So here at edit 1, there is a little
weirdness that happened because of the cuts,
| | 07:08 | so we're just going
to clean that up edit-wise.
| | 07:11 | So we get rid of this and what I want
to do is use the Trimmer tool and just
| | 07:15 | pull out this region a couple of frames
and maybe lengthen that Crossfade and
| | 07:21 | of course we want to listen
and check our edits there.
| | 07:23 | (Male speaker 1: Financials?)
(Male speaker 2: But Jessica?)
| | 07:26 | So that sounds okay, and the second edit here.
| | 07:29 | We are going to look. This one,
| | 07:30 | it looks okay in terms of there is
nothing any extra audio material hanging
| | 07:33 | over but we are talking about to pull
these guys out maybe a couple of frames
| | 07:37 | there and we will make a quick
crossfade using the F key between those guys to
| | 07:41 | smooth that edit out.
| | 07:42 | (Male speaker 1: Speaking of money?)
| | 07:44 | Okay, sounds good.
| | 07:46 | And the last one is trickiest one because
remember we added some frames here, so there's a gap.
| | 07:52 | So we definitely want to
fill any kind gap like that.
| | 07:54 | We could fill it with room tone, but we
might actually be able to get away here
| | 07:58 | if I just removed this piece and take
the Trimmer tool and drag the old section
| | 08:02 | out and kind of pull this one in a
little bit and make a crossfade. So I have to
| | 08:07 | listen to make sure it works
but it might work perfectly.
| | 08:09 | I will actually go a little closer here.
| | 08:16 | So that sounds good. I mean, we can
finesse this edit a little bit more, maybe
| | 08:19 | just pulling this over.
| | 08:20 | It doesn't look like we have to have any
other room tone to add in there. We can
| | 08:24 | just pull that out and it stretches
across the edit and everything is cool.
| | 08:27 | So conforming to a video edit can seem
daunting but as long as you use these
| | 08:31 | tips and you have good communication
with your video editor, it actually is very
| | 08:34 | manageable in Pro Tools.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Pitch shifting for effect or utility, TC expansion| 00:00 | As you're editing dialog, effects,
ambiences, and even music cues in Pro Tools,
| | 00:04 | you'll probably find a need for time
stretching, where you want to shorten their
| | 00:07 | length in a region without altering
its pitch, or actual pitch shifting where
| | 00:12 | you do want to raise or lower the pitch of a
sound without stretching the region in time.
| | 00:15 | X-Form is an AudioSuite plug-in for
high quality time compression/expansion and
| | 00:20 | formant correct pitch-shifting.
| | 00:21 | It's part of complete production toolkit too.
| | 00:24 | In this movie we'll explore
some effective uses of the plug-in.
| | 00:27 | So here in our Timeline we have an
ambience track that might be a bit too short.
| | 00:31 | We have the track soloed and
let's hear what it sounds like.
| | 00:34 | (White noise)
| | 00:38 | So it's the background sound of a race,
but you can see it doesn't extend far
| | 00:42 | enough into the scene. It ends here.
| | 00:45 | Now normally we would try to take the
Trimmer tool, F6, and pull it out, but as
| | 00:49 | you can see that's the end of the region.
| | 00:51 | That's all we have recorded.
| | 00:53 | So we're going to have to use time
compression/expansion to lengthen the size of
| | 00:57 | this clip and we don't want
to pitch shift it as we do that.
| | 01:00 | So let's go up into the X-Form plug-
in. AudioSuite > Pitch Shift > X-Form.
| | 01:06 | So here's the X-Form plug-in.
| | 01:08 | Audio Type is the type of
content you wish to process.
| | 01:11 | There's a couple of settings in here.
| | 01:12 | We have Polyphonic, Monophonic,
and Polyphonic with a Faster setting.
| | 01:17 | Polyphonic uses a different algorithm
for more harmonically complex sounds.
| | 01:21 | Pro Tools gives the example
of a multipart musical section.
| | 01:25 | Monophonic is for-- in Pro Tools words--
it's monophonic sound such as a vocal melody.
| | 01:31 | And Polyphonic (Faster) is a
simplified polyphonic algorithm that takes less
| | 01:35 | time and a trade-off of lower quality.
| | 01:38 | Since the sound we're working on is
neither, let's start with Polyphonic and
| | 01:41 | we're just going to have to do a trial-
and-error and see if it sounds good this
| | 01:44 | way or with Monophonic.
| | 01:46 | Below this section, we have our Time.
| | 01:48 | So this is the way we can assess how
much longer or shorter we're going to
| | 01:52 | affect this particular region.
| | 01:54 | We can change the Unit here to
Time Code, which would make sense since
| | 01:57 | we're working in video.
| | 01:59 | And let's make a selection across the track
to see how long we need this section to be.
| | 02:03 | So we wanted to go to about here,
a little bit over that section so we
| | 02:07 | can crossfade it out.
| | 02:08 | And if I look up in my main counters here,
I can see the length is a little over 13 seconds.
| | 02:14 | So with that information, we need to
actually select the region I'm going to
| | 02:18 | affect, so select that region, then go
in here, and I'm going to type in 14, and
| | 02:22 | go into the next field and
I'll type 00. So here we go.
| | 02:27 | 14 seconds. It'll expand this region
from its original length of 10 seconds to a
| | 02:33 | total length of 14 seconds.
| | 02:35 | Let's preview it for audio quality.
| | 02:37 | (White noise)
| | 02:46 | Okay, that sounds pretty good.
| | 02:47 | Let's actually check out what that
would sound like for the Monophonic setting.
| | 02:50 | (White noise)
| | 02:56 | Okay, that sounds worse to my ears, but
notice that in the Monophonic setting,
| | 03:00 | we have a Window setting that's active,
so we can actually increase this window.
| | 03:05 | Window is a fine-tuning control basically.
| | 03:07 | Smaller window sizes will be good for
drums and percussion and larger window
| | 03:12 | sizes will be good for longer sounds
like we have here. So let's increase the
| | 03:15 | Window and see if it helps it all.
| | 03:17 | (White noise)
| | 03:20 | It helps a little bit, but I'm going
to go back to the Polyphonic setting and
| | 03:23 | listen to how that works.
| | 03:24 | So when we're in the Polyphonic setting,
Transient Sensitivity is active and the
| | 03:29 | Window is grayed out.
| | 03:30 | So in this case, Transient can be adjusted.
| | 03:33 | You want a lower Sensitivity
setting when you're working with rhythmic
| | 03:36 | material and maybe a slightly higher setting
when you're working with less rhythmic material.
| | 03:41 | I'm going to bring up the
Sensitivity a little bit here.
| | 03:43 | Again, it's kind of a trial-and-error thing.
| | 03:44 | I'm going to preview it and see how it sounds.
| | 03:46 | (White noise)
| | 03:54 | Okay, so out of all the settings
I'm going to go with that one.
| | 03:57 | We still have our time set in there,
so we'll hit Process and the region
| | 04:03 | will be lengthened. Okay.
| | 04:06 | So as you can see, our region got
lengthened and its appropriate length now.
| | 04:11 | Take a listen to it.
| | 04:12 | (White noise)
| | 04:15 | That's it by itself, but let's put it
in the context of the session and we can
| | 04:18 | hear what it sounds like.
| | 04:19 | (Vietnamese dialogue)
| | 04:25 | So that sounds pretty good as a
background race and we'll probably want to do
| | 04:29 | just a quick crossfade out
as we get out of that scene.
| | 04:32 | So the next thing we're going
to do with X-Form is not a time
| | 04:35 | compression/expansion, but rather a
pitch shift. So it's kind of the inverse
| | 04:39 | of what we're doing.
| | 04:40 | I'm going to click on <factory default>
just to get back to our default settings,
| | 04:44 | and here in the sequence we have an
area where we have two Woosh sounds.
| | 04:50 | Let's listen to them.
| | 04:51 | Soloed out their tracks.
| | 04:53 | (Whoosh whoosh)
| | 04:55 | Okay, so I think it will be cool if
the second whoosh was a different pitch.
| | 04:59 | So maybe lower than the first
whoosh just to add some variation.
| | 05:02 | So we'll use X-Form to lower the pitch
of this second whoosh sound. So select
| | 05:07 | that sound, and down here in the bottom-
right we have our Pitch Shift settings.
| | 05:11 | So here we're able to take this knob
and lower it down and then we have
| | 05:15 | Semitone, which is a musical increment,
but we also have Percentage. So if I
| | 05:19 | take it down say little over 3
semitones, that means that we are 80% lower in
| | 05:24 | pitch than the original sound.
| | 05:26 | X-Form also does allow for something
formant pitch shifting, and this feature is
| | 05:31 | to be used when you're pitching a voice
or some other instrument that you want
| | 05:34 | it to sound as natural as possible.
| | 05:36 | Basically, it takes into account the
harmonic series, which makes it more natural sounding.
| | 05:41 | But in this case, the whoosh sound isn't
as complex as a voice, so we're going to
| | 05:44 | leave Formant off.
| | 05:46 | I've had some bugs when I hit Preview
in the Pitch Shift area, so I'm going to
| | 05:50 | stay away from that for now.
| | 05:51 | We're going to process it and if we don't
like it, we can undo it and redo it later.
| | 05:55 | So here we're going to go process and
pitch shift it out and let's take a listen.
| | 06:00 | (Whoosh)
| | 06:02 | So I've here the original and
the newly pitch shifted one.
| | 06:05 | (Whoosh)
| | 06:07 | As you heard, the first one was a
little higher pitched, the second one was a
| | 06:10 | little lower in pitch, and that gives
just enough variation, just what I wanted.
| | 06:14 | So one more thing you can do with the
X-Form plug-in is you can set it as your
| | 06:18 | default time compression/expansion tool.
| | 06:20 | So if I go up to Pro Tools > Preferences,
here under Processing we have the TC/E Plug-in.
| | 06:27 | Now here we can go in and Digidesign X-
Form will show up as the tool we want to
| | 06:32 | use as opposed to just the regular
Digidesign Time Compression/Expansion, and
| | 06:36 | since X-Form is a higher-quality
plug-in, I would like to set it up as our
| | 06:41 | default TC/E plug-in.
| | 06:43 | And what this means for us is back in
Pro Tools, when I take the Trimmer tool
| | 06:48 | in the TC/E mode where it actually
allows you to trim out a region and lengthen
| | 06:53 | or shorten it, Pro Tools will be using the
algorithm from X-Form to do that processing.
| | 06:58 | So the X-Form plug-in is a real
valuable tool in your bag of tricks.
| | 07:01 | If you use it correctly, it can allow
you for some effective and seamless audio
| | 07:05 | stretching or some dramatic pitch
shifting, and it'll give you a lot of options
| | 07:09 | and flexibility in your audio for video project.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
7. Mixing Audio for VideoSetting up for stereo mixing| 00:00 | On bigger productions it's common to
perform pre-dub or premix prior to the
| | 00:04 | final mix or re-recording session.
| | 00:06 | This practice allows you to cut down the
number of tracks and simplify our track
| | 00:10 | count for the final mix.
| | 00:11 | You would for example combine all your
dialog tracks, background fill, ADR, and
| | 00:16 | production effects onto six or eight
checkerboard tracks for your final mix.
| | 00:20 | Although when you do your premix
you'll be printing your volume levels and
| | 00:24 | some processing like EQ and
compression, you should keep it somewhat minimal to
| | 00:27 | keep some possibilities open when all the
elements are heard together in the final mix.
| | 00:32 | Here is an example of how
you'd set up your dialog pre-dub.
| | 00:34 | So I have my dialog tracks split out
here for two scenes like we talked about
| | 00:39 | for doing the dialog edit, but down
here I have the tracks that I'm going to
| | 00:43 | premix too and I'll show
you how I've broken them out.
| | 00:46 | I gave myself three dialog tracks,
Dialog A, B, and C. So Dialog A is going to be
| | 00:52 | your primary print track, say for the
first scene. So any normal dialog, in this
| | 00:57 | case all of this dialog--
There is nothing out of the ordinary.
| | 01:00 | There are some perspective
changes and things like that.
| | 01:02 | They're all going to
combined onto our Dialog A track.
| | 01:06 | Then for the next scene, we have
three more tracks, also normal dialog.
| | 01:11 | It's been edited and filled with room
tone and all that good stuff, but in the
| | 01:15 | premix we're going to combine them
and they will go onto Dialog B.
| | 01:17 | So we're still checkerboarding,
but we're minimizing the track count.
| | 01:21 | So Scene 1, all normal dialog, we go
to Dialog A. Scene 2 all normal dialog,
| | 01:27 | we'll print down to Dialog B. Now I made
one more, Dialog C, and that would be for
| | 01:31 | anything out of the ordinary.
| | 01:32 | If there is a special needs dialog
that we want to separate out for the final mix
| | 01:36 | or something that needed to be append in a
different way, you could put that on Dialog C.
| | 01:41 | I have some other premix tracks to print
to, if I had ADR, I would put them on A
| | 01:47 | and B by scene, checkerboarded.
| | 01:48 | I also have some
production effects tracks down here.
| | 01:51 | So if you wanted to take the time to
split out all the production effects from
| | 01:55 | the original dialog tracks, much like we
did here where we took out the sound of
| | 02:00 | him unrolling the paper and
putting the coffee cup down,
| | 02:03 | you could print that stuff down
too production effects A and B, again
| | 02:07 | checkerboarded by scene.
| | 02:09 | By separating out the production
effects it will save you a lot of time later
| | 02:12 | when you need to make M&E, which is a music and
effects only version for foreign distribution.
| | 02:17 | So you have the opportunities
to do that here in your premix.
| | 02:20 | Another option you have is if you
wanted to you could print your reverb also
| | 02:26 | to separate tracks.
| | 02:27 | So that you wouldn't have a reverb
running in realtime. You could actually print
| | 02:31 | the reverb and you can bring that up or
down in the final mix if you wanted to.
| | 02:36 | The next step in this process, we made
the tracks and I just want to go through
| | 02:40 | how you would route this kind of
thing to these final print tracks.
| | 02:44 | So for the first scene, which goes from
here to here, we would route all three tracks.
| | 02:50 | Again, remember I said these
are all normal dialog tracks.
| | 02:53 | There is nothing strange about them,
there is no special needs dialog. These will
| | 02:57 | all be printed down to Dialog A. So I
would select all three of these tracks and
| | 03:03 | by holding Option+Shift or Alt+Shift,
I can route their outputs to that Dialog A track
| | 03:09 | using the new quick
routing feature in Pro Tools 9.
| | 03:12 | And now they're routing down to
Dialog A. Its input is set to that same bus.
| | 03:16 | And for the second scene, I'll take all
three of these tracks, which again also
| | 03:21 | they're normal dialog tracks, and I would
Option+Shift or Alt+Shift and send those
| | 03:27 | to Dialog B. And if I wanted to split
up the Production FX, I would take that
| | 03:33 | and I would send that to my PFX A track.
| | 03:36 | Then we've got our dialog. You can
see that all of our dialog tracks are
| | 03:39 | bussing to an aux track for reverb, and if we
wanted to print that, we have the option here too.
| | 03:45 | I could take the output of the dialog
verb track and print that to our dialog
| | 03:50 | verb print track down here.
| | 03:53 | So once you have all your tracks
routed, you just need to record enable any
| | 03:58 | tracks that you're recording to.
| | 03:59 | In this case Dialog A, Dialog B,
Production FX A, and Dialog verb, and you
| | 04:05 | simply just record as
you play through the scene.
| | 04:08 | So I would hit numeric keypad 3 on my
keyboard to begin recording and as it
| | 04:13 | rolls through the scene, you can
see I'm printing these tracks down.
| | 04:21 | (Male speaker 1: Hi Charlie! Again! Good to see you.)
| | 04:25 | (Male speaker 2: Good to see you!)
| | 04:25 | (Male speaker 1: So what did you bring me here?)
| | 04:27 | (Male speaker 2: Just what you suggested we cut back
to save on expenses. We're losing the one in the back?)
| | 04:32 | So when we're done, we'll have these
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 tracks with our
| | 04:39 | reverb will be combined into four tracks,
which we'll bring into the final mix
| | 04:44 | and that will make the final mix
a little bit simpler to deal with.
| | 04:47 | And the mixer can have his or her
finger on one fader for the main dialog
| | 04:52 | and for the next scene it will
be the next fader next to it.
| | 04:55 | So this is just one example of how
you might prepare your mix for a premix.
| | 04:58 | Of course if you're working with a re-
recording engineer, you want to confer
| | 05:01 | with him or her about how they
prefer the tracks to be prepared.
| | 05:05 | Everybody has their own personal
working methods, but this is an example of how
| | 05:08 | you can route and perform a pre-dub.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Calibrating levels using an SPL meter| 00:00 | When you are mixing audio for video
you might ask yourself, how loud is too
| | 00:04 | loud, how quiet is too quiet?
| | 00:05 | As you are going to send your
work out to the world, these are
| | 00:07 | important questions to ask.
| | 00:09 | By properly calibrating your
loudspeakers prior to any work you do and leaving
| | 00:13 | the listening volume set the whole
time, you will have a baseline volume
| | 00:16 | reference that relates to the outside world.
| | 00:18 | This way you can use your ears to
accurately determine when dialogue, effects, or
| | 00:22 | music are too loud or too quiet.
| | 00:24 | As a consequence your mixes will
translate to the outside world and they will
| | 00:27 | conform to volume level standards.
| | 00:30 | The tools you will need to
calibrate are as follows.
| | 00:32 | You will need an analog or digital SPL meter.
| | 00:35 | You can get this at your local RadioShack.
| | 00:37 | You'll also need a digital file of pink noise.
| | 00:41 | This is a test tone and you can
get this at a web site Blue Sky.
| | 00:45 | They make professional speaker monitors
and they actually offer a free bundle of
| | 00:49 | test tones, which is where I got the
test tone that we'll use in this lesson.
