Need some (or a lot of) help with editing sound!

T

Trigonis

Member
Hey there everyone. About eight months ago I shot a video on the new Panasonic HVX200 and I'm in the finishing stages of video editing and moving my way into the complicated realm of sound editing via Soundtrack Pro. My dilemma is that I'm not very mathematical (or even logical for that matter), and am somewhat confused by much of the terminology of audio remastering/engineering and Soundtrack Pro. Wikipedia was of little help, and the user manual for Soundtrack Pro is useless to me because it doesn't explain the effects, just tells you how to use them.

So, where does that leave me? I am looking to "master" the audio in my film as best I can with the equipment I have. What are some things I can do to:

1) lessen the background noise of a clip (or, really, increase the volume of, say, the voices of my characters to make them stand out from the background more)

2) eliminate (or at the very least lessen) the amount of background "hum" throughout most of the video without affecting the foreground audio

3) eliminate a very high pitched ringing in some of the shots in one of my scenes.

I am aware of digital effects such as compressors, noise gates, and graphic EQs, but again, I'm not sure how to work the settings to get the results that I'm looking for. Any information would be greatly appreciated.

And if anyone can explain to me, in layman's terms, the concept behind frequency and how it works, I will forever be indebted to you! Thanks!. :huh:
 
I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but those problems sound like improperly recorded sound. There are things you can do to minimize them, but no one is going to be able to aswere all of those questions here.

You need to pick up Jay Rose's books Producing Great Sound for Digital Video and Audio Postproduction for Digital Video

http://www.dplay.com/book/pgs2e/index.html#buy

the link above and buying from amazon helps Jay get paid for his work, so please use them. You will need both books.
 
Unfortunately all of the questions in your post have nothing to do with sound editing. They all refer to sound mixing and that is not something that you can learn from a few answers on a forum. As Mike said read up on it and then practice. To get you started, set up a parametric EQ on one of your clips with the high pitched ringing, boost the frequency around 8khz. Then move the frequency slider around changing the freq until it matches the sound you want to reduce. Once you find it, then cut that frequency and see if that helps.
 
saneproductions said:
I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but those problems sound like improperly recorded sound.
Click to expand...

Ditto!


saneproductions said:
You need to pick up Jay Rose's books Producing Great Sound for Digital Video and Audio Postproduction for Digital Video

http://www.dplay.com/book/pgs2e/index.html#buy
Click to expand...

Double and triple ditto!!

Sorry man, long road ahead of you. Get and READ Jay's book. You will know where to go from there.

Good luck
 
wabbit said:
Ditto!




Double and triple ditto!!

Sorry man, long road ahead of you. Get and READ Jay's book. You will know where to go from there.

Good luck
Click to expand...

Like wabbit's signature says (which I love BTW): Fast, Cheap, Good. Pick any two.

You're going to have to send the stuff out to be worked on.
 
Yup. I agree with all of these comments. You may get away with not having to loop if you get a really good re-recording mixer to mix it for you. As far as sound editng goes, I've never used soundrack, but I don't know anyone that uses it for editng sound to picture. Most people use Pro Tools or Nuendo.
 
saneproductions said:
I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but those problems sound like improperly recorded sound. There are things you can do to minimize them, but no one is going to be able to aswere all of those questions here.

You need to pick up Jay Rose's books Producing Great Sound for Digital Video and Audio Postproduction for Digital Video

http://www.dplay.com/book/pgs2e/index.html#buy

the link above and buying from amazon helps Jay get paid for his work, so please use them. You will need both books.
Click to expand...


And here is a link (from the author's web site) to get both of them for $59.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1578201160/ref=nosim/wwwdplaycom

Seemed like a good deal, and with a little extra money going to the author, so I bought them.
 
But the reason Sane put the other link is that if you click the Amazon link "from Jay's site" he will get a larger commission from Amazon. Quote from his site:

"A book like this obviously has to be a labor of love, since the publisher pays me only $2.25 royalty per copy sold.
But if you buy right after clicking on the Amazon link, they give me a commission of $4.72 on top of the publisher's royalty! Two of those and I can buy a pizza!

Amazon's commission is much less ($1.57) if you wander around their site before ordering. So if you're going to wander, please do me a favor. Once you decide to actually buy the book, come back to my site. Then click the Amazon link right before placing the order.

Barnes & Noble's commission is $1.79 per copy for purchases that come from my link. If it's all the same to you, please buy from Amazon. I could use the pizza."

Get the man a pizza, he deserves it.

Cheers
 
I would like to point out that I have been "recording" sound since 1999 for video projects. Until I started coming here and until I read Jay's books I never really recorded anything. It is about as night and day as you can get. A little embarrassing too.

