Airplanes... suck

C

chuckles

Member
I have this conversation that takes place outside, and this airplane flew over right when my actor NAILED the line. It's very high-pitched sound, so I'm wondering if I can isolate that frequency... is there a tool for that in FCP?

I'm a total amateur when it comes to sound, so let me know if you can break it down!

Thanks,
Chuck

I have FCP, Soundtrack Pro, and Adobe's Soundbooth.
 
Izotope RX (funny I was just using it for an example in another thread) is my go-to tool for this, but it isn't cheap. It also doesn't work as part of FCP Pro. It is however part of my own audio post workflow.

RX's Spectral Repair let's you select and isolate individual sounds so you can remove them. I've used it to remove bird chirps, forklift warning beeps and more from audio - most people can't tell an errant sound was present.

Problem is the tool isn't free and can take some time to get the most out of (like any tool really.)

Perhaps someone else has another option?
 
the first thing I'd try is using the high pass and low pass filters to cut everything under 100-150 hz and everything over 10,000-15,000 hz. narrower than that will really start to affect the voice.

bit this could also be a good opportunity to learn how to nail ADR.
 
Thanks everyone. I guess I'll try the high pass and low pass filters.

Zak, you're right it's actually more about the actor's facial expression in what I want. So, I matched some sound from another clip, and it's pretty smooth— but I was curious about these damn airplanes. ADR is sweet, but not if the actor is 1000 miles away!
 
Chadfish said:
You mean you heard a plane go by on the set and you didn't do another take?
Click to expand...

let's not turn this into bashing someone for perceived inexperience. his reply in this thread indicates that he did other takes. the matter at hand is: can he salvage the take with the best performance? so let's check the ego next time someone who genuinely wants to learn about sound asks a question, and responds with gratitude to everyone that offered ideas. this is a community for professionals and amateurs alike.
 
Thanks for saying that Zak. Well put.

Chadfish, we actually did about 10 takes of this particular shot— but as I said earlier the actor's facial expression was nailed once. The airplanes were an ongoing issue— we happened to be shooting in a park that was right in line with the airport I guess? We had to wait 2 minutes for a 2 minute gap of no planes.

And I'd just like to hammer home the sentiment that Zak put forth... a lot of assumptions are made on DVXuser. You probably wouldn't guess that we shot this project mx-RED with a full crew and professional actors... but we did. And we're not spending any money on post, because I'm editing and we don't have any left!! I really like what Zak said about this being a community for pros and amateurs alike. I like the idea that there is always someone who is better than you at something. There's an expert for everything, and DVXuser promotes collaboration and learning from the specialists that each of us are.

Keep it that way!
Chuck
 
Could you possibly marry the audio from some previous takes to the video of the take you like?
In some instances I've found that easier to pull off than ADR, all depending on the complexity of the line and consistency of the actor, of course.

Of course, that assumes you can't salvage the audio in the first place - which I realize is what you're trying to figure out now.

Just trying to point out another option in case that doesn't work.
 
Chuckles I didn't imply that anyone was better than anyone else. That's just the first question that came to my mind spoken in the way I talk to myself. Sorry. If you had a little budget you could use vocalign to match up an alternate take perfectly to the take with the perfect look.

Check the dialogue example: http://www.synchroarts.com/index.php?PAGEID=demos
 
Chuckles,

Don't take it too seriously, the audio board at DVX user has always been a little more hard knuckles than the rest of DVXuser. Having said that, most folks here will help you until their fingers bleed on their keyboards, Chad included.

Welcome.

Grant
 
That's true Grant. We do try to help, even with a little ribbing. Chuckles, I'll even go as far as fixing your clip myself if it's a reasonably short length (10 - 15 sec). If you have an alternate take, or composite of takes that match the actors "good" take I think I can do it real fast using Vocalign. It's important that the replacement take has the same exact words/syllables as the take with the plane. Vocalign reads the "source" take and then stretches the alternate take / ADR take to match the timing of that source - within reason. It's not magic, meaning if the actor was interpreting the lines differently every time the results may not be good. But if they were attempting to say the line the same every time, and the main difference was slight timing, then it is a good candidate for Vocalign.
 
I've had this same problem on a shoot I was DP-ing, actually a few now that I think about it. We were about 15 mins from the airport on the one shoot, director was in a bad mood all day. From what I know they brought the actor back in to the studio and recorded just his voice again, took a few hours but they finally got it. They used a computer for playback to get the timing right and recorded the final. It's pretty much ADR, but on a smaller scale.


Good luck to you
 
dialing_wand said:
Izotope RX (funny I was just using it for an example in another thread) is my go-to tool for this, but it isn't cheap. It also doesn't work as part of FCP Pro. It is however part of my own audio post workflow.

RX's Spectral Repair let's you select and isolate individual sounds so you can remove them. I've used it to remove bird chirps, forklift warning beeps and more from audio - most people can't tell an errant sound was present.

Problem is the tool isn't free and can take some time to get the most out of (like any tool really.)

Perhaps someone else has another option?
Click to expand...

Actually Rx insalls as an AU plugin also so you should be able to use it in FCP.
And it's my "Go to also" but planes tend to change freq as they go by so Noise Reduction software almost never works on them. You could try EQ but they also often step all over the vocal range (another reason why NR often doesn't work well).

I think Rx has an Xday demo so you could give it a shot. Even if it doesn't show up in FCP it will install the stand alone version so you can give it a try.

I would give everything anyone suggests a shot, one might help enough. This is the kind of problem that I start with the go to's, for me here it would be Rx and EQ, and then try whatever pops in your head after the go-to's fail. If your lucky something just works, if your kind of lucky something works enough to get by.
 
Thanks everyone for your tips. And I understand a good joke too... after all this is a comedy short!

Timing is everything, especially with the sound/dialogue. Vocalign sounds awesome. I've gone through that process manually so many times. I actually did manage to opt for sound from another take instead of ADR. It's slightly off at the end, but not really noticeably so... I might not need to do any manual Vocaligning.

These are awesome workarounds. Thanks again everybody!
 
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