IntroductionWelcome| 00:04 | Hi, I am Scott Hirsch, and welcome
to Mixing a Short Film in Pro Tools.
| | 00:08 | In this course we'll explore a powerful
audio workflow for the audio of your short film,
| | 00:13 | documentary, or other multimedia video project.
| | 00:15 | I will start by showing you how to export
audio from the Avid Video Editing Software,
| | 00:20 | and to get going with a useful film
and video specific template in Pro Tools.
| | 00:25 | I will then show you how to consolidate, edit,
and clean up your dialogue and sync tracks using
| | 00:31 | Pro Tools' powerful
editing tools and crossfades.
| | 00:34 | We'll see how to get rid of unwanted hum
and broadband noise using such tools like
| | 00:38 | the built-in 7-band equalizer
and iZotope's RX 2 plug-in.
| | 00:43 | We will then look at techniques on how to
use Pro Tools Automation and Clip gain to
| | 00:47 | balance and tonally shape your
tracks to get the perfect mix.
| | 00:51 | When we're done, we'll have a
completed mix to re-import back to Avid.
| | 00:55 | Now, let's get started with
Mixing a Short Film in Pro Tools.
| | 01:00 |
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| What you should know before watching this course| 00:00 | Before we begin, I want to point out a few
important bits of information about the workflow
| | 00:04 | and the software requirements for this course.
| | 00:07 | Parts of this course, specifically mentioned
a workflow from Avid to Pro Tools, and back.
| | 00:13 | While this is a widely used workflow, it's only
optional that you're using Avid to benefit from this course.
| | 00:18 | We are working with OMF or AAF files to move the
audio between your video program and your audio program.
| | 00:25 | In addition to Avid, many other video editing
softwares support exporting this kind of file, OMFs or AAFs.
| | 00:33 | When we complete our mix, we are just
simply exporting the audio files back.
| | 00:36 | So, any video editing program
can re-import these as well.
| | 00:40 | We will be using Pro Tools 10 in this course,
and we will be looking at a few features that
| | 00:44 | are specific to Pro Tools 10.
| | 00:47 | But 95%--if not more--of the techniques we cover
in this course are also available in Pro Tools 9.
| | 00:52 | So, the goal of this course is to show you
a possible workflow, but more importantly,
| | 00:57 | to explore how to go about finessing and
enhancing the audio for your film project.
| | 01:02 | I designed a course that uses some very
powerful techniques in Pro Tools, yet from the point
| | 01:07 | of view that you're not a Pro Tools expert or
even necessarily a frequent user of the software.
| | 01:12 | I wanted to concentrate instead more on the
approach and technique of mixing audio for
| | 01:16 | film, rather than all the technical
possibilities of the Pro Tools software.
| | 01:21 | I hope you enjoy it.
| | 01:23 |
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| Using the exercise files| 00:00 | If you're a Premium Member of the lynda.com
online training library, you have access to
| | 00:05 | the exercise files used throughout this title.
| | 00:09 | The exercise files have been compressed
to a zip file called exercise files.
| | 00:14 | Download and uncompress this file, and
you'll see a folder called Exercise Files.
| | 00:19 | In this folder, you'll see all of the
elements we'll work with in this course.
| | 00:23 | The Avid folder contains a To Audio folder,
containing the AAF file to import, and a Video
| | 00:29 | folder with a video reference file to import.
| | 00:32 | There is also a From Audio folder
containing an example of our final mix.
| | 00:38 | You'll also find some other
folders containing other sound elements.
| | 00:42 | I included one master session
folder called Castles_ProTools.
| | 00:48 | In here, there are a bunch of ProTools .ptx
session files that correspond to the beginning
| | 00:53 | and end of all appropriate
chapters for this course.
| | 00:57 | You can double-click these, or open
them from the File menu in Pro Tools.
| | 01:02 | The media for all of these folders is
collectively shared in the Audio Files folder.
| | 01:09 | As long as you copy all of these folders
to your work hard-drive, and don't go moving
| | 01:13 | folders around, all the files will link up.
| | 01:17 | The first time you open a Pro Tools session,
or if something gets moved, Pro Tools might
| | 01:22 | ask you to re-link files.
| | 01:24 | In that case, tell Pro Tools to
automatically find and re-link.
| | 01:30 | And as long as the files are present on your drive,
Pro Tools will find them and bring them online.
| | 01:36 | If you are a monthly or annual subscriber
to lynda.com, and you don't have access to
| | 01:40 | the online training materials, that's okay too.
You can follow along with your own media.
| | 01:46 | Let's get started on mixing
a short film with Pro Tools.
| | 01:51 |
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|
|
1. Getting StartedThe Pro Tools workflow| 00:00 | You might ask the question, why do we want
to take our audio out of the video editing
| | 00:04 | software we are working in like Avid?
It does have audio capabilities.
| | 00:09 | This is a perfectly valid question.
| | 00:10 | In this movie I will outline some key reasons
why you'd want to go to the trouble of exporting
| | 00:15 | your audio tracks to Pro Tools.
| | 00:17 | First, and foremost, Avid is
primarily a video editing program.
| | 00:22 | There are some audio features bundled in
there, but the whole architecture of the program
| | 00:25 | is built around editing video and working
with the visual aspects of your short film.
| | 00:30 | So, if you're willing to make the jump and
follow me through this course, you will be
| | 00:34 | able to take control of your audio, and use
the right tool, which in this case is Pro Tools.
| | 00:39 | It's a very powerful editing and mixing
software that's designed to master one thing, audio.
| | 00:45 | When you're done, you will be able to export the
finalized tracks and flattened mix stems back to Avid.
| | 00:51 | This is a Pro Tools session containing the
end result of this course, our mixed short film.
| | 00:57 | Pro Tools gives you the ability to
objectively listen to each of your source audio files.
| | 01:02 | Here is an example where we have a common
dialogue situation where there's a Lavalier
| | 01:05 | track as well as a camera mic or boom mic.
| | 01:09 | In Pro Tools, we can zoom way into the waveforms
and make better informed decisions about whether
| | 01:14 | we want to use one, or both
of these files in our mix.
| | 01:17 | We can also adjust the clips on a high-resolution
level, down to the sample, 148,000th of a second.
| | 01:25 | This can help us work with issues like phase that
might come up, something we'll go over in this course.
| | 01:30 | Pro Tools also ships with an arsenal of extremely powerful
processing tools like the 7-Band EQ3, and the Channel Strip.
| | 01:39 | These can help you harness the best aspects
of your sound, and fix problem areas.
| | 01:43 | Plus, the ability to add on additional industry
standard plug-in bundles such as the Impulse
| | 01:48 | Response Reverb TL space is huge.
We are ready to mix your tracks
| | 01:54 | you get very high resolution and flexibility
with your volume and plug-in automation controls.
| | 01:59 | Essentially, every parameter can
be automated to enhance your mix.
| | 02:03 | So, whether you're a seasoned video editor,
a beginning filmmaker, or a budding sound
| | 02:08 | designer, this course is great for you.
| | 02:11 | We'll go through all you need to know to make it easy
to integrate Pro Tools to mix your short film project.
| | 02:16 | Trust me, you and your
audience will appreciate it.
| | 02:21 |
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| Initial setup and views| 00:00 | Since Pro Tools is not strictly an audio
for video postproduction application, it isn't
| | 00:05 | automatically configured for the kind
of work we will be doing on film sound.
| | 00:08 | So, I want to go over some settings and ways
to manipulate the window views in Pro Tools,
| | 00:13 | so the look and functionality will be
better suited for our needs in this course.
| | 00:17 | So first, let's open up Pro Tools.
| | 00:19 | By default, you will get
this Quick Start dialog.
| | 00:23 | Let's choose Create Blank Session.
| | 00:25 | For Parameters here, we will
choose Broadcast (.WAV), 48 kHz, 16 bit.
| | 00:32 | That's the audio file standard for video, and
it's the format of the files we'll be working in.
| | 00:37 | For I/O Settings, let's choose Stereo Mix.
| | 00:41 | When you hit OK, you will be
prompted to name and save a new session.
| | 00:45 | We will name it My.Template, and
I'll save it here on the desktop.
| | 00:51 | When the session opens, we're
brought into the Pro Tools edit window.
| | 00:55 | This is where we'll be doing
most of our work in this course.
| | 00:57 | It's where you can see the
timeline and all of your tracks.
| | 01:01 | First, of all, let's clear up these
timeline rulers at the top of the Edit window.
| | 01:05 | There are some here that we won't need.
| | 01:06 | There is a lot pertaining to
music stuff you won't be dealing with.
| | 01:10 | So, to get rid of them, you can Option-click
on the timeline rulers we don't need.
| | 01:14 | Let's remove all of them except for
Minutes and Seconds, Timecode, and Markers.
| | 01:19 | Alternatively, you can go into the
pulldown menu here to uncheck them.
| | 01:24 | Now, the currently highlighted
time ruler is Minutes and Seconds.
| | 01:28 | This is your master time ruler.
| | 01:30 | But we're going to change our master time ruler to
timecode, so we can reference video frames as we work.
| | 01:37 | To change this, we will go into the main counter up
here, and we will change the main counter to timecode.
| | 01:42 | Next, let's make a few tracks.
| | 01:45 | Let's use the key command Shift+Command+N--
it's a three button key command--
| | 01:50 | and this lets you make new tracks.
It'd be good to memorize this.
| | 01:53 | But if not, you can also go to
Track > New to create new tracks.
| | 01:58 | Let's go ahead and make
12 new mono audio tracks.
| | 02:02 | Next, let's change the Editing mode in
the upper-left corner of Pro Tools to Grid.
| | 02:08 | This keeps our cursor
accurate to the frame boundaries.
| | 02:10 | Then we want to change our Grid value up
here to reference frames instead of seconds.
| | 02:16 | That way, we can make the Pro Tools background
grid accurate to the flame instead of a second.
| | 02:20 | You can always go to Slip mode later to go
to finer resolution, all the way down to the
| | 02:25 | Sample Level, which is a much finer resolution
than you can get in most video editing softwares.
| | 02:30 | Now, I want to show some
more views in our tracks.
| | 02:33 | So, go to the Edit window view
selector on the top-left of the Edit window.
| | 02:38 | Let's show our inserts A through E since we
will be using real-time plug-in inserts later on.
| | 02:44 | Also here, let's show the I/O, so we can see our
volume and pan parameters for each track as we work.
| | 02:51 | We'll also change the way
our track solo buttons work.
| | 02:54 | The solo button lets you hear one track at a
time, and effectively mutes all other tracks,
| | 02:59 | so you can single out any specific track.
| | 03:02 | By default, Pro Tools allows you to latch
more than one of these together, so you can
| | 03:06 | solo more than one track.
| | 03:08 | This is fine, but for postproduction audio,
I have found it's better to only be able to
| | 03:12 | solo one track at a time, so we can
compare what's on one track to another track.
| | 03:17 | So, let's change that in Options > Solo Mode > X-OR.
| | 03:21 | Again, this lets us just solo one
track at a time by a single click.
| | 03:26 | It's a much faster way to isolate your tracks.
| | 03:28 | Finally, we will take a glance at the
central hub of all your settings for each session.
| | 03:33 | It's called the Session Setup window.
| | 03:36 | You can find it in this
Setup pulldown menu, Session.
| | 03:39 | Here, we are able to see all the
parameters of our current session.
| | 03:44 | As you can see, here, we are referencing a
timecode frame rate of 30 frames per second.
| | 03:49 | It's good to know we can come here at any
time to glance at all of our session settings,
| | 03:53 | and change parameters like the frame rate to accommodate
different video formats we might be working with.
| | 03:58 | These new settings we just changed fall into the
global category. They're not session specific.
| | 04:03 | So, that means every session we open from
here on now should look like this and keep
| | 04:07 | these settings as we progress.
| | 04:10 | Let's go ahead and save and
close this My.Template session.
