Should I put in clipped audio, if the emotional acting is better?

I

ironpony

Carbonite Member
I did a scene where two people are shouting and screaming at each other, and the audio clipped, so I adjusted it lower for second takes. The sound guy didn't show up that day and never got back to me (shrug). I wasn't able to hold the boom, follow the actors, and watch the lights on the field recorder all at the same time. Quite a fair amount of the audio clipped but I could not hear it in the headphones. Plus the screaming didn't help cause since the actors voices where distorted, it sounds similar to the audio distortion. The best take for acting however, is the clipped one. I want to send this project into some film festivals next year and have a decision to make. Which will sell them on it better, the good acting, or a lot less clipping? I'm guessing clipping is worse on theater speakers of course.
 
my wife is an editor and is very adept at cutting in the dialogue from other takes when the audio isn't ideal (clipping, off-axis, or for performance reasons) on the one she prefers. now, she's never done an entire scene, just a line here or a line there. but perhaps you could first try replacing the worst instances with the audio from other takes? the other thing to note is that loud sounds that clip are forgivable to some degree (depending on how bad it is), because it's not entirely foreign to an audience. they've heard distortion on loud sounds before elsewhere. granted i haven't seen the scene, but I would be inclined to try to salvage the performance.
 
Well it's not the whole scene but a signifcant portion of it, throughout. Yeah and sometimes I can't here the distortion because the yelling is literally too loud, with other sounds in the movie as well. It just says it's distorted in the waveform. I didn't notice as well before, until I got new headphones as of recently, with better sound.
 
if it's less than 5 mins,

re-record the audio, with good levels.

go to the timeline, place in/out point on the scene, make sure it's just one video track and the original audio, take a note with the in point frame number, export the video to a compressed format(720 width x aspect ratio, h.264(1Kbps), audio(same as source)), copy or export the audio takes of that scene, put them in a folder and zip it. i'll take a look and edited for you. i'll send you an audio file, place it on the frame number you noted.
 
Wouldn't you rather just get the audio as uncompressed so to have the full quality needed to clean it up? Why add another layer of compression to it?

Michael
 
Okay thanks but, I am not technically knowledgeable on what you're talking about. I usually just have a pro do the audio engineering and I just give him the audio takes I want used. I don't know what the 720p format has to be with improving it. I can't re-record the audio as one of the actors lives far away, and was only shooting while in town. I already tried ADR with them while they were still available but the emotional acting was less convincing, then all the on set takes, as usual with ADR, so I might as well just use the lesser takes, if that's the case.

My goal is to get it done by the end of the year though, since another project is starting up after. What does a file compressing have to do with it?
 
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Man, that's a tough call. I look at it like this:

If I'm watching a movie and it has managed to draw me into the story, bad audio is going to immediately disconnect me from the story and remind me I'm watching a movie. The same way having a boom mic slip into the scene would, or seeing a car drive by in the background of a movie that's supposed to be a period piece.

Is the better take with bad audio worth that possible disconnect with your audience?
 
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Nope it's not worth it. I just hope they are not taken out of it by somewhat lesser acting too, you know? Hard to know which is worse sometimes...
 
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Why not post the distorted clip, and we'll have a listen. The answers are likely to be:
1. NO - don't use this in a competition under any circumstances
2. Pretty horrible, but not bad enough to totally discount
3. within the limits of a restoration program to soften up

I suspect that as you're not too sound orientated, the clip could be badly distorting throughout - so a real mess. Have you looked at it in the editor? Is it just a totalally flat-topped waveform, with hardly any drops back to less than full scale? If it really is that bad, then you will have to accept that you need to re record the audio, no matter how annoying that is - and technically stressful!
 
i only asked for the video to be compressed(i meant 1000Kbps or 1Mbps not 1k) not the audio(i actually said same as source, copy or export and did not mention compressed audio at all),

the video was just to make it easier on ironpony to place the audio track in place with the frame number. and for me to sync the audio to the footage. a proxy file is just fine for reference. and you can upload the file as a password protected file on any file sharing site if it's small enough. and i won't have to download a really big file for no reason.

that's not usual with ADR, it's your job to get the right performance and sync the audio to the footage(it's done all the time including animation where the voice actor did not perform the scene before). if it's an important scene and you already have the video, a few takes with a reference monitor is not that difficult. he does not have to hit every note in one take. if your not technically knowledgeable about editing, why are you editing!!. how are you going to mix the soundtrack, sfx, ...etc.

can't you see the pattern here, you did not feel inclined to check the audio levels on set, did not feel it was worth it to get good audio takes later, and your not even considering a fix in post, i can only imagine how the rest of the production looks like, but i have a clear idea why the audio guy did not show up, my offer is withdrawn.
 
Well I just got the new headphones and everything sounds different. They are Seinheisers are oppose RCA which I had before. I am trying to upload to sound cloud, but soundcloud does not seem to accept any of the export formats from Premiere Pro.
 
ironpony said:
Well I just got the new headphones and everything sounds different. They are Seinheisers are oppose RCA which I had before. I am trying to upload to sound cloud, but soundcloud does not seem to accept any of the export formats from Premiere Pro.
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Export it as a .wav or .mp3, that will upload just fine.
 
Okay thanks I just figured it out. Here it is:

http://soundcloud.com/harmonica44/audio-clipping-test

When the guy yells 'holy f$%k', it distorts on 'f$%k, and it distorts when he shouts 'bauk!'. He was making a noise with his voice when he hits her. When he says 'you're gonna die!" it distorts on die. When the woman screams after he says bauk, it distorts. When she says 'no', at least two of the no's distort. I think that's it for that section, so maybe not much during the better takes.
 
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Amr Rahmy said:
i only asked for the video to be compressed(i meant 1000Kbps or 1Mbps not 1k) not the audio(i actually said same as source, copy or export and did not mention compressed audio at all)
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You are correct, didn't catch that the first time.


Michael
 
How bad is it? Some *slight* clipping during loud yelling, particularly when the point is that they're yelling and not necessarily delivering important information, is sometimes acceptable. It's supposed to be loud, so audiences will sometimes accept it as being clipped.
 
honestly, the easiest, cheapest, most invisible and best sounding solution to fix the clipping is to use the other takes (audio only) if they are available to replace the specific offending sections. I listened to your file and there are only what? four or five places? before you jump off the cliff into ADR or post processing to soften the distortion, give this a shot. This is the sort of thing professional editors do all the time. It's just that no one notices because it's so effective in concealing problems.
 
sonofaresiii said:
How bad is it? Some *slight* clipping during loud yelling, particularly when the point is that they're yelling and not necessarily delivering important information, is sometimes acceptable. It's supposed to be loud, so audiences will sometimes accept it as being clipped.
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I've heard worse clipping in mainstream movies. This really does not sound bad to me. I also feel it's completely acceptable but you can repair it with the izotope rx software (for example).
 
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