| | 00:53 | So what is pink noise?
| | 00:55 | Unlike white noise which is randomized
noise with energy weighted equally for
| | 00:59 | all frequencies, pink noise is randomized
noise with energy weighted equal for all octaves.
| | 01:04 | Basically pink noise is a test tone
that best approximates how we hear.
| | 01:08 | Pro Tools also does have a built-in
signal generator that provides pink noise.
| | 01:13 | But some engineers have argued that
Pro Tools tone generator isn't randomized
| | 01:17 | enough for the best calibration.
| | 01:19 | So instead we are using here the
Blue Sky Pink Noise file which is full
| | 01:24 | bandwidth at -20 decibels Full Scale.
| | 01:27 | And we're using it as an
audio file in our tones track.
| | 01:31 | So let's talk about our loudspeakers.
| | 01:32 | I want to look at a slide that shows
how they should be arranged physically in
| | 01:36 | your room. This is important.
| | 01:37 | First of all, you want to make sure
that the speakers form an equilateral
| | 01:40 | triangle between the optimum listening
position, where you would be, and the
| | 01:45 | speakers themselves and the angles should be
60 degrees at each corner of this triangle.
| | 01:50 | You also want to make sure the
tweeters of the speakers are at ear height.
| | 01:54 | That's the best position
for them to be vertically.
| | 01:56 | If you have an external mixer or any
device between your Pro Tools output and
| | 02:01 | the speakers, you want to make sure
that you've calibrated the output levels of
| | 02:05 | Pro Tools and that device.
| | 02:07 | So the way to do this is to use another
test tone. This time it's just a 1 kHz
| | 02:11 | sine wave also playing back
at -20 decibels Full Scale.
| | 02:16 | So you have 20 decibels of headroom
above this test tone and take a listen to
| | 02:22 | what this sounds like.
| | 02:23 | (Beep)
| | 02:25 | Okay, so we're probably
familiar with that kind of tone.
| | 02:28 | You want to play that out of Pro Tools
and you want to make sure it's coming
| | 02:31 | out at -20 and you want to set that up
so that if your external device, your
| | 02:35 | mixer between Pro Tools and your speaker, is
going to have a VU meter or an analog meter.
| | 02:40 | Now remember decibel Full Scale is a
digital meter at -20 and that should equal
| | 02:45 | 0 VU on an analog VU
meter on your external mixer.
| | 02:49 | So, you want to adjust your input trim
on that mixer until -20 coming out of Pro
| | 02:56 | Tools equals 0 VU, on that mixer
between Pro Tools and your speakers.
| | 03:01 | Then we are going to calibrate the
actual level of the speaker monitors and for
| | 03:05 | this we would use our pink noise.
| | 03:07 | We want to position the SPL meter where
your head would be in the engineer position.
| | 03:13 | Then you want to set the meter
to C weighting, slow response.
| | 03:16 | Those are two settings that
you'll see on the meter itself.
| | 03:19 | So C-weighted, slow response.
| | 03:22 | You want to set your tones track to
output just to one speaker. We can calibrate
| | 03:25 | each speaker one at a time
and then we play the test tone.
| | 03:29 | (Buzzing/white noise)
| | 03:33 | And as it's playing we're going to
adjust the output of our speaker up or down
| | 03:39 | to hit in certain SPL levels and once we
get there, we're calibrated for that one
| | 03:43 | speaker and we move on to the next speaker.
| | 03:45 | So what are these SPL levels?
| | 03:47 | Let's take a look at a chart and it
shows us where we should be hitting.
| | 03:50 | For a theatrical film work, say you're
mixing for a film that's going to play
| | 03:53 | in a movie theater,
| | 03:54 | we listen a little louder as we work
in Pro Tools, and if you're working in a
| | 03:59 | very large studio where you are
farther away from the speakers or a dub stage
| | 04:02 | for example, you are going to want
to calibrate your SPL meter to 85.
| | 04:07 | That's the decibel level dBSPL on the SPL meter.
| | 04:11 | So you play back the pink noise and
you adjust the output of the speaker
| | 04:15 | until it reaches 85.
| | 04:16 | Again, if you're working on a theatrical
film but you're in a much smaller room,
| | 04:21 | 85 is going to be a way too loud
to be listening to for hours on end.
| | 04:24 | So you're going to want to actually go
down to 82 dBSPL, which will give you a
| | 04:29 | loud enough reference but it
won't be blowing your ears off.
| | 04:32 | For other type of work such as Internet,
TV, broadcast, or even DVD mixing, you're
| | 04:38 | going to be monitoring back
at a slightly lower level.
| | 04:41 | This would be 79 for a large studio or dub
stage and also 79 or even 78 for a smaller room.
| | 04:49 | Again, remember if you are listening
back lower your mixes will tend to be
| | 04:52 | a little bit hotter.
| | 04:54 | It kind of works in the
inverse fashion that way.
| | 04:57 | So these are again just recommended SPL
levels, kind of taking a survey across a
| | 05:02 | lot of professionals that I know and work with.
| | 05:05 | These are typical SPL readings that
people calibrate their monitors for out in
| | 05:09 | the professional world.
| | 05:11 | So what about audiometers?
| | 05:12 | Within Pro Tools you can use a meter
such as the PhaseScope here and it can be
| | 05:18 | a helpful reference to ensure you're
in the ballpark but it should only be
| | 05:22 | used as a reference.
| | 05:23 | Truth is that no meter can perfectly tell
you all the info that you need all the time.
| | 05:27 | As you can see here on this PhaseScope
I'm referencing two things at one time,
| | 05:32 | Peak metering and RMS.
| | 05:33 | These are two different styles of metering.
| | 05:36 | RMS, which stands for Root Mean Square,
gives you information about the average
| | 05:40 | level over time and Peak gives you an
instantaneous read on the loudest peaks
| | 05:44 | for any given moment.
| | 05:46 | In general, RMS metering can tell you
more about the true loudness of your
| | 05:50 | audio, so I use it to check general
dialog range and when normal spoken
| | 05:53 | dialog is reading somewhere in the -20 average
range RMS, it's usually a good spot to start.
| | 05:59 | Now I'm going to playback a piece of
this sequence so we can see where it's
| | 06:03 | landing on both
the Peak and the RMS level.
| | 06:05 | (Background noise, car engines, crowd)
| | 06:06 | You'll see the Peak meter is the green meter
that's a little higher and the RMS is the blue.
| | 06:13 | (Cars revving their engines)
| | 06:22 | So remember that your ears are really
the best reference and as long as you
| | 06:25 | have calibrated your monitors like we spoke
about here to output to the correct SPL level,
| | 06:29 | that's really the point of calibration.
You can rely on then your ears and not meters.
| | 06:35 | But you can use a meter just
as a general ballpark reference.
| | 06:38 | Once you have completed this kind of
calibration and you work with it for a
| | 06:41 | while you'll learn to better trust
your ears and they will tell you where the
| | 06:45 | overall levels of your mix are at.
| | 06:46 | So if it sounds too loud to you it is too
loud; if it sounds too quiet it is too quiet.
| | 06:51 | It will take a bit of time to get
acclimated, but if you work consistently in
| | 06:55 | this calibration for all the
projects you work on, they will give you an
| | 06:57 | accurate frame of reference and it
will make your mixes translate better to
| | 07:01 | the outside world.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Mixing with automation| 00:00 | A good audio for video mix would be
impossible without the ability to change
| | 00:04 | parameters such as volume, pan and plug-
in settings with precision and accuracy.
| | 00:09 | In this movie we will explore
setting up automation parameters, writing
| | 00:12 | automation in real-time and
editing your automation after writing it.
| | 00:16 | Before using any automation
let's go over a few basics.
| | 00:20 | The automation playlists are shown as a
pull-down menu underneath the Mute, Solo
| | 00:24 | and Record buttons in your track. We
can see the waveform playlist, but we also
| | 00:28 | can see the volume automation playlist,
the mute automation playlist, panning
| | 00:33 | automation. So that you can
toggle between those views here.
| | 00:37 | Another really quick way to just
quickly show volume automation is to click in
| | 00:41 | the track with your Selector tool
and type the minus key on your qwerty
| | 00:45 | keyboard, not the minus
key on your numeric keypad.
| | 00:48 | That minus key toggles you between
Volume view and Waveform view, and also if
| | 00:55 | you're in any other automation
playlists like pan and you type minus, it takes
| | 01:00 | you back to your Waveform view, so
that's a good quick key to know about.
| | 01:03 | Pro Tools 9 also now supports
multiple automation playlists and they can be
| | 01:07 | shown concurrently and neatly
folded back under the track.
| | 01:11 | So on the very left of the track we
have this disclosure triangle. If we open
| | 01:15 | that we can now see the waveform on the
top and volume automation for example
| | 01:20 | below and we can keep hitting the
plus button to show other types of
| | 01:23 | automations, and now we are showing
waveform and volume and mute, and we can
| | 01:27 | keep on going. We can show pan as well.
| | 01:29 | So this is a great way to see more
than one automation playlist at a time and
| | 01:34 | when you're done you can neatly fold it
back up into that disclosure triangle.
| | 01:38 | So let's go over to volume automation and I
want to look at the way we can create this.
| | 01:43 | So automation can be split into two
ways to create it. You can create it in
| | 01:47 | non-real-time using your mouse,
breakpoint by breakpoint, or you can go
| | 01:52 | real-time which we will talk about later.
| | 01:53 | Non-real-time automation you can
create using your Grabber tool, so hit F8 to
| | 01:58 | get my Grabber tool, and you see in this
view it turns into a finger instead of a
| | 02:02 | hand and if I click on the volume
automation line I get a breakpoint.
| | 02:06 | Any single click creates a breakpoint
and you can grab hold of these breakpoints
| | 02:10 | and you can pull them up
or down or left or right.
| | 02:13 | And you can see that above the
breakpoint Pro Tools gives me a little display,
| | 02:17 | telling me what fader
position this volume fader is in.
| | 02:20 | So if I go up to -3 you can see I
have a pop-up fader for this track and
| | 02:25 | it moved up to -3. And I go down to say
-10.3 and it moves it down to that location.
| | 02:32 | To delete a breakpoint you can Option
or Alt+Click on a breakpoint and that
| | 02:36 | deletes it. Also if you make a
selection, hit F7, get our Selector tool once
| | 02:41 | again, make a selection,
| | 02:43 | then you can use the Trimmer tool, F6, and
pull automation for that whole selection
| | 02:49 | up or down. So that's a useful way to do
automation say for just a specific passage.
| | 02:54 | Breakpoints can also be selected and
copied and pasted. So if I hit C and I over
| | 03:01 | here I can paste those breakpoints
over here. And you can also nudge your
| | 03:05 | automation around using the plus
and minus keys on the numeric keypad.
| | 03:09 | Here I am using minus since moving
backwards by a frame or quarter frame and
| | 03:14 | plus moving forwards.
| | 03:17 | So if you notice we are making all of
these non-real-time automation breakpoints
| | 03:22 | and we are in Read automation mode.
You can see here the green Read mode, and
| | 03:26 | you can do this in Read mode and as
you see when we hit Play, Pro Tools, the
| | 03:31 | volume fader, will read
these moves we are making.
| | 03:32 | (Background noise)
| | 03:33 | Let me go ahead and solo the track.
And if you watch the Fader, it's actually
| | 03:41 | reading and moving around
according to these breakpoints we have made.
| | 03:47 | If at any time you want to disable Read
you can change this Automation pull-down
| | 03:51 | menu to Off and Pro Tools will ignore
any breakpoints that are in the track.
| | 03:56 | So now that I am on Off if you watch
the fader over this passage it's not
| | 04:00 | moving at all. In fact I can move it wherever
I want and it doesn't follow any breakpoints.
| | 04:05 | And that brings up a good point. In
Read mode if there are no breakpoints at all
| | 04:11 | in a track, so I am just going to go
ahead and select these, delete them,
| | 04:15 | Pro Tools is kind of in its
initial automation state.
| | 04:18 | So if I'm in Read mode with no
breakpoints at all I can then move the fader
| | 04:23 | wherever I want and the
whole line moves up and down.
| | 04:26 | So that's kind of like
the default initial state.
| | 04:28 | But the second I have even just one
single breakpoint, that no longer becomes
| | 04:33 | possible. If I move the fader, it snaps
back to that single breakpoint location
| | 04:38 | because it's now reading any
breakpoints that are in the playlist.
| | 04:42 | So let's talk about real-time automation.
This is when you can write the move in
| | 04:46 | real-time as it's playing back.
| | 04:48 | To make this possible we want to show
the Automation dialog window which is
| | 04:53 | useful to have open anytime you are
doing any real-time automation,. You can get
| | 04:57 | this from the Window menu under
Automation or it's also available as a key command.
| | 05:03 | Command, or Ctrl for PC, 4
on your numeric keypad pops this up.
| | 05:07 | So this gives us like an overall control
over automation globally for the session.
| | 05:12 | First thing is on top you have Suspend.
This is kind of like turning our track
| | 05:16 | to Off, but it does it
globally for the whole session.
| | 05:18 | So if I hit Suspend the automation for
all the tracks just turn Off and your
| | 05:23 | fader can be put anywhere
you want and it doesn't care.
| | 05:25 | If I have a breakpoint in the track for
example as soon as I take this off, Pro
| | 05:31 | Tools goes back to reading.
| | 05:33 | So that's just a good thing to
know that you have that there.
| | 05:36 | Below Suspend is some really
important buttons. They're controlling which
| | 05:40 | parameters are currently enabled, so you
need to select the automation type and make
| | 05:45 | sure it's armed before you can
write any real-time automation.
| | 05:48 | So if I am going to work on volume
automation I want to make sure that the
| | 05:51 | Volume button is write-enabled and
it's red here in this Automation window.
| | 05:57 | So I am going to write some volume
automation so I make sure that that's
| | 06:00 | enabled and I am going to go into this
track, zoom in a little bit, and in Read
| | 06:05 | mode you're safe from writing anything.
| | 06:06 | So no automation could be written in
Read mode but the next four selections in
| | 06:11 | this pull-down window are writable modes.
So first start with Write, and in this
| | 06:16 | mode Pro Tools will destructively
write over any breakpoints that are in the
| | 06:20 | path of the playhead.
| | 06:22 | So we have this breakpoint here.
| | 06:23 | If I were to just play, it would
just write over that breakpoint.
| | 06:27 | But as it's playing if I control the
volume fader, which again is write enabled,
| | 06:33 | I'll be able to write those moves and
when I'm done we'll see what I've written
| | 06:38 | reflected in the volume playlist.
You will see the breakpoints I've written.
| | 06:41 | So I am going to hit Play and you
will see a red line that shows what I'm
| | 06:45 | currently writing and that'll be
the automation writing in real-time.
| | 06:49 | (Drumbeats)
| | 06:57 | And when I let go over the fader it's
continuing to write out at that location
| | 07:01 | until I hit Stop and then it kind
of snaps back to where it once was.
| | 07:06 | So that's Write mode.
| | 07:06 | It's just destructively writing for
any enabled parameters, by the way.
| | 07:10 | So if I had Pan enabled and I wasn't
even looking at pan automation, we would be
| | 07:14 | writing over any pan automations there.
| | 07:17 | So it's kind of a destructive mode,
Pro Tools automatically snaps you out of
| | 07:22 | Write mode into Latch mode, just as a safety.
| | 07:25 | So if you hit Play again you
wouldn't write over anything.
| | 07:27 | Before we get to Latch mode
we will talk about Touch mode.
| | 07:30 | So Touch mode is a mode of writing
automation where when you hit Play,
| | 07:35 | your fader will follow along with any
automation that's been written until you
| | 07:40 | actually touch the parameter.
| | 07:41 | So it will read along as if it was in
Read mode until you touch the parameter.
| | 07:46 | At that point, as soon as you are
touching the parameter with your mouse or with
| | 07:49 | your finger on a control surface you'll
be writing automation, and then as soon
| | 07:53 | as you let go of the parameter it will snap
back to reading any automation that was there.
| | 07:58 | So let's see how Touch mode works.
| | 08:00 | (Drumbeats)
| | 08:03 | So it's reading along and I
am going to grab the parameter.
| | 08:07 | Now I'm writing and then I am going to let go
and it snaps back to reading what was there.
| | 08:13 | So that's how Touch mode works.
| | 08:15 | It's kind of the least destructive way
to write automation because it doesn't
| | 08:19 | write anything unless you're
actually touching the active parameter.
| | 08:23 | Then we've got Latch mode, which is a
lot like Touch mode at the beginning.
| | 08:28 | It reads along any automation that's
there, but as soon as you touch the
| | 08:32 | parameter you're writing and then
when you let go over the parameter here's
| | 08:35 | where it's different.
| | 08:36 | It continues to write out at that last
position of your volume fader in this case.
| | 08:42 | So let me demonstrate Latch mode.
| | 08:43 | (Drumbeats)
| | 08:45 | So it's following along what's there
and then I am going to grab-hold of the control.
| | 08:48 | Now I'm writing.
| | 08:50 | And when I let go instead of snapping
back, it just continues to write out from
| | 08:55 | this position until I hit Stop.
| | 08:58 | So that's how Latch mode works.
| | 09:00 | Now also in Pro Tools HD and in the
complete production toolkit you have this
| | 09:05 | other mode called Touch/Latch.
| | 09:08 | Now that mode actually is a
combination of the two when you're in this
| | 09:12 | Touch/Latch mode your volume fader
is always in Touch mode and the other
| | 09:17 | parameters such as Pan or Mute, those
go into Latch mode. This is actually
| | 09:21 | really useful if you're using
a control surface for example.
| | 09:24 | So then I will just go back to Read mode.
| | 09:27 | Once you've written any automation like
we have here, you might notice that Pro
| | 09:31 | Tools creates a lot of breakpoints as
you're writing any real-time automation.
| | 09:35 | This is really exact, but
sometimes it's hard to edit.