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| The power of the template| 00:00 | The best way to set yourself up for speed
and efficiency for your audio edit and mix
| | 00:05 | in Pro Tools is to create a template
from which you can work from every time.
| | 00:09 | This way, you will cut out the time-consuming
process of designating tracks and their outputs,
| | 00:13 | and you will have more time
to work on the audio itself.
| | 00:16 | Let's open the My.Template session we
last made in our initial setup lesson.
| | 00:21 | This is a Pro Tools session with 12 tracks.
| | 00:24 | The best way to organize a Pro Tools session
for audio postproduction is to break up the
| | 00:28 | sound elements into stems.
| | 00:31 | Think of a tree with several
branches breaking out into stems.
| | 00:35 | There are three main stems we will
designate, Dialogue, Effects, and Music.
| | 00:41 | By routing the outputs of our tracks to these
three places, we will be able to mix our video
| | 00:45 | project in a very organized and efficient way.
| | 00:48 | Plus, the option to separate the
stems later anytime is really useful.
| | 00:53 | So let's designate these first
12 tracks as our dialogue tracks.
| | 00:57 | We will name them DIA1-12.
| | 01:01 | Double-click the first
track header to rename it.
| | 01:05 | Then you can either use the key command Command+Right-arrow
or click the Next button to move to the next track.
| | 01:12 | Name the next track DIA2, and so on.
I am going to name these first 12 tracks.
| | 01:18 | While I am naming them, keep in
mind that these are mono tracks.
| | 01:21 | They contain a single sound source that's
going to be panned to the center of our mix.
| | 01:26 | Once we are done, we will make a different
kind of track type, an auxiliary track.
| | 01:30 | Type Shift+Command+N to make
a new Mono Auxiliary track.
| | 01:35 | This is going to be the pathway all of our
dialogue and sync soundtracks will route through.
| | 01:40 | We can use the pathway called a bus in Pro Tools
to route audio from one place to another.
| | 01:46 | Let's name this auxiliary
track DIA Stem, Dialogue Stem.
| | 01:52 | Let's set its input to Bus 1.
| | 01:54 | Next, we'll make sure all
the dialogue tracks are selected.
| | 01:59 | Hold Shift to select only the
dialogue tracks, not the dialogue stem.
| | 02:03 | Now, holding Option+Shift change the output of
any of the selected dialogue tracks to track DIA Stem.
| | 02:13 | They are now all routing
through that main DIA Stem track.
| | 02:16 | Holding down Option+Shift lets you change
the outputs of any selected tracks altogether.
| | 02:21 | Now, we are going to do the
same with our effects tracks.
| | 02:24 | Only this time, we'll include
some stereo and some mono tracks.
| | 02:28 | Type Shift+Command+N, and this time use the
plus button to add more than one type of track.
| | 02:33 | We will make four mono tracks, and four
stereo tracks, and then one stereo Aux track.
| | 02:41 | Again, this Aux track will be our FX stem.
So now, we will name them.
| | 02:46 | I will use Command+C and Command+V to
copy and paste the names to speed this up.
| | 02:51 | We'll call them FX Mono 1-4.
| | 02:56 | Click the Next button to move to
the next track, and FX Stereo 1-4.
| | 03:03 | We'll call the Aux track FX Stem.
| | 03:05 | Now, we will route our FX tracks the
same way, but this time we'll use Bus 3-4.
| | 03:11 | We will set the input of the FX track to Bus 3-4,
and then holding Option+Shift, we will
| | 03:17 | set the outputs of all the
FX tracks to the same bus.
| | 03:21 | Lastly, we will do the
same with the music tracks.
| | 03:25 | These are going to all be stereo tracks
since music sources are almost always stereo.
| | 03:29 | We will make four stereo music
tracks, and one more Stereo Aux track.
| | 03:35 | We'll name them MUS 1-4 and the
stem will be called MUS Stem for Music.
| | 03:43 | Now, we'll route these the same way,
only this time we'll use Bus 5 and 6.
| | 03:50 | Now that we have got all the routing on in
the way, let's globally change all the tracks
| | 03:55 | to mini so we can see them all.
| | 03:57 | This time just hold Option-click in a
thin track size ruler, and choose mini.
| | 04:03 | Holding just Option lets you
change all tracks at the same time.
| | 04:06 | Once we're done with this, I like to
color-code stem, so we can keep track.
| | 04:10 | Let's leave the dialogue tracks
blue, and the Aux tracks green.
| | 04:14 | FX tracks will be pink.
| | 04:18 | Select all the FX tracks and click in the
thin color strip, and we will change those
| | 04:21 | to pink, and then we'll do the same
for music, but these will be yellow.
| | 04:26 | Now, we have a working template
already named and routed and color-coded.
| | 04:31 | This will be a starting point for
all of our postproduction projects.
| | 04:35 | Go to File > Save As Template.
| | 04:38 | We can save this as a template, and be able to call
it up whenever we start any new Pro Tools session.
| | 04:44 | We can save it in our postproduction templates.
| | 04:46 | Alternatively, we can save it as a regular
session, and also be able to import these
| | 04:51 | tracks into any existing session.
Let's do that too.
| | 04:55 | Call it My.Template.Post.
| | 04:58 | Now that we have gotten this task out of the way,
we will enjoy the benefits of this template
| | 05:02 | every time we work on an
audio for video project.
| | 05:05 | And keep in mind, you can alter and
enhance this template anytime you see fit.
| | 05:10 |
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| Exporting audio and video from Avid Media Composer| 00:00 | There are a lot of options to
export audio and video out of Avid.
| | 00:04 | In this movie we'll explore the best ways to get the audio
to Pro tools via an Advanced Authoring Format, or AAF file.
| | 00:12 | And we'll also show how to export the video
reference movie as a QuickTime file to use in Pro Tools.
| | 00:18 | In this movie you'll see us
working on an Avid project.
| | 00:22 | This Avid Project file is not included
in the exercise files for this course.
| | 00:26 | But we're showing it here as a demonstration of
a complete Avid to Pro Tools workflow and back.
| | 00:33 | If you own Avid software, you are welcome to open
any Avid project and follow along with these steps.
| | 00:39 | As I also suggested that what you should
know before watching this course video, it isn't
| | 00:44 | essential you have Avid to take advantage
of the concepts presented in this course.
| | 00:49 | So here on our Desktop, we
have our Castles_avid folder.
| | 00:54 | Inside there, we have got our
Avid Files and a To Audio folder.
| | 00:59 | This To Audio folder is where we are going to
export all of our audio and video to send the Pro Tools.
| | 01:06 | Back in Avid, we have got our sequence down here.
| | 01:10 | Let's give it a quick listen to
make sure everything is in sync.
| | 01:14 | (male speaker 1: And you want to take risk again.
That's a creative approach.)
| | 01:22 | (male speaker 2: My creativity
has nothing to do with this.)
| | 01:25 | That's sound pretty good.
| | 01:26 | Now we're going to actually export our
audio and video separately from Avid.
| | 01:31 | This is the most standard way of exporting, and it
allows for the best file management going forward.
| | 01:36 | So up here in the File menu, we'll go to
Export and under the Export Settings, we'll select
| | 01:43 | Export To Pro Tools, and then we have got
some Options for Exporting to Pro Tools.
| | 01:49 | Now, since we're only sending out our audio
in this export, we'll make sure that Include
| | 01:54 | All Video/Data Tracks in Sequence is unchecked.
And for Export Method, we'll Copy All Media.
| | 02:02 | And all of these other options here are good.
| | 02:05 | We do want to change our
Audio File Format to WAVE.
| | 02:09 | That's the audio file format that's
standard, and we'll use it in this course.
| | 02:13 | And then we'll Select our
Folder for the Audio data.
| | 02:16 | And that's just going to be here in
To Audio/Audio, and we can Save that.
| | 02:23 | And our AAF will actually just
go inside the To Audio folder.
| | 02:26 | That way our audio and video folders just
contain the actual data and the AAF file will
| | 02:31 | live outside those subfolders.
I will now hit Save and wait for it export.
| | 02:38 | So back in our Finder window, we can see we
have our AAF and in our Audio folder we have
| | 02:43 | all of our audio data.
Back in Avid, we will now export our video.
| | 02:49 | We'll go to File > Export and for this one
we're going to choose Send To QT Movie.
| | 02:56 | Make sure are Video folders selected and
then check out our options for QuickTime.
| | 03:01 | So we'll go ahead and leave this Same as Source,
because if we want to compress our video down
| | 03:06 | to a smaller size, we'll use a third-party
application like Compressor or Adobe Media Encoder.
| | 03:12 | And because we'll use the Audio from our Avid
Edit as a reference, we'll check export Audio
| | 03:18 | and Video and 601/709 is good for color levels.
And our aspect ratio is good at 16:9.
| | 03:26 | So everything looks good, we can hit Save,
and we are waiting for the Video file to export.
| | 03:32 | So back on our Desktop in our Video
folder, we'll see our freshly exported movie.
| | 03:37 | This QuickTime files full-res,
and it's really large.
| | 03:40 | But to get it smaller, it can be compressed by
using a third-party application like Compressor
| | 03:44 | or Adobe Media Encoder before sending it to
Pro Tools, and that's we have done in the exercise
| | 03:49 | files for this course to keep it small.
| | 03:51 | It is after all just used as
a reference movie in Pro Tools.
| | 03:56 |
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| Importing to Pro Tools| 00:00 | An AAF, Advanced Authoring Format file, or
an OMF, Open Media Framework file are two
| | 00:07 | file types that can transfer all the audio
information, tracks, timecode placement, edits,
| | 00:14 | volume info, et cetera, from the
Video Editing Program into Pro Tools.
| | 00:19 | For all our purposes OMF and
AAF files can be treated the same.
| | 00:24 | Going forward in this course, I may say OMF, but
I mean both OMF and AAF file types if I say that.
| | 00:30 | Once you have your properly exported AAF or
OMF and QuickTime reference movie on hand,
| | 00:36 | it's time to import them into Pro Tools.
| | 00:39 | In this movie we will convert the OMF file into a
Pro Tools session, and we will import the reference movie.
| | 00:44 | We will make it's all in sync and ready to go.
| | 00:47 | Getting your OMF or AAF into Pro Tools
is quite a simple process.
| | 00:51 | Pro Tools even treats the file the same
as it were in a Pro Tool session file.
| | 00:55 | You can double-click on the file to open it
or from a Pro Tool session like we have here,
| | 00:59 | you can go to File > Open and choose the file.
