Cutting audio in Premiere

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cruel_world

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I'm trying to edit audio in Adobe Premiere and I keep getting popping sounds at every cut.

I've tried filling in the gaps with room tone and overlaying audio dissolves but it's still noticeable when I wear headphones or have the volume turned up. I've also tried changing the locations of my cuts by a few frames but it seems like the cut itself is causing the pop. I've even tried exporting the edited audio track and then re-importing it and trying to edit out the pops, but the new edits just make more pops!

When I used to use Avid and Final Cut, I was always able to cover up any audio cuts with dissolves, so I don't know any other way around the issue. Is it a problem with my settings or my sound card, or am I missing something obvious?
 
I've tried using all of the audio dissolves, but invariably there will be a slight pop at the center of the dissolve, where one audio clip transitions into the next. Any other suggestions? Please, this is killing me.
 
You might see if there is a zero crossing preference. I doubt it since this is a picture editing app and you limited to the frame line but? The other option, not great, is to checkerboard so that the fades are not crossfades, you should be able to set them so the pop goes away. Of course if your at the end of the clip then crossfading won't do you any good since where ever the clip ends so does the audio.
 
This may sound silly, but have you ascertained that no empty frame on the time line sits between the clips?

Secondly, I wonder what a one-frame L or J cut would do.
 
Noiz2 said:
You might see if there is a zero crossing preference. I doubt it since this is a picture editing app and you limited to the frame line but? The other option, not great, is to checkerboard so that the fades are not crossfades, you should be able to set them so the pop goes away. Of course if your at the end of the clip then crossfading won't do you any good since where ever the clip ends so does the audio.
Click to expand...

I'm not really sure if Premiere has a zero crossing preference or how to set it up. I tried googling it but no hits. I did try checkerboarding a little bit before and it didn't seem to help, but I'll try it with longer fades. If it works though I still have to do it with a couple hundred clips.

jordandov said:
This may sound silly, but have you ascertained that no empty frame on the time line sits between the clips?

Secondly, I wonder what a one-frame L or J cut would do.
Click to expand...

Yes, I've made sure the clips are flush with each other.

I just tried overlapping the clips on different tracks and it just makes 2 pops; one at the beginning of the second clip and one at the end of the first.
 
What a few of us have tried to ask but not to clearly is, is there enough audio to fade? If at the end of the clip that's it then the end of the clip needs to be the end of your fade. Most apps (other than ProTools) use volume automation to create fades. So you could in theory do a fade with out a clip. The pops are because the waveform at the end of the clip is not at zero but hanging i the air somewhere. So you need to fade to zero BEFORE the end of the clip or you will still get a pop. If the fade function is not extending the clip to the end of the fade OR the clip doesn't have enough material to go to the end of the fade you will hear a pop.
 
Noiz2 said:
What a few of us have tried to ask but not to clearly is, is there enough audio to fade? If at the end of the clip that's it then the end of the clip needs to be the end of your fade. Most apps (other than ProTools) use volume automation to create fades. So you could in theory do a fade with out a clip. The pops are because the waveform at the end of the clip is not at zero but hanging i the air somewhere. So you need to fade to zero BEFORE the end of the clip or you will still get a pop. If the fade function is not extending the clip to the end of the fade OR the clip doesn't have enough material to go to the end of the fade you will hear a pop.
Click to expand...

Sorry, to clarify what I am doing: I have one audio file with multiple takes of a narration. I'm cutting the audio into clips and putting the best takes together, and trying to fill gaps with room tone and using crossfades to cover the transitions. Unless I set something up wrong, there should be more than enough media for any transitions, because everything is coming from the same long source file. (The pops are not present on the source file either.) I don't have gaps in my timeline, and the pops occur exactly at the cut and not partway through the fade (I don't think Premiere will even let you do a transition if you don't have enough media.)

Right now I'm trying again to checkerboard the clips and fade each one over the next individually, rather than using cross dissolves on the same track. I think it might actually be working better, even though it takes a lot longer. But for my own curiosity: why would this work differently from cross dissolving on a single track?

Thanks again.
 
Does your room tone clip start on frame 1 or is it plucked out from the middle of a longer clip? This would relate to Noiz's comment on having enough audio. If the room tone clip you use is the very begining of your audio file it might cause this popping effect. If you have your first clip of dialog followed by your room tone, and apply a cross fade the transition will look for data of a predetermined amount of frames after the dialog clip and before the room tone. If the room tone begins on frame 1 it has no previous data to insert so there is no transition in, just the beginning where the 2 clips meet. And if you use this same clip of tone each time, you will get the same exact pop each time. Verify that you have clean tone that has at least as many frames behind it (backwards on the timeline) that your cross fade is set for. And maybe take your tone clip elsewhere on the timeline and extend the starting and ending points by 30 or 60 frames and listen for the pop. Maybe the tone is clean in its original state, but extending one way or another finds some noise.

Aside from that I am stumped. I use Premiere Pro (CS4 currently) and I have done this same scenario numerous times and it sounds clean, even on the cans.

Cole
 
Okay, I think I figured out what was causing the problem. I had a de-noise filter applied to the media, and once i disabled it, most of the pops went away, and the ones that were left I could cover with dissolves. So I guess as a follow-up question, is this an expected occurrence, and if so how do I use filters and not get popping sounds at the cuts?
 
OK snide alert... "the fix is to use an audio application for audio".

The non snide answer would be that that must be a bug with Premiere. I would never, ever put NR as a track plugin. It's not EQ it needs to be tailored clip to clip, actually EQ does often also. Something that you just slather on is either going to be very ineffective or wrong for most of the clips. NR also takes a lot of processing so there is going to be latency, probably what was causing your pops.

Oh and use an audio app for audio, it really is better. Hammers make lousy screwdrivers.
 
I agree with Noiz2. Although, I am guilty of using my editing app for sound work, but I use Vegas and it started off as an audio app anyway, so I lucked out.
 
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