| | 09:39 | So if I want to get in here and edit
this, get my Grabber tool, there are so many
| | 09:42 | breakpoints it's kind of hard to work through.
| | 09:45 | But there is a way to control the
amount of thinning as Pro Tools calls it,
| | 09:49 | thinning the breakpoints, and you can get
to that in the Pro Tools Preferences menu.
| | 09:54 | So here under the Mixing tab down where
it says Automation, we have a checkbox
| | 09:59 | that says Smooth and Thin Data After
Pass. So it actually is checked and the
| | 10:04 | Degree of Thinning right now is set to Some.
| | 10:06 | We could set that to More and the next
time you write an automation move we will
| | 10:10 | end up with less breakpoints.
| | 10:12 | It will thin it more.
| | 10:13 | Another option you can do to thin
automation is once you've written it you can
| | 10:18 | actually select over a heavy passage
with a lot of breakpoints and you can go up
| | 10:23 | to Edit > Automation and here
we have something that says Thin.
| | 10:28 | So this'll thin your automation
breakpoints according to the preferences you've set.
| | 10:33 | So since we have set it to More,
we should see some thinning happen. And as you
| | 10:36 | can see a little bit of thinning
occurred. So we have less breakpoints now and it
| | 10:40 | will be easier to edit.
| | 10:42 | So in audio for video work, automation
for music under spoken word, ambience, and
| | 10:47 | dialogue, those are really good places
to employ real-time volume automation.
| | 10:51 | Things like moving sound effects, like
panning left to right, those can also
| | 10:55 | benefit from real-time writing of automation.
| | 10:58 | But no matter what you use it for,
automation will really make your mixes
| | 11:01 | dynamic and effective in
your audio for video sessions.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Advanced mix automation| 00:00 | When you are working in HD or with a
complete production toolkit, you get a few
| | 00:04 | advanced automation control features.
| | 00:06 | While some of these are more
centered around control surfaces,
| | 00:08 | in this movie, we will go over some of
the advanced features that can have an
| | 00:11 | impact on mixing audio for video.
| | 00:13 | Write on Stop is one of these
advanced automation features.
| | 00:16 | You can use it in your audio for video
session to find a good sweet spot for
| | 00:21 | music while you're moving the fader
around, and then when you hit Stop it will
| | 00:25 | write that automation setting to
either before and after your location, from
| | 00:30 | where you are to the end of the session,
from where you are to the beginning of
| | 00:33 | the session, or to the
previous or next breakpoint.
| | 00:36 | So, let me show you how that would work.
| | 00:38 | We are going to set it to Write for the
whole length of the session before and after.
| | 00:42 | So, this would be kind of like an
initial pass when you're trying to find just
| | 00:46 | globally where the music should sit.
| | 00:48 | The next thing you want to do
is set this track into Latch.
| | 00:52 | And what I am going to do is hit Play
and I will move the fader until I find the
| | 00:56 | sweet spot where I think it's sitting the best.
| | 00:58 | And you will see once I hit Stop
it will write that location to the whole
| | 01:03 | session for this automation playlist.
| | 01:04 | (Engines revving)
| | 01:09 | So, finding the stop where I want to
put it and let's say I like the volume to be there.
| | 01:16 | Now, when I hit Stop, it writes that
location to before and after where we
| | 01:22 | stopped the playback.
| | 01:23 | I blew away any automation that was
there before, so this would be kind of an
| | 01:27 | initial thing just to get your
bearings right and it does write a breakpoint.
| | 01:31 | So, now that location and that position
of your fader is written before and after.
| | 01:35 | Remember you can write
it just from where you are
| | 01:37 | to the end if you want and not affect
things before, or you can write it from
| | 01:41 | where you are to beginning and not
affect things after, or just to the
| | 01:45 | previous or next breakpoint.
| | 01:46 | Let me undo that and so that's Write on Stop.
| | 01:49 | And you have to know you want to do
that and you set your button whichever one
| | 01:53 | you choose before you hit
playback and it works that way.
| | 01:57 | There is also Manual Write.
| | 01:58 | For Manual Write, you have to
actually select one of these options while
| | 02:03 | playback is occurring.
| | 02:04 | So, let's say you're playing back and
you're moving the fader around and you
| | 02:08 | say oh, I really like this spot.
| | 02:10 | Then at that point you can click one of
the Manual Write buttons after playback
| | 02:14 | has already occurred, and when you hit
Stop it will write out the automation
| | 02:19 | for that session just
like we did on Write on Stop.
| | 02:22 | So, let me demonstrate that.
| | 02:23 | So, let's say again we are still in
Latch mode, but we are playing and we are
| | 02:28 | moving the fader around and we
like this position, for example.
| | 02:32 | Now, I say oh, I want to
write this to the whole session.
| | 02:35 | So, I click Manual Write and when I hit
Stop it gives me a little warning that
| | 02:41 | it's going to affect all automation moves.
| | 02:43 | I say OK and it writes
that to the beginning and end.
| | 02:47 | So, these two are kind of related.
Just one is kind of premeditated thing where
| | 02:51 | you know you want to do this.
| | 02:52 | The second one is, Manual Write is when
you are kind of moving a fader around,
| | 02:57 | then you say I would like to write
this spot to the whole session and you can
| | 03:00 | click these buttons after playback has occurred.
| | 03:02 | So, I am going to hit Undo and we are
going to go over a different type of
| | 03:07 | advanced automation called Trim Automation.
| | 03:10 | Trim Automation allows you to use
previously recorded automation and trim
| | 03:14 | their values up or down in real time while
you maintain your original automation moves.
| | 03:20 | So, to go into Trim mode, we can click
in here where the other automation modes
| | 03:25 | are and we just select
this last option here, Trim.
| | 03:29 | So, trim works in conjunctions.
| | 03:31 | So, now we are in Trim Latch mode for example.
Or we can be in Trim Write mode for example.
| | 03:37 | And you know you're in Trim mode when you
see a yellow line running across your track.
| | 03:41 | So again, Trim mode lets us just
trim the moves that are already there.
| | 03:46 | So, let's say we like these moves.
I made these earlier and I like how it fades out.
| | 03:50 | I like how it gets a little
louder here in this middle section.
| | 03:54 | But once I started adding effects in,
I realized that the music is a little
| | 03:58 | too loud and it all needed to come down a
little bit, but I want to maintain these moves.
| | 04:03 | We can do this if we are saying Write
Trim mode. Like over this section, I
| | 04:07 | wanted this section to come down for example.
| | 04:09 | So, I'm in Write mode and if I'm in
Write Trim mode, I'm able to pull my fader
| | 04:14 | down and when I hit Play, Pro Tools will
take the existing moves and my new trim
| | 04:19 | value moves and coalesce them into a
composite, which included my old moves but
| | 04:24 | it will be a little quieter.
| | 04:26 | One way I like to work in Trim mode is
up in the Preferences here I am going to
| | 04:30 | set a certain setting.
| | 04:32 | And this is under the Mixing tab in Automation.
| | 04:35 | On the right-hand side here,
see this Coalesce Trim Automation.
| | 04:39 | I like to set this to On Exiting Trim Mode.
| | 04:42 | That actually shows me what it's
going to be like and it doesn't actually
| | 04:45 | coalesce my trim that I made with the
existing automation until I leave Trim mode.
| | 04:50 | I'm going to set it to that option.
| | 04:52 | It's not set there by default and we
will take a look at how that works.
| | 04:56 | So, in Write Trim mode, again I can
tell I am in Write Trim because I can see
| | 05:00 | a yellow line and my volume
fader is actually yellow as well.
| | 05:04 | The yellow line represents
what's called your delta value.
| | 05:07 | That's how much change is occurring.
| | 05:09 | If I move this down as we are playing
back, as soon as the pass is over we
| | 05:15 | will see a blue line.
| | 05:16 | And that's the composite of the
original and our delta value, so how much
| | 05:20 | we've trimmed it, and that will give
us kind of a preview of the view of what
| | 05:23 | we're going to get when we leave trim
mode since we decided to coalesce after
| | 05:28 | we leave trim mode.
| | 05:29 | So, let's take a pass at
it and see what happens.
| | 05:30 | (Engines revving)
| | 05:42 | Okay, so we zoom in here so we
can really see what's going on.
| | 05:46 | I brought down the trim value to a
lower point during this section, and again,
| | 05:52 | the yellow is my delta value.
That's how much it lowered.
| | 05:54 | Now, the blue line which you can see
right above the yellow line, that's where
| | 05:59 | the composite result would be when my
original move combined with my trim
| | 06:04 | move is going to end up.
| | 06:04 | And so that looks like it's what I
wanted. I just wanted the whole thing to be
| | 06:08 | lowered, but I wanted to
keep the original breakpoints.
| | 06:11 | So, now as soon as I leave Trim mode,
just uncheck it here in the pulldown menu,
| | 06:16 | it coalesces and my trim has been made.
| | 06:18 | That whole section maintained the
original breakpoints, but it's all trimmed down
| | 06:22 | by a certain amount.
| | 06:23 | So, the last type of advanced
automation I want to go over is called
| | 06:27 | snapshot automation.
| | 06:28 | And this way we can actually go ahead
and just turn our automation to off and
| | 06:34 | we can set up some values
that we like just free form.
| | 06:37 | So, we can just kind of playback and
say oh I like the volume of the music to
| | 06:44 | be there and I wanted to actually
take the pans a little less wide.
| | 06:49 | I can set it up however I want over a
whole section and then as long as I select
| | 06:54 | that section, and say it's just this
part of the scene, I can enable the
| | 06:58 | parameters that I want to
write as just a global snapshot.
| | 07:01 | So, in this case, the
Volume and Pan. So I want this
| | 07:04 | Volume here and the Pan
there for this whole section.
| | 07:08 | Remember my Automation pulldown menu
and everything is just turned off, so I
| | 07:13 | can move these wherever I want.
| | 07:15 | But even though it's turned
off, I have set my parameters.
| | 07:18 | I can go to the Edit pulldown menu,
go into Automation, and say Write to All
| | 07:24 | Enabled and that'll do a snapshot
automation. That will write my current settings
| | 07:28 | to any enabled parameters, in this
case Volume and Pan. And there you go.
| | 07:32 | It just quickly writes
those moves to that location.
| | 07:36 | So, that's snapshot automation and
that's a really useful thing if you wanted
| | 07:39 | to just take it scene by scene and set up
initial parameters throughout the session.
| | 07:45 | Because precise control over automation
is such an important feature to have on
| | 07:49 | any audio for video mix, these advanced
features that you get with the complete
| | 07:53 | production toolkit or HD, they open up
even more possibilities for control and
| | 07:57 | most importantly the speed
at which you are working.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Automating plug-in parameters| 00:00 | Volume, panning, and send automation are
not the only parameters you can automate.
| | 00:04 | You will find that automating plug-in
parameters such as equalizer curves and
| | 00:08 | compression settings can be
extremely helpful in your mix.
| | 00:11 | The ability to adjust plug-in
parameters over time can help you keep your track
| | 00:14 | counts down and give you more
control over what happens on a given track
| | 00:18 | throughout the timeline.
| | 00:19 | First thing you will notice when you
try to automate a plug-in is that their
| | 00:22 | parameters don't automatically
show up in the automation playlist.
| | 00:25 | So let me insert an EQ plug-in into this track.
| | 00:28 | So here I have my plug-in
inserted and it has a lot of parameters.
| | 00:32 | If I close the plug-in box and I go to
my automation playlist, I don't see any
| | 00:36 | of those parameters showing
up in my automation list here.
| | 00:39 | You actually have to manually
set your parameters to show up.
| | 00:43 | So let me take this plug-in off and I
want to show you one way you can do this
| | 00:46 | is through the Preferences in Pro Tools.
| | 00:49 | Here under the Mix tab you can set Pro Tools to
say Plug-in Controls Defaults to Auto-Enabled.
| | 00:57 | If you select this box and you hit OK
and I re-instantiate that EQ plug-in,
| | 01:05 | you'll see a number one on the plug-
in every parameter has either green box
| | 01:09 | around it or a green dot below any knob.
| | 01:12 | That's a visual indicator that all of
these parameters are enabled to be automated.
| | 01:18 | Now in the Automation playlist pulldown
menu we have a section for this plug-in
| | 01:23 | and we have all of our controls.
| | 01:25 | So they have been automatically
added as possible automation playlists.
| | 01:30 | So if I wanted to automate the High Band
Gain, go here and I see that line is there.
| | 01:35 | The downside to doing it this way is
that you have so many parameters in here
| | 01:39 | it's hard to know which one
that you want to actually work on.
| | 01:42 | So the alternative to this is to
manually decide which parameters as you work
| | 01:48 | you want to automate.
| | 01:49 | So I am going to actually take
this insert off and go back to that
| | 01:52 | preference and uncheck this.
| | 01:56 | Click OK and I am going to re-
instantiate the plug-in and here again none of
| | 02:01 | these parameters have green boxes or green dots.
| | 02:03 | So it's back to how we started. None of these
parameters are currently set to be automated.
| | 02:09 | From the plug-in itself you can choose
which parameters you want to automate.
| | 02:14 | You do that in this little button
right below where it says Auto, Auto
| | 02:17 | standing for automation.
| | 02:19 | This brings up our Plug-In Automation
dialog box here and here again we have
| | 02:23 | a long list of all the different parameters
and we can choose which ones we want to automate.
| | 02:28 | You select them and then
you add them one at a time.
| | 02:30 | So Low-Mid Band Gain for example, and
you can add several of these and when
| | 02:35 | you're done-- I added High-Pass Slope,
Low-Mid Band Gain and High Band Enable and
| | 02:40 | if I close this plug-in-- now in the
automation parameters list I see those three
| | 02:46 | automations highlighted and I can
automate any of those three parameters.
| | 02:51 | This could be a useful way of doing it,
but you still have that problem where
| | 02:55 | you're looking at this list and are
wondering, which is the control I wanted
| | 02:58 | to automate, again?
| | 02:59 | So I have a third way of selecting the
parameters you want to automate that I
| | 03:03 | want to show you and that is you
actually use a key command to automate.
| | 03:08 | So actually let me go back into the
plug-in and I am going to take these guys,
| | 03:13 | hold Shift, and select all
three of them and remove them.
| | 03:16 | So I am back to square one.
No parameters are automated.
| | 03:19 | So this third way I actually use
a three-button key command.
| | 03:24 | Ctrl+Option+Command on a Mac, which would
be Windows+Alt+Ctrl on the PC, all three.
| | 03:31 | I call it the three finger salute
because you use all three of your fingers.
| | 03:35 | Then you simply hold down those three
keys and you click on whatever knob you
| | 03:40 | want to automate and you
can enable it from there.
| | 03:43 | So this is a much faster way and a
much more intuitive way to enable
| | 03:47 | automation parameters, because you
might be working with that parameter, say
| | 03:51 | you are moving this up and down and you
say, oh, I like that, and you just hold
| | 03:54 | down all three keys, click on it.
| | 03:56 | So that's another way to enable your parameters.
| | 03:59 | Let's demonstrate how that would
work in the context of a scene.
| | 04:03 | So I've got this motorcycle section
here and I've notice that when it plays I
| | 04:09 | like the sound of this High-Mid Band
frequency being moved up during the
| | 04:15 | course of this region.
| | 04:17 | So it sounds like this.
| | 04:18 | (Engine revving)
| | 04:21 | So it adds like a real nice bike in
there and I like the way that sounds.
| | 04:25 | So again I Ctrl+Option+Command+Click on
there and I have already enabled it.
| | 04:30 | I can check if I go into that list and
I see okay, it's been enabled. Hit OK.
| | 04:35 | Close the plug-in and now it just
shows up as any other automation parameter
| | 04:40 | would in my list here and I can look
at that line and I can even real-time
| | 04:46 | write it in if I wanted to. Just go to Touch
mode and I'll write it in on during this pass.
| | 04:53 | (Engine revving)
| | 04:54 | So I made an actual pretty common
mistake here as I tried to write the move in
| | 04:58 | Touch mode, but I did not look at my
Automation Parameters window and you will
| | 05:03 | notice that Plug In automation was not selected.
| | 05:06 | So again if you're automating any plug-
ins you have to make sure that you've
| | 05:09 | enabled it in your Automation window
here which you can get from hitting
| | 05:13 | Command+4 or from the Window > Automation.
| | 05:19 | So now that I do have it write enabled,
you notice a visual difference in the
| | 05:22 | actual EQ window here and that is
that little green dot is now red.
| | 05:26 | So that actually tells me visually that
hey, we are ready to automate this guy.
| | 05:30 | So let me do one more pass of that.
| | 05:31 | (Engine revving)
| | 05:37 | So it just kind of enhances that
bite, the kind of high-end of that
| | 05:40 | motorcycle as it drives off.
| | 05:42 | Another good way to use automation for plug-
ins is to actually automate the bypass button.
| | 05:47 | So let's take a look at
this production track here.
| | 05:50 | Let's say I wanted to have a specific
EQ setting on this first region, but I
| | 05:55 | didn't want any EQ on the second region.
| | 05:57 | So I could use a similar technique.