We will choose the Castles.aaf file.
| | 01:07 | When you open the AAF file, Pro Tools will
prompt you to choose a Sample Rate and Bit Depth.
| | 01:12 | You should use what the video source
material is already at for your session.
| | 01:16 | The standard here is Broadcast WAV,
48 kHz, and 16 bit.
| | 01:22 | It then asks you where you would like
to save it and what you want to call it.
| | 01:25 | We will call it Castles_ProTools,
and we will save it on our Desktop.
| | 01:32 | Next a session will open, and you are
prompted right into the import Session Data dialog.
| | 01:37 | Let's get familiar with this step because we will
use import Session Data frequently in this course.
| | 01:42 | On the top left of the dialog, you have
your Source Properties, this tells you all the
| | 01:46 | information you need to know about
the source AAF file you are importing.
| | 01:50 | In this case the Source frame
rate is 23.98 frames per second.
| | 01:55 | Below that you have your Audio Media Options.
| | 01:57 | Some of these options have more ramifications
if you're importing from another Pro Tools
| | 02:02 | session, not an AAF, but from another session.
| | 02:06 | Link to Source Media is a possibility here
as an option, because on Avid Media Composer
| | 02:11 | systems, it is possible to export
the AAF and the media files separately.
| | 02:16 | If you receive your AAF in this format, and you
don't want to double up on media, you could choose this.
| | 02:22 | Here we will choose Copy from source media, and
we will put the audio files in the appropriate
| | 02:27 | audio files folder inside your session folder.
| | 02:31 | Video Media Options here in this case are
grayed out, as we are dealing with our video
| | 02:34 | separately as a video import.
| | 02:36 | Now assuming Timecode was used correctly from
the beginning of the sequence in a video edit,
| | 02:41 | you should choose to Maintain absolute
timecode values on the upper right here.
| | 02:46 | Relative timecode values can be used, if
for example, the video sequence was using
| | 02:50 | timecode starting at say hour 3, and you don't
want all your audio to start way down the timeline.
| | 02:56 | It will star relative to
the beginning of your session.
| | 03:00 | You can also customize the start point timecode
by Mapping to a specific timecode or alternatively
| | 03:05 | you can Offset everything by a
certain amount in the Track Offset menu.
| | 03:09 | But we will keep it on Maintain
absolute timecode values here.
| | 03:14 | SRC stands for Sample Rate Conversion.
| | 03:17 | This is where you could change your source
sample rate to a higher or lower rate on import.
| | 03:22 | I try to keep it consistent to the original video media,
which is at 48 kHz, so we will leave that unchecked.
| | 03:29 | Next you have all your
Source tracks listed here.
| | 03:31 | If they're highlighted, they'll be imported.
| | 03:34 | You can deselect one or more if
you don't want to bring it all in.
| | 03:38 | At the bottom we have some more options.
| | 03:40 | Because we plan on doing significant audio
work in Pro Tools, I think it's best to ignore
| | 03:45 | any rendered effects, clip
based gain, and leave off panning.
| | 03:50 | We can keep the original volume information.
You can choose to import All track data or some.
| | 03:56 | I usually grab it All, but you can specify to uncheck
certain parameters if you don't want to bring those in.
| | 04:02 | Playlists aren't supported by AAF,
so don't worry about this setting.
| | 04:07 | When you hit OK, everything
should come into your Pro tool session.
| | 04:11 | As you can see, all the tracks came
in and the clips are being populated.
| | 04:14 | Now, here's a very handy
working technique I swear by.
| | 04:18 | Before going any further, I always make a
duplicate of these imported AAF tracks
| | 04:24 | and then I lock them in place.
| | 04:26 | That way we can always be able to come back to reference
the original audio that came from the video timeline.
| | 04:30 | I am using Shift-select All the audio tracks, right-click
on any one of those tracks and select Duplicate.
| | 04:38 | Now we have got a duplicate of all these tracks.
| | 04:41 | Next, drag a selection around all
the clips on the duplicated tracks.
| | 04:47 | Type Command+L to lock all these regions
in place, and if we zoom in, we see a little
| | 04:52 | lock icon on all the clips.
| | 04:54 | Finally, with only the duplicated tracks selected, right-click
on one of them and choose Hide and Make Inactive.
| | 05:01 | They will disappear from view and they won't
be using any system resources, but they will
| | 05:06 | always be here in our track list
on the left, in case we need them.
| | 05:09 | The next step is to import the video
reference file and make sure everything is in sync.
| | 05:15 | Go to File > Import > Video and
select the Castles.mov file.
| | 05:22 | Pro Tools will ask you if you want to
keep the audio file and where to import it.
| | 05:26 | I always take the audio as a reference.
| | 05:27 | It's a good reference of the mix
that the video editor was working with.
| | 05:31 | It also gives you another way to check sync
against the original in case something slides out.
| | 05:36 | Pro Tools will ask you where to put the
audio files, but it defaults to the Audio files
| | 05:40 | folder for your current session.
So we will choose this folder.
| | 05:45 | Now let's open the video track to medium size by
clicking on the thin ruler strip on the track header.
| | 05:51 | Let's also change the video size, right-click
on the video and make it half size, then we
| | 05:56 | can further size it down by clicking on
the bottom right of the window and dragging.
| | 05:59 | We will place it right over here in the
upper right corner of the Edit window.
| | 06:03 | Now, go into Grid mode on the
upper left of the Edit window.
| | 06:08 | Now let's zoom in on the little 2-pop
reference blip, which is a way to check sync.
| | 06:14 | At 59:58 timecode, there should be a little
blip that corresponds with the frame of video.
| | 06:20 | As long as this is in sync, then
everything came in okay, and looks like it is here.
| | 06:26 | So the 2-pop is a one frame long blip on
an audio track and a corresponding one frame
| | 06:32 | of video that helps us verify sync.
| | 06:35 | Now I usually change the video display to
block view as the frames view is cool, but
| | 06:40 | it eats up a lot of system usage.
Finally, I like to do some color coding.
| | 06:45 | Let's make the AAF import tracks have no color.
| | 06:48 | By selecting these tracks and clicking on
the thin color strip, we will choose None.
| | 06:53 | Then the video and audio
reference tracks we will make brown.
| | 06:57 | Importing the AAF files to Pro Tools is simple.
| | 06:59 | Once you do a few, it becomes second nature, and you
are quickly on your way to shaping up your audio.
| | 07:04 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
2. Editing Dialogue and Location SoundFirst steps| 00:00 | Now that we have successfully imported our
media from Avid to Pro Tools, it's time to start
| | 00:04 | sifting through the material on these tracks and
breaking out these clips to their appropriate stems.
| | 00:10 | In this movie we will import our template
that contains our stem routing and start sorting
| | 00:14 | and organizing our clips,
keeping only what's useful.
| | 00:17 | Import > Session Data under the File menu is
a very handy way to get tracks from one
| | 00:23 | Pro Tools session into another.
| | 00:25 | We will use it here to bring all of our pre-named
and routed tracks from the Pro Tools template
| | 00:30 | we made into our Castles movie session.
| | 00:34 | Navigate to the My.Template.Post
ProToolssession file and click Open.
| | 00:38 | When you open the template, you may get a
notice of the session times don't match.
| | 00:43 | That's nothing to be alarmed about,
since the template has no media.
| | 00:46 | Just click through this window.
| | 00:47 | You will notice it looks a lot like the
dialog window we used to import the OMF.
| | 00:53 | In fact, it is the same dialog window.
| | 00:55 | We are going to want to bring all of these
tracks into our session here, so let's Shift-click
| | 00:59 | and highlight all the tracks below.
| | 01:02 | Select All for track data to import
and click OK to bring them all in.
| | 01:07 | Now you will notice after the movie and reference file,
you have all those empty tracks we made from our template.
| | 01:13 | We have one housekeeping thing to do here.
| | 01:16 | We want to do something called Solo safe
on the Auxiliary Stem tracks we created.
| | 01:21 | This way when we solo our tracks to listen, they
will still be heard into their respective stem outputs.
| | 01:27 | To Solo safe these tracks just Command-click
on the S solo button, and all three of the
| | 01:32 | stem tracks, the little S will become
grayed out, and they will be Solo safe.
| | 01:38 | The next steps are where we
really start getting our hands dirty.
| | 01:40 | We are going to start going to all the clips
from the original OMF tracks and moving them
| | 01:45 | down into the appropriate
dialogue, effects, or music tracks.
| | 01:49 | You will be required to listen closely and
make some quality judgments about the audio.
| | 01:53 | Most of these materials are going to end
up in a dialogue sync tracks, since there hasn't
| | 01:57 | been a bunch of effects or
music added yet to the movie.
| | 02:01 | But within the dialogue sync tracks, we are going to have
to come up with a strategy to keep things organized.
| | 02:06 | The first rule of thumb, if there is nothing in a
clip, or it sounds likes garbage, we can ignore it.
| | 02:12 | First, two clips on tracks 1 and 2 look
and sound like they have nothing on them.
| | 02:17 | Let's play them and see.
| | 02:19 | Yes, our intuition is correct,
there is nothing on these clips.
| | 02:23 | So we can select both of them
and type Command+M to Mute them.
| | 02:28 | In addition to muting the clips, this
technique also grays them out, so we know they have
| | 02:32 | already been addressed, and we can move on.
Next, we have six clips on the track below.
| | 02:38 | One of them is a voiceover,
the female reporter voice.
| | 02:41 | (female speaker: Sensation no more, once award-winning
architect fails to deliver on his downtown music hall.)
| | 02:48 | And the other is the Mr. Dalton
character talking off screen.
| | 02:52 | (Mr. Dalton: Joseph's our most gifted architect.
He takes risks. We all know it.)
| | 02:55 | When we examine these tracks further by
zooming in on them, we will notice that
| | 02:58 | the clips are actually the same
thing duplicated on two tracks.
| | 03:03 | See how their waveforms are identical.
| | 03:06 | Having duplicated clips not only makes things
louder, it also makes things more confusing,
| | 03:10 | and we have more to deal with, so in this case
we will mute the bottom clips and ignore them.
| | 03:15 | A very crucial key command here
to know is the Control button.
| | 03:19 | When you hold the control button down and
then click and drag a clip from track to track,
| | 03:24 | it keeps its position in time.
| | 03:26 | Without doing this, you are in danger of sliding
clips out of sync as you move them from track to track.
| | 03:31 | So we will Ctrl-drag each of these
clips on to the dialogue stem tracks.
| | 03:35 | Let's just decide right now that dialogue
tracks 11 and 12 will be used for voiceover
| | 03:40 | and any off-screen or replace dialogue.
| | 03:42 | So I will drag them on to
those respective tracks.
| | 03:48 | Now you can see you have a
lot of work in front of you.
| | 03:50 | Each clip has to be gone through meticulously
and categorized and placed on the track that
| | 03:54 | makes sense for its sound.
| | 03:57 | For example, in the first few bottom clips
here, when we solo them, we hear a distant,
| | 04:02 | not very usable room mic.
| | 04:05 | (Mr. Dalton: Did you finish it? You know, I'm taking
a big risk putting you on this Columbia project.
| | 04:20 | The firm could be on the line here.