These books are not for just noobs.
 
While a forum like this is not able to resolve your issues, I would like to point out that I've had some horrible takes that a talented sound engineer was able to salvage. So if you don't have the money to hire someone, try to find a friend, or a student who has the right tools and know-how to take a look at it.
 
wabbit said:
But the reason Sane put the other link is that if you click the Amazon link "from Jay's site" he will get a larger commission from Amazon. Quote from his site:

Get the man a pizza, he deserves it.

Cheers
Click to expand...


Blast! I thought that since the was the direct link I got from his site, that would work. I sure hope I ordered them correctly so he can get his extra money.

Shoot. Once again, wabbit corrects me on what should be the glaringly obvious.

Damn!


:dankk2:
 
I'll try to answer your question as briefly as I can here. I didn't see anyone really answer the question for you. In a nutshell, the "noise" and other elements in your poorly recorded soundtrack must be filtered out (now remember I'm going to simplify this) You can sometimes get remarkable results, but remember it's like trying separate the yellow from orange, which is a combination of red and yellow. Some things you will only be able to minimize. (maybe even to an acceptable level)
Noise gates, compressors, limiters, etc. aren't really filters they control the intensity of a signal or a specific part of the signal by regulating it.
EQ's separate the sound signal into frequency ranges. For instance low tones, and high tones, and everything in between. Once they are separated they can be regulated. So to make it simple, amplitude is the loudness or rather the strength of the sound wave. The frequency is the length of the wave. A high frequency sound wave would be like the high notes on a piano. And of course the low frequency sound waves would be the low notes on a piano. (I don't mean to make this sound like I'm explaining it to a 3rd grader, but someone else might not have the understanding that you do about this stuff)
Let's say for instance, on your soundtrack, you hear this low pitched deep hum (low frequency sound) you would find that specific sound on the spectrum and decrease it's strength or eliminate it. If you try recording a 1Hz tone which is a common tone used to calibrate the levels on your camera. Since you already know what the frequency is, you could go to your EQ and find the range that controls that frequency (1Hz) turn it down and you will hear the tone disappear. While other sounds remain relatively unaffected. Unless they contain that frequency as well.
For High pitched sounds or that high pitched ringing you were talking about. Same thing, find out where it is on the scale and attempt to eliminate that frequency or minimize it. Now that's simplifying it. But say you are talking about a sound like the human voice. It is a combination of a wide range of frequencies. Not so easy to control or manipulate.
I hope I at least have given you a little bit more on what frequency is. Maybe even cleared some things up.
Also different frequencies have different characteristics. Knowing this can help you when you are dealing with sound recording, mixing, and mastering. Low frequencies travel much further than high frequencies. Sort of like rolling a bowling ball and a "bb" sound frequencies act just the same.

The best book to get on all this is :
Mixing Engineer's handbook; by Bobby Owsinski
Mastering Engineer's handbook; by Bobby Owsinski

I hope this was helpful and cleared it up for you.
Also there is a program called "Sound Soap" which uses some fairly complex and advanced filters.
If you need more help on this, send me an email and we can talk more about this stuff.
 
Practical advice

Practical advice

What you want is some practical advice, minus the confusion to deal with your number one complaint---hum or frequencies you would like to get rid of or at least lessen to a managable level.

Soundtrack Pro is an excellent 1st generation program which operates at a more intuitive level than Pro Tools. For many applications I much prefer it over PT; I own both.

Here's what you do.

1) import segments of your audio tracks into editor. FC will only import files into multitrack so once in multitrack, right click 'open in editor'

2) when the sound file appears in editor, from the menu click 'process > effects>eq and filter> channel eq

3) on the channel eq pop up window click "analyser" on the left side of the window. This will provide you with a visual representation of what's going on.

4) since your main complaint is 'hum' which is usually in the lower register, select the '200Hz' filter. The icon at the top of your eq window displays a peak and dip filter.

5) with your mouse over the 200Hz filter select the 'gain slope' filter measured in db. boost this value drastically-- say 15 to 25 db

6) select "Q" directly below the 'gain/boost' and narrow the width of your eq curve which appears as a yellow representation on the graph

7) move the mouse over the yellow curve and while holding down the left click button, scan the range of frequencies until you hear the offending frequency

8) once you have located this frequency, narrow your "Q" as small as possible while still hearing the bad tone to it's maximum.

9) now change your boost on your gain to a severe dip to a point where the voice is only affected to a minimal degree, but the hum is greatly reduced.

While you probably have other audio problems, the majority of your complaints can be cleared up in this way.
 
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