I have an EQ already inserted here and here's
| | 06:01 | my specific EQ that I want to apply to
the first region but not the second.
| | 06:06 | So I would use the same type of
technique except it won't be one of these knobs.
| | 06:09 | It'll be the actual Bypass button.
| | 06:11 | So again Ctrl+Option+Command, all three
keys, click on the Bypass button, enable
| | 06:17 | automation for that button, and it turns green.
| | 06:20 | So it's now an enabled parameter.
| | 06:21 | And here I am not going to use real-
time automation, but rather I am just going
| | 06:25 | draw it in with my mouse.
| | 06:26 | So I will go into the automation parameters,
choose the Master Bypass, which I just added.
| | 06:31 | We've got a line down at the bottom and
that means that it's currently not bypassed.
| | 06:36 | So what I am going to do is go like this.
| | 06:39 | That means it is bypassed all the
time. And then I am going to select just
| | 06:43 | that region where I want it to be
active and I am going to take theTrimmer
| | 06:47 | tool and pull that down.
| | 06:49 | So what we have then is that the plug-
in is bypassed until it gets to that
| | 06:53 | section, then it un-bypasses so that EQ
curve will last for the duration of that region,
| | 06:59 | and then once I get past that
region over here to the next region it's
| | 07:03 | once again bypassed.
| | 07:05 | So you can automate bypass just like
you can automate any of these knobs and
| | 07:09 | it's really useful do that on plug-
ins because now I don't have to have two
| | 07:13 | separate tracks. I can use the same
track and I can even use the same plug-in.
| | 07:16 | The automation of bypass brings up a
good point here, because not all automation
| | 07:21 | parameters have similar controls.
| | 07:22 | Obviously, bypass is either an on or
off selection. It's not like an knob or a
| | 07:28 | fader where it's got much
more fine control like down here.
| | 07:31 | But let's say you did want to copy and
automation from one automation type like
| | 07:36 | volume to a plug-in parameter.
| | 07:38 | This is possible, but you have
to use a special trick to do it.
| | 07:41 | So let me demonstrate here if I go up
to one of our dialog tracks, for example,
| | 07:47 | and I am going to hit the minus key to
show and hit minus key to show that this
| | 07:52 | volume track has automation.
| | 07:54 | So let's say I wanted to grab this
automation here. This is again volume
| | 07:57 | automation and I want to copy it.
So hit C to copy that to my clipboard.
| | 08:01 | Now I want to paste that automation
move down here to this High-Mid Band Gain.
| | 08:07 | So remember I'm copying volume
automation to an EQ band parameter.
| | 08:12 | So if I hit V, nothing happens because Pro
Tools is saying, hey, what you are trying to do?
| | 08:17 | You are trying to paste this
volume setting to a different parameter.
| | 08:21 | But you can force Pro Tools into
doing this through a special command.
| | 08:24 | It's called Paste Special > To
Current Automation Type and this kind of
| | 08:30 | overrides Pro Tools' will to not want
to paste a different automation type to
| | 08:35 | your current automation type.
| | 08:36 | So Volume to EQ and the key command is also
Ctrl+Command+V or Windows+Ctrl+V for a PC.
| | 08:44 | So when I hit this, '
that automation is still in our clipboard and it
| | 08:48 | actually lets us paste it.
| | 08:49 | So it kind of bridges the gap for
us and it interpolates any different
| | 08:53 | information and puts it
right there in the track.
| | 08:55 | This won't always work if the
parameters are too different.
| | 08:59 | Bypass has either an on or off.
| | 09:01 | So something this fine won't really
work in that case, but for most parameters,
| | 09:05 | if they're close, you can use Paste
Special > To Current Automation Type and it
| | 09:10 | will override and let you do it.
| | 09:12 | So any successful mix is helped a
lot by this kind of plug-in automation.
| | 09:16 | Hopefully, some of these ideas will
help you maximize what your EQs and
| | 09:19 | compressors can do for you
over the course of your mix.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Mixing with reverb| 00:00 | One way you can use reverb in your mix
is to use it as sort of a glue that
| | 00:03 | holds scenes together.
| | 00:05 | In this movie we'll explore how you can
use snapshot automation for an impulse
| | 00:08 | response reverb to change over
different scenes to create a subtle but
| | 00:12 | important space around the action.
| | 00:15 | In the motorcycle footage for this
scene, there are four distinct locations
| | 00:18 | where the action unfolds.
| | 00:20 | First we have an alleyway scene,
then we have the motorcycle race itself,
| | 00:25 | then we have a hospital scene briefly, and
then we have in the end where he is on a river.
| | 00:31 | So I've marked these locations
with memory locations, as you can see.
| | 00:36 | TL Space is the reverb we'll
use to bind together these scenes.
| | 00:40 | TL Space uses a technology
called impulse response or IR.
| | 00:44 | An impulse response is an actual
acoustic sampling of a real space like a
| | 00:49 | concert hall, a church, corridor, and so forth.
| | 00:53 | Engineers send a test signal into
the space to excite and capture the
| | 00:56 | acoustic reflections.
| | 00:58 | Then the sound of the test signal
is removed, leaving only the acoustic
| | 01:01 | response in the space.
| | 01:02 | This impulse response is
stored as a setting in the plug-in.
| | 01:06 | So here we have a setting that's a
sampling of a church. You can see there's
| | 01:10 | different rooms like a ballet
school for example and so forth.
| | 01:15 | TL Space uses this concept called
snapshots and this workflow is made almost
| | 01:19 | for audio over video in mind, because
it allows the user to automate different
| | 01:23 | IR settings over the course of the
timeline and we only need to use this one plug-in.
| | 01:28 | So here in TL space, let's go into
Snapshot mode by clicking on this SS button.
| | 01:33 | As you can see, we have 10 snapshots possible.
| | 01:35 | So we're going to set these snapshots up
for each acoustic space of our sequence.
| | 01:40 | First of all we'll leave Snapshot 1
empty. So we'll go on and start with
| | 01:44 | Snapshot 2. That way we can always come
back to a reverb setting that doesn't
| | 01:49 | have any acoustic response or
doesn't have any IR built-in to it.
| | 01:53 | So in Snapshot 2 that's going to be
our alleyway scene. Sso to do that we're
| | 01:58 | going to use a setting. It's going to be
under Chambers > Concrete Stairwell > SameFloor.
| | 02:03 | That'll be a good impulse response to
create the acoustic nature of an alley.
| | 02:09 | Snapshot 3, that's the race itself, so
we're going to need an outdoor setting for
| | 02:13 | that one and there is one under Post
Production, under Outdoors. There is a
| | 02:18 | Meadow and we're going to do Meadow at 25 feet.
| | 02:22 | Then the next one, Snapshot 4, is in the hospital.
| | 02:26 | So for this one, we want a corridor and
there is a Corridor Rear Facing.
| | 02:30 | We're going to choose that one.
| | 02:31 | And finally Snapshot 5 we're back
outside on the river and we're going to choose
| | 02:36 | the Meadow once again, but we'll use a
different setting, the Meadow at 50 feet.
| | 02:40 | So here we have loaded up each of
these settings into the different snapshots,
| | 02:44 | leaving one empty at the beginning.
| | 02:46 | Now we can go back to the Picture view,
so we can actually see the pictures of
| | 02:49 | some of these spaces that were sampled.
| | 02:52 | So the next thing we need to do if we
want to automate Pro Tools to move between
| | 02:55 | these snapshots is to make the
Snapshots parameter an automatable parameter.
| | 03:00 | So down here where it says Snapshot 5,
that's our Snapshot settings and we're
| | 03:05 | going to make that an automatable
parameter by going Ctrl+Option+Command or
| | 03:10 | Windows+Alt+Ctrl on a PC, click here,
and Enable Automation for "Snapshots."
| | 03:15 | So you can see it turned green, meaning
it's now a parameter that can be automated
| | 03:19 | out in your timeline.
| | 03:21 | So I'm going to close the reverb for
one second here and now in our automation
| | 03:25 | parameters list, we see that Snapshot
is available. So let's select it and here
| | 03:30 | now our automation line we can move
between these different snapshots.
| | 03:35 | So we'll take the Trimmer tool, F6, and
we'll poll the snapshot automation line
| | 03:41 | down to Snapshot 1, which is
empty, so that'll be our home base.
| | 03:46 | And then we're going to go through
and using these markers I'll be able to select,
| | 03:49 | if I click on Alley and then I hold
Shift and click on Race, I'll be able to
| | 03:54 | select just that section between. And
remember that's our alley snapshot that was
| | 03:58 | Snapshot 2, so I'm just going to pull up
the automation to Snapshot 2, then I'll
| | 04:03 | click on the race and
I'll go to the next section.
| | 04:06 | So, over the course of the
race that would be Snapshot 3.
| | 04:10 | Then we have the hospital after that,
flow from the hospital to the river.
| | 04:13 | We're in the hospital and we're going
to up to Snapshot 4 and then from the
| | 04:18 | river on out to the next scene or whatever,
will be the river so that'll be Snapshot 5.
| | 04:26 | So now if I open up the plug-in,
we can see as I work through, starting with
| | 04:31 | empty, nothing and we get to the Alley
scene, we have our Stairwell impulse
| | 04:37 | response again. He's in an alleyway,
he's obviously not in a stairwell, but the
| | 04:40 | acoustic nature of this
reverb works pretty well.
| | 04:43 | It doesn't have to be the
exact same space obviously.
| | 04:47 | So then we have our race and we go
out to the Meadow impulse response, which
| | 04:51 | works well for an outdoor sound, and
then the next section we have our Hospital
| | 04:56 | and in the hospital we'll use this
Corridor impulse response and then we go
| | 05:00 | back to the river and we're back out in
the Meadow from a farther distance for
| | 05:04 | the river acoustics.
| | 05:06 | So we've got our snapshot set up and
now as we play through the scene,
| | 05:10 | TL Space will just quickly move
between those different settings.
| | 05:14 | The last thing we need to do is send us
some of our tracks through this reverb.
| | 05:17 | So these are all returning on an AUX
track called FX Verb and if I go over to my
| | 05:22 | Mix window, you can see that all of my
FX tracks, for example, are on a send,
| | 05:27 | going to that same reverb.
| | 05:29 | So if I want to control all these all
at the same time, just to bring them all up
| | 05:33 | together for an initial setting so
we can see how this sounds like, we can
| | 05:37 | use our groups to do that.
| | 05:38 | All we need to do is go over into
our Groups menu down here under FX and
| | 05:44 | double-click to the left of the FX and
we're going to change the attributes of
| | 05:47 | our group to include Send
levels. Good, I got that.
| | 05:52 | Now I just need to activate
the group itself. There we go.
| | 05:55 | Now all of these send levels can move up
and down. So we'll move them up just a bit.
| | 05:59 | You know, again this is just an
initial raw setting, just to see if we can
| | 06:03 | detect and hear what these reverbs
are doing as we move through the scene.
| | 06:07 | And we'll take a listen to them and
remember it's going to be a really subtle effect.
| | 06:11 | It's just a way to almost
subconsciously get the viewer into these different
| | 06:15 | spaces and it might even work on a
subconscious level, but it's a good technique
| | 06:19 | to use in your film.
| | 06:20 | So let's listen to a little bit here.
| | 06:22 | (Background noise)
| | 06:26 | And as we listen, I'll bypass and un-
bypass the plug-ins so see if you can
| | 06:30 | detect a difference.
| | 06:31 | (Background noise)
| | 06:39 | So that's the alleyway. Here is the race.
| | 06:41 | (Engines reving)
| | 06:51 | And we have to the hospital.
| | 06:53 | (Background noise)
| | 06:59 | And we go out to the river.
| | 07:01 | (Background noise, water sloshing)
| | 07:10 | So again this reverb here is not
used as a dramatic effect by any means.
| | 07:14 | It's just a kind of subtle glue that
going to tie together your different
| | 07:18 | effects in this scene.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Ducking techniques| 00:00 | Playing music underneath a spoken voice
is a very common practice in documentary
| | 00:04 | and other types of video.
| | 00:05 | In this movie we will explore a
technique called ducking that can help the voice
| | 00:09 | to always be heard above the level of music.
| | 00:12 | Here in this session we have a dialog
track and music track to play under it.
| | 00:15 | Let's take a listen.
| | 00:16 | (Music playing, speaker inaudible)
| | 00:26 | So obviously here the music is way too
loud and this is a common scenario when
| | 00:30 | you bring in any arty mastered music
into your audio over video session.
| | 00:34 | The music is going to be typically too loud.
| | 00:37 | So we are going to have to pull that
down and we'll just take a listen and
| | 00:40 | we will roughly get the volume
level of the music into the ballpark.
| | 00:43 | (Music playing, speaker inaudible)
| | 00:57 | That seems about a good spot for the music.
| | 00:59 | It's about -13 and let's hear a
little later in the track when the music
| | 01:03 | kicks in a little more.
| | 01:04 | (Music playing, speaker inaudible)
| | 01:10 | So here the music's got some more
drums and bass and at that point it's still kind
| | 01:14 | of sitting in the right place, but
you can hear it gets in the way of the
| | 01:18 | dialog a little bit.
| | 01:19 | One technique we can obviously use to
control this would be too automate it down
| | 01:24 | a little bit there, which we may end up doing.
| | 01:26 | But also I want to show you this
technique called ducking which actually uses a
| | 01:30 | compressor plug-in on the music track
and that compressor plug-in is going to
| | 01:34 | get triggered by not the music track itself like
a normal compressor, but from an external track.
| | 01:40 | So in other words the dialog track will be
triggering the compressor on the music track.
| | 01:44 | Let's see how we can set this up.
| | 01:46 | We are going to Music >
multichannel plug-in > Dynamics and we will use
| | 01:50 | Compressor/Limiter Dyn 3 plug-in.
| | 01:53 | So this plug-in like a lot of
compressor plug-ins has a special area over here
| | 01:58 | called Side-Chain and when you use
the Side-Chain it means that you use
| | 02:02 | something called a key input.
| | 02:04 | So, to activate this, first we want to
select and activate the little key where
| | 02:09 | it says Side-Chain which means that the
compressor is now listening externally
| | 02:13 | for a key input, and the threshold is
not going to be activated by the music on
| | 02:19 | this track, but rather another track,
in this case the dialog track that we
| | 02:24 | send over the key input.
| | 02:26 | We do that via an internal Pro Tools bus.
| | 02:29 | So let's go over to the dialog track
here and I will go to the mix window.
| | 02:32 | So on this track we are going to go in
and activate a send and on the first send slot,
| | 02:37 | we will send this on Bus 1 and we
want to Option+Click on the send fader
| | 02:42 | to get that to unity.
| | 02:44 | So now we are sending the dialog track
over this bus and we are going to return
| | 02:49 | that bus back into the
compressor. So where it says key input here,
| | 02:53 | that little key icon, we are
going to set that to Bus 1.
| | 02:57 | So we are sending over the
dialog track into this compressor.
| | 03:01 | On a normal compressor the levels of
the track itself that the compressor is
| | 03:06 | inserted on reach the threshold and
therefore activate that compressor to reduce
| | 03:11 | the volume of the track.
| | 03:13 | In this case it's not going to be
the music itself, but the key input, the dialog.
| | 03:18 | So in other words whenever the dialog
is spoken it's going to activate the
| | 03:22 | threshold of this plug-in and
therefore the compressor will act on the music.
| | 03:26 | So we are going to be ducking the
music whenever the dialog occurs.
| | 03:31 | So we have are key input set up over
Bus 1. We've activated the key button over
| | 03:35 | here in the Side-Chain.
| | 03:37 | Now we just need to set the
controls of the plug-in so that they activate
| | 03:40 | correctly so they don't
compress too hard or too little.
| | 03:43 | So one thing we are going got
definitely want to do is turn up the Ratio.
| | 03:46 | We don't want to get into a
situation where we are limiting it too hard.
| | 03:50 | The limiter would be up here about
100:1 ratio, but we are not going to be too
| | 03:54 | light with it either.
| | 03:55 | We are going to probably around 25 to 1,
which is a pretty hard compression, but
| | 03:58 | again we do want to duck the
music when the voice happens.
| | 04:02 | So we will set it somewhere around there.
| | 04:04 | We can actually also turn up the Knee,
which in this plug-in kind of reduces the
| | 04:08 | compression artifacts.
| | 04:10 | Again, we want the compressor
here to be somewhat transparent.
| | 04:12 | We don't want to be
hearing the music compression.
| | 04:15 | We just want to feel it a little bit
to reduce down when the dialog happens.
| | 04:18 | So maybe soften the Knee a little bit it
should help us to have less artifacting.
| | 04:22 | For the Attack and Release,
those are our time-based controls.
| | 04:25 | So the Attack should be fairly quickly.
| | 04:28 | We want to grab onto the audio as soon
as the dialog hits the threshold. We want
| | 04:32 | to grab onto the music pretty fast
and start compressing right away.
| | 04:35 | And Release we will be a
little more gentle with.
| | 04:38 | We are going to let it go a little slower.
| | 04:39 | So it lets go of the gain
reduction in a slightly slower way.
| | 04:44 | Then the last most
important setting is our Threshold.
| | 04:47 | So if the Threshold is too high up here,
then it won't hit the threshold as it
| | 04:52 | comes in over the key input and we
won't hear any compression at all.
| | 04:55 | If the Threshold is too low it's going
to activate too much and we are going to
| | 04:59 | hear it all the time.
| | 05:01 | But for demonstration purposes I am going to
start out really, really low on the Threshold.
| | 05:04 | So it will be really hitting the
compressor hard and we will back it up from there.
| | 05:08 | So let's take a listen to
what this is going to sound like.
| | 05:10 | Keep in mind on the meters here, gain
reduction is the amount of compression.
| | 05:14 | So if we set everything up right you
should hear gain reduction here coming from
| | 05:18 | the top down only when we hear the dialog.
| | 05:20 | That means again that the dialog is
actively controlling this compressor.
| | 05:24 | Input and output are going
to be the level of the music.
| | 05:27 | So the input is how the music comes
into the compressor and the output is how
| | 05:30 | the level of the music coming out.
| | 05:32 | So if we are doing our job correctly,
when the dialog is spoken the meter on the
| | 05:37 | Out should be a little
less than a meter on the In.
| | 05:40 | But of course, we are going to just
use our ears mostly just to determine if
| | 05:42 | it's working or not.
| | 05:44 | So here I am going to play the music
and we will listen and right now the
| | 05:48 | Threshold is really low.
| | 05:49 | So it's going to be a very obvious use of this
technique and we will back it off from there.
| | 05:53 | (Male speaker: And in that year we met a woman named
Barbara Scott from San Francisco who did a workshop in Santa Paula.)
| | 05:59 | (Male speaker: Right just down the?)
| | 05:59 | So here since the threshold is so low
it's actively compressing the music so
| | 06:04 | much that we can barely hear it.
| | 06:06 | But if you notice right there in that
section the actor stops speaking and the
| | 06:10 | music just poked right back through.
| | 06:12 | So again it's really working that when
he's talking the compression's happening
| | 06:17 | and when he stops talking
the music creeps back in.
| | 06:20 | Let's take a listen to section one more time.
| | 06:21 | You can hear what I am talking about.
| | 06:22 | (Male speaker: Stuff started making sense for us.)
| | 06:25 | Now just in that little instant when he
stops talking the music creeps back in.
| | 06:29 | So doing what we need to do, we
just need to back off the Threshold little
| | 06:33 | bit so becomes a little less intense.
| | 06:36 | (Male speaker: Stuff started making sense for us.)
