What do you do when you're given "unusable" material?

EDV

EDV

Well-known member
Ever been given an audio track ( a studio recording ) for a music video and it's poor? Just wondering what to tell the artist now because this is a zero budget project, she is a talented singer ( has been on TV a few times ) and she approached me to do a simple music video. I will not be making any money out of this, but her videos get thousands of views so it's good publicity for me. I was given an mp3 track, which is supposed to be ready. The audio track is almost acceptable for a studio recording, that means, it could sound good if they would have balanced it better, lowered the bass, raise the vocals, etc. Take a look at the waveform :

2e51mrb.jpg



That's right, it clips to red and stays there almost the whole time! But keep in mind it's her first CD, so she's probably getting it done very low budget. Now I tried to mess with it a little, and improved it about 20%, but this really needs to be remastered ( or whatever the term is ) to bring it to a pro level. The thing is, this might be as good as the recording studio producer she's using is capable of doing, so what do I tell her? What would you suggest?
 
Just by quickly glancing, it doesn't look totally clipped, so I imagine backing off the levels alone would help. EQing the bass down will also likely help. If possible, just ask for a lower level recording, because in all honesty, this breaches "legal" limits anyway. You COULD try to say "it's incompatible because it's too loud", or something to that extent. Sometimes you do have to lie your way to get what you need, because really, you're trying to help them. The same goes for having high resolution stills, raw audio stems, PNG logos, etc.
 
The audio track after I tried to fix it a little:

72616r.jpg


I may still try to get a proper version, but in case I don't , I've got a "less offensive" version now.
 
mp3? No professional masters to mp3. The mp3 conversion is probably responsible for the slammed track. mp3 is intended for headphones in high noise environments and by default compresses the track to this sorry state. Get the wav. If her engineer really is that much of a hack then tell him that you need a new master that doesn't hit the limiters. Tell him that it's okay for the stereo but the tolerances are different for video and that he needs to keep it within 90% or something. Make up any reason specific to 'video' (so as not to offend him), if this is truly his intended mix he won't know any better. If he's genuinely trying hard and just not very good you might even be able to get away with giving him a list of instructions for 'mixing for video'. If you can get the stems even better, mix it your yourself. When she hears the difference she won't go back without you having to say a word. The other possibility is that he has analogue equipment. Analogue sounds really good when pushed to the point of mild distortion. Converted to digital just clips horribly if you don't back off the trim levels. If he hasn't got good monitors or didn't even check it after making the mp3 it's possible he doesn't even know how bad it is. You won't be able to fix this mess any more than you have. You can't recover the lost information where it clips.
 
It might also not be the music guy.

Assuming she is pushing him to do free work, there may be a limit to what she/he is willing to do. And she may have insisited on MP3, or burned it from her laptop "demo"/proof version, etc.

I did some free headshots for a friend of my wife. After about 5 hours to deliver some basic images, her web designer came back and wanted me to do knock-outs for green screen, etc. I finally just had to discuss rates and say "no" to any more free stuff.

I also have had clients that steal proofs, etc. to use when they don't really have the rights. One business client didn't want to pay $100 for a freebie after a $3,000 job (to pay my assistant), so went with someone for $80 instead with no studio, etc.

Poke around, see who recorded it. If you get the OK, you might send an e-mail to the creator and just ask what is avaiable, without sounding judgemental.

Or maybe she has a college guy that is a beginner, knows it, and would love to learn from you.

Or the ego guy who knows everything and swaggers when he delivers garbage. Hard to tell. That is the problem with "free." :)

Good luck!

Michael
 
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Hey guys, thanks for the comments. The artist is a teenage girl on the verge of stardom, but her current situation
doesn't allow her to spend what you would usually spend on a studio recording. So I think she is relying on freebies
for now, for website design, graphic design, photography, and now studio recordings and video. The recording person is a very talented musician / composer, who seems to be doing this partly to forge a new career in music production ( probably not quite ready for it yet? :cool: )
One thing I wanted to check with you guys is this: if they were to go ahead and use the poor version they sent me, could radio / tv stations refuse to air their tracks because they're not technically acceptable? Or will the stations fix this themselves? ( the way I tried to fix the audio track I was given )
 
Egg Born Son said:
mp3? No professional masters to mp3. The mp3 conversion is probably responsible for the slammed track. mp3 is intended for headphones in high noise environments and by default compresses the track to this sorry state.
Click to expand...