Six p.m. tonight. Simple deadline. Beat it.)
| | 04:29 | We can probably get away with ignoring these clips so
we will highlight them and mute them at least for now.
| | 04:35 | Also in this scene you will notice that
some dialogue actually does have two mic sources,
| | 04:40 | maybe a Lavalier and a Boom mic perhaps.
| | 04:42 | Take, for example, the first line,
when he says, did you finish it?
| | 04:46 | (Mr. Dalton: Did you finish it?
Did you finish it?)
| | 04:52 | Zooming in on these waveforms shows us that
there are two different mic sources, you can
| | 04:56 | see they are different sources
by the waveforms being different.
| | 04:59 | You can also solo them, and we
hear the sound very different.
| | 05:04 | (Mr. Dalton: Did you finish it?)
| | 05:05 | We will address those kinds of issues more
when we get into our dialogue editing stages,
| | 05:09 | but for now our task is to break them out on to the
dialogue tracks and keep them consistent from clip to clip.
| | 05:16 | So now when we hear this
clip and the very next clip.
| | 05:21 | (Mr. Dalton: You know, I'm taking
a big risk putting you on this Columbia project.
| | 05:28 | Did you finish it?
--putting you on this Columbia project.)
| | 05:36 | We can tell they are both from the same source,
so we will pull them onto the same tracks.
| | 05:40 | We will Ctrl-drag them to tracks 1 and 2.
| | 05:45 | The other character has
a similar thing going on.
| | 05:47 | Listen to the line, that's it? Six p.m., huh?
| | 05:52 | (male speaker: That's it? Six p.m. huh?
That's it? Six p.m., huh?)
| | 05:59 | So we'll pull his two tracks to dialogue 3 and 4.
| | 06:03 | It's going to sound choppy here for a little
while, but the point is to be consistent and
| | 06:06 | put like sounds on the same track.
Later we'll be able to make it more smooth.
| | 06:11 | One thing you have to overcome is that the
tracks may have gotten out of order during
| | 06:15 | the video edit, the Lavalier might be on top
in one shot, and the Boom on the bottom and
| | 06:20 | vice-versa in the next shot.
| | 06:21 | This is something we need to use
our listening skills to overcome.
| | 06:25 | The first part of this scene after some
listening and moving clips around ended up like this.
| | 06:32 | As you can see, there are a lot of muted
clips that didn't get used from the original OMF
| | 06:36 | and the best sounding sources have been placed on
the appropriate dialogue tracks below. Let's listen.
| | 06:44 | (Mr. Dalton: You know, I'm taking
a big risk putting you on this Columbia project.
| | 06:48 | The firm could be on the line here.
Six p.m. tonight. Simple deadline. Beat it.)
| | 06:58 | (male speaker: That's it? Six p.m., huh? And, If I'm a risky choice,
then don't use me. We all know what risky decisions lead to.
| | 07:10 | The company is in free-fall, and you want to
take risk again. That's a creative approach.)
| | 07:17 | Now this is far from perfect sounding, but
it's a good start and much more easy to deal
| | 07:21 | with than the mess we had
going on the original OMF tracks.
| | 07:25 | Obviously, as you work through the session,
you can't have a track for every character.
| | 07:29 | So the convention is that you use the top 1
through 5 or 6 tracks for the first scene,
| | 07:34 | then the next 6 through 10 or 11 tracks for
the next scene, and then back to the first
| | 07:39 | 5 or 6 tracks for the following scene.
This is what's referred to as checker boarding.
| | 07:45 | So now we have some work to do.
| | 07:46 | The end version of this session will show
you an example of how our timeline might look
| | 07:50 | when we're done with this stage of editing.
| | 07:55 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Dialogue editing: Part one| 00:00 | At this stage of the project we have taken the time to
break out the OMF clips into all of our template tracks.
| | 00:06 | As you see here we have narrowed our session
down to only the necessary clips and they're
| | 00:10 | all neatly organized in the timeline, checker
boarding back and forth in the dialogue tracks between scenes.
| | 00:16 | In this movie we'll explore some techniques
that will help finesse these newly organized
| | 00:20 | clips into coherent dialogue and sync
tracks that play seamlessly throughout a scene.
| | 00:24 | The first thing we should do here is hide all of these
muted clips we didn't use from the original OMF import.
| | 00:31 | All that's left here are the muted clips on
these tracks, and there will be placeholders
| | 00:34 | in case we ever need to get back to them.
| | 00:37 | So let's select all of these tracks by
holding down Shift, then we'll right-click on any
| | 00:42 | one of them and say Hide and Make Inactive.
| | 00:44 | Good, we'll be able to get back to these if
we need to, but they're gone from our view.
| | 00:50 | This second scene of the movie
is a standard dialogue track layout.
| | 00:54 | On the top track dialogue 6, I have edited only
the Boom Microphone Source, it's by far the
| | 01:00 | most natural sound, but it does
have a bit of room echo in it.
| | 01:04 | The two tracks below it contain the
two Lavalier tracks for the scene.
| | 01:08 | The top one on dialogue 7 is the assisting
characters Lavalier and the dialogue 8 contains the young
| | 01:15 | architect characters Lavalier mic.
| | 01:18 | We'll use these Lavalier mics to fill in
against the Boom when the actor speaks.
| | 01:23 | So let's clean up the Boom tracks edit, and
make sure it's seamless without any skips or bumps.
| | 01:29 | So let's solo it and make sure it's nice and wide by
clicking on the thin track ruler and changing it to large.
| | 01:37 | The Trimmer Edit tool will be very useful
here, which if you're using Pro Tools Smart
| | 01:42 | tool, identified by when all three tools are
lit up in blue, will become active as we move
| | 01:47 | the cursor to the edge of regions.
| | 01:50 | Alternatively, if you dislike working with
the Smart tool, you can type F6,
| | 01:54 | and that'll give you the Trimmer tool.
| | 01:56 | F7 gives you the next tool, the Selector tool
and F8 gives you the next tool, the Grabber tool.
| | 02:01 | We'll demonstrate the trimmer here on this
clip where the assistant says, well, 6 p.m.
| | 02:08 | The line is off camera, and we'll decide
to keep just the laugh, and we'll remove the
| | 02:12 | well, let's take a listen to it.
| | 02:15 | (male speaker: Well, 6 p.m.)
| | 02:20 | So again, we want to take out the well and
just keep the laugh, we can use the Trimmer
| | 02:24 | tool to remove this, and we'll drag in the
preceding shot like this. Now let's listen.
| | 02:32 | (male speaker: Six p.m.)
| | 02:37 | Okay, now that worked, but there's a little
talking from the preceding clip that you might here.
| | 02:42 | Your first instinct might be to just cut it
out, right, and hit Delete, but remember our
| | 02:46 | goal here is to make it seamless, no dropouts,
so we have to fill it in with some room tone.
| | 02:52 | We can select some room tone from the empty areas
such as right before the clip, with the Selector tool.
| | 02:58 | I just want to make sure that there are no
other sounds going on, it's just the room itself.
| | 03:03 | Then we'll type Command+C
to copy it to the clipboard.
| | 03:05 | Next, we can make a selection
only where we want to paste it.
| | 03:10 | This time type Option+Command+V, this is
called Paste Special, and it only fills in the space
| | 03:17 | you selected with the clipboard contents,
it's a very useful paste command to know when
| | 03:22 | you're making this kind of edit.
Great. Now let's listen.
| | 03:25 | (male speaker: Six p.m.)
| | 03:27 | Next, we want to make sure that every edit
has at least a tiny crossfade between them.
| | 03:33 | Again, to avoid any bumps in the road, we don't
want any clicks or pops going on between our clips.
| | 03:41 | Fades can also be made with a smart tool by
going to the bottom of the overlapping clip
| | 03:45 | and pointing it out a little, or you can
make a selection over the intersecting point and
| | 03:50 | type the key F to make a quick crossfade.
| | 03:54 | So now we'll continue to work through the
Boom Mic clips on the scene checking each
| | 03:58 | edit and making crossfades over each one.
| | 04:01 | We'll also be copying and pasting room tone
where necessary, to make it as clean as possible.
| | 04:06 | To check what this looks like, take a look
at the end version of the session file, to
| | 04:10 | show the end result of our work.
| | 04:15 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Dialogue editing: Part two| 00:00 | We're continuing our dialogue edit here for
this scene, we have gone through and made a
| | 00:04 | very clean Boom track, and now we'll explore
some techniques for the Lavalier tracks below.
| | 00:09 | Which we plan to blend into the boom tracks
to make them a little more solid sounding.
| | 00:13 | Using Lavalier clips like this is a little
tricky, they need to be brought in and out
| | 00:18 | unnoticed, so fading in and out of
them will eventually be a necessity.
| | 00:21 | Before we get to that, let's discuss the
negative effects blending two microphones,
| | 00:25 | such as a boom and a lav
together can have on the sound.
| | 00:29 | Because the sound is hitting the mics at
slightly different times and space, the closest mic
| | 00:34 | to the actor, in this case the Lavalier mic,
is receiving the sound slightly before the
| | 00:40 | Boom mic does, which is a little farther away.
| | 00:43 | The technical term for this is that the mics
are slightly out of phase from one another,
| | 00:48 | let's listen to tracks 6 when the
architect's first line is on the Boom.
| | 00:53 | (male speaker: Is he sending you in here with
scripted-out dialogue and everything?)
| | 00:57 | As you can hear, it sounds okay.
| | 00:59 | Next, we'll listen to the same
dialogue from the lav track only.
| | 01:04 | (male speaker: Is he sending you in here with
scripted-out dialogue and everything?)
| | 01:08 | That clip also sounds okay.
