Basic question about editing dialogue in post

E

ecd

Member
So I'm entering a 48-Hour film fest this weekend and it's fallen again on me to do the editing. While I love editing film, it's the audio aspect that I need a lot of work at.

So I've learned somewhat from my mistakes and last year recorded my audio in stereo as opposed to mono. My question comes in how to treat the mono recorded dialogue in post.

In Premiere Pro, do you still edit the dialogue as a mono track? I know my music, ambience, and all that other stuff will be in stereo.

From what I'm thinking is correct is I edit the dialogue in mono (essentially just make one audio track in premiere mono for dialogue) and when I export the film, export it in stereo. Would that process preserve the mono dialogue?

Thanks for your help.
 
ecd said:
So I'm entering a 48-Hour film fest this weekend and it's fallen again on me to do the editing. While I love editing film, it's the audio aspect that I need a lot of work at.

So I've learned somewhat from my mistakes and last year recorded my audio in stereo as opposed to mono. My question comes in how to treat the mono recorded dialogue in post.

In Premiere Pro, do you still edit the dialogue as a mono track? I know my music, ambience, and all that other stuff will be in stereo.

From what I'm thinking is correct is I edit the dialogue in mono (essentially just make one audio track in premiere mono for dialogue) and when I export the film, export it in stereo. Would that process preserve the mono dialogue?

Thanks for your help.
Click to expand...

In the standard Premiere setup, 'mono' audio tracks should be 'panned center' for the stereo output. Under the 'Audio Mixer' panel you can change the panning to something else.

The 'stereo' tracks should be 'mixed' to their respective left/right channels, unless one changes things in the mixer panel.
 
Yes edit your dialogue in mono and try to produce a constant track on the timeline for each scene, some people put different voices on individual tracks but I personally prefer to edit a complete track for each scene.

So for example scene one would have all its dialogue elements on track 1 and all the dialogue for that scene would be edited together including room tone or filler to fill in any gaps for vision extensions so that the whole dialogue track has continuous continuity for the length of the scene. I would also do overlaps on each edit point to smooth out any discrepancies in the room tone or noise floor to hide the transition between each shot cut. This also keeps a constant noise or room tone floor and if you are struggling to do this due to big differences in backgrounds it is then useful to add a room tone or atmos track in mono to give continuity for the whole scene to smooth over any edits ot changes in background room or ambient tone.

Scene 2 would then commence on a different track so that overall eq or filtering can be added on a scene by scene basis, of course putting each actor or dialogue on individual tracks could also help I have found for fast turnaround projects jist checkerboarding on a scene by scene basis is enough for most situations.

Any diogue that needs to be proceseed or dealt as dialogue off shot should be put on a sepearate track so it can be dealt with seperately, for example the reverse of a telephone call or a voice off camera in a downstairs room etc that may need extra reverb. I would still also add room tone filler to the main dialogue track so that when the reverse telephone or voice off is playing the room noise floor continuity is maintained.

Hope that all makes sense and if you have time adding stereo room tones, music, Foley and mono spot effects will all add to the soundscape but I personally always do a dialogue pre mix in mono before I add any of the stereo elements to ky final mix, that way I can smooth out and filter the dialogue to get the best out of it and can then concentrate on balancing the dialogue pre mix against and other elements for the final mix!
 
j1clark@ucsd.edu said:
In the standard Premiere setup, 'mono' audio tracks should be 'panned center' for the stereo output. Under the 'Audio Mixer' panel you can change the panning to something else.

The 'stereo' tracks should be 'mixed' to their respective left/right channels, unless one changes things in the mixer panel.
Click to expand...

Thanks for your help guys. So essentially I'm not touch the mixer on my mono dialogue because it's already set to pan centre when I drag it into my sequence? I'm assuming the only time I'd want to change the balance to my dialogue is if someone's speaking off screen to either the left or right.
 
ecd said:
Thanks for your help guys. So essentially I'm not touch the mixer on my mono dialogue because it's already set to pan centre when I drag it into my sequence? I'm assuming the only time I'd want to change the balance to my dialogue is if someone's speaking off screen to either the left or right.
Click to expand...
No, you really don't want to ever pan dialog to one side. For the small screen this isn't as big an issue but then you generally aren't going to get as much side to side localization on a small screen. The reason it's a big no no for the big screen is because of balance and lag time. If your down front on the right and someone has panned some dialog off left you are either going to have a hard time hearing it OR the guy down left is going to need earplugs.

You are also going to get some unwanted delays in the dialog. Sound takes time to travel, much more time than light does. In a large theatre the sync can be off by three frames from the first row to the back row. But your brain is a wonderful sound and picture computer and once it figures out the lag it disappears. But that can only happen if it's the same lag all the time. If you move voices around on the screen it may sound OK in the center but off center you getting big lag time changes and your brain won't be able to "fix" the lag. And if you move the dialog you also need to move the Foley for that actor and all the other sounds associated with them or you brain will have to decide which lag is "real" and should be "fixed" and which you will hear.

The short story is it's a can of worms and you don't want to go there.

As to editing. There are a number of styles depending on what kinds of projects you work on. Gary's is I think more common in video, big budget films pretty much always split characters off. Low budget is all over the map. Some folks doing the whole big $$ feature thing and some doing the all in one video thing or the scene by scene or the split by problem workflow. The last is basically an all in one except that you split similar problems to individual tracks so you can treat them similarly. Part of the choice is guided by how many tracks and plugins you can use. The big budget film way can take a LOT of tracks.

I will split by character if they are on different mics and generally not if it's just one boom track. I also tend not to fill all the holes with RT because I'm going to do full backgrounds so there won't be any holes. After the BG's are in then I will fill holes that are still audible.

I do this for a couple of reasons. One is it's faster and on a lot of low budget projects time is an issue. Also I want full backgrounds so I would be pulling the RT out (or way down) in most cases anyway. And very few projects come in with usable RT so I would be piecing it together from little snips and that tends to sound bad so again I would be pulling it WAY down if I used it.

I also tend to pul out problem bits to their own track OR I clone the clip and disable it (my undo) and then destructively work on the clip. It really depends on what the problem is and how likely I am to want to revisit it when mixing. Things like noise reduction and glitch fixing are good candidates for destructive editing.
 
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