Produced Music Tracks Clipping in Post

egproductions

egproductions

Veteran
I've asked this question in the past but I forgot the answer. When I import pre-produced music tracks into Adobe Premiere Pro and lay it out on a timeline, my meters hit the red. I can't audibly hear any degradation but from what I understand hitting the red means the audio is clipping. I could always lower the levels by -1db and the clipping goes away, however, I'm afraid that doing that is only hiding the fact that the msuic is already clipped in adobe premiere pro.

With that in mind:

Do i leave the track the way it is and not worry about it hitting the red?
Should I lower it to -1db to avoid clipping?
Am I doing something wrong altogether that is causing the clipping?

I particularly interested now because I'm currently working on a music video and the final/produced track is clipping in the manner described above.

Thanks!
 
I'm not familiar w/ PP. Are the meters dBFS (full scale decibels)? Are PPs gain, channel and master volume set to unity gain? Can you post a short clip? If the music came off a CD, they are often mastered with peaks hitting -0.0dBFS. If your final audio is going to be re-encoded to MP3, AAC, ect., I would lower the 1st stage channel gain (if PP has it)... which brings up the question: What is the final format and for what... B'cast, YT, DVD, ect.?
 
egproductions said:
Do i leave the track the way it is and not worry about it hitting the red?
Click to expand...

Yes.

egproductions said:
Should I lower it to -1db to avoid clipping?
Click to expand...

No. That is, there's probably no real reason to.

egproductions said:
Am I doing something wrong altogether that is causing the clipping?
Click to expand...

Nope.

What you are probably seeing is the result of the "loudness wars". That is, the music is mastered for, say, CD. They take it right up to clipping, do some fancy tricks so that inter-sample peaks don't clip. They compress the crap out of things to get the average levels up as loud as possible. All so their CD sounds louder than anyone else's CD.

Pointless, but for a while it was thought to be a marketing tool. That is, it was thought that this could increase record sales. Whether it did, or not, is a different debate.

Suffice it to say, what you have is probably not actually clipping, but you probably don't have the equipment to prove that to yourself. So... just use it as is. If client is happy with the source, client should also be happy with the sound you provide. If not, just explain that it's exactly the same. Because... it is.

All that said, I'm assuming that the only sound on this thing is the music. If not, you'll need to adjust the various tacks to make them all play well together. But that's not the question you asked, so I'll drop that line.
 
Bruce may be right, it could be a mastering issue. The other option is that PP is "pretending" to be analog and the meters are not Full Scale meters. Do they go past zero? If so they may be playing games with stuff and you are fine.

Going into the red is not necessarily a problem. It really depends on how the meters are set up. Back when with analog meters going into the red was a common thing. So often your ears are a better judge.
 
Since the PP meters do not show above 0, I assume DBFS.

The default, who knows why, PP uses is -1.3db as peak. That means a 0.0db signal would show red. The yellow seems to start at about -7db.

All this is with my audio set for 16/48 on PP CS5. I don't know if those values above change with different settings as my old camcorders max out at 16/48.
 
Wow. Good info. Thanks guys. I have been wondering about this too as PP seems kind of hot using imported music.


While we are on this topic...how about if it was for broadcast TV in the USA? Does this change the answers given here?
 
Lots of other threads on metering scales and levels but if you are producing content for TV use the max level for the USA is -12dbfs or -10dbfs for the UK.

This pic may be useful:

 
firehawk said:
While we are on this topic...how about if it was for broadcast TV in the USA? Does this change the answers given here?
Click to expand...

The majority of my work is broadcast TV with USA deliverable. Always check the specs given by the station or network. Generally most want a target close to -24LKFS.

The majority of my audio work is done in Pro Tools as I have loudness monitoring and mastering plugins which I don't have in Premiere Pro.

As a side note I'm going to go against the grain and suggest that if your imported music track is too hot and hitting red on your meters, then bring the level of that track down.
 
When 'hot' audio is encoded to a lossy format, (AC3, AAC/MP4 or MP3 for instance) in many instances will cause more clipping, so I recommend lowering the level a little to avoid this.
As David stated, most TV networks these days specify audio to be at the 'current' loudness standard (ATSC A/85 for N. America and EBU R128 for Europe), but always get the specs before submission. DVD, BluRay and web streaming have no absolute loudness standard, but many (including myself) set the integrated loudness to around -18LKFS.
LKFS or LUFS is not to be confused w/ dBFS.
 
My experience with broadcast is that it varies a LOT network to network. Not that one is going to be hugely different sounding but what spec's they expect you to hit vary a lot. So the only way to really answer the question is to get a deliverables list from the place you are mixing for. Local stations also sometimes differ from the network. Like David and Rick mentioned most seem to have gone to a LUFS or LKFS measurement, which is good because for awhile they were using a Dolby number that you could only get with a $$$ box or plugin.

I would also agree you want to turn the level of the track down. Probably everyone would agree with that. It wasn't your question but we probably should have said it anyway.

The two big reasons are it's just too loud except maybe if it is the only sound and you are aiming at posting it on YouTube. You don't technically want peaks over -3dBfs and I bet your average level on the track is way too high for most usage. The second is that 99% of the time you are going to have other sounds playing with it and they all add up to your output so if your music is peaking at -1dBfs or so, really you can't add any other sounds with out clipping.

I also forgot an easy check to see if the sound is clipped. Find a peak and zoom way in till it looks like a wavy line. If the top of that wave is flat and not nicely rounded or pointed the file has clipped.
 
Thank you for everyone's insights. Just to clarify, this is for web/Youtube (not broadcast.) It's for a music video, so no other audio is going to be added to the mix. Also the file format given to me was WAV. It's a new song that the producer provided to me so it's not like it was ripped off of a CD.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top