But now let's listen to them blended together.
| | 01:13 | (male speaker: Is he sending you in here with
scripted-out dialogue and everything?)
| | 01:18 | This sounds kind of hollow, right?
| | 01:20 | This is due to the phase issue between the mics,
and we can fix this. What's the solution?
| | 01:25 | To look closely at the waveforms and line
them up better, this is one of those tasks
| | 01:30 | you need an audio system
like Pro Tools to accomplish.
| | 01:33 | So, after zooming way in on these tracks, let's
go into Pro Tools finest editing mode, Slip mode.
| | 01:40 | Next, we'll pull the dialogue 8
track right up next to dialogue 6.
| | 01:46 | We'll zoom right in here horizontally and
vertically, we can zoom in vertically by clicking
| | 01:51 | the up and down arrows where you see the
little waveform displayed in the Zoom tool up here.
| | 01:57 | Now you can see the peaks of the waveforms
are a little off, so with the Grabber tool,
| | 02:02 | let's slide the bottom track, the Lavalier
track ever so slightly until the waveforms
| | 02:07 | lineup, let's zoom out, and we'll take a listen.
| | 02:11 | (male speaker: Is he sending you in here with
scripted-out dialogue and everything?)
| | 02:15 | This sounds much clear and cleaner than before.
| | 02:18 | So, any time you have two mic sources, you must be
aware that maybe this kind of phase issue is at play.
| | 02:25 | So now we just want to fade in and out of
its Lavalier clip to make it a seamless edit,
| | 02:29 | and now we'll continue using
these methods to complete the scene.
| | 02:32 | We'll go through all the Lavalier clips
and line them right up with the Boom clips
| | 02:36 | to make sure they're in phase.
| | 02:37 | The end result of this will be
a much cleaner playing scene.
| | 02:41 | (male speaker: Is he sending you in here with
scripted-out dialogue and everything?)
| | 02:46 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Fixing hum problems with processing| 00:00 | We're going to take a look at some noise problems you
might encounter when you're editing your dialogue tracks.
| | 00:06 | Continuous tonal noise problems like a
refrigerator or machine based hum are common, but sometimes
| | 00:12 | they are the easiest type of noise to fix.
| | 00:14 | In this movie we're going to look at removing
a hum from a scene using an equalizer plug-in.
| | 00:19 | On dialogue track 6 in this scene,
Mr. Dalton is sitting at his desk.
| | 00:22 | There is no dialogue here, but we'd like to
preserve the sound of some of his movements.
| | 00:27 | Unfortunately, there's a rather annoying hum that makes this
scene hard to watch and listen to, let's take a listen.
| | 00:34 | (video playing)
| | 00:42 | Luckily, we can use an equalizer to notch
out the offending frequency and save the day.
| | 00:48 | We'll use the Pro Tools EQ3 1-Band equalizer
as a real-time plug-in, click in your Insert
| | 00:53 | column on the left of the track
and locate the EQ3 1-Band equalizer.
| | 00:59 | Remember this is a real-time plug-in, so we can move the
controls and hear instant results as we play back the clip.
| | 01:05 | First, we need to locate the audio
frequency at which the hum is the most active.
| | 01:10 | Let's put the EQ into Peak mode
by clicking the circular icon.
| | 01:14 | We'll turn the gain all the way up to
emphasize the frequency we're searching for.
| | 01:18 | Next, change the Q value to the highest until
you get a nice narrowband. Now is the fun part.
| | 01:26 | While playing back the clip, we're going to
start sweeping the frequency knob around until
| | 01:29 | we hear the hum getting louder.
Let's try this.
| | 01:34 | (video playing)
| | 01:44 | It's definitely louder around 120 Hz, and we can
even type in 120 in this field to be more precise. Great.
| | 01:52 | Now that we're able to find it, we
can simply switch the EQ type to Notch.
| | 01:57 | This will now notch out that offensive
frequency, let's take a listen to the clip now.
| | 02:03 | (video playing)
| | 02:12 | Awesome. We were able to salvage this
clip, but we're not done yet.
| | 02:15 | Remember, this is a real-time plug-in, and we don't want this
to affect every clip on this track. So let's render it.
| | 02:21 | Go to the pulldown menu in the plug-in window
next to the word Preset then copy the settings.
| | 02:27 | Next, open the AudioSuite version of the
same plug-in from the AudioSuite pulldown menu.
| | 02:33 | AudioSuite plug-ins are very similar to
the real-time counterparts, except notice the
| | 02:37 | word Render at the bottom of the plug-in window.
| | 02:40 | Now, using the pulldown menu on the
AudioSuite plug-in, paste the settings in.
| | 02:46 | Now with these clips still selected, click
Render to render this notch EQ to all these clips.
| | 02:53 | Now let's remove the real-time plug-in, and we can
close these plug-in windows, let's take a listen.
| | 02:59 | (video playing)
| | 03:06 | You can use this kind of EQ processing
whenever you encounter a continuous hum like sound
| | 03:11 | on any clips you work on in the future.
| | 03:16 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Fixing broadband noise issues with processing| 00:00 | Broadband noise such as wind on the beach is much more
difficult to remove from dialogue tracks than hum is.
| | 00:07 | That's because unlike a hum, the offending
sound is scattered all over the frequency
| | 00:11 | spectrum, not just centered in one place.
| | 00:14 | In this movie we'll explore how to use a
noise reduction tool like Isotopes RX Denoiser
| | 00:19 | and Pro Tools to help
alleviate broadband noise issues.
| | 00:23 | The beach scene at the end of the film is
very noisy, it's a ripe candidate for dialogue
| | 00:28 | replacement, which was actually
recorded, we have it muted in track 11 below.
| | 00:33 | Even though we may end up using the dialogue
replacement, we'll still need to hear the
| | 00:37 | original dialogue as cleanly
as possible to sync it up.
| | 00:41 | Denoiser is a plug-in made by the company
Isotope, and it's a part of an affordable
| | 00:44 | noise reduction package called RX2.
| | 00:48 | We'll use it here on this
clip we have highlighted.
| | 00:50 | Let's take a listen to the noisy clip.
| | 00:52 | (Mr. Dalton: You got a design for me?)
(male speaker: Yeah, I think I do.)
| | 01:00 | (Mr. Dalton: Good.)
| | 01:02 | So as you can hear there's a lot of general
broadband noise clouding up the dialogue from the beach.
| | 01:07 | So let's open the Denoiser from
the AudioSuite pulldown menu.
| | 01:11 | Next, we'll change the Algorithm mode to D,
it's the best sounding, yet lowest option,
| | 01:18 | but the extra render time is worth it.
| | 01:21 | The way denoising software works is that you
must first isolate a piece of the clip with
| | 01:26 | only the noise and make the plug-in
learn this as a noise print.
| | 01:30 | Let's select this section over here
where there is no dialogue taking place.
| | 01:35 | While this is playing, we'll click Learn.
(video playing)
| | 01:41 | Great. Now that we have stored the noise profile, next
we'll select the entire clip you want to noise reduce.
| | 01:47 | Now we'll click the speaker icon to
hear the results of noise reduction.
| | 01:52 | (Mr. Dalton: So, you got a design for me?
(male speaker: Yeah, I think I do.)
| | 02:02 | That sounds pretty good, but I do hear a
little artifact on some of the dialogue.
| | 02:06 | This is always the trade-off
with noise reduction software.
| | 02:08 | If you push them too far, the stuff you
want to keep can start to sound weird, so let's
| | 02:14 | back off the Noise reduction slider just a
little bit, to 9.4, and we'll listen again.
| | 02:19 | (Mr. Dalton: So, you got a design for me?
(male speaker: Yeah, I think I do.)
| | 02:29 | (Mr. Dalton: Good.)
| | 02:30 | That sounds pretty good to me, so
we can go ahead and render the clip.
| | 02:33 | So there is a simple demo, I'm using
a broadband noise reduction plug-in.
| | 02:38 | There are other ones out there just like RX.
| | 02:42 | Remember the key is to get a good sample noise
print to work from, we'll repeat this process
| | 02:47 | on all the clips on this beach scene, and we'll
end up with some more serviceable audio clips.
| | 02:52 |
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|
3. Working with Sound Effects and MusicSynchronizing sound effects| 00:00 | Now that we have all of our dialogue and sync
soundtracks edited, it's time to start thinking
| | 00:04 | about how we can add some sound
effects to enhance the action in our film.
| | 00:08 | In this movie we'll look at importing
sound effects and syncing them to picture.
| | 00:13 | In this scene here, the boss man is sending a message
on his iPhone, but we have no sounds to go with it.
| | 00:19 | The message he sends isn't important part of the film,
so we want to give his actions a little life here.
| | 00:24 | So let's go over how to import and sync
up some cell phone sound effects we have.
| | 00:29 | The way to import audio with the most controls
is through File > Import > Audio, or Shift+Command+I.
| | 00:37 | This brings us into the
Import Audio dialog window.
| | 00:40 | At the top of the window we can navigate
to the sound effects folder on the Desktop.
| | 00:44 | We have two sounds, a tap
sound and an unlock phone sound.
| | 00:49 | This window let's you audition the sounds before you
bring them into the session. Let's play the tap sound.
| | 00:55 | That's the sound the iPhone
makes when your fingers tap it.
| | 00:58 | Now we'll play the unlock sound.
| | 01:00 | You can decide you want to use these sound effects.
They can either be added or copied to the session.
| | 01:07 | The difference between add and copy is that
add will not physically copy the files into
| | 01:11 | your audio files folder
associated with your session.
| | 01:15 | Pro Tools will remember to include the files, but
not if you move it or take your session somewhere else.
| | 01:20 | The safer bet is to copy the file, so it
goes in the audio files folder for your session
| | 01:25 | then hit Done to import them.
| | 01:28 | Pro Tools will then ask you where you want
to put your audio files; it defaults to the
| | 01:32 | audio files folder associated with
your session, so I'll put them there.
| | 01:37 | Then it'll ask you if you want to add it to a new track
or to the clips list on the right-hand side of our edit window.
| | 01:42 | Let's choose the Clip List, since we'll put this
on our mono sound effects tracks we already have.
| | 01:47 | Next, we'll make the movie window a little
bigger so we can check our sync better, right-click
| | 01:52 | on the video and make it Half Size.
| | 01:55 | Now we have to find the sync points, we
can use markers by hitting Enter to establish
| | 02:00 | all the places these need to go.
| | 02:02 | So let's go into Grid mode, so we can work
frame by frame and then we can slowly move
| | 02:07 | the cursor to find the sync points.
| | 02:10 | It looks like he unlocks the phone with
his thumb at timecode 01:06:20:00.
| | 02:18 | Hit Enter to make a marker there,
then we can name the marker unlock.
| | 02:23 | Then he taps his fingers seven times on the
phone, scrolling through I can see the first
| | 02:28 | one starts at 01:06:21:20, we'll make a
marker there, and we'll call it tap 1.
| | 02:38 | Looks like the next one happens at
01:06:22:11, we'll call this tap 2.
| | 02:49 | Then there's one at 01:06:22:20, one
at 01:06:23:05, one at 01:06:23:11.
| | 03:03 | The sixth marker is at 01:06:23:17, and
the final one is at 01:06:24:08. Great.
| | 03:12 | So now we have laid some markers
to see where the sync points are.
| | 03:18 | Now let's make the video a little
smaller, so we can see what we're doing.
| | 03:21 | One way to spot in a sound effect to a particular location
is to use the Spot editing mode in the upper left here.
| | 03:29 | When you're in Spot mode if you drag the
unlock clip out anywhere in the track, as soon as
| | 03:34 | we release it we're prompted with a spot dialog,
and then we can put it at a specific timecode.
| | 03:40 | If you remember the placement for the
unlock clip, it was at 01:06:20 and 0 frames,
| | 03:47 | so let's put that in the start time.
