Audio Sounds Dull

J

Joe Calabrese

Well-known member
This a a test of the entire process I will be using for my short film. Shooting on DVX100B and upressing for HD projection. Anyway, I love the image, just cant stand how flat, dull, uninteresting the audio sounds. It doesn't sound like I want it to. All there is is the overhead mic and a little foley for ambiance. What am I doing wrong, how can I make the sound more cinematic and the voices easier to understand?




Thanks,
Joe
 
Any chance you can link to the page on vimeo? The embed isn't loading for me, but I have been having odd flash problems lately.
 
Did you have a boom op or are you just slapping a mic on a stand?

You're getting a lot of reverb, which is probably partly the room, partly the mic being further away than in could be from the talent, and maybe partly mic choice.

Can you give us some details on the setup / gear being used?
 
1. You were shooting in bare cavern type of space... No sound deadening materials like carpet drapes furniture etc to help tone the echo. The voice is echoing off the walls and is picked up as a delay in your mic. This will happen especially if you use a shotgun mic indoors.

2. Short of doing ADR and replacing the dialogue, you can sweeten the audio and tone down the echo a bit. BUT it will take an audio editor like Sound Forge or equivalent to accomplish this. I use Sound Forge and personally I love it's capabilities.

If you wish to have a recipe that I use for sweetening audio, and yes removing echo, I will give it to you. It is in depth and has several steps. You just need to carefully enhance/massage your audio and it will sound better.

The steps would look like this: Echo removal, Equalize by cutting low and high frequencies and than boost voice frequency range by 3 DB, Normalize (RMS), Noise Reduction, add limiting and mild compression. You will be pleasantly surprised by the difference.
 
JordanBlock said:
Did you have a boom op or are you just slapping a mic on a stand?

You're getting a lot of reverb, which is probably partly the room, partly the mic being further away than in could be from the talent, and maybe partly mic choice.

Can you give us some details on the setup / gear being used?
Click to expand...


I agree. The more information on how you recorded the audio would be great. That would be the first step in fixing your audio so you have less problems in post for future projects.


Nicole
 
There's a consistent hum that needs to be dealt with and as others have said - the mic is capturing as much of the room as the dialog (in other words, the mic was too far away from the actors when it was recorded).

IMHO - the piece is short enough to ADR the dialog. That's the on;y way to get it to sound right. Anything else (and I mean anything) will involve a major tradeoff because the frequencies that are causing the main problem and too important to just take out or lower. The voices will end up sounding thin.

Just my opinion.
 
Rode NTG-2 on boom pole (held by operator) just above the frame (probably 1 foot away from the talent on average). The buzzing is some room tone i added because I thought it sounded to blank without it. For mic EQ, I rolled off the below 150Hz frequencies and rolled off the frequencies above 15kHz. If you have any ideas as far as music or sound effects for ambience, I want it to sound like a school hallway while classes are in session. (the two characters are copying homework during a free period).

And to Tommy K: I would really appreciate any tips or instructions I could use to make my mix better. Feel free to PM me.
 
Just one suggestion on mixing...

Step #1 is ALWAYS-
Ensure that you're listening and judging the audio on professional monitors, in an acoustically treated room, and at a predetermined reference level.

Saying the mix is "dull" "bright" "roomy" ect.... could all just as easily be your speakers as the material itself. Once you've got the room right, tweaking the audio is MUCH easier.
 
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It's a sometimes solution, but downward expansion has worked on "roomy" sounding dialog. It's another of those trade-off situations. Sometimes noise reduction can help a little as well.

Cleaning up roomy sounding dialog is one of the toughest editing jobs there is. That's why it's always best to capture the dialog correctly in the first place. It is not unusual for professional dialog editors/mixers to have two or three different noise reduction plugs, a couple of EQs and a downward expander on each channel all running simultaneously. One of the trade "secrets" is to do just a little bit at a time. Another "trick" is to enhance all of the noise on a duplicate of the dialog and then invert the phase while doing the "standard" noise reduction on the original track. Again, you can spend hours playing with this method and get nowhere. And ALWAYS compare what you are doing with the original; you could end up making the problem worse instead of better.

NEVER fill up "empty" space with noise. Since it is supposed to be a hallway in a school add some appropriate ambience - people talking, footsteps, doors, announcements. You may also want to add some Foley.
 
I hear a very pronounced low rumbling and rhythmic, reverberant thudding sound, almost like the engine room of a ship, and an undercurrent of vague voices and shouts in the distance, like coming up from a lockerroom on a lower floor. Step one is to get a low-cut filter in place down around 100 Hz. Very distracting when combined with the severe reverb in their voices. You've got the talent up against a hard reflecting wall and sitting on a hard reflecting surface so the result is a culvert like ambience.
 
Steve House said:
I hear a very pronounced low rumbling and rhythmic, reverberant thudding sound, almost like the engine room of a ship, and an undercurrent of vague voices and shouts in the distance, like coming up from a lockerroom on a lower floor. Step one is to get a low-cut filter in place down around 100 Hz. Very distracting when combined with the severe reverb in their voices. You've got the talent up against a hard reflecting wall and sitting on a hard reflecting surface so the result is a culvert like ambience.
Click to expand...

I have a high pass filter on it, set at 150Hz. The rumbling you hear is a foley track I added for ambience, but I can see it doesn't really fit.

Does anyone know of some good plugins for Logic or Final Cut I can use to make this a little better. I am also looking at iZotope Ozone or Alloy.
 
First, you have to get your terminology right.

Foley is the replication of the sounds created by the individual characters - footsteps, hands, cloth, punches, body falls, etc. In your particular clip you should put in the sounds of the books/papers, the writing, the arms rubbing while writing, shifting on the bench, the hand on the back and cloth noises for a start.

Ambient or BG (background) sounds are crowds, traffic, nature, etc. Even BGs are usually constructed. Think your way through the scene - what is happening while they are sitting and talking? Maybe a few isolated sounds - security/teachers walking through the hall, maybe the muted sound of classes in session, the distant sound of basketballs from gym class, or the orchestra or choir rehearsing. When the school bell rings there should be a huge rush of students exiting the classrooms into the hallways - classroom doors opening, chatter, the "thundering herd" of footsteps, lockers opening, etc.

One of the most overlooked aspects of the filmmaking process is thinking the project through sonically. Although it's probably important to keep the "idea" a secret, as seen they are alone so there was no need to whisper. In your scene someone could have walked by, necessitating the need for the one character to whisper his idea to the other, but since they are in an ostensibly empty hallway they would have to hear the footsteps and react to them.

Lecture over; for now...
 
Perhaps what we really need to hear is the original track before you tried your techniques.
We don't really need to see the video, just hear the audio. WAV (or some uncompressed codec) would be ideal.
 
Joe Calabrese said:
Does anyone recommend using iZotope Ozone or Alloy and those presets with adjustments?
Click to expand...

Nothing beats getting nice clean diaglog tracks during shooting. I would recommend concentrating on that first, and leave the repair work as a last resort.

I can hear the request coming over the overhead speakers at the supermarket: "Cleanup on track 2!" :cheesy:
 
Joe sent me the audio file and I was able to clean it up considerably within Sound Forge. Joe, after you adapt the recipe that I sent to you to work with your audio application, please post your results here as well.
 
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