(Music playing softly)
| | 06:39 | (Male speaker: So we formed a group
and at first there were very few of us.)
| | 06:45 | (Male speaker: But over time we
began to learn things and we began to?)
| | 06:48 | So that's more kind of in the
ballpark of where we want it.
| | 06:51 | I mean, we are still hearing the
compression act pretty hard on the music.
| | 06:54 | So in that case if you're hearing that
we want to refine or Attack and Release
| | 06:59 | and kind of refine our Threshold a little bit.
| | 07:01 | Now I am going to listen one
more time and just try to get it.
| | 07:03 | So it's a little more subtle.
| | 07:04 | (Male speaker: In Santa Paula right just down the street here.)
(Music playing)
| | 07:08 | (Male speaker: And suddenly a lot of
this tuff started making sense for us.)
| | 07:12 | (Male speaker: So we formed a group
and at first there were very few of us.)
| | 07:16 | (Male speaker: We didn't know what we?)
| | 07:17 | So around there it's starting to work for me.
| | 07:19 | It's not totally obvious in terms of us
hearing the music duck drastically, but
| | 07:23 | it's just carving out a little to
space underneath every word that he speaks.
| | 07:28 | Then if we wanted to really go in here
and do this the right way, we would go in
| | 07:31 | and automate the volume as well.
| | 07:33 | So we are getting the benefits of our
ducking plug-in plus any automation we would do.
| | 07:38 | And this is how a lot of engineers do it.
| | 07:39 | They will use this ducking technique
along with volume automation, just enough
| | 07:43 | to make the music get out of the way of
the voice so it doesn't get lost on any
| | 07:46 | type of listening system.
| | 07:48 | Remember, you don't know what type of
listening system this might be heard on.
| | 07:51 | If it's a laptop, you got a lot
smaller speakers to deal with. If it's a TV.
| | 07:55 | So you just want to make sure that
the voice is heard in all cases and the
| | 07:58 | music is still present, but this technique
allows us to really make sure it's out of the way.
| | 08:03 | It also can be a real timesaver.
| | 08:05 | If you're working on a lot of commercial
spots and you don't have time to really
| | 08:08 | go in and detail your automation moves,
you can use this ducking technique in
| | 08:12 | even a more dramatic way than we are
using here just to quickly duck the music
| | 08:16 | out of the way of the voice
that it can always be heard.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
8. Working in SurroundSetting up a surround mix template| 00:00 | Surround mixing has rapidly gone
from being a big budget-only practice to
| | 00:04 | something, in my opinion,
even the smallest project should be a tempting.
| | 00:07 | In this video we'll go over the
specifics of the hardware, monitor arrangement,
| | 00:11 | and I/O setup for a 5.1 surround signal flow.
| | 00:15 | The first consideration for any
surround mixing setup is the hardware.
| | 00:18 | You have to have the available outputs
on your hardware interface, which would
| | 00:21 | be six for a 5.1 mix.
| | 00:24 | You also have to have five full
range speaker monitors and one LFE or Low
| | 00:28 | Frequency speaker or subwoofer.
| | 00:30 | Here's the proper way to
configure those speaker monitors.
| | 00:33 | You should have a center speaker at 0
degrees from the mixing position, right in front,
| | 00:38 | and the right speaker
should be 30 degrees off axis from that.
| | 00:43 | And going around, the right surround
speakers should be 110 degrees from zero position.
| | 00:48 | These speakers should be ideally
placed around the periphery of a circle, so
| | 00:51 | that each speaker is indetented in a
little bit, angled towards the next position.
| | 00:55 | And then finally we have our LFE speaker,
which we just place somewhere in the room.
| | 01:01 | It's not as directional as the other
speakers. We just need to find a good spot
| | 01:05 | for the LFE speaker in the room where
it doesn't incur any standing waves or
| | 01:08 | low-frequency problems.
| | 01:10 | How these speakers connect to which
outputs of your hardware can also be tricky.
| | 01:14 | By default, Pro Tools configures its
surround tracks and meters in this order.
| | 01:19 | Channel 1 Left, Channel 2 Center,
Channel 3 Right, Channel 4 Left surround,
| | 01:25 | Channel 5 Right surround, and Channel 6 LFE.
| | 01:28 | Now this would be great if all people
using surround stuck to this convention.
| | 01:32 | But unfortunately, the SMPTE standard
and the ITU recommendation specifies that
| | 01:36 | the track order and layout
should actually go like this.
| | 01:39 | Channel 1 Left, Channel 2 Right, Channel
3 Center, Channel 4 LFE, Channel 5 Left
| | 01:46 | surround, and Channel 6 Right surround.
| | 01:48 | In reality it also turns out that this
way works best for most studios since
| | 01:52 | Channel 1 and 2 are normally your
left and right speakers when you aren't
| | 01:56 | working in surround.
| | 01:57 | And that's how they are here.
| | 01:58 | Channel 1 is Left, Channel 2 is Right.
| | 02:00 | Let's go into Pro Tools and take a look at this.
| | 02:03 | First thing we're going to want to do when we
setup for surround is go into our I/O setup.
| | 02:07 | That way we can configure which
speakers are going to which outputs on our
| | 02:10 | hardware and all of our internal busing as well.
| | 02:12 | So let's go up to Setup > I/O. Here down
at the bottom we have the 5.1 Path Order.
| | 02:19 | This is what I was just referring to,
and the default for Pro Tools is to have
| | 02:23 | Left Center Right, so Channel 2 is
Center, Channel 3 is Right, and so on.
| | 02:27 | And the SMPTE/ITU recommendation has Left
and Right as 1, 2, and Center as 3, and so on.
| | 02:33 | We're going to actually stick to the
SMPTE recommendation for the remainder of
| | 02:37 | this course, so that way we can
hear our left and right speakers.
| | 02:41 | Since we're listening in stereo,
they'll actually be the appropriate outputs, Left and Right.
| | 02:45 | So we're going to leave that there.
| | 02:47 | And we're going to go over to our Output tab.
| | 02:50 | We configured right now in this I/O setup for
our stereo output, 1 and 2 go to Left and Right.
| | 02:55 | We need to make a surround output
so that we can get the sound to out to
| | 02:58 | our surround speakers.
| | 03:00 | So the first thing we're going to do is
create a new path and this one is going
| | 03:04 | to be 1 new 5.1 Output, and we hit Create.
| | 03:09 | It shows up down at the bottom here.
| | 03:11 | And it's going to be using again
the first available six outputs.
| | 03:15 | So we're actually going to have to
take off or disable the first six outputs
| | 03:20 | that we are normally using and when
we go into this field, we get a pencil.
| | 03:25 | And now that we have the pencil, if I
click once, it's going to lay out our
| | 03:27 | speakers in the order that we
specified in a 5.1 path order.
| | 03:32 | So we have Channel 1 Left, Channel 2
Right, Channel 3 is our Center speaker,
| | 03:38 | Channel 4 is our LFE, Channel 5 is our Left
surround, and Channel 6 is our Right surround.
| | 03:43 | Again, we have to disable the first
regular six stereo outputs to make way
| | 03:48 | for this 5.1 output.
| | 03:50 | Next we want to configure our buses to
accommodate some of the surround routing.
| | 03:54 | Because we're going to have a dialogue
bus, an FX bus, and a music bus, and we
| | 03:58 | want all three of those take advantage
of our surround signal routing, we're
| | 04:01 | going to make three surround buses.
| | 04:04 | So let's make new path, let's say
3, and let's say three 5.1 buses.
| | 04:11 | So it'll create those.
| | 04:13 | they're going to be all
over down at the bottom here.
| | 04:16 | And there is our three 5.1 buses.
| | 04:19 | So let's go ahead and name the first
one by double-clicking there, DX BUS.
| | 04:26 | That's our dialogue surround bus.
| | 04:28 | And let's go ahead and name the second one,
FX BUS, our effects bus. Third one, MX BUS.
| | 04:35 | That's our music bus.
| | 04:36 | And you can see the format
for all three of those is 5.1.
| | 04:40 | We're going to actually not always want
our dialogue to be going out in all six
| | 04:45 | of our surround channels.
| | 04:46 | In fact, most of our dialogues are only
going to go through the Center channel.
| | 04:50 | So in that case, we need to make some sub paths.
| | 04:52 | So we're going to select the dialogue
bus, and we're going to say New Subpath,
| | 04:57 | we're actually going to go ahead and make
seven subpaths, and you'll see why in a second.
| | 05:00 | So let's click this a few more times.
| | 05:02 | It's two, three, four, five, six, seven.
| | 05:06 | So now we can assign these seven subpaths
to the various combinations of our outputs.
| | 05:13 | So for the first one, we're going to
make this a Left Center Right so it'll
| | 05:19 | take advantage of LCR.
| | 05:22 | That's going to be just in
the front of the audience there.
| | 05:25 | The second one, we're going to do just
a Stereo so that'll be, if I click in
| | 05:29 | here, it's going not be just Left and Right.
| | 05:31 | The rest of them are going to be Mono.
So we're just going to say Mono, Mono,
| | 05:36 | Mono, Mono, and Mono.
| | 05:39 | And that way we can have one of our
paths be Left only, one of our paths be
| | 05:44 | Center only, one of our paths be Right,
Left surround, and Right surround.
| | 05:49 | We probably won't be sending any
dialogue to the LFE, so I'm leaving that out of
| | 05:54 | our sub-paths at this time.
| | 05:55 | Now here is a really cool trick to
name all these paths so they're not
| | 05:58 | just generic names.
| | 06:00 | Once we get these all made, double-
click on the dialogue bus as if we're going
| | 06:03 | to rename it but then just
hit Return, and there you go.
| | 06:06 | It actually automatically put that
name in front of all of our subpaths.
| | 06:10 | So we're going to go on and we're going
to create the similar thing for the FX Bus.
| | 06:15 | On the FX Bus we're going to give even
more options of subpaths, so let's select
| | 06:19 | the FX Bus, and this time
we're going to make nine sub-paths.
| | 06:22 | One, two, three, four, five,
six, seven, eight, nine.
| | 06:27 | And we're going to give more options here.
| | 06:29 | We're going to do a one that's 5.0.
| | 06:32 | No LFE. We're going to do a one
that's LCR, so it's Left Center Right.
| | 06:36 | We're going to do a one that's Stereo, and
then we're going to do a Mono one for all
| | 06:42 | the rest, but we'll include the LFE as well.
| | 06:51 | Okay, double-click here, hit Return.
| | 06:53 | It automatically names them.
| | 06:55 | And the music bus finally.
| | 06:57 | We're going to click that and we're
going to make three sub-paths for the music.
| | 07:03 | Click that three times.
| | 07:04 | We want one of them to be 5.0, and one
of them to be Stereo, and we'll make an
| | 07:12 | LCR one as well for the music, just in
case we need it. I am going to name them.
| | 07:17 | When we hit OK, we've locked in all of
our outputs. Now it's time to route our
| | 07:22 | tracks to all these fancy buses we just made.
| | 07:26 | So we're going to go ahead and make
three auxs to return our dialogue bus, our
| | 07:32 | effects bus, and our music bus to,
and those are going to be surround.
| | 07:35 | So those will be 5.1 and we're going to
say Aux input and we're going to make 3.
| | 07:42 | Again, we'll name these DX Bus, and
Command+Right Arrow, Tab over, FX Bus, and MX Bus. Great!
| | 07:53 | As you can see, each of these buses has five
meters, meaning that it's a surround output.
| | 07:59 | We actually want to assign their
output to that 5.1 output we created, and
| | 08:04 | they're actually already assigned
there by default because that's the only
| | 08:08 | surround output that we have.
| | 08:09 | So now it's time to route the tracks.
| | 08:11 | So like I said, most of our dialogue is
going to be center, so let's go almost
| | 08:16 | all except for the last two. We'll
Shift+Select and we're going to hold
| | 08:19 | Option+Shift or Alt+Shift just to
assign a group of these at once.
| | 08:24 | And let's assign these to--
| | 08:26 | If I go to bus menu b, I can see in my
dialogue bus I have DX BUS.C, so that's
| | 08:35 | our center mono output.
| | 08:36 | So we've bused those all to the center.
| | 08:38 | If you look on the next window here, you'll
notice none of those tracks have a pan fader.
| | 08:43 | Remember, they're just
going through that center bus.
| | 08:47 | But the last two, we're going to make
LCR. So let's Shift+Select those, go
| | 08:50 | into the outputs, and let's choose bus
> bus menu b > Dialogue Bus.LCR, and so
| | 08:59 | that one does get a fader.
| | 09:00 | If I look in the Mix window, we do
have a fader and this will be fading from
| | 09:03 | Left to Center to Right.
| | 09:06 | Now for our FX tracks, we're going
to put almost all of our FX tracks to
| | 09:11 | the full 5.1 bus, with the exception of two
of the tracks which I'll get to in a second.
| | 09:16 | So, we're going to hold Option+Shift
for these and we're going to put them on
| | 09:19 | bus > bus menu b > FX BUS, just in the 5.1.
| | 09:24 | So for these guys, they're going to
get the cool surround pan right in the
| | 09:27 | middle there because they have
access to all six of the surround outputs.
| | 09:31 | Now the only other thing I want to
do is I want to take two of these mono
| | 09:35 | buses here, Mono 4 and Mono 5, and we're
just going to make these go strictly to the LFE.
| | 09:42 | So if we have like rumble or thunder
sound, we're going to just going to pump
| | 09:46 | this right into the LFE.
| | 09:48 | So we're going to go Option+Shift and
we'll go to our output here under bus >
| | 09:52 | bus menu b, and this one will
just go straight to the LFE.
| | 09:55 | So that'll actually just be a mono,
and we should probably name these FX.LFE
| | 10:00 | or thunder or something that we know that
designates them as just our LFE-only tracks.
| | 10:07 | Finally, we have our music.
| | 10:08 | We have two music tracks.
| | 10:10 | let's send one to the full 5.1 music bus, and
we'll send the next one just to a stereo bus.
| | 10:17 | And this all might change once we get
into the mix, but we're just kind of
| | 10:20 | setting our template up so that it's
all ready to go in our Mix window and
| | 10:24 | tracks that are assigned to the right place.
| | 10:27 | So at this stage, what we can do is
just to clean up and finish up here we can
| | 10:31 | go back to our I/O setup and we might
want to export these settings so that we
| | 10:35 | can get back to them later, so we
can call this like My surround setup.
| | 10:40 | Again, this is a process you'll need it
to really do once. So once you save this
| | 10:43 | as a setting, you can
bring this into any session.
| | 10:46 | So save it something like that.
| | 10:48 | Also we can save this template we made
as a template. So we might want to go in
| | 10:53 | here and say Save As Template and
we'll put this in our Post Production
| | 10:57 | category and we'll call
it My surround template.
| | 11:03 | So for the first time in Pro Tools 9,
all versions of Pro Tools software
| | 11:07 | support surround mixing.
| | 11:08 | So getting familiar and customizing
your I/O setup is an important first step
| | 11:12 | into diving into surround mixing.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Calibrating for 5.1 surround mixing and bass management| 00:00 | In this movie we'll address
calibrating your 5.1 monitor system and how to
| | 00:04 | effectively base manage so you're
hearing what your audience will hear.
| | 00:08 | We will be using the Wave 360 plug-in
suite, an industry-standard tool for
| | 00:11 | software-based management.
| | 00:13 | The concept of calibrating the 5
surround monitors is very similar to the stereo
| | 00:17 | calibrations concept we learned in
the stereo levels calibration video.
| | 00:21 | You still need an SPL meter set to c
weighting slow response and you will play
| | 00:26 | pink noise out of each speaker to measure it.
| | 00:28 | So here we'd set our Tones track to
output first on the Output.L, the first
| | 00:35 | channel, and we play the pink noise.
| | 00:37 | (Buzzing, white noise)
| | 00:39 | And we'd use our SPL meter to
calibrate the output of that speaker.
| | 00:42 | Remember, you want to calibrate at 85
dBSPL for large film style mix in a large
| | 00:47 | room, 82 for a small mixing room for a
film mix, and 78 or 79 for small mixing
| | 00:54 | rooms when you're mixing for
DVD, internet or broadcast.
| | 00:57 | So you're going to go through each speaker.
| | 01:00 | First you do
Output Left, then Output Center.
| | 01:02 | Then you're going to do Right, Left
Surround, and Right Surround and you will do
| | 01:06 | each one and you will calibrate them
to the same reading on the SPL meter.
| | 01:11 | All speakers should register an equal
level on SPL meter except in the case of
| | 01:15 | if you are doing a straight to
film mix on a large mix stage.
| | 01:19 | In that case, you want the two
surround speakers to be calibrated 3 decibels
| | 01:22 | lower than the other speakers.
| | 01:25 | Otherwise, all monitors
should be calibrated equally.
| | 01:27 | When you're calibrating the two
surround speaker monitors, the left surround
| | 01:30 | and the right surround, make sure you
turn 90 degrees of the speaker you're
| | 01:33 | calibrating so you don't
block the sounds with your body.
| | 01:36 | Also, you're going to want to aim
the meter at the wall closest to the
| | 01:39 | speaker you're calibrating.