When we hit OK, the clip snaps right there.
| | 03:53 | Another faster way to spot sound effects in is to place
the cursor at the location you want the effect to go.
| | 03:59 | Let's place the cursor at the first tab,
then while holding the Ctrl button drag the tap
| | 04:07 | clip out from the clips list into that track,
it'll snap right to your cursor location.
| | 04:13 | Let's repeat this for all the taps.
| | 04:16 | Finally, let's lower the volume of all these
sound effects to see if they work in the scene.
| | 04:21 | We can change the track playlist to our
volume view, then we can select all the clips and
| | 04:27 | with the Trimmer tool let's lower the
volume down to -10, we'll take a listen.
| | 04:33 | (video playing)
| | 04:38 | This looks and sounds pretty good.
| | 04:42 | Knowing how to play sound effects like these in
sync is crucial to getting a great sounding
| | 04:45 | film mix, and it can enhance your film a lot.
| | 04:50 |
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| Working with Foley| 00:00 | Foley, named after the famous Hollywood sound designer
Jack Foley, is a method of recording sound to match action.
| | 00:07 | It's used for those kinds of effects that are
better acted out than just a canned sound effect.
| | 00:13 | In this movie we'll do a sample Foley record, and I'll
show a handy way to get your recordings in sync as you go.
| | 00:18 | In this scene the boss man sits
at his desk contemplating life.
| | 00:23 | At one moment he drops his phone.
| | 00:25 | We can kind of hear the phone drop in the
sync track, and I put a marker where you can
| | 00:29 | hear it, let's take a listen.
| | 00:31 | (video playing)
| | 00:34 | We're going to do a Foley recording where
I drop my phone and try not to break it.
| | 00:38 | I have my microphone all set up here.
| | 00:40 | I'm going to demonstrate
this simple Foley recording.
| | 00:43 | One thing that's helpful when you're recording
Foley if you have ever tried to do it is getting
| | 00:46 | a cue to know when to do the action, for this
reason I have provided you with some simple Foley beeps.
| | 00:53 | The Foley beeps on a track I
called beeps which I'll now unmute.
| | 00:57 | These are just three simple beeps spaced
one second apart, but if you place them right
| | 01:02 | before the sound we're going to Foley,
they can act like a countdown, cuing me to
| | 01:06 | drop the phone on time.
| | 01:08 | Here is a good way to snap the
back end of any region in to place.
| | 01:13 | Place the cursor at the desired location,
in this case it's where the phone is going
| | 01:16 | to fall, then with the Grabber tool
type Command+Ctrl-click on the region.
| | 01:24 | This effectively back timed the beeps
track to be right on cue, let's take a listen.
| | 01:31 | (video playing)
| | 01:35 | Now I have the FX Mono 1 track all
set up with my mic connected to it.
| | 01:40 | I'll record and enable the track.
| | 01:42 | I'm going to make a selection starting at the
beginning of the beeps and extending pass the record area.
| | 01:48 | Now to start recording, I'll
type Command+Spacebar.
| | 01:51 | Make sure you have the Apple Spotlight Quick Key turned off
in your preferences to do this key command, let's try this.
| | 02:00 | (video playing)
| | 02:06 | And now you can see our recording is
in the track, and it sounded in sync.
| | 02:10 | So that's a fun and easy way
to do accurate Foley recording.
| | 02:13 | Don't forget to mute the beeps track when you're done.
| | 02:17 |
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| Creating sound effects from scratch| 00:00 | Some sound effects need
to be created from scratch.
| | 00:03 | Pro Tools has an incredible arsenal
of sound designing tools available.
| | 00:07 | In this movie, we're going to show two
examples of how to use some of these tools to make
| | 00:10 | the speakerphone voice actually sound
like it's coming from a speakerphone.
| | 00:15 | In this scene the young architect
calls the boss man on the speakerphone.
| | 00:19 | The voice of the boss man is on the voiceover
track 12, but it doesn't sound like a phone.
| | 00:24 | Let's take a listen.
| | 00:27 | (Mr. Dalton: Patton, you there?)
| | 00:28 | (Patton: Yes, Mr. Dalton, I'm here.
And I never said on the hour.)
| | 00:33 | So I want to show you how to make
it sound more like a speakerphone.
| | 00:36 | We'll be using the AudioSuite
plug-ins here to demonstrate.
| | 00:39 | Remember, AudioSuite plug-ins
render the audio clip in place.
| | 00:43 | So before rendering in the effects, I like
to duplicate the track playlist, that way
| | 00:48 | I can quickly go back to
the original unaffected audio.
| | 00:51 | Go down to the little pulldown arrow next
to the track name and select Duplicate, we'll
| | 00:58 | then be prompted to name the playlist,
let's name it DIA12.phone1.
| | 01:04 | Now we can easily swap back and forth from the
new track playlist to the old track playlist.
| | 01:10 | Now let's call up the channel strip plug-in.
It's under EQ in the AudioSuite pulldown menu.
| | 01:15 | This is a plug-in that comes with Pro Tools 10
and acts like a traditional Console Channel Strip.
| | 01:21 | It has Compression and EQ all in one place.
It also has a telephone Preset.
| | 01:27 | Let's call up the preset by going to the pulldown
menu that says factory preset and choose Telephone.
| | 01:35 | Let me adjust the view of his plug-in,
so we can see it a little better.
| | 01:38 | So how it works is it calls up a combination of equalizing
and compression that gives the sound like a phone.
| | 01:43 | We can audition it by
clicking on the speaker icon.
| | 01:47 | (Mr. Dalton: Patton, you there?
Patton, you there?)
| | 01:51 | That sounds pretty good, so let's select all the clips and
choose create individual files up here in this pulldown menu.
| | 01:58 | We'll hit Render, and
let's hear it in the scene.
| | 02:02 | (male speaker: Hey, yeah, I'm here with Patton,
and he's telling me you want him here every hour
| | 02:09 | on the hour, checking in on me?)
| | 02:12 | (Mr. Dalton: Patton, you there?)
| | 02:14 | (Patton: Yes, Mr. Dalton, I'm here.
And I never said on the hour.
| | 02:17 | I just told him I decide before or after the hour.)
| | 02:21 | (Mr. Dalton: No matter, just continue to do as I requested.
Oh, and Patton, did you let Joseph know about the other details?)
| | 02:30 | That seems to be working.
| | 02:31 | Let's try one more. Let's open the playlist
to switch back to our original clip, and we'll
| | 02:37 | make one more playlist,
so select Duplicate again.
| | 02:40 | We'll name this one DIA12.phone2.
| | 02:46 | This time we'll be using
a plug-in called TL Space.
| | 02:49 | This is an affordable add-on plug-in that
you'd buy to enhance your Pro Tools system.
| | 02:54 | This plug-in uses a technology called impulse
response reverb where real-world spaces and
| | 02:59 | systems are sampled and they
can be rendered into your sound.
| | 03:03 | It's really an amazing stuff, and it's great for
postproduction, so I want to show it to you here.
| | 03:07 | In the Favorites here, I have added a Small intercom
speaker preset, double-click it to activate it.
| | 03:13 | You actually see a picture of the
speaker used to collect impulse response.
| | 03:17 | Let's audition this one.
| | 03:19 | (Mr. Dalton: Patton, you there?
Patton, you there? Patton, you there?)
| | 03:24 | That sounds great.
| | 03:26 | Let's increase the wet volume, that's the effect value
to make it a little louder and then we will render it.
| | 03:33 | Now we can use either phone sample 1 or 2,
and we can also go back to the original from
| | 03:37 | our track playlist pulldown menu.
Let's take a listen.
| | 03:42 | (Mr. Dalton: No matter, just continue to do as I requested.
Oh, and Patton, did you let Joseph know about the other details?)
| | 03:51 | (Joseph: What other details?)
| | 03:54 | Plug-in processing like this is a great
way to achieve sound design effects
| | 03:57 | in your Pro Tools mix. You
can have a lot of fun doing this.
| | 04:02 |
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| Working with music tracks| 00:00 | We have gotten to the point in our editing here where this
movie needs some music, especially the first daydream sequence.
| | 00:05 | In this movie we'll work through adding a music track
and syncing it up to a specific location in the timeline.
| | 00:11 | In the sound effects movie, we
imported audio using File > Import.
| | 00:15 | In this lesson we'll import music tracks
by dragging and dropping from the Desktop.
| | 00:19 | This is easily possible, but you want to
ensure one preference is set in Pro Tools.
| | 00:24 | Let's go to Pro Tools > Preferences > Processing tab and
make sure Automatically Copy Files on Import is checked.
| | 00:35 | This will ensure that any files dragged and dropped into
the timeline will end up in your Session Audio Files folder.
| | 00:41 | Otherwise, Pro Tools points to the file on
the Desktop, and if you move it or delete it,
| | 00:46 | it won't be found in our session.
| | 00:49 | Now on the Desktop, let's grab the music track
with the words the trouble within its title,
| | 00:55 | and we'll drop it into in
one of the music tracks.
| | 00:57 | If we solo the track and listen to this music, you'll notice
about one-third of the way through the clip, the drums come in.
| | 01:04 | (video playing)
| | 01:15 | This is a good moment in
music to sync to something.
| | 01:18 | So we'll drop a Sync Point here.
| | 01:20 | We can drop a sync point into any audio clip by
typing Command+Comma at the selection point.
| | 01:27 | Each clip can contain one sync point.
See the little down arrow that was made?
| | 01:33 | That's our sync point.
| | 01:35 | Now let's find a point in
the timeline to sync it up to.
| | 01:38 | How about when the dream
scene goes to black and white?
| | 01:41 | Let's drop a marker there by typing
the Enter button, name it music point.
| | 01:47 | And note the time code is 01:04:25:10.
| | 01:53 | Now if we go into Spot editing mode on the
upper left here, and we choose a Grabber tool,
| | 01:59 | we can click once on the music
clip and the Spot Dialog will appear.
| | 02:04 | We'll plug-in the timecode point we wanted
to sync to, into the sync point field, that's
| | 02:09 | 01:04:25:10, that's where the
scene goes to black and white.
| | 02:15 | When we hit OK, the music
snaps right to that point.
| | 02:19 | Let's listen to that transition.
| | 02:23 | (video playing)
| | 02:36 | This works pretty. We'll now continue through
and place some other music in the film, but
| | 02:41 | this demonstration shows an easy way to sync,
not only music, but any clip to a specific
| | 02:46 | location within the clip using a sync point.
| | 02:51 |
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| Building background ambience| 00:00 | One of the things we can do to enhance our
films is to create a sonic world around the action.
| | 00:06 | These actors aren't working in a vacuum.
| | 00:08 | One way to create the sense of space is to
use background ambient tracks in all the scenes.
| | 00:13 | This will create a sense of space in
a real world that the actors live in.
| | 00:17 | The best way to set up for laying an
ambience tracks is to mark each scene's beginning and
| | 00:22 | end with a marker accurate to the frame.
| | 00:25 | That way we can easily lay in stereo
ambient sound effects tracks and make them line up
| | 00:30 | perfectly with the
beginning and end of each scene.
| | 00:33 | As you can see here, I have one
marker indicating the start of the film.
| | 00:37 | So making sure we're in Grid mode, we can
scroll through and find the exact frame that the
| | 00:43 | next scene, which is in
the architect office, starts.
| | 00:48 | Once you get close to it, you can use the
Plus and Minus keys on the numeric
| | 00:52 | keypad to nudge the cursor forward and back until
you find the exact frame that the next scene starts on.
| | 00:59 | The last frame of the first scene is 01:01:36:02,
and the first frame of the next scene is 01:01:36:03.
| | 01:10 | Let's put a marker on the first frame of the
new scene. We'll hit Enter to make a marker.
| | 01:16 | And we'll name it small office.
| | 01:18 | Now we'd want to go through the film and put
one of these markers on every scene boundary,
| | 01:22 | because it will help enormously when we lay
in the background ambiences for each scene.
| | 01:29 | As you can see, towards the end of the film
I have already placed a marker to indicate where
| | 01:32 | the last scene, the beach scene starts.
| | 01:35 | I'm going to drag and drop a few background
sound effects into the Stereo Effects track.
| | 01:42 | I have a folder called Ambiences on my
Desktop containing some stock library beach sounds.
| | 01:47 | This folder isn't included in the exercise
file media, but you can use any stock library
| | 01:52 | files you might have at your disposal, or
you can download free sounds from sources
| | 01:56 | like freesound.org, if you need them.
| | 02:00 | I'm going to drag them in one at a time to
the Stereo FX tracks, then I'll trim
| | 02:07 | the heads of each of these clips so it
starts somewhere right in the middle of each clip,
| | 02:11 | but at the beginning of the scene.
| | 02:14 | To make the top tracks fit to the end
of the film, I'll have to duplicate it.
| | 02:18 | Command+D to duplicate a clip.
