getting best audio for direct to DVD film

tylerindo

tylerindo

Active member
I'm working on a big project, a surf video and was wondering what steps I should follow to get the best possible audio for my film. I've already shot it, my main concern is exporting it from premiere, i've tested a few dvd's out to see how it would look and sound on a tv, and the audio, mainly the MUSIC, sounds terrible compared to other surf videos i've seen. The music is all from CD's by various artists that i've licensed tracks from and I'm wondering what exactly is it that I should be concerning myself while i still have some time. Aside from ripping the music as a wav file, exporting as 16bit stereo etc I still feel like i'm missing a huge piece of the puzzle that is my film which i've been working on for a while now.

I've looked into surcode and various applications however haven't really immersed myself into the audio department in a big way as of yet. What is the industry standard (indy action sports vids) method to ensure optimal audio that I can be happy with?
 
i notice my MUSIC doesnt sound as good as the dialogue when i export to dvd and play back on a television too. maybe i'm being too anal about it since nobody else has commented on it since. i'm using final cut and dvd studio pro though. hopefully somebody can offer a good suggestion.
 
How are you getting the audio into Premiere? MP3 can ruin music. What are your audio settings for export to DVD? Compared to music dialogue has a much smaller range of frequencies usually. Bad compression usually flattens out music before dialogue at least in my experience.
 
You probably want to use a multiband compressor, that should fix alot of the issues. Jay Rose had a great article about it in last month's DV magazine.
 
Just curious - when you say you've licensed the tracks, you're not saying you just purchased the tracks on iTunes or one of the other services, right? You've licensed them directly from the copyright holders, right? If so, you should be able to get uncompressed versions of the songs from whoever you licensed it from (should have been a part of your licensing agreement).

Phil
 
yeah i have the 16bit versions of the songs, so it's not in mp3 format. I' look into audition and the multiband compressor and see what results that will produce. That seems like it should be the solution for the most part, would it be worth it to use something like minnetoka surcode or to just leave it in stereo format?
 
surfshooter said:
...would it be worth it to use something like minnetoka surcode or to just leave it in stereo format?
Click to expand...
If you're having difficulty getting it to sound acceptable in stereo, surround encoding is unlikely to improve your results.

AndrewTC's suggestion of lowering you're levels is probably the best place to start. I would add that you should try reducing the individual audio tracks, rather than just the master volume control. Remember: you're working with digital audio, and there's nothing above -0dB. Therefore, if you have a music track that's mastered to peak close to -0dB (as is often the case with buy-out music) playing back at unity gain (ie. the fader's set to +0 dB), then mixing in a second track of audio will cause you to overload you're mix. Back everything off a bit, and pay close attention to the clip indicator on you're master channel.
 
alright, sounds like a good place to start, I had noticed that the audio was pretty high to start with in premiere. Just want to make sure that i'm not missing anything important before I release this video, obviously money is limited so its a matter of getting the best qualtiy with the programs that i do have.

thanks for the help, i'll let u know how it turns out.
 
I recently did a project in premiere and it sounded awful till i brought the levels to about -12db. -12 is standard for broadcast.. i'm not sure about DVD but i'm guessing it's similar. while you're editing in premiere, you're usually at 0db.... this introduces a LOT of clipping into the track.
 
surfshooter said:
yeah i have the 16bit versions of the songs, so it's not in mp3 format. I' look into audition and the multiband compressor and see what results that will produce. That seems like it should be the solution for the most part, would it be worth it to use something like minnetoka surcode or to just leave it in stereo format?
Click to expand...

If you have a professionally mastered, uncompressed song, there's no reason why it shouldn't sound great without any further compression or other massaging. As others have already suggested, Premiere does have a problem with the default audio settings causing clipping.

If you want go beyond just a simple music track and add in voiceovers and natural sound, Audition's multitrack mode is well worth getting to know if you already have it.

-Dan
 
FiddlerMD said:
I recently did a project in premiere and it sounded awful till i brought the levels to about -12db. -12 is standard for broadcast.. i'm not sure about DVD but i'm guessing it's similar. while you're editing in premiere, you're usually at 0db.... this introduces a LOT of clipping into the track.
Click to expand...
A little clarification may be in order. If memory serves (haven't used it in a while, please correct me if I'm mistaken), the master audio fader in Premiere serves only to attenuate the mix output (-0dB= top of fader=unity gain). If you're overloading the mix, then decreasing the master fader will just make the distorted audio quieter, without affecting the distortion itself. You can see this digital distortion in a waveform by zooming in quite a bit and looking for sections where the tops (or bottoms) of waveforms are flattened right out (ie. "clipped" or "squarred").

Different broadcasters will have slightly different audio specifications, but most broadcasters I've worked with prefer tapes where +0dB VU (ie. +0dB on an analogue meter) is callibrated to -12 dB on a digital meter (ie. 12 dB below full-scale), with maximum peaks not exceeding -3 dB on a digital meter. If you're mixing for DVD or other digital home video formats, you don't neccessarily have to observe the "max peaks at -3dB" guideline, as long as you're maximum peaks do not try to exceed -0dB (which will cause digital distortion).

Most editing software has a "find max peak" opperation, which you should use on your final mixed audio file. If the opperation tells you that there is 0dB of headroom available, you had better revisit the mix and lower the levels of the tracks going into the mix (rather than just lowering the master output level).
 
also, while this isn't a huge deal, DVD deals with audio in 24bit. So if you can get the source music from the artist in 24bit that could improve it.

First I'd follow the recomendation to lower your levels to -12db or atleast -6db if your not broadcasting it. That will probably get rid of the terrible sound that it digital clipping.
 
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