What is the standard for audio balancing in FCP?

H

Hiro Nakamura

Active member
Hi Guys,
I am cutting a feature film shot on DVX 100, they used boom mic to capture the audio,
the sound man control the sound around -18, however, the boom mic captured dialogus with the ambiance sound as well, for some particular outside scenes, the environment sound is pretty loud and noisy.
What I did was to minor the audio level slight lower, bring the level of audio to -2 (as original level is 0 from the audio clip, not the audio meter) however, after I did that, I preview the video from a sony monitor, and audio I connected to the sony monitor through the firewire ( so... the sound is not from my Rokit speakers, it's from the monitor) the problem came out, the level is too low, if normal video s audio level on the monitor, I will probably set 40, this feature film, i need to bring up to 70....
I predict that there must be something wrong with it for outputting. however, if i keep the audio level higher, the environment ambiance sound will be very loud.

so my question is
should I keep the audio level low for safety reason?
or should I just bring up the level for just in case audience cant hear it? ( the the ambiance will be noisy

How do deal with this problem?
Any suggestions or advises are highly appreciated!

Hiro
 
Are you planning a professional mix on a dubbing stage- then leave it alone. If your mix is it- get some good speakers and apply noise reduction as needed and ADR as needed. Nothing sinks a project quicker than crappy sound.

Noah
 
It's kind of low budget post production, my producer wants to keep as low cost as possible, so ... it depends on me.
If I can do it, of course, they wouldn't want to add more cost on it.
If I can't, there is no choice.
I will try my best.

Thank you very much for your suggestion.

Hiro
 
The important factor is the level of the audio on your meters, not the gain settings. What do your actual levels/waveforms look like in FCP?

Also, if you mean that the background noise on your dialogue tracks is too loud relative to the voices, then adjusting levels won't help the balance... you'll have to treat that with EQ or noise reduction processing...
 
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