Then I could use some crossfades and fade-ups.
| | 02:22 | I'll do some fade-ups coming into the beach
clips, and maybe I use the Trimmer tool to
| | 02:27 | out each clip out one
frame before the scene starts.
| | 02:32 | I'll make a selection over the frame, and I'll use the
Quick Key F to make the fade in on all three tracks.
| | 02:38 | And we'll trim the clips to the end of the
film and use the F Quick Key to make a longer
| | 02:41 | crossfade, starting at the
fade to black marker we have here.
| | 02:45 | In the case of Ambiences, the
best way to work is in layers.
| | 02:49 | If you layer a bunch of ambiences in a scene
like this, it tends to sound more realistic.
| | 02:53 | Also, we decided to go with the dialogue
replaced lines of the characters on the beach.
| | 02:58 | So we really want to make sure they
sound real against the beach ambiences.
| | 03:01 | Let's take a listen to how this scene ended up.
| | 03:06 | (Joseph: Hey, dad.)
| | 03:08 | (Mr. Dalton: Hey, kiddo.
So, you got a design for me?)
| | 03:19 | (Joseph: Yeah, I think so.
Thanks for the message.)
| | 03:29 | (Mr. Dalton: Just doing my job.)
| | 03:32 | (music playing)
| | 03:40 | Great. Those Ambience tracks work well.
| | 03:42 | Now we want to fill in each
scene with that kind of background.
| | 03:45 | This kind of Ambience treatment will make
your film sound much more realistic and cinematic.
| | 03:50 |
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|
4. Mixing to PictureAutomating volume| 00:00 | This film has really come a long way. We have pretty much fleshed
out all the backgrounds, effects, music, and dialogue tracks.
| | 00:07 | Now it's time to start thinking about how
we're going to mix each individual track together
| | 00:11 | to make it sound as good as
possible for a final result.
| | 00:15 | When we mix our film, it's good to be aware of another
window in Pro Tools we haven't looked at yet, the Mix window.
| | 00:21 | You can bring out the Mix window by going to Window > Mix,
or you can use a quick key combination Command+Equal.
| | 00:29 | The Mix window lets you see the channel strips and track
volume faders for all your tracks together in one view.
| | 00:35 | They can be a really useful reference of your
levels, but we can still do most of our mixing
| | 00:40 | back in the Edit window.
| | 00:42 | Command+Equal toggles
you back to that window.
| | 00:45 | Let's look at the Volume view
playlist of all of our tracks.
| | 00:49 | Holding the Option, change one of
the Waveform views to Volume view.
| | 00:54 | All tracks should now show volume.
| | 00:57 | If you look around here, you'll already see
that some volume breakpoints have been made
| | 01:01 | for several regions. As long as there are
breakpoints present in the track and the track
| | 01:06 | is set to Read Automation mode on the track controls,
the track will follow these volumes as it plays through.
| | 01:14 | So when you mix each track of your film, you can
use the Grabber tool to click and create breakpoints.
| | 01:21 | You can then pull the Volume line up or down.
| | 01:25 | You can also use the Selector tool to make
a selection and then you can use the Trimmer
| | 01:30 | tool to pull Volume up or
down within the selection.
| | 01:35 | You can also use the Pencil
tool to draw Volume automation.
| | 01:40 | To erase breakpoints, you can Option-click
on them with the Grabber tool, or you can
| | 01:46 | select around a bunch of
them and hit the Delete key.
| | 01:51 | One thing I want to go over in this movie
is the difference between track volume, which
| | 01:55 | is what we're looking at here, and Clip Volume.
| | 01:59 | In Pro Tools 10, each clip can have its
own internal volume or Gain, it's called
| | 02:04 | Clip Gain, but Track Volume and Clip Volume
can be used together simultaneously.
| | 02:10 | In this scene I have added a clock sound
effect to the scene, let's take a listen.
| | 02:15 | (video playing)
| | 02:22 | Obviously, the clock is much too loud here.
| | 02:25 | Let's use Clip Gain to pulldown
the volume on the sound effect.
| | 02:29 | First, I have to go to Waveform view to access Clip Gain.
| | 02:33 | Now I can pull down the little slider on the
bottom left of the clip, that's our clip Gain control.
| | 02:39 | Let's pull it down to about -41.
Now I can go back to the Volume view.
| | 02:44 | I want to automate the volume to suddenly
rise when he looks at the clock right around
| | 02:49 | timecode 01:07:25:00, then we'll make it
go back after around 01:07:30:00, just a quick
| | 03:01 | rise of the clock level as he looks at it.
Now let's take a listen to this move.
| | 03:08 | (video playing)
| | 03:18 | So that's the example of how you can use the Clip Gain
and Track Volume together in your final mix.
| | 03:24 | You should definitely utilize this
as you go through and mix your scenes.
| | 03:29 |
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| Using EQ to enhance your mix| 00:00 | As you're mixing your movie, you'll inevitably
come across situations where just adjusting
| | 00:05 | the volume isn't enough to make
the sounds sit right in the film.
| | 00:10 | In this movie we'll explore using Equalizers as Tonal
Shaping Tools to make the sounds work better in your mix.
| | 00:17 | We can begin by using Equalizers to get rid of
any unwanted stuff that maybe clouding up our mix.
| | 00:22 | In terms of dialogue, there's a lot of information
that might be on our tracks that we don't need.
| | 00:27 | I'm talking about low rumbles, wind noise,
and hiss that extends well below and above
| | 00:33 | the usable frequencies of the voice.
| | 00:35 | We can put a Global EQ on our Auxiliary Dialogue Stem track
to deal with all of this, on all of our Dialogue Tracks.
| | 00:43 | Let's put an EQ3 7-band EQ plug-in
on the Dialogue Stems insert.
| | 00:49 | This is the 7 band EQ plug-in
that comes with Pro Tools.
| | 00:53 | Now where it says HPF, that
stands for High Pass Filter.
| | 00:59 | It lets the high frequencies pass and cuts
out the low frequencies where you tell it to.
| | 01:04 | Let's click it in, then we'll adjust the slope
a little to be more steep, say, 18 dB per Octave,
| | 01:11 | so we can be more precise.
| | 01:13 | Then will increase the
Frequency to around 75 Hz.
| | 01:18 | That means everything
below 75 Hz is getting cut out.
| | 01:22 | We can also take the edge a little off the
high end of our dialogue tracks with the Low
| | 01:25 | Pass Filter, where it says LPF.
| | 01:28 | This will help with any hiss on our tracks.
We have to be a little more careful here.
| | 01:33 | So let's leave it slope to be
more gentle at 6 dB per Octave.
| | 01:37 | And we can pull the frequency down to 15 kHz.
| | 01:41 | Good, now this is a Global EQ for all the
dialogue in the film, and it's a good start
| | 01:46 | to filter out any unnecessary
sound for all your dialogue tracks.
| | 01:50 | But some tracks need even more
EQ level to sit right in the mix.
| | 01:55 | Let's take, for example, the voiceover track
that was added as dialogue replacement
| | 01:59 | during the beach dream sequence.
| | 02:02 | It sounds much too close and present to be
a voice on the beach. Let's listen to it.
| | 02:08 | (male speaker: The sand? Well, the water
and sand mix, chemistry stuff.
| | 02:12 | But that's not the exciting part.
The exciting part is the lines.)
| | 02:16 | (boy: The lines?)
| | 02:18 | (male speaker: Yeah, the lines.
Here, let me show you. You want strong lines.)
| | 02:24 | It's just not quite working.
| | 02:25 | So we'll use EQ on this track to tonally shape the
sound, so it can match the scene a little better.
| | 02:33 | Let's insert a 7-band EQ3 on the
DIA11 track, and we'll solo the track.
| | 02:40 | Here we need to make his voice a little less
boomy and also a little less present in the high end.
| | 02:45 | The boomy stuff is on the low frequencies.
| | 02:49 | In the control for LF, which stands for Low
Frequency, we can move the Frequency Knob
| | 02:54 | up to around 300, then we
can reduce the Gain about 8 dB.
| | 03:01 | You can then adjust the cue to be a
little more gradual with the slope of this EQ.
| | 03:05 | We'll then do a similar thing on that
HF band that's the High Frequency band.
| | 03:11 | We can adjust the frequency to
about 7.5 kHz and the gain to -6.
| | 03:17 | We can adjust the cue here
also to be little more gradual.
| | 03:22 | Finally, let's crank the output gain of
this plug-in to compensate for any lost volume.
| | 03:29 | Now let's take a listen.
| | 03:32 | (male speaker: The sand? Well, the water
and sand mix, chemistry stuff.
| | 03:36 | But that's not the exciting part.
The exciting part is the lines.)
| | 03:39 | (boy: The lines?)
| | 03:40 | (male speaker: Yeah, the lines. Here, let me show you.
You want strong lines, unique lines, fun lines.)
| | 03:55 | During playback, I'll push the bypass, so we
can here before and after our Tonal Shaping EQ.
| | 04:00 | When the bypass button is
lit, the plug-in is inactive.
| | 04:03 | Let's take a listen.
| | 04:05 | (male speaker: The sand? Well, the water
and sand mix, chemistry stuff.
| | 04:09 | But that's not the exciting part.
The exciting part is the lines.)
| | 04:13 | (boy: The lines?)
| | 04:14 | (male speaker: Yeah, the lines.