| | 01:40 | Now, what about that .1
of our 5.1 speaker channels?
| | 01:44 | This is where it gets a little confusing.
| | 01:46 | First, let's make sure we
understand the discrepancy between the LFE or
| | 01:50 | Low-Frequency Effect channel
and the concept of a subwoofer.
| | 01:54 | Although both concepts use the same big
deep sounding speaker, they're actually
| | 01:58 | different concepts altogether.
| | 02:00 | The LFE in surround mixing is a
separate and discrete channel containing only
| | 02:05 | low-frequency sounds
directly routed to that .1 channel.
| | 02:09 | In this session, for example, we have
one of our effects tracks, FX.LFE, routed
| | 02:15 | directly to that LFE channel and it's
feeding only that speaker and it would
| | 02:19 | contain only low-frequency content.
| | 02:22 | In large movie theaters all of the
normal speaker monitors, the 5 and the 5.1,
| | 02:27 | can handle a full range of sound from
the lowest to the highest in frequency.
| | 02:31 | So the job of the LFE channel is to send
low-frequency sounds to that additional
| | 02:35 | low-frequency speaker when
thunderous rumble type effects are needed.
| | 02:39 | It's an additional low-frequency effect channel.
| | 02:42 | The concept of the subwoofer came into
play when people wanted home surround systems.
| | 02:46 | The 5 regular satellite speakers of
our consumer systems don't go down
| | 02:50 | frequency-wise as low as theater speakers.
| | 02:53 | So to counteract this, consumer
systems automatically cross over and send any
| | 02:57 | frequency below 80 hertz from
the whole mix to the subwoofer.
| | 03:01 | So in consumer systems not only does
the subwoofer contain LFE channel sound
| | 03:06 | from our .1 channel, but also any
sound from the whole mix under 80 hertz is
| | 03:11 | being sent there as well.
| | 03:13 | If we monitor in our mix room with
full range speakers, we don't know what
| | 03:17 | effect this can have.
| | 03:19 | So we have to use something called base
management when we monitor our surround mixes.
| | 03:23 | This will emulate a home system so we know
we're getting if we mix for that type of venue.
| | 03:28 | The Waves 360 Surround Manager makes
this setup and monitoring easy through
| | 03:33 | a software plug-in.
| | 03:34 | Here is how to set up and use it.
| | 03:36 | So here in our master track I am
going to instantiate the Waves 360 plug-in
| | 03:41 | on the last insert.
| | 03:42 | So this is the very last thing
that is being heard from our project.
| | 03:46 | So I am going to put-in the
M360 Manager and here it is.
| | 03:51 | So it has a lot of different settings
and we want to first take care of making
| | 03:55 | sure that the base
management is actually happening.
| | 03:57 | Now, notice it defaults to 80 hertz,
which is where we want it, and we just want
| | 04:02 | to make sure that it's turned
on for all 6 of our channels.
| | 04:05 | So to do that, there is this All button here.
| | 04:08 | Click that and we can see everything lights up.
| | 04:10 | So we've got the crossover system happening.
| | 04:12 | The next thing we want to do is actually
calibrate the base management for each channel.
| | 04:17 | So we are going to start by setting our
tones track to output through the center
| | 04:22 | channel only, so Output.C. Then we're
going to mute all of our channels except
| | 04:29 | for the center channel on the Wave 360.
| | 04:30 | Then we are going to solo the subwoofer.
| | 04:35 | So that way we are getting just the
sub-reading as it's being pumped through
| | 04:38 | the center channel.
| | 04:39 | Remember, the base management takes each
channel's information, crosses it over,
| | 04:43 | and sends it to the sub.
| | 04:44 | At this point, we are going to play the
pink noise and we are going to turn up
| | 04:48 | the sub until our SPL meter reads 6
decibels lower than our calibration.
| | 04:53 | So if we calibrated our room to 79
for example, then we want the subwoofer
| | 04:59 | reading on our meter to read 73.
| | 05:01 | So I am going to play pink noise and I
am going to turn up the Send to Sub until
| | 05:07 | I'm getting a reading of 73 on my SPL meter.
| | 05:14 | It's going to differ for every system, but
it's usually around -6 when we hear that.
| | 05:18 | Then we're going to repeat
this step for every channel.
| | 05:24 | So we are going to go ahead and mute
the center channel, unmute the left
| | 05:27 | channel, send our tones
output to the left channel.
| | 05:32 | Again, keeping the sub soloed and we
are going to go ahead and play this and we
| | 05:35 | are going to bring this up until
it reaches 73 on our SPL meter.
| | 05:39 | They're going to be pretty close, all
of these, as we go, but we do want to do
| | 05:45 | each channel one at a time.
| | 05:47 | So now we've gone through and we've set
all 5 of our satellite speakers to send
| | 05:51 | to the sub and we've calibrated.
In this case, all of them ended up about -6 in
| | 05:56 | terms of reading 73 on our meter since
our main calibration was set to 79 and
| | 06:03 | now our subwoofer has been calibrated.
| | 06:05 | So we are going to unmute the Sub and
we are going to unmute the rest of these
| | 06:08 | tracks and now we need to calibrate the LFE.
| | 06:11 | We are going to solo the LFE channel in
this case and we are going to adjust it
| | 06:16 | up starting at a starting place of +10.
| | 06:20 | So see where it says LFE Adjust
down here, we have a couple of options.
| | 06:26 | If I keep clicking on it,
I get -10, I get +10, or Off.
| | 06:29 | We are actually going to go above +10
dB setting for our LFE and the reason
| | 06:34 | for this is because since it
contains less frequency content than regular
| | 06:38 | speakers, it's normal to calibrate
your LFE 10 decibels higher on your SPL
| | 06:43 | meter than the satellite speaker.
| | 06:44 | So when we set this to +10 and we
sent tone for example out just our LFE
| | 06:50 | speaker, it should read
somewhere between 89 and 92.
| | 06:55 | In this case, we calibrate it at 79, so
it should read about 89 on our SPL meter
| | 07:00 | through our subwoofer.
| | 07:02 | Then you can have some fine adjustment here.
| | 07:04 | If it's a little short or a little loud,
you can bring it down a little bit with
| | 07:08 | this fine adjustment on LFE Gain.
| | 07:10 | But this is a pretty normal setting to
have. It'd just be 10 decibels louder than
| | 07:14 | your other speakers.
| | 07:16 | Again, that's because it
has less frequency content.
| | 07:19 | So at this point once we've gone
through and calibrated our Send to Sub and
| | 07:24 | we've put our crossover in there and
then we've adjusted our LFE above,
| | 07:28 | the base manager is properly based
managing and as long as the plug-in is set on
| | 07:33 | the last channel of our master fader we are
hearing what we would hear on a consumer system.
| | 07:38 | So we are doing the base management as we mix.
| | 07:40 | Now, of course at any time during your
mix you can go ahead and bypass this to
| | 07:44 | hear without the base management
just the full straight up 5.1 mix.
| | 07:49 | If you are mixing with DVD or home
systems in mind, this gives you a way to hear
| | 07:53 | what your end audience is hearing.
| | 07:55 | Now remember before you do your final
print mastering you want to take this
| | 07:59 | plug-in off, because this is
only for monitoring purposes.
| | 08:03 | You don't want to process
your final mix through this.
| | 08:06 | What else can this 360 manager do?
| | 08:08 | It can do some other cool things
to help you monitor and surround.
| | 08:12 | As you probably know some control rooms
and the architecture of some rooms make
| | 08:16 | it so that you can't have the
perfect setup of all your speakers.
| | 08:20 | So in the case of like if your center
speaker had to be a little closer than you
| | 08:24 | wanted it or a little farther away,
you actually can delay in terms of
| | 08:28 | milliseconds so to get the time
aligning of your speakers properly.
| | 08:32 | You can compensate for that in the 360
Manager. Like if your left surround and
| | 08:36 | right surround aren't at the optimum
angle of +110 and -110 degrees you can
| | 08:40 | actually compensate for that to
how they actually are in your room.
| | 08:44 | So this is a very useful tool.
| | 08:46 | If you're serious about calibrating your
surround monitors, you're going to want
| | 08:50 | to use this kind of software
to get the best calibration.
| | 08:53 | But most importantly, with this base
management this tool allows you to hear
| | 08:57 | the low frequencies as your target
audiences will, which is incredibly
| | 09:00 | important as you're mixing.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Mixing and spatial techniques for 5.1 surround | 00:00 | Once you get all of your surround
routing and calibration taken care of, it's
| | 00:03 | time to put all this hard work
towards creating a captivating surround mix.
| | 00:07 | In this movie, we will talk about how
to approach to panning on your tracks out
| | 00:10 | of the surround speakers with some examples.
| | 00:13 | To open a surround panner, click on the
small fader icon next to the Output Selector.
| | 00:18 | Here is a mono source track
panning into surround surround panner.
| | 00:23 | Notice that Pro Tools defaults to have
the panner pan to the center speaker.
| | 00:27 | The center speaker for
surround mixing is really important.
| | 00:30 | You can ground your mix and make all
dialogue or any sound come from the
| | 00:34 | center of the screen.
| | 00:35 | You could even argue that in 5.1 mixing,
the addition of the center speaker is
| | 00:39 | even more useful than the
surround left and right channels.
| | 00:43 | One drawback to stereo style mixing
for film or video mixes are that the
| | 00:47 | sounds you want to put in the center of the mix
have to arrive there through a phantom center.
| | 00:52 | In a home stereo system, if you sit
between your left and right speakers,
| | 00:55 | the central components of the mix seem
as though they come from the middle.
| | 00:59 | You can try it with music and you will
notice that the lead vocals sound like
| | 01:02 | they come from between the speakers.
| | 01:04 | This is actually a phantom center since
there is no center speaker in that scenario.
| | 01:08 | The sound is coming from the left and
right speakers equally and it sounds
| | 01:12 | like it's in the middle.
| | 01:14 | In a theater, sound emanating from a
left and a right speaker would strike
| | 01:17 | different audience members differently.
| | 01:19 | In other words, there is no guarantee
that all audience members are in the
| | 01:22 | sweet spot of the theater and
they're not going to get the benefits of a
| | 01:25 | phantom center necessarily.
| | 01:27 | So the center channel avoids all of
that problem by anchoring the important
| | 01:30 | dialogue or effects to the center of
the screen and it's really effective.
| | 01:34 | That's why in this session, we chose to
bus all of our dialogue tracks strictly
| | 01:38 | to just the center channel of our surround mix.
| | 01:42 | So what about when we do want to pan
things to the surrounds like sound effects?
| | 01:46 | Remember, we bussed all of our sound effects
here through the bus to the full 5.1 bus path.
| | 01:52 | So I am going to again open the
surround panner for a mono track.
| | 01:56 | Pro Tools panner allows us to pan the sound
via this dot in the interface to any speaker.
| | 02:02 | We can go to the left, center, right,
left surround or right surround or
| | 02:07 | anywhere in between where
we combine the speakers.
| | 02:10 | If I was to pan this sound directly hard
panned all the way to the left surround speaker,
| | 02:14 | remember that some audience
members might not experience it the same way.
| | 02:18 | Like if there was an audience member
in the right-front of the theater, they
| | 02:22 | might not hear this the same way as
someone in the rear-left of the theater.
| | 02:25 | So to counteract this kind of
negative effect that might happen, we have a
| | 02:29 | control called Divergence.
| | 02:31 | Divergence actually spreads the
sound if you're hard panning in this case
| | 02:35 | two adjacent speakers.
| | 02:37 | So in this case, if I was to take the
rear Divergence at a value of 100, where
| | 02:41 | it defaults to, it means that the sound is
discretely going out the left surround speaker.
| | 02:47 | Now, if I wanted to spread this over to
the adjacent speakers, I would turn this
| | 02:51 | Divergence down to a lower value.
| | 02:53 | Let me demonstrate this with the center speaker.
| | 02:57 | For example if I had this pan right
directly in the center speaker here in the
| | 03:01 | front and I hit Play, let me show the
master fader here, and I am going to make
| | 03:06 | it nice and large so we can see what's going on.
| | 03:09 | Now watch these meters.
| | 03:10 | When I hit Play on this track--let me go
find some audio for this track here and
| | 03:18 | loop some of this Fireplace sound.
| | 03:20 | Now, if I hit Play, I am hard-panned to
the center speaker on our surround panner.
| | 03:26 | Notice that the sound is only going to
Channel 2 which is our surround center channel.
| | 03:33 | Now as I decrease the
Divergence, watch what happens.
| | 03:36 | The sound will get spread
to the 1 and 3 channels.
| | 03:45 | See, now I've got a divergence of all
the way to 0 and it's pretty evenly spread
| | 03:49 | across our left, center, and right speakers.
| | 03:51 | An interesting thing here in Pro
Tools is that the graphics are kind
| | 03:57 | of counterintuitive.
| | 03:58 | You would think that when the
triangle is pointing towards the center
| | 04:01 | speaker, it would be coming
discretely through that speaker and as I move
| | 04:04 | more towards 100, it looks like it spreads out.
But it's actually the opposite of what you think.
| | 04:09 | So don't let that mess you up as
you're using your Divergence settings.
| | 04:16 | Other controls we have here on the
surround panner are the LFE fader.
| | 04:20 | So if I wanted to, for example, send
a bit of this sound through the 0.1
| | 04:24 | channel, the LFE channel, which is in
this case coming up on channel 6 of our meter,
| | 04:28 | I could increase that fader and watch.
| | 04:30 | You'll see that a little bit of the sound
is going into that last channel in our meter.
| | 04:38 | Another control we have here is the central %.
| | 04:41 | So this actually lets us decrease the
volume of the center channel as we mix.
| | 04:45 | So if I had this divergence for the
front, going to all three speakers here,
| | 04:50 | I could actually decrease the center
channel and notice how the speaker is kind
| | 04:54 | of fading out a little bit there.
| | 04:56 | I'd say that that control, however, is
used more in music surround mixing than
| | 05:01 | it is film because remember, as we
talked about, the center channel is really an
| | 05:04 | important part of mixing for film and video.
| | 05:08 | So how do we decide where to pan our sounds?
| | 05:10 | There are so many theories and
styles and choices that you can develop on
| | 05:14 | your own as you mix.
| | 05:15 | Some mixers are really conservative and they
only use the surrounds for special moments.
| | 05:20 | Others create a whole sense of
space with them throughout a film.
| | 05:23 | It really depends on the type of film
and how you wish to engage your audience.
| | 05:26 | For this motorcycle race, one place
we can start is with the ambiences.
| | 05:30 | So I want to kind of make the
audience feel kind of immersed in this space.
| | 05:34 | Let me just take a listen to this ambience
track. I will just solo it up here for a second.
| | 05:40 | (Background noise)
| | 05:41 | Remember it's kind of an
outdoor sound that's going on.
| | 05:44 | So one place we can start is by making
the audience feel like they're immersed
| | 05:47 | in this outdoor space during the race.
| | 05:50 | So let's open the surround
panner for a stereo track.
| | 05:52 | Click on the little fader.
| | 05:54 | So here's our surround
panner for a stereo source track.
| | 05:57 | It's similar to the one you'd find on
a mono track except you have separate
| | 06:00 | controls for the left side of the
source and the right side of the source file.
| | 06:04 | Now, by default, the panners
for the left and the right are
| | 06:07 | completely independent.
| | 06:08 | So I can move this panner around to
the left side of the file anywhere I want
| | 06:12 | and the right panner I can
move anywhere I want as well.
| | 06:16 | So if I put them both all the way over
to the left, I can actually link them
| | 06:20 | as well. I go up to the top here and I click
the Link button, this is called Absolute Link.
| | 06:25 | So here, the left and the right
side are linked together in an absolute
| | 06:29 | fashion anywhere I go.
| | 06:32 | You can also invert this link.
| | 06:33 | So if I put it back to hard left and
hard right and I click the Link button and
| | 06:38 | I click Front Inverse, so just the
front side will have an inverse relationship.
| | 06:46 | And I can do the same with the rear.
| | 06:48 | So if I take these down to the rear
left and the rear right, I can invert them
| | 06:53 | in the rear speakers.
| | 06:54 | So remember, you'd want to do this.
| | 06:58 | If your source file is stereo,
there is going to be an inherent spatial
| | 07:01 | relationship between the left and the right.
| | 07:04 | So even if you're putting a sound
in the left and right surrounds, you
| | 07:06 | might want to maintain that relationship even
when you're panning in the surround speakers.
| | 07:11 | You can also invert the front and rear.