I disagree. MP3 conversion does not alter audio levels like this. If it's matered low, the .mp3 will be low. If it's mastered hot, the .mp3 will be hot. I've downloaded a few .mp3 podcasts that had incredibly low levels. This is not a codec "created for heaphones in high-noise environments." It's a compressed format created to distribute music over the Internet and minimize upload/download times. In other words, it's a distribution format intended for the end-user (aka "the listener"). Unfortunately, it sacrifices quality in the search for efficiency (no surprise there). While professional studios won't master to .mp3, plenty of amateur studios will, and almost all studios from low-budget to nationally-recognized will shoot out .mp3 files for clients when requested or needed.

EDV, the only advantage to getting a full-rez .wav file from the recording studio is that you avoid the artifacts of compressing a file and then "uncompressing" it for use with the video. If the mix is bad, then the mix is bad and there's no way that .wav vs. .mp3 will make a huge difference (unless the studio used a crappy .mp3 conversion, which is not likely considering that even the most basic conversion available... built into iTunes... isn't bad considering what .mp3 is). It's still worth tracking down the .wav or at least a CD, but it's not going to fix all of your woes.

Remember, too, that the "peaking" level is misleading. Your software's meters are programmed to indicate clipping just before clipping actually occurs, as a warning. Studio albums these days are mastered to peg just under 0dB by using a brick-wall limiter, so what you're seeing is pretty typical. They're all about perceived loudness, which means peaking as high as possible and squashing the dynamic range down as far as possible. It's a battle to see whose album can seem to be the loudest. If the waveform isn't actually clipped (if there's no digital distortion), then it's right where you'd expect it to be. So for a music video, even if you get a client with an album from one of the major studios, you're going to have to drop the overall level to match spec for video production/distribution.
 
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If the audio is clipping it can't be fixed and a LOT of information is simply not present in an mp3. You'll be a lot better off with a lossless codec like wav. It will be fine for youtube or ipod/iphone where you can count on cheap poor quality reproduction anyway but won't hold up on better equipment.

Alex, mp3 was not created for ipods and car stereos, but that is what it is typically used for and where it excels. And if the default settings are used when creating mp3s it will be compressed to death for this very purpose. It is possible to create an mp3 where this is not the case but only if you customise the settings. And my point was that you don't master to mp3, you create an mp3 from the master.
 
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If the peaks are at 0dB then the thing you need to ascertain is if they have been normalised so that the peaks are at 0dB, but there is no flat topping - just enlarge the display to show individual bits and you'll spot the hard edges that sound bad, and 'zingy'. I'd probably listen and determine if the piece sounds distorted, rather than 'looks' distorted. Can you hear the distortion? If you can't and are worried about somebody doing what you've done and rejected it, then re-normalise to -0.5dB so it won't hit the stop, and then repair any nasty peaking. In some audio editors, you can draw in a curve to repair an obvious peak or click. It takes time, but works ok.

If the multitrack was from one of the popular sequencers - pro-tools, cubase, logic etc, then the MP3 is simply the exported mix down format - NOT the format it was recorded in - so asking for a wav version shouldn't be a problem. Almost certainly the person also had an audio CD, not just an mp3 - so perhaps what you were sent was an mp3 from the CD - if you can get the CD you can rip the full bitrate, uncompressed audio form that. By the way, the limited, compressed and drastically reduced dynamic range version you stuck up must sound pretty strange?
 
Interesting? Do you find that works very well? I've always found it makes the waveform look better but roughens the sound a little as it also seems to reform some peaks that I suspect were just harmonics?

Re-reading your original question again, I wonder that if the mix is bad - as in balance rather than eq, then it may be better to see if they could do a new mix for the video - the eq can be tweaked a little - but the balance will still be iffy, won't it.
 
update: Turns out this track is not for a CD, it's for a couple of "demos". The producer did in fact refuse to share the WAV. Luckily, I had done enough work on the audio file on SOund Forge to render it usable. The earlier fixed version was not up to scratch, I had to go back and do it again. Anyway, the video turned out pretty good. It's on my facebook, message me if you'd like to see it.

Thanks for all the feedback!
 
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