Here, let me show you. You want strong--)
| | 04:19 | And there we go, now his voice
sounds a little more glued into the scene.
| | 04:23 | Going forward, you want to use these types
of EQ treatments wherever any element isn't
| | 04:28 | sitting right in the mix and just
pure volume isn't doing the trick.
| | 04:33 |
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| Automating plugins| 00:00 | Sometimes when you use plug-ins for your film mix,
you want them to change parameters in real time.
| | 00:06 | This attribute can be very
useful as a sound design tool.
| | 00:10 | In this movie, I'll show you how to use
automation to change a reverb plug-in in real time.
| | 00:15 | The clock sound effect in this scene is cool,
but wouldn't it be cooler if we could make
| | 00:19 | it really sound like it's in the character's
mind and it fades to a normal clock?
| | 00:24 | If we could only make it have reverb that gradually decreases
until it's dry, using plug-in automation we can do this.
| | 00:32 | Let's insert a real-time
plug-in on the track's Insert.
| | 00:35 | We'll use D-verb (mono/stereo), that's the
reverb plug-in that comes with Pro Tools.
| | 00:40 | Let's listen to the plug-in
without any automation.
| | 00:43 | (video playing)
| | 00:50 | Cool. Now in order to automate a plug-in, you have to tell
Pro Tools which parameters you want to automate first.
| | 00:56 | One way to do that is to click the little button
below automation in the top of the plug-in window.
| | 01:01 | Here we see a list of all
of the plug-in's parameters.
| | 01:04 | We know we want to bypass this plug-in for
all the rest of the movie except for here.
| | 01:08 | So let's add Master Bypass
to the list and click OK.
| | 01:13 | Now in the track playlist selector, you see
(FX a) D-Verb and then the Master Bypass listed.
| | 01:22 | Let's go to that playlist.
| | 01:23 | This is our bypass control
playlist for this plug-in.
| | 01:27 | So using a Trimmer tool, we can make it so the
plug-in is bypassed and the line is at the top.
| | 01:35 | Then we'll make a selection around the sound effect
and use the Trimmer to un-bypass just for this clip.
| | 01:42 | Now this effect will only be heard during
this clip and no other clips on the track.
| | 01:46 | The other control we need to
automate is the WET/DRY slider.
| | 01:49 | This will allow us to
decrease the reverb effect over time.
| | 01:53 | Another way to automate a parameter is to
Ctrl+Command+Option-click on the control.
| | 01:59 | Then we can say, Enable
Automation for "Wet/Dry".
| | 02:04 | This is just another way to
add it to our automation list.
| | 02:06 | You'll notice a green box shows up around
the control; that tells us it can be automated.
| | 02:12 | Now it should be able to find this control on
the track playlist under D-Verb, there it is.
| | 02:18 | Now using the Pencil Line tool, let's draw
a line from wet which is at the top, to dry
| | 02:25 | which is at the bottom.
Now let's take a listen.
| | 02:30 | (video playing)
| | 02:35 | That's sounding great.
It really makes the scene happen.
| | 02:39 | Plug-in Automation is a really useful tool
when you're finessing your mix, and it's these
| | 02:43 | kinds of touches that really
makes your film mix stand out.
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| Printing final stems| 00:00 | Once you have your mix finalized, it's time to do what
we call the Print Master or the Re-recording session.
| | 00:07 | This is where you make flattened versions
of all your stems, both as a stereo mixdown
| | 00:11 | of all of the stems, and as individual stems.
| | 00:15 | The stem print masters can be useful later
if you need to make a change or make a foreign
| | 00:19 | language version, and you don't want to
go back into the original Pro Tools Mix.
| | 00:24 | In this movie, we'll work through the
steps to make these final print masters.
| | 00:28 | To make things easier, let's pull all of
auxiliary tracks up to the top of the session.
| | 00:33 | Next, we need to make four stereo
audio tracks to record our mix to.
| | 00:39 | Let's type Shift+Command+N, and
we'll make four new stereo tracks.
| | 00:44 | We'll name these tracks Stereo Mix Print, then you
can either use the key command, Command+Right Arrow
| | 00:53 | or click the Next button
to move to the next track.
| | 00:57 | Name the next track DIA Print for dialogue
print, FX Print, and MUS for Music Print.
| | 01:06 | I also like to color code
these print tracks red.
| | 01:11 | We'll be using internal bus routing to go
from our stem tracks to these audio tracks.
| | 01:17 | So let's change the input of each
print track to an available stereo bus.
| | 01:22 | We can use Bus 7-8 for the Stereo Mix Print.
We can use Bus 9-10 for the Dialogue Print,
| | 01:32 | 11-12 for the FX Print, and
13-14 for the Music Print.
| | 01:41 | Now, we'll route the output
of the Dialogue Stem track
| | 01:44 | to first go to the Stereo Mix track, in the output pulldown
menu choose Track > Stereo Mix Print in the output selector.
| | 01:53 | But we also want to Dialogue Stem to
go to the Dialogue Print track as well.
| | 01:58 | You can send the outputs of your tracks to
go two destinations at once in Pro Tools.
| | 02:04 | To do this, you hold down the Ctrl key
as you select the Dialogue Print track.
| | 02:10 | Now we should see a Plus sign in the track output.
That means it's indeed going to two places
| | 02:15 | at once, or at least more
than one place at a time.
| | 02:19 | Now we'll repeat these
actions for the other two stems.
| | 02:23 | And they'll go to the Stereo Mix Print
and their respective print stem tracks.
| | 02:28 | So when we're done, each of our stem
tracks is routing to our stereo print master and
| | 02:34 | to its respective Dialogue, FX,
or Music Print Master track as well.
| | 02:39 | We also have a Tones track I
have here made with our own 2-pop.
| | 02:43 | I want to make sure this pop tone makes
it onto the print masters and the stems.
| | 02:48 | So we can keep them in sync
when we output back to Avid.
| | 02:52 | So let's route the output of this
Tones track to all of the tracks.
| | 02:55 | First, we go to the Stereo Mix Print track, then
while holding Ctrl, we'll put it on the Dialogue Print.
| | 03:04 | Then still holding Ctrl, we output it to the FX Print track
and still holding Ctrl, to the Music Print tracks.
| | 03:12 | So this track is actually
outputting to four places at once.
| | 03:16 | Now we're ready to make the final re-recording.
| | 03:20 | Start at the beginning of
the timeline by hitting Return.
| | 03:23 | Record enable all 4 print tracks, then
hit Command+Spacebar to start recording.
| | 03:37 | (female speaker: Sensation no more, once award-winning
architect fails to deliver on his downtown music hall.)
| | 03:43 | (Mr. Dalton: Joseph's our most gifted architect. He takes risks.
We all know it. I stand by any and all of his designs. That's that.)
| | 03:54 | When we're done, we have four recorded tracks.
| | 03:57 | A stereo mix and then we have
three more broken out stem tracks.
| | 04:02 | Now we'll export these.
| | 04:04 | The clip names are based on the track names we
made, so they're pretty close to what we need.
| | 04:08 | We might want to double-click to just to remove
the little suffix that Pro Tools puts in there.
| | 04:16 | Now with all the clips highlighted, we can
go to the little pulldown menu in the Clips
| | 04:20 | list area on the right.
| | 04:22 | We'll choose Export Clips
as Files, or Shift+Command+K.
| | 04:30 | We'll then get asked what
file type to make our export.
| | 04:33 | Let's keep it the same as we have been working.
| | 04:35 | WAV, Interleaved, which means it's going to
be a stereo file combined, 16 Bit, 48 kHz.
| | 04:44 | We'll then choose a destination, I'll say
Desktop for now and hit Export. Great.
| | 04:52 | Now the files are ready to be re-imported
to Avid or any other video editing program.
| | 04:57 |
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| Marrying back to picture| 00:00 | In this movie, we'll look at re-importing our final
stereo mix back to Avid to finalize our short film.
| | 00:07 | In this movie, you'll see us
working on an Avid project.
| | 00:10 | This Avid project file is not included
in the exercise files for this course.
| | 00:15 | But we're showing it here as a demonstration of
the complete Avid to Pro Tools workflow and back.
| | 00:21 | If you own Avid software, you're welcome to open
any Avid project and follow along with these steps.
| | 00:28 | As I also suggested in the what you should
know before watching this course video, it
| | 00:32 | isn't essential you have Avid to take
advantage of the concepts presented in this course.
| | 00:37 | So we have our final stereo mix from Pro Tools,
and it's located inside our Castles_Avid folder.
| | 00:44 | Inside a folder called From Audio,
you'll see our Stereo Print Mix.
| | 00:49 | So we're going to import this into Avid.
| | 00:52 | Now that we are here in Avid, we're going
to select our Bin and choose File > Import.
| | 00:59 | And inside our From Audio folder, I
see Stereo Mix Print, choose Open.
| | 01:07 | Now this is just saying that Stereo Mix Print
file contains a start time, which is just
| | 01:11 | representative of our timecode.
| | 01:14 | So I want to make sure that 23.98 is selected, because
that's the frame rate of our sequence, and I'll hit OK.
| | 01:21 | And once that's done importing, I'm going to first
duplicate this sequence by right-clicking and choosing Duplicate.
| | 01:30 | The reason I want to duplicate the sequence
is because I'm going remove all of the original
| | 01:34 | audio, and I want to keep the original
sequence intact in case any problems come up
| | 01:39 | in the future, and we want to come back to it.
| | 01:41 | So I'll select Duplicate, and
I'll call this Castles.FINALMIX.
| | 01:45 | I'll open that final mix sequence and
enlarge the sequence just like I can go through and
| | 01:51 | select all of the audio here
and give it a quick delete.
| | 01:56 | Then I'll drag the Stereo Mix in here.
Now I'll go ahead and resize the sequence again.
| | 02:03 | Now to line up our audio pop with our color
bars for the 2-pop, I'll just go ahead and
| | 02:08 | turn on Audio Waveforms, so we
can see the 2-pop visually.
| | 02:12 | I can do that by going down to the Fast menu
here, up to Audio Data and then down to Waveform.
| | 02:19 | And this will show our waveforms,
so we can see where our 2-pop is.
| | 02:23 | I'll zoom in on the sequence here and make
sure I get this first lined up at the beginning.
| | 02:30 | So you can see our 2-pop is right on top
of our color bars, so everything is in sink.
| | 02:35 | So I'll go ahead and zoom out here, then I'll scrub
to the sequence just to make sure everything lines up.
| | 02:42 | (Joseph: That's it? Six p.m., huh?
And if I'm a risky choice, then don't use me.)
| | 02:50 | So that's looking pretty good, and now
our sequence is ready for our final output.
| | 02:56 |
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ConclusionNext steps| 00:00 | In this course we have looked at how
to mix a short film in Pro Tools.
| | 00:03 | I hope we achieved our goal of exploring
possible approaches and techniques for mixing
| | 00:07 | audio for your project, rather than working through all
the technical possibilities of the Pro Tools software.
| | 00:13 | If you're looking to increase your skill set
working with Pro Tools in the postproduction
| | 00:17 | context, I encourage you to watch my course
entitled Audio for Film and Video with Pro Tools.
| | 00:23 | Also, if you're working with the newest
version of Final Cut Pro X, and wondering how your
| | 00:28 | workflow could fit in here, take a look at
another course I teach, entitled,
| | 00:32 | Audio Post Workflow with Final Cut Pro X and Pro Tools.
| | 00:36 | Finally, for comprehensive look at Pro Tools 10 in general,
check out David Franz's Pro Tools 10 Essential Training.
| | 00:44 | Thanks a lot for watching this course.
I'll see you next time.
| | 00:49 |
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