So that would look something like this,
| | 07:17 | front and rear inverse.
| | 07:21 | So just the front and back
are going back and forth.
| | 07:25 | Let's return back to a left
and right relationship here.
| | 07:31 | So for this sound, we have an ambience sound.
| | 07:34 | So how are we going to decide how
to approach panning in surround?
| | 07:39 | One place to start is in this case
with ambience. This is just one idea.
| | 07:43 | we have some ambience during this
motorcycle race and if you listen to this track.
| | 07:46 | Let's just take a listen for a second.
| | 07:50 | (Background noise)
| | 07:51 | So we're hearing this just in
left-right stereo currently.
| | 07:55 | So it might be cool in this race to
have this sound coming from all surround
| | 07:59 | speakers so that when the race is
happening, you feel like you're really
| | 08:03 | immersed in this sonic environment.
| | 08:05 | Now here is one common misconception
that people have with surround panning is
| | 08:09 | they think that to put this sound in
all the speakers at once, you just simply
| | 08:12 | take the panner for a stereo source
file like this and actually place it right
| | 08:18 | in the middle like this.
| | 08:20 | Now this will effectively make the
sound come from all the speakers at once, but
| | 08:25 | it won't actually give you the effect
you think it would. Because the sound
| | 08:29 | coming out of the speakers
will be completely correlated,
| | 08:31 | it will kind of just sound like it's
not coming from any specific location and
| | 08:35 | it won't sound like it's sounding all around.
| | 08:37 | So the way to actually make sound
come from all speakers and sound very
| | 08:41 | spatial like you're in the middle of a
sound is to de-correlate the sound at
| | 08:46 | all the speakers. And there is
actually a nice plug-in from Waves that does
| | 08:50 | this kind of de-correlation.
| | 08:51 | So I want to show you that.
| | 08:53 | So let me go back to having these sounds
actually panned just hard left and hard
| | 08:57 | right and I am going to close
the surround panner for a second.
| | 09:00 | On this track, I am going to open up multichannel
plug-in > Sound Field > S360 Imager (stereo/5.1).
| | 09:09 | So the function of this plug-in is to
actually create the kind of imaging
| | 09:13 | I am referring to, which is a
de-correlated image coming from all the speakers
| | 09:17 | which would really make us feel as
the audience like we're in the middle of
| | 09:21 | this ambience sound.
| | 09:22 | So I will load up, there's a preset
in here under the Waves preset called
| | 09:25 | Stereo to Surround.
| | 09:27 | So that's what it's doing.
| | 09:27 | It's taking a stereo file which we have
as our source file and pumping it out to
| | 09:31 | the surround speakers but de-
correlating it so that it sounds like it's coming
| | 09:35 | from all around. And you can see
it does its little settings here.
| | 09:39 | And if I close this track, now I am
going to go ahead and play a section of this.
| | 09:43 | And let's take a look at it.
| | 09:44 | You can see in the track, it is coming
from all speakers and you can see that
| | 09:49 | the levels are kind of varying and it's
actually has de-correlated the signal.
| | 09:52 | So this would give us a much better feel
like we're immersed in the sound during
| | 09:56 | the race than just panning it to the
center with the Pro Tools surround panner.
| | 10:00 | So what else can we do
with our surround panning?
| | 10:02 | Now here is a couple of other ideas.
| | 10:04 | For the crash section of this sequence
remember we have a very dramatic motorcycle crash.
| | 10:09 | I will play it for a second here.
| | 10:10 | (Crash! Crowd gasps)
| | 10:13 | So let's take a couple of these
sounds and put them in surrounds.
| | 10:17 | One way we can approach this using our
surrounds speakers is to keep the dry
| | 10:21 | sound in the front speakers and use a reverb
send to send the reverb to the rear speaker.
| | 10:25 | So we're keeping the dry sound in the front
speakers and the reverb just in the surrounds.
| | 10:30 | So let's go over here to one of these
tracks. This car crash sound is a good
| | 10:35 | sound we can do that with.
| | 10:36 | So let's take a listen to
this. I will solo up the track.
| | 10:39 | (Crash!)
| | 10:41 | Okay, so we're going to take the unreverb part
of the sound and put it in the front speaker.
| | 10:45 | So let's open up the surround panner
for this track and you can see I've
| | 10:49 | already panned it that way.
| | 10:50 | What I am doing here is I put it in
the center speaker; however, I use a bit
| | 10:54 | of divergence on the front divergence
to spread it to all three left center
| | 10:59 | and right speakers.
| | 11:00 | If I scroll down to our master meters
here, I will play the sound once more and
| | 11:05 | we'll see that the sound is
coming from the front three speakers.
| | 11:07 | (Crash!)
| | 11:10 | Okay, so now like I said I want to
send the reverb of this sound to the surround.
| | 11:16 | So the reverb only is going to be going to
the left surround and the right surround.
| | 11:19 | So to do this, let me close this panner
and I am going to go the Mix window and
| | 11:23 | here as you see on this track
I have a surround send setup.
| | 11:28 | So let me open the Send panner for
the surround and here I have kind of the
| | 11:33 | opposite of that. For the send,
| | 11:34 | I have got a pan to the back of the
panner and I've got the divergence spread
| | 11:38 | for the rear divergence.
| | 11:40 | So this sound for just the send should
be spreading equally between the left and
| | 11:44 | the right surround speakers.
| | 11:46 | So I've got that Surround Send already set up.
| | 11:48 | Let me go back to the Edit window
and the last thing I need to do is just
| | 11:52 | actually automate the send
to occur during the car crash.
| | 11:55 | Go into my automation
playlist, under send, and
| | 11:58 | choose send level and here I just want
to use the Trimmer tool to turn up the
| | 12:04 | send level during that section.
| | 12:06 | So actually I'll use my Grabber tool to
just dry out in the automation move and
| | 12:11 | remember I want it to go a little
longer than the actual sound because it's a
| | 12:14 | reverb tail and we want it
to tail off a little bit.
| | 12:17 | So we'll do something like that.
| | 12:19 | So now let's take a listen to this
track and as we do this, we'll scroll down
| | 12:22 | and we'll look at the master meters so
that we can see that the dry sound will
| | 12:26 | be going across the front three and the
wet or reverb sound should be appearing
| | 12:31 | in the surround channels.
| | 12:32 | Let's take a listen.
| | 12:33 | (Crash!)
| | 12:35 | There they are. You can see
there is a long tail in that reverb.
| | 12:39 | So it's pumping out a little
bit after the sound of the crash.
| | 12:42 | So that would be a great way to
dramatize this crash a little more by pumping
| | 12:45 | some reverb just in the surrounds, just
to make the audience feel it emotionally.
| | 12:50 | So one other thing we can do with our
5.1 mixing is also during the crash scene,
| | 12:55 | we could use the LFE, the low frequency,
to really emphasize the low rumble and
| | 12:59 | impact of that crash.
| | 13:01 | So we're going to do that on another
track here and we have this sound effect
| | 13:06 | called Boxcar Crash. And if we listen
to this, solo it up, we hear that it has
| | 13:10 | some nice low end in there.
| | 13:10 | (Crash!)
| | 13:11 | Okay, so we're going to use the LFE.
| | 13:15 | So I am going to open up the
surround panner again and here I am going to
| | 13:19 | automate the LFE level to
turn up just during the section.
| | 13:23 | So I am going to go over to my
playlists here and turn on the LFE playlist and
| | 13:28 | again I am just going to use the
Trimmer tool and automate that out just for
| | 13:32 | that section so I'm pumping
it out pretty loud there.
| | 13:35 | Now, again, let's go down to our master
meters here and you should see the very
| | 13:40 | last channel on this meter is our LFE channel.
| | 13:42 | So you should see on the sound I have it
using the divergence going through LCR,
| | 13:46 | left, center, right, and we
should see it pumping through the LFE.
| | 13:49 | Let's take a listen.
| | 13:50 | (Crash!) So there it is.
| | 13:53 | it's coming in all of those channels now.
| | 13:56 | So these are just a few ideas to
get you going with surround mixing.
| | 13:59 | Ultimately, it's really up to your
personal taste and the narrative content in
| | 14:03 | the film that you should consult to
make decisions about how you're going to
| | 14:06 | approach your own surround panning.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Downmixing, encoding, and using Neyrinck plug-ins| 00:00 | Your surround mixes might sound great
in your 5.1 equipped studio, but with all
| | 00:04 | the flexibility of Pro Tools, you might
need to work on them when a six channel
| | 00:08 | speaker setup just isn't possible.
| | 00:10 | Downmixing is the concept of folding
down your 5.1 mixes into less channels.
| | 00:15 | In this movie we'll explore how to take
a 6-channel surround mix and downmix
| | 00:19 | it to monitor and stereo using the
Neyrinck surround tool that come with a
| | 00:23 | complete production toolkit.
| | 00:24 | The mix of this project has a few
surround mix moves going on in it.
| | 00:29 | If you wanted to listen in two channel
stereo like we are now, we would miss some
| | 00:32 | of the surround mix moves that are happening.
| | 00:34 | For example, in this crash scene
we've got one of the crash sounds we've
| | 00:39 | enhanced with surround reverb.
| | 00:41 | Right now we are just listening to
stereo and if I play it back, we miss it.
| | 00:45 | Let me solo the track and let's hear it.
| | 00:47 | (Crash!)
| | 00:50 | So all we hear is just the left/right
component, but I'm not hearing any
| | 00:53 | reverb and surround.
| | 00:54 | Of course~ Because we don't have
surround speakers set up and we're just
| | 00:57 | listening to it and left/right stereo,
but with downmixing we can fold our 5.1
| | 01:03 | mix into the stereo mix.
| | 01:05 | So we can hear everything even over just
our left and right speakers or headphones.
| | 01:10 | So here's how you downmix.
| | 01:12 | On the master fader we're
going to insert a plug-in.
| | 01:14 | It's under of the Sound field tab and
it's called the Sound Code Stereo and
| | 01:21 | this pops open the tool.
| | 01:22 | It's a pretty simple tool here.
| | 01:23 | Again, it's doing the downmix algorithm inside.
| | 01:28 | Basically, you have some controls over
your Left, Right, your Center, your Left
| | 01:32 | Surround, and Right Surround, and your LFE.
| | 01:34 | There are a couple of defaults
in here that you can bring up.
| | 01:37 | The Dolby Digital Default, and that's
just going to encode like Dolby Digital
| | 01:42 | would as if it was downmixing to surround.
| | 01:45 | But again this is not encoding. This
is just making it so that we can monitor
| | 01:48 | through our stereo headphones.
| | 01:50 | So you can set these however it
seems appropriate for your setup.
| | 01:54 | You wanted to hear the
LFE you can bring that in.
| | 01:57 | You could make the Center and
Left Surround channels even.
| | 02:00 | We will leave it as this for
now and let's take a listen.
| | 02:02 | So now if I play this back, we
should be able to hear that reverb that we
| | 02:07 | weren't hearing before, because
it's in the surround speakers.
| | 02:09 | So that's being downmixed.
| | 02:11 | So in that track we hear
just that effect and here we go.
| | 02:14 | (Crash!)
| | 02:19 | So you heard the reverb and that was
only in the surround channels, but because
| | 02:23 | we're downmixing the downmixer
did its job and we're hearing it.
| | 02:26 | There is also a number of ways to
deliver a multi-channel mix like a 5.1 mix as
| | 02:31 | a stereo pair, for broadcast or DVD creation.
| | 02:34 | This is called encoding
the mix from 5.1 to stereo.
| | 02:38 | Then the mix can be decoded on a broadcast end.
| | 02:41 | This Neyrinck tool doesn't do encoding
and decoding, but they do make one that does.
| | 02:45 | It's called the Stereo Tool
LtRt and here's the slide of it.
| | 02:50 | And it looks very similar, but this
tool actually does the encoding as a real
| | 02:53 | time or AudioSuite plug-in.
| | 02:55 | We can encode a 5.1 mix
using Dolby 2 technology.
| | 02:59 | Dolby 2 is a way of encoding a
6- channel surround mix into stereo.
| | 03:03 | So it can be later re-up converted
back to six channels on the broadcast end.
| | 03:07 | Also, on the ultra high-end some
broadcasters and theatrical film houses require
| | 03:12 | audio to be encoded as Dolby E. Neyrinck
also sells and rents this service is as
| | 03:17 | a plug-in for Pro Tools.
| | 03:19 | So down mixing is another one of those
technical considerations that exists kind
| | 03:22 | of outside your creative choices for a mix.
| | 03:25 | But that said, any good engineer
mixing in surround has to be aware of these
| | 03:29 | concepts and delivery specifications.
| | 03:31 | Otherwise, all those creative efforts
that you worked on to make your slamming
| | 03:35 | surround mix happen
won't be heard by the masses.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Automating techniques for 5.1 surround mixes| 00:00 | The first thing everybody wants to do
when they mix in surround is to fly sounds
| | 00:03 | around the room wildly.
| | 00:05 | Once you realize that this
accomplishes nothing more than making the
| | 00:08 | audience sick, you will notice that
some movement for key sounds across the
| | 00:11 | surround speakers is useful.
| | 00:13 | In this movie will talk about how to use
glide automation to automate a sound in
| | 00:17 | the surround channels.
| | 00:18 | Let's take a listen to this clip here.
| | 00:20 | You've got a motorcycle quickly
rushing from the right of the screen to the
| | 00:23 | left of the screen.
| | 00:24 | (Zooommmm)
| | 00:28 | So we're going to want to
actually automate this in surround
| | 00:31 | so it starts from kind of behind
us to the right and moves across the
| | 00:34 | screen to the front-left.
| | 00:35 | Here we're going to use glide automation
to actually automate without the use of
| | 00:40 | a control-panning joystick.
| | 00:41 | Now if you have a surround-panning joystick,
automating this move would be pretty easy.
| | 00:45 | You can go into Touch mode here and you
could watch this scene and move it from
| | 00:50 | the rear right to the left really quickly.
| | 00:52 | But this is a really fast move.
| | 00:53 | So it might be hard to get it right.
| | 00:55 | Here we're going to use glide
automation to accomplish this task.
| | 00:58 | So remember when you're automating
something in surround you're controlling
| | 01:01 | more than one axis.
| | 01:02 | It's not just moving a left to right panner.
| | 01:05 | You're actually controlling front axis,
a rear axis, and a front/rear axis.
| | 01:10 | For a stereo source track, you have that
on both the right side and the left side.
| | 01:14 | There are actually six controls that
are at play when you're trying to make
| | 01:18 | an automation move.
| | 01:19 | So drawing them in with a mouse
isn't really practical either.
| | 01:22 | This is where glide automation is useful.
| | 01:24 | So let's get into it.
| | 01:25 | Here I would make first a
selection around this section.
| | 01:29 | Then I'm going to automate.
| | 01:31 | This allows us to make some default
values so that anything down the line at
| | 01:35 | the next region over here, anything before,
won't be affected by this move we're about to make.
| | 01:40 | So I've made the selection around the region.
| | 01:42 | I'm going to go up to Edit.
| | 01:43 | I am going to say
Automation > Write to All Enabled.
| | 01:49 | So because the Pan automation is the
only enabled parameter, Pro Tools just
| | 01:53 | wrote some breakpoints for all six
parameters before and after the region.
| | 01:58 | Let's take a look at one of those.
| | 01:59 | Let's just go to pan left, the
front position and you'll see we have some
| | 02:03 | breakpoints in there at
either edge of our selection.
| | 02:06 | So, again this just makes it so that it
will return to its default value after
| | 02:10 | we're done working here.
| | 02:11 | So next we want to get our in-points.
So that's where we want to this pan move
| | 02:16 | to start and I'm going to start at
right before the sound starts, right here.
| | 02:19 | So I'll just click into the track right
where you want it to start and I'm going
| | 02:23 | to move the automation
parameter to the rear-right.
| | 02:27 | That's where this sound is going to
start. And I'm going to go back to Edit and
| | 02:30 | say Automation > Write to All Enabled once again.
| | 02:34 | So it's going to put a breakpoint
in there to lock this position in.
| | 02:37 | Next thing I'm going to do is step
through this scene one frame at a time with
| | 02:41 | the plus key on my numeric keypad.
| | 02:43 | You can see the motorcycle going by
and right about here at the end once it's
| | 02:48 | past the screen is where we
would want the end of the move to be.
| | 02:52 | So I've got our selector in
there right at where it needs to be.
| | 02:55 | Now I just need to move the panning
parameter over to the front-left which is
| | 02:59 | where we want to end up and at this
point I'm going to go back to the Edit
| | 03:02 | window > Automation instead of saying
Write to All Enabled, this time I'm going to
| | 03:06 | say Glide to All Enabled.
| | 03:08 | So that'll glide a straight line
from our original point to this point.
| | 03:12 | So we have done that.
| | 03:14 | Now let's actually take a look.
| | 03:15 | I have all six of our automation lanes
actually hidden as automation playlists
| | 03:20 | underneath this track.
| | 03:21 | We can see that all these front rear,
front rear for the left, and front
| | 03:27 | rear and front rear for the right
have all been moved via this glide
| | 03:31 | automation altogether.
| | 03:32 | So it saved us a lot of steps.
| | 03:34 | You can see it glided from our
original point to our end point.
| | 03:37 | Let's take a listen to
hear what this sounds like.
| | 03:39 | (Zoooommm)
| | 03:42 | As we listened, you could see that
panner starting from the right and going
| | 03:45 | to the left and you would hear it in surround
going from the rear-right to the front-left.
| | 03:48 | (Zoooommm)
| | 03:51 | So glide automation is a good way to
carefully control your surround pan moves.
| | 03:56 | You can use these tips to create
complex surround mix moves even without a
| | 03:59 | surround mixing panner.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
9. Preparing for Final DeliveryPrint mastering and stem mixes| 00:00 | In this movie, we are going to go
over how you can set up your final print
| | 00:03 | mastering session so you can record
or print your mix and separate your
| | 00:07 | dialogue, effects, and
music stems all in one pass.
| | 00:10 | So let's say we are done with the
surround mix. We are getting ready to
| | 00:13 | finalize and print our work.
| | 00:15 | In addition to the full 6-channel 5.1
mix we also want to separate out the mix
| | 00:19 | elements into various
printed stems for delivery.
| | 00:22 | This gives us a lot of options later
for any further edits, any rights issues
| | 00:26 | that might come up with music,
and broadcast specifications.
| | 00:30 | So to be as flexible as possible we
are going to want to deliver dialogue,
| | 00:34 | effects, and music print stems
as well as the full surround mix.
| | 00:38 | If your project is long, doing all
these mixes can take hours or even days.
| | 00:42 | But I am going to show you a way to
route your session so you can output more
| | 00:45 | than one stem and your full mix all in one pass.
| | 00:49 | So first we need to make some record tracks.
| | 00:51 | So down at the bottom of my session I am
going to select the last track and I am
| | 00:55 | going to make them at the end
here and make 4 audio tracks.
| | 00:58 | Shift+Command+N or Ctrl+Shift+N. 4 audio
tracks and these are going to be full 5.1 tracks.
| | 01:05 | These are going to be
where we print our mixes to.
| | 01:08 | And the first track we
are going to name Mix Print.
| | 01:13 | That's going to be our fully
combined mix of all the elements.
