Need Help With Bad Audio (Short Film-XL-1)

A

attrition4u

Member
New here...so, please, be patient.

I have recently shot a short film on an XL-1 and am now in the process of editing this thing together. It is for festival consideration and is the first thing I've ever done.

Now, I'm not a hundred percent happy with it but I am very proud of it because it turned out fairly well for the first thing I've ever put together.

That being said, I've tweaked the cut to a point where I'm relatively happy with the picture side of it (a few minor blemishes aside). But, the audio is just terrible and I'm not sure why. I have a terrible hiss/ambience going on through the whole thing. The whole mix is bassy like "woh" when I play it back through my entertainment center. It is just awful. I don't even know where to start correcting on this thing.

I was hoping someone who was more experienced at this could give me a little guidance. I've never done anything of this nature before and I'm kind of learning as I go. I've never used an EQ. Never applied compression. I have the software suite to do all of that. I use Vegas Video and I have the waves and ultrafunk plugins along with all of the Vegas plugins that come with the program. I just don't know what to do. It's a 25 mb video (with audio). If anybody could help me out, I would be forever in your debt. Thanks a million.

http://home.comcast.net/~christopherforrester/Grief_Creek.avi

Thanks,

Chris
 
Microphone...

Microphone...

It was a boom mic. Sennheiser, if I'm remembering correctly. However, the eqipment wasn't mine so I'm not positive about the model.
 
Robert,

Thanks for the response. Unfortunately, I have tried both Soundsoap and Waves X-Noise and neither worked wonders. They are working to eliminate noise. However, I am getting horrible artifacts that cannot be ignored and both seem to leave the audio sounding flat and dead.

Chris
 
I take it you tried EQ'ing the hell out of it, taking out the highest treble frequencies for the hiss and lowering the bass frequencies for the rumble?
 
If it's that bad, you may need to loop it. The only other plug in that might help you is the stuff from Cedar, and it's really spendy.
 
Could you make a smaller downloadable file? If you can't included the video then just a a FLAC audio file would do.

Without knowing the specific issue you are dealing with I can't direct you to a specific solution. If it's as bad as you seem to imply then ADR might be your only salvation. NR and EQ are the two main guns for most other evening out done with audio. If it's bass heavy then obviously try a high cut. If your hiss is localized then you might be able to notch it out, if not try some light NR to reduce it. If the hiss is too heavy and spread across the spectrum then you are likely to find yourself back in the studio looping the dialog.

After taking out as much ambient that is making your cuts uneven the next thing is to add back some consistent ambient to help even out the cuts and build a realistic background to your scene.

One of the first things you will need before embarking on fixing your audio is good monitors. If your monitors aren't flat then everything you tweak will sound inconsistent from place to place. For example, your entertainment center is likely to be set up bass heavy to begin with. Consumer speaker are usually designed to make music sound richer which includes pumping up the bass.

For future projects you might want to use a seperate recorder for the audio or at the very least make sure you have a good mixer in front of your XL-1. The XL-1 is a seriously crappy audio recorder and likely to be a source of many of your headaches.

Hope that helps
 
Replies...

Replies...

Sorry fellas. I have to work 50 hours in the weekend to get my weeks off and I just got back up and running from my "work week". So, to reply. I have taken away the video and put up a FLAC file of just audio. It's only 11 mb so it's a lot smaller than the video file so I'm hoping that more people will give it a listen and let me know what you think. The file can be downloaded here.

http://home.comcast.net/~christopherforrester/Sample.flac

I haven't done anything to these files yet. These are the uncorrected files. I did, however, adjust volume in a couple of places to match up cuts better, etc. So, this copy is without any noise correction or EQ at all. I haven't really messed with the EQ just yet because, as I said, I've never really done a major EQ process on something like this and I just simply didn't know where to start. I've tried tweaking here and there (to no avail) and just haven't been happy with the results on anything. So, please, by all means, if anybody has a few minutes to listen to the file and a stern direction to send me in, I'm all ears and would appreciate every second of it.

Thanks again for all the help. My deadline on this thing is Dec 3rd and I'm starting to get a little nervous.

Chris
 
I can't download the video because it says URL not found, however, after having listened to the FLAC file a few times, I don't know why you think it sounds so terrible??
But then not having seen the visual it is hard to judge where the sound is suposed to be coming from in the scene.

If anything it needs a little compression to boost the weaker dialogue and tone down that banging sounds. I don't think there's anything wrong with the ambient room sound - the dialogue is clear & crisp enough for me with natural room ambience.

I'm monitoring this through Soundcraft Spirit 2 reference speakers and with flat tone controls on the amp. I'm not sure how you've setup your entertainment centre but it sounds like it could be unaturally enhancing the bass frequencies.

If you don't like the ambient room sound there's nothing available (to my knowledge) other than noise gating that you could do to remove it short of re-recording it. But even with gating you'd still need to add some room ambience to bridge the silence gaps.

I'm not a film maker by any means but I do have some experience in music recording. In my opinion:
1) Roll off frequencies below 80Hz and above 10Khz
2) If you find that the dialogue lacks a bit of clarity just EQ a spike with a very narrow Q setting at around 7Khz to give the voices a little sizzle
3) Finally add a little 3:1 compression with limiting via the Vegas built in compressor or one of the Waves mastering compressors

You already have the tools to do a great job, however, purely from not having seen the footage I realy don't see what you are so concerned about.
 
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