Audio Post Production Tutorials

Hmm. There are a number of things.

First and this goes for #1 also. You should really rehearse a few times because it's a bit "seat of the pants" sounding.
Of course I was planning on doing something similar and haven't gotten off my but and done it yet so you get compensation points for actually doing it!

The technical issues I would have are.
There is an implication that there are colors that are standard for different types of tracks. As far as I know this isn't the case. Mixers are going to look at the track names more than the colors. Now I also color code my tracks but I don't think there is any standard to coloring and in fact last large film I worked on the editors weren't coloring tracks at all.

So I think it's a good practice but you imply that there is a scheme that's standard and that coloring is expected and I don't believe either is the case.

In terms of sync. Your probably close enough but I always zoom in and make sure they are actually in sync. You can't really make a very accurate assessment at play speed, but you can easily zoom in and check that the first mod is at the frame edge.

You can nudge at the subframe level in PT and you should probably be doing that when trying to get in sync. Doing it with a mouse is very hard.


Your video is not actually at 24 frames. It's possible but very unlikely, and if it was 29.97 would be the wrong TC setting. Your I'm sure using "24p" which is 23.98 fps and that is the TC setting you should be using also.

Your track naming is, well different places have different standards so it's certainly not "wrong" but it is unusual. Dialog tracks are conventionally named DX..., FX tracks are usually in banks of AFX, the BFX,... In the old days they would be in banks of eight so you might get a lot of letters but now generally AFX are your hard FX and BFX are your more ambient type FX. Then there is BG for Backgrounds. Foley is usually named Foley..., Music is MX. I have never seen "small fx" and "large fx" used and am not really sure what they would be though I guess it might be along the lines of AFX and BFX, but then you already have some A's and B's, so?

Also the use of "comp tracks" I have only seen in music. FX tracks are (as a general practice) not comped so you can make changes in the mix.

FX groups used to often be premixed but that has become less common with workstations on the mix stage. Usually now you have virtual premixes coming in on AUX busses.

It would also be fairly unusual to have FX on 5.1 tracks, even in a 5.1 mix. Virtually no FX are recorded in 5.1, for a stack of reasons, and FX are generally not going in the center channel or the surrounds. It would be a lot more common to have LCR or stereo FX tracks with a sub or surround send. And have dedicated surround tracks.

There is a certain amount of non-standardization in all of this so it's entirely possible that you work at a place that uses this exact track layout and naming convention, but you shouldn't imply that it's the standard because it certainly isn't in most feature film posts.
 
Noiz2 is on the money. In addition to DX, MX, AFX, BFX, CFX, I also have PFX (production sound effects). These are only a few tracks and are sfx you can pull from production though I hardly use these anyway. But sometimes the PFX are great to use! I typically have one VCA per food group. For BGs, I checkerboard between BG A to BG B to BG C depending on the complexity of the film.

For sync, I do that manually by going into Grid mode. I think you were in Slip which can get you in between frame boundaries - a huge no no. I set my nudge/grid value to 1 frame and just line it up manually. Sync is something you don't want to play with. I also lock the video track and lock the video region as well (then unlocking for conforming). Furthermore, I also put muted 2pops region on every audio track in the session (heads and tails except for the last reel). It's sort of a dummy check and when conforming, it's easier to see if you're off or not since the 2pops will look like a vertical line when zoomed out.

Check your TC and F+F burn and get those frame rates right. It's probably 23.976 FPS instead of 24. I don't know if this applies now (it might have been fixed but just haven't realized it) but PT used to read 23.976 FPS OMFs as 24 FPS in the DigiTranslator window. Obviously, this is false and this is where the 2pops come into play.

I agree that there is no standardization with coloring tracks. I just make each food group their own color so I can quickly scroll between a group of tracks and identify them. People can definitely live without them.
 
wow ok thanks for the input once again. I do apologize for my misinformed information. I am still an amateur when it comes to audio post production (probably obvious). But learned all this while I was going to school for audio engineering, and they taught us that these "standards" were actual standards in the industry. I am pretty ticked to find out that most of the stuff they taught us for audio post was a bunch of bull, but well they did teach me the fundamentals and for the music side of audio engineering I learned alot. But man that doesn't mean they can say, "ok lets teach an audio post production class and say these are industry standards that way once they go out into the real world they look like a bunch of fools".

anyways end of rant. I really do appreciate the help and the correct information you guys are sharing I'll post another video correcting everything in this video and rehearse it before recording it. lol have been hitting record and going off the seat of my pants lol.
 