| | 01:16 | I am going to hit Command or Ctrl for PC,
right arrow to go to the next, and this
| | 01:21 | is going to be called DX Print.
| | 01:23 | This is where just a
dialogue stem will be printed to.
| | 01:26 | Command or Ctrl+Right-arrow, FX Print, Command
or Ctrl+Right-arrow, MX Print, and we are done.
| | 01:33 | So we've named our 4 print stems.
| | 01:36 | So now we just need to route to these stems.
| | 01:39 | I am going to start with just taking
our dialogue bus and in its output we are
| | 01:44 | going to use this feature to route to
our dialogue DX Print track and we are
| | 01:48 | going to do same with effects except
we are going to take this one to our FX
| | 01:52 | Print track, and the MX Bus we are
going to send to our Music Print track.
| | 01:57 | So there we've set up our tracks to go
to their respective print master tracks
| | 02:01 | for recording our print masters.
| | 02:03 | But we also need to do one more and
that's to combine all the tracks to
| | 02:07 | simultaneously go to the Mix Print track.
| | 02:09 | So to do this, we are going to
use something called Multiple Output Destinations.
| | 02:13 | Multiple Output Destinations lets you
assign output of a track to two places at once.
| | 02:19 | So in addition to going to their
respective print tracks, each of these dialogue
| | 02:23 | effects and music tracks are also
going to be simultaneously going to the Mix
| | 02:27 | Print track and combine there.
| | 02:28 | So to make multiple output destinations,
you hold Ctrl or the Windows key as you
| | 02:33 | go into your output selector of your track.
| | 02:35 | So I am holding Ctrl, I'm going
into my output selector of the dialogue
| | 02:38 | bus and I'm going to go into track
and assign this also to the Mix Print track.
| | 02:43 | Now, you see a plus sign
appeared in the output Sselector.
| | 02:46 | I am going to make this track
medium so we can see what's happening.
| | 02:49 | Actually, I'll make all the buses medium.
| | 02:51 | So when you see a plus sign, that means
that this track is indeed outputting to
| | 02:55 | multiple output destinations.
| | 02:57 | So if I click in here and I go under
the buses that it's assigned to, I can see
| | 03:01 | that Dialogue Print and
Mix Print are both checked.
| | 03:04 | That's what we want.
| | 03:04 | So we wanted the same thing with the FX
Bus. So holding Ctrl or Windows key, go
| | 03:09 | in here and assign it also to the Mix
Print, and we're going to do the same for
| | 03:13 | the music bus. Hold Ctrl and go down and
assign it to the Mix Print as well. So all three,
| | 03:20 | dialogue bus, effects bus, and music
bus are going to both their respective
| | 03:26 | stems to print and the
final full mix to print as well.
| | 03:31 | So now the next thing we want to do
when we're listening back to this as we are
| | 03:35 | printing, we don't want to
hear all of these at one time.
| | 03:38 | It's going to be very loud and it
won't be accurate representation of what
| | 03:42 | we are actually doing.
| | 03:43 | So we actually want to send the
dialogue, effects, and music stem just to a
| | 03:46 | dummy output, and we want to listen to
the full mix as we print, just a quality
| | 03:51 | check as we are printing.
| | 03:52 | So let's go up to Setup > I/O and we are
just going to go ahead and under the Bus
| | 03:57 | window we are going to make a new path,
and this will be a 5.1 path, and we will
| | 04:02 | just call this Dummy.
| | 04:05 | It's going to be our dummy output.
| | 04:06 | It's really just going nowhere.
| | 04:08 | But it gives us a place to send our
dialogue, effects, and music print.
| | 04:13 | I am going to hold Shift to select all
those and Option or Alt+Shift and I'm
| | 04:17 | just going to send those to that dummy
track I just created, so we won't have to
| | 04:22 | hear those as we print.
| | 04:23 | Now, we are going to want to record
enable all 4 of these tracks when we're
| | 04:26 | getting ready to print.
| | 04:28 | One more thing that we should do before
we do our final print is just go back to
| | 04:31 | your Mix window and we want to make
sure just double and triple check that all
| | 04:36 | of your tracks are bussed to the correct stem.
| | 04:39 | So this is what we want to see, that all
the dialogue buses are outputted through
| | 04:43 | the dialogue bus, all the effects
tracks are assigned through the effects bus.
| | 04:49 | If you had one of these off or in the
wrong place, then it's going to really mess
| | 04:53 | up our stems because we'll get say for
example a music track and our dialogue
| | 04:57 | stem and we don't want that.
| | 04:58 | So just a word of warning, you should
double and triple check your routing
| | 05:01 | before you do your final print master.
| | 05:03 | So everything is ready to go.
| | 05:05 | Now, we just want to roll to before the show
starts, say at the 2pop, and start recording.
| | 05:10 | So hit 3 on my numeric keypad and
we start rolling and there we are.
| | 05:15 | So zoom in a little bit, and you can
see that all four tracks are printing at
| | 05:19 | one time, and we are hearing just our
final 5.1 mix where the other ones are
| | 05:24 | going to a dummy output, and again when
you're done with this print master you
| | 05:28 | are going to want to check your files
and make sure that everything is there
| | 05:32 | and send them off to the final delivery.
| | 05:34 | So the print mastering
stage is a good place to be.
| | 05:36 | It means your creative work is
done but it isn't time to tune out.
| | 05:40 | The moves you make here in
this stage have high consequences.
| | 05:42 | So make sure you pay attention and
make sure you listen to all your stems
| | 05:46 | before sending them off.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Mastering delivery levels and dynamics| 00:00 | Let's talk a little bit about final
delivery levels and how limiting plays into that.
| | 00:04 | In audio for video work, it's common
for final bus compression and limiting to
| | 00:08 | occur right in your final print master session.
| | 00:10 | In this video, we'll discuss some
options for preparing your mixes in terms of
| | 00:13 | dynamics and levels before you
send them out into the world.
| | 00:16 | By the time you are print mastering,
you should have some idea of what market
| | 00:20 | you're listening for as you mix.
| | 00:21 | Remember, you should have
calibrated differently for theatrical film mix
| | 00:24 | versus a TV or broadcast mix.
| | 00:27 | That said your final mixes can usually
benefit from some bus compression and
| | 00:30 | limiting before you do the final print master.
| | 00:32 | One way to accomplish this is to put
in aux track with the finishing limiter
| | 00:36 | inserted on it between your stems and your
final mix print track, such as I've done here.
| | 00:41 | I've got my a dialogue bus, my
effects bus and my music bus all using
| | 00:45 | multiple output destinations to go
to their respective stems, print master
| | 00:50 | stems, and the final mix stem.
| | 00:53 | Now before it gets the final mix
stem, where it's all combined, I've
| | 00:56 | additionally sent them through a MIX sub
bus track and that track has a limiter on it.
| | 01:02 | It has the L360 surround limiter.
| | 01:05 | So what limiting setting do we use?
| | 01:07 | There are no tried and true settings here,
but in general you can view limiting this way.
| | 01:11 | Internet and commercial broadcast work
can have the most limiting as you want
| | 01:15 | the message to pop and a large
dynamic range isn't as crucial.
| | 01:18 | So here is an example setting for that.
| | 01:20 | I've got a pretty low threshold.
| | 01:22 | So I am going to be compressing it quite a
bit and the out ceiling is up there a bit.
| | 01:26 | So it's going to be a lot
louder with this limiting on.
| | 01:29 | But again, dynamic range isn't as crucial
here, so this will just make it loud and proud.
| | 01:34 | Television, DVD, and other broadcast
mixes can benefit from some moderate
| | 01:38 | limiting and often there's a cap on
the final output, like say at -10 or -6.
| | 01:44 | A limiter can really help you realize this goal.
| | 01:46 | You'll need to check the delivery
requirements of where you're sending your work
| | 01:50 | to verify if there's a cap like this.
| | 01:52 | But I have a setting in here
that would work for say a -10 cap.
| | 01:55 | So I am going to load that up and
you'll see what that looks like.
| | 01:58 | This would be set for a broadcast
delivery spec that has a -10 cap.
| | 02:02 | So I have got that on the out ceiling,
and then I've got another additional
| | 02:06 | almost about 3 dB below
that of limiting going on.
| | 02:10 | So there is some limiting and there's
-10 out ceiling cap on this limiter to
| | 02:15 | help you realize the
broadcast delivery spec like that.
| | 02:18 | Finally, theatrical film mixing can
have the least amount of limiting and
| | 02:22 | therefore, you can have the most
dynamic range and the highest headroom.
| | 02:25 | Here is an example of
limiter setting for a film mix.
| | 02:29 | You can see here a threshold is a lot
less and the out ceiling is a lot higher.
| | 02:34 | So I am allowing for more headroom
for this type of mix with this limiter.
| | 02:37 | Remember, when you are limiting, you
can't rely too much on these limiters.
| | 02:40 | Your mix should translate to these
dynamic levels by itself and this limiter
| | 02:44 | should just be helping you realize your
ultimate goals with how you mixed it to begin with.
| | 02:49 | Another way to approach using limiters is to
actually put a separate limiter on each mix bus.
| | 02:55 | So your dialogue bus would have its own
limiter, your effects bus would have its
| | 02:58 | own, and your music bus would have its own.
| | 02:59 | So I am doing to deactivate
the mix sub bus to show this.
| | 03:03 | So I am going to hold Ctrl+Windows
button and Command+Control and click on the
| | 03:08 | plug-in to deactivate it.
| | 03:09 | That's a quick key
combination to deactivate any plug-in.
| | 03:12 | And I am going to reactivate
the ones I've made on each bus.
| | 03:16 | Control+Command+click, Control+
Command+click, Control+Command+click.
| | 03:20 | So in this case, I've got a
separate limiter on the dialogue bus.
| | 03:22 | For example, here I am just
compressing the center channel a little more and
| | 03:27 | I've got a separate one on the effects
bus where I am compressing the surround
| | 03:31 | outputs a little bit just to tuck
those in and I've got a separate one on the
| | 03:35 | music bus which isn't limiting very
much at all because some of the music, say,
| | 03:38 | for example, is already mastered.
| | 03:40 | So I don't want to limit that too much
since it's already been limited pretty
| | 03:43 | heavily by its own mastering.
| | 03:45 | So using limiters on each respective
bus is a great way to control specifically
| | 03:50 | what goes on, on those kind of buses.
| | 03:52 | But it does still have its own set of drawbacks.
| | 03:54 | One of the drawbacks is that you
aren't really controlling the whole combined mix.
| | 03:57 | So be careful what limiting
settings on one stem does to the other stems.
| | 04:02 | The only way to really understand how
your mixes will translate is to get them
| | 04:06 | out there into the world.
| | 04:07 | You should listen to as much material as
possible and compare your own mixes to them.
| | 04:12 | All this calibration, limiting, and
pointers we've gone over should only come
| | 04:15 | second to your own ears and your own experience.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
10. Backing Up and ArchivingBacking up your final project| 00:00 | When we work with digital media,
there are few constants we must consider.
| | 00:04 | Number one, hard drives fail. Number two,
a project is never finished even when
| | 00:08 | you think it's done.
| | 00:09 | In this movie, we'll work through a few
simple ideas about how to back up your
| | 00:12 | Pro Tools sessions as you work as well as how
to archive your project after its completion.
| | 00:17 | The best way to back up a Pro Tools
session is to copy the session folder
| | 00:20 | to another hard drive.
| | 00:21 | This can be managed by software which
keeps track of any changes and syncs these
| | 00:25 | changes in a future backup.
| | 00:27 | There are a number of low-cost
softwares that do this such as SuperDuper
| | 00:30 | on the Mac platform or for Windows you
have Backup and Restore as part of the
| | 00:34 | Windows platform or Norton 360.
| | 00:37 | As you can see here SuperDuper
is really useful for doing incremental backups.
| | 00:41 | But you can also back up manually.
| | 00:43 | The first time you back up your session,
you want to copy the session folder
| | 00:46 | to another hard drive.
| | 00:47 | So here in my Exercise Files in 10_01
I've copied this whole session file over
| | 00:53 | to another disk under _BACKUPS.
| | 00:56 | So I did that yesterday when I was done
working and here's my session from yesterday.
| | 01:02 | Now today, as you can see I did some
changes and I added some audio files and
| | 01:08 | I've already done a Save As and I've
named it 10_01.2. So that's the second
| | 01:12 | version of this session.
| | 01:14 | But remember, I also
have added some audio files.
| | 01:17 | So to make my today's session backed
up into that backup location I would
| | 01:22 | open up _BACKUPS folder on the right, and
I've got my original session here on the left.
| | 01:30 | What I want to do here is just go
into that session and I am going to take
| | 01:36 | a couple of things.
| | 01:37 | I am going to take my new session
file and just drag that in there.
| | 01:41 | That's really small.
| | 01:43 | I am not sure which of these audio
files are new, but the Mac Finder will
| | 01:46 | help us decide this.
| | 01:47 | So if I select all of them and go
ahead and drag them all to the Audio Files
| | 01:50 | folder and drop them in there,
it will give me this dialog box.
| | 01:54 | It will say, Do you want to replace any
old files with the ones you're moving?
| | 01:57 | And we're going to say Apply
to all and say Don't Replace.
| | 01:59 | So we are only going to be
adding any new ones we've added.
| | 02:02 | It brings in the three new
files and then we're done.
| | 02:05 | So we've backed up our newest session
file and any new audio files and we can be
| | 02:10 | finished with backing up for the day.
| | 02:11 | Now, the other question you'll
ask is what to do with old projects?
| | 02:15 | I always give my clients a copy of the
Pro Tools session for their archives.
| | 02:19 | That said I still like to
archive the old projects myself.
| | 02:22 | So I'll copy the whole session to a
completed projects folder when we are done working.
| | 02:26 | After maybe six months I'll think about
consolidating the projects a little for space.
| | 02:31 | So let's say I wanted to consolidate
this project that we're working on here.
| | 02:35 | It's been six months and it's been
sitting on my backup drive, but I'm thinking
| | 02:39 | I need some room on my drive.
I don't need to keep everything.
| | 02:43 | What can I get rid of effectively to
still have the things I might need later?
| | 02:47 | Number one, fade files.
| | 02:49 | You can get rid of any fade files.
| | 02:51 | You just can grab them and you can
even grab the whole folder and just
| | 02:54 | Command+Delete, toss in the trash.
| | 02:56 | This is pretty non-destructive
because the next time I open this Pro Tools
| | 02:59 | session, Pro Tools can regenerate any fades.
| | 03:02 | There weren't that many in this folder.
| | 03:04 | But on a larger session there could be
megs and megs of just fade files that
| | 03:08 | you can effectively get rid of.
| | 03:09 | Another thing that's usually safe to
get rid of are your video reference files.
| | 03:13 | Believe it or not, they are just
scratch files here. The filmmakers themselves
| | 03:17 | are going to have the actual real
video files which you can always get back
| | 03:21 | for them if you need it.
| | 03:21 | It's usually somewhat safe to get rid
of video files and the other bonus about
| | 03:25 | this is that video files are
usually very big compared to audio files.
| | 03:28 | So they're good thing to get rid of.
| | 03:31 | Next, you can go into the session itself.
| | 03:33 | So here in the session and if I look
in the Regions file list over here, I can
| | 03:38 | select anything that's unused.
| | 03:41 | So here I have a lot of unused files that
are not being used in the current timeline.
| | 03:46 | Now, you have to be really careful that
you opened up the final version of your
| | 03:49 | session and you can select these
unused files and if you're feeling pretty
| | 03:53 | cavalier that you're ready to dump
some stuff here, you can go to Clear.
| | 03:57 | Then you can delete any files
not used in the final version.
| | 04:01 | Again, I qould say this is kind of a
last resort. You definitely don't want to
| | 04:04 | get rid of stuff that you might need later.
| | 04:06 | One other thing you can do is you can
select all the media in your project
| | 04:11 | that's being used, and you want to
actually just do like a Select All and maybe
| | 04:16 | take the all group and drag
across your entire project.
| | 04:19 | So you get all your regions that
are being used in the timeline.
| | 04:21 | Then you can go up to that same pull-
down menu and here you can say Compact.
| | 04:26 | Again, this is a pretty destructive thing.
| | 04:28 | What it does is it looks at all your
different regions and it truncates them.
| | 04:32 | So it cuts off anything
beyond the region boundaries.
| | 04:35 | You can give yourself one second or
three seconds handles on the end of each
| | 04:39 | region, but other than that, it's going
to knock off anything outside the region
| | 04:43 | boundaries that are being used in the timeline.
| | 04:45 | So again, that's kind of
a last resort type thing.
| | 04:48 | If you're really out of
drive space, you can do that.
| | 04:51 | But it is a way that will conserve
some space on your archived projects.
| | 04:55 | So a couple of other things that we
should think about when we're talking about
| | 04:58 | archiving is definitely name your
archives and your sessions meaningfully with
| | 05:02 | the dates, so you know what they are 5
or 10 years down the road and also you
| | 05:06 | want to migrate your archived data to
new hard drives every few years because
| | 05:11 | hard drive failure is no joke.
| | 05:13 | These techniques have saved me a lot of time.
| | 05:14 | So if you do this long enough, you'll
inevitably have to go back into a session
| | 05:18 | you thought you've
finished and pull something out.
| | 05:20 | So be careful about what you get rid of and
remember these days hard drive space is cheap.
| | 05:25 | Your work is worth it!
| | 05:26 | So keep track of what you do
and archive responsibly.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
ConclusionGoodbye| 00:00 | This concludes our course on
working with audio for film and video.
| | 00:03 | I hope that these techniques and
ideas are both inspirational and valuable
| | 00:07 | to you and your work.
| | 00:08 | Moving forward, I encourage you to get your
hands on as much video content as you can,
| | 00:11 | so you can really sink your teeth in and
apply all these new concepts we explored.
| | 00:16 | I wish you all the best of luck.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
