noob audio cutting question

S

skywalks

Active member
can anyone direct me to a site or a thread talking about cutting audio in premier? My major questions are, do you cut the dialogue out of close ups and then just use room tone underneath? or do you leave the ambient audio in between the lines in each shot and throw room tone underneath to make the variation in audio levels between the cuts less noticeable.

Also just looking for some info on how to set the levels, how many audio tracks from the hvx should I keep? theres four , how do I go about mixing them?

thanks, I'm trying to step up my audio technique
 
Premiere mixes the two main audio channels into a single audio track. They can be split if desired but since both channels are identical there's really no point. The 3rd and 4th channels are just the on board microphone and I believe that's separated as an audio file that can be imported. It should be discarded since the board mic is completely useless.

Dialogue is usually mixed so that they averages -12db and peak at around -6db. When there is dialogue present music is mixed to around -18db, adjust as needed.
 
Do you cut the dialogue out of close ups and then just use room tone underneath? or do you leave the ambient audio in between the lines in each shot and throw room tone underneath to make the variation in audio levels between the cuts less noticeable.
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Room tone can be additive, meaning that if you double it up in spots, it can get louder. So what works best is to leave the ambient audio in between the lines of dialog and use the "Constant Power" audio transition in Premiere to blend, into and out of, clips of room tone when there are blank spots or spots where the sound is cut.. Just think of it as putting in room tone clips in the blank spots using audio dissolves.

There may be times when it will work better to lay out a whole audio track of room tone underneath your clips. This method will work better if you have different shots with different sounding room tone levels and you want to create a consistant room tone level that doesn't exist in the shots.

Also just looking for some info on how to set the levels, how many audio tracks from the hvx should I keep? theres four , how do I go about mixing them?
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I usually set dialog levels to where the meters show an average signal dancing around -9db. Between -12db and -6db is good (signal dancing closer to -20db is recommended if the speaker is prone to loud outbursts in dialog) but make sure that sudden loud bursts in speech don't go all the way up to 0db and clip.

The same goes for output in post, although you can typically boost the levels a bit in Premiere and keep a steady average dancing around the -6db mark and then watch for clipping and lower the levels in any spots that start to clip.

When you import .mxf files into Premiere, you always have the 4 tracks of audio showing because of the inherent nature of the DVCPro format having 4 audio tracks within the codec. The thing is, you will almost always have just the first two tracks containing your sound and ignore the other two. Channel 1 and channel 2 are typically switchable from internal to external 1 or 2.

As far as mixing them, you can use the individual audio tracks independantly if you right click on them and unlink them from the video. Not sure but I think you can seperate the individual audio tracks ---- never had to do that yet. Also you can eliminate the audio in one channel and replace it with audio from the second channel by using the "Fill Left" or "Fill Right" filters. I have done that plenty of times when I've recorded from two seperate mics and used the better mic to fill both channels in the stereo track.

I hope this helps a bit :thumbsup:
 
you want your average residual peak mark (in green) to be around -6 to -12. if you need to tone down your audio to -6 by turning down the levels youve likely recorded it too loud to begin with and will have some issues with clipping and peaking. remember taht once audio reaches 0 on a digital scale, it clips. you lose everything above that. so recoding at -12 to -6 will give you some headroom for any extremely loud plosives and whatnot that you dont want to distort by digital clipping. ..an on set limiter wil work wonders for keeping a desired level without things blowing out.
 
Neil Rowe said:
you want your average residual peak mark (in green) to be around -6 to -12. if you need to tone down your audio to -6 by turning down the levels youve likely recorded it too loud to begin with and will have some issues with clipping and peaking. remember taht once audio reaches 0 on a digital scale, it clips. you lose everything above that. so recoding at -12 to -6 will give you some headroom for any extremely loud plosives and whatnot that you dont want to distort by digital clipping. ..an on set limiter wil work wonders for keeping a desired level without things blowing out.
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thanks. My stuff is more so quiet. I need to turn it up, but this usually brings up the back ground noise as well... :(
 
skywalks said:
thanks. My stuff is more so quiet. I need to turn it up, but this usually brings up the back ground noise as well... :(
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Sounds like you need to get the mic closer to the source when recording. Try to get within 1 or 2 feet if possible :)
 
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