Ryan, good catch. Yes PFX and putting pops on all tracks. That was one of those assistant tasks that I still do. In the dark old days of analog, ten years ago or so *..., it was critical to make sure all your reels of sound were in sync.

For those that know what I'm talking about. Film sound used to be premixed on to six track "Mag" (magnetically coated 35mm film). All of these reels were mounted on dubbers and mechanically locked in sync. So it was important to have pops on everything so you could hear if something had slipped. With a big show you might have fifty or so dubbers all cranking up to speed when you rolled the film. A great sound I regret not recording when I could.

* Even though Pro Tools and it's (then) competitors had taken over the editorial process by the early 90's films were still mixed to mag until fairly recently.
 
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thanks again guys greatly appreciated will make a video correcting these topics, and hopefully the last one to where I have to make corrections to. I'm confident that the remainder of the videos all have content that is correct that I learned from school, but they just miss informed on the standards. Although, I will double check and do a bit of research before hand.
 
Gumby,

Schools are a bit notorious for not teaching post sound well, even ones that should. Part of the problem is that very few classes are taught by folks who have actually done it and the printed info available is often wrong and also done by folks who have never done it. If your lucky you get someone who at least knows something about music post so something useful comes your way.

I took over a class at (an unnamed school) and my processors specialty was teaching basic music and GarageBand to autistic kids. A good thing but really nothing related to film post. When I looked at his old presentations it was a bit upsetting. This was a class for filmmakers so they were not going to go do sound post but they should know at least how it works. There are a ton of ways to cut corners when you don't have the time or money or people to do a "normal" post. But you really want folks to know what they are aiming at so you can make smart decisions about what you can get away with.

As a for instance. We did Foley FS for every ad and film that came in. Almost nobody does Foley on ads but it really upped the level. Well walking Foley takes a fair amount of time and a LOT more if you are on your own. So I took lots of Foley FS we had done and made up banks in my E4 (sampler). For most shorts I just let my fingers do the walking. It's not as good, specific or as detailed as real walked Foley but FS on a short... It generally doesn't mater. And I will take more time with getting the very few FS in your average short that do matter to really work. But it saves a couple of days. Of course you can't do that if you don't have a lot of Foley FS to build the banks from and you won't think of it till you see what a huge difference a small thing like having all the FS present does to the "finishedness" of the track.

You may want to look at the sticky on post sound on this list. It has a lot of good info.
 
Noiz2,

Thanks for the insight helps me feel a bit better and for the most part I did learn a good bit of excellent information and technique in that class. Also, that is an excellent idea to load foley steps into a sampler and letting your fingers do the walking for short films.

Will definitely take a look at the sticky.
 
I saw an AvidTV video a couple months ago where instead of using a sampler to trigger footsteps, the operator/editor would play PT in half-time (50% slower) and just drop markers every time there's a footstep. After dropping the markers, you can just use sync points to sync up the FS. I thought it was pretty cool and it might be faster than loading it into a sampler.
 
Gumby, as long as we are at it, it's Foley not foley. It's always capitalized because it's a proper name.
 
ryanjf said:
I saw an AvidTV video a couple months ago where instead of using a sampler to trigger footsteps, the operator/editor would play PT in half-time (50% slower) and just drop markers every time there's a footstep. After dropping the markers, you can just use sync points to sync up the FS. I thought it was pretty cool and it might be faster than loading it into a sampler.
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I've done both, and you will probably need to do some cutting even if you use the sampler. It's slower IF you need to load it all into a sampler, But once the banks are created then it's MUCH faster. I spent some rainy days making up a bunch of banks so it take 30 sec or so to load a bank and then "walk" it in real time.

I would tend to cut IF the feet are a featured part of the shot, or very important for some reason. But most of the time FS are filler. You have five people walking and talking, you don't want to hear the feet much but you want a touch so that it feels real. So you walk them in and then just about bury them in the mix. It's a little thing but it adds a lot of "life" to the scene and helps it from sounding stagey.

A minor issue with just cutting is it's easy to get the rhythm wrong. In your average shot it's almost never the case that you see all the FS that you need to add. Trying to get it to sound "right" by moving individual FS can be a long frustrating process.

And it leads to one of my big points about sound post. Unless your working on a doc the way you know it's right is when it sounds right. If you put FS exactly where (visually) they should go and it sounds off then it's wrong. People get wrapped up sometimes in trying to be physically correct but if you think about it that is generally a wank. The image has been manipulated, spacial relationships have been altered and humans don't experience the world as it actually is but through a giant filter called the brain that distorts and filters out all kinds of stuff and then adds information unique to you in to the mix. There is no "objective reality". We have things we generally agree on like stop signs being red. But what that "red" actually is perceived as can be quite different from person to person.

As a generalization, if you cut a bunch of stuff that is based on visual cues and not corrected by playback experience you will find that is sounds off. Your still going to have to do that a lot while editing but you should expect that you will need to change things to make them sound "right". After you get it "right" you may be surprised at how far "off" some of your sounds are from where you would have placed them visually.
 
This might be personal taste, but instead of consolidating a region, you can just create region group instead. It saves *some* disk space. Not a huge deal though.

Are you clapping in the video as a 2pop? If so, you don't need to include it in the video since you have the visual/audible pops in place already.
 
didn't even think of doing region group.

The clap was so I could line the audio up with the sound recorded. didn't use onboard the camera mic. Just forgot to edit it out once the audio and video were in place
 
I also moved to using RegionGroups. I used to just make a silent sound file and slice and dice it up and rename the regions. Your consolidate is a better choice than that and something I hadn't thought of. However I only do this kind of thing for Spotting Foley where I'm going to be recording over those regions. For FX and such if I'm spotting with a director I'll just take notes or drop markers (depending if we are playing in PT or not). If I'm spotting on my own I will usually do it in Soundminer or more often with markers. In actuality if I'm the only editor I will drop some markers for things I want to make sure to remember but generally that is very few. Since an FX like a gun shot may have a stack of tracks associated with it and only really has a sync point it's just faster to build as you go.

Backgrounds are another thing that I don't generally "spot" to a specific place but to a location/ scene. The main BG's are going to run the entire scene so... And the bits you add you probably won't know you need till you get into it and feel something is missing.

That said it's probably good to teach folks to spot it out so they are at least thinking in terms of the layers of sound they will need.
 
Depending on how much time there is to complete the projects, I might spot BGs with region groups. It plays nicely with Soundminer when you highlight the region group, drop down to a track, switch to SM, then Spot to Timeline. The spotted BG will be the entire length of highlighted region group, if that makes sense. Then I have QuicKeys script that automatically gives me one frame fades at the heads/tails ;) Saves so much time, especially if the sound designer wants some really thick backgrounds.

You can probably wrap up your tutorials in one or two more vids... All that's left is really printing your mix to a track. I think it would be beneficial for people to see that signal flow. For corporate mixes, you can also show how to print the full mix and M&E stem at the same time.
 
ryanjf said:
...It plays nicely with Soundminer when you highlight the region group, drop down to a track, switch to SM, then Spot to Timeline. The spotted BG will be the entire length of highlighted region group, if that makes sense. Then I have QuicKeys script that automatically gives me one frame fades at the heads/tails ;) Saves so much time, especially if the sound designer wants some really thick backgrounds.
...
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Never though of that! Your right I may have to start doing that.

BTW once you set your default fade length you can just highlight regions and hit the cross fade key (F with the key commands turned on) and it will give you head and tail scrapes on all the regions (or cross fades if the regions touch). QuicKeys ;~), we used to have a ton of things programed in to it but most of them Digi actually built in to PT and I haven't used Quickeys in quite some time. I actually switched to Keyboard Mestro, but don't use that much either.

It's kind of funny since I just moved out of SF to Detroit because it sound like we probably worked in similar circles.
 
Noiz2 said:
It's kind of funny since I just moved out of SF to Detroit because it sound like we probably worked in similar circles.
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I'm pretty sure too! If you know some people in the post houses (video post as well) in downtown SF, then we more than likely know the same people.

The thing I don't like about setting the default fade length is that you can't specify it to be exactly one frame. When I want a one frame fade, I want it snapped to the grid. If there is a setting for this let me know. What's nice about the QuicKeys shortcut is that if the scene is a fade in from black, I can set the fades, i.e. a long linear fade in, on one BG; then on the next BG (below it) will have fades based on the region above it with the press of a button. I'm not sure if that makes sense. It's hard to describe it through text.

Some of my other QuicKeys commands is automatically switching to the Sends Fader view in the Edit/Mix window. This makes automating so much faster whereas before I would have to hold Command and click to the left of the Send A, B, C, icon thing. I have another set of keys that returns to the default Send view (to see all the Sends).

I love QuicKeys! It helps me out so much with the video game stuff I do where Excel and naming is involved :) I still use this crazy script that automatically pulls Selects for me :) That's probably where I use it the most.
 
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