Exporting audio for outside editing?
Jacques E. Bouchard
short project (compressing, normalizing, removing noise etc.). What is the
best way to do this? Should I export the two-track audio to a WAV file, or
is there a better way to preserve the edits (breaks in the clips) while
allowing the engineer to work on them easily (i.e. without an NLE program)?
If I export to WAV, am I locked out of making changes in the montage
afterwards without having to snip the cleaned up audio to move it around?
The engineer had no advice to offer as she's never worked on a film's audio
track before.
Thanks.
jaybee
Mike Kujbida
Do you know what hardware/software the engineer is using?
If you export each track as a separate WAV file, it should import into
most programs that way as well (i.e. with all the separations as you
currently see them).
I work a lot with animation students who come to me for audio sweetening
of their projects.
They do their audio in PPro while I work in Vegas.
I have them export each track separately (usually 4 but sometimes as
many as 10 tracks) and save them as WAV files.
When I get them, each track is dropped separately into Vegas and
everything lines up as expected.
If at all possible, give the engineer an AVI file to use as a reference.
I know that Pro Tools and several other sound programs have an AVI
import feature.
Mike
Richard Crowley
>I have a sound engineer who offered to work on the soundtrack of my last
> short project (compressing, normalizing, removing noise etc.).
Do you mean working on the individual clips, or do you mean working
on the finished edit soundtrack?
> What is the best way to do this? Should I export the two-track audio
> to a WAV file,
That is what I typically do for "sweetening". After I'm done cutting the
edit together, I export the entire sound track, end-to-end. to a 48K
WAV file and then do whatever in my audio NLE (Adobe Audition).
Thenn I re-import the sweetened track and drop it into a new audio
slot and mute the original.
> or
> is there a better way to preserve the edits (breaks in the clips) while
> allowing the engineer to work on them easily (i.e. without an NLE
> program)?
It gets too complex too quickly if you are trying to do this "on the fly"
WHILE you are still editing the piece together. Recommend waiting
until you are done editing as it is already too late for her to sweeten
the individual clips (since it sounds like you've started editing.)
> If I export to WAV, am I locked out of making changes in the montage
> afterwards without having to snip the cleaned up audio to move it around?
Yes, that is the problem of trying to do editing and sweetening in parallel.
> The engineer had no advice to offer as she's never worked on a film's
> audio
> track before.
It is sometimes very helpful to be able to SEE the video that goes with the
track so that you can make the right decision about how to deal with it.
Jacques E. Bouchard
news:68s8oeF...@mid.individual.net:
> "Jacques E. Bouchard" wrote ...
>>I have a sound engineer who offered to work on the soundtrack of my
>>last
>> short project (compressing, normalizing, removing noise etc.).
>
> Do you mean working on the individual clips, or do you mean working
> on the finished edit soundtrack?
On the finished edit soundtrack, as there are too many individual clips
for her to manage efficiently.
>> What is the best way to do this? Should I export the two-track audio
>> to a WAV file,
>
> That is what I typically do for "sweetening". After I'm done cutting
> the edit together, I export the entire sound track, end-to-end. to a
> 48K WAV file and then do whatever in my audio NLE (Adobe Audition).
> Thenn I re-import the sweetened track and drop it into a new audio
> slot and mute the original.
That's what I had assumed. I'm just worried that, after I've been away
from the project for a week or two and she gives the track back to me, I
suddenly see things I hadn't seen before but can't make any changes in
the video.
Another problem is what if I need to apply effects to some clips but not
others, such as making a voice sound like it's on the telephone? Do I let
her do that after sweetening, and if so can she work directly on that
single WAV file?
> It gets too complex too quickly if you are trying to do this "on the
> fly" WHILE you are still editing the piece together. Recommend waiting
> until you are done editing as it is already too late for her to
> sweeten the individual clips (since it sounds like you've started
> editing.)
She got in touch with me when I was halfway through, but I haven't done
anything too extensive. I can easily remove the audio effects I've
applied and let her work on the WAV file. It'd be one less thing for me
to worry about while I colour-correct.
> It is sometimes very helpful to be able to SEE the video that goes
> with the track so that you can make the right decision about how to
> deal with it.
Without a doubt. She'll have a DVD of the rough edit.
Thanks for the tips. It helps greatly.
jaybee
Jacques E. Bouchard
news:68s7gkF...@mid.individual.net:
> Do you know what hardware/software the engineer is using?
> If you export each track as a separate WAV file, it should import into
> most programs that way as well (i.e. with all the separations as you
> currently see them).
> I work a lot with animation students who come to me for audio
> sweetening of their projects.
> They do their audio in PPro while I work in Vegas.
> I have them export each track separately (usually 4 but sometimes as
> many as 10 tracks) and save them as WAV files.
> When I get them, each track is dropped separately into Vegas and
> everything lines up as expected.
> If at all possible, give the engineer an AVI file to use as a
> reference. I know that Pro Tools and several other sound programs have
> an AVI import feature.
She's using a PC with Adobe Audition.
Very good point about exporting each track. I forgot that empty space on
each track will be exported as silence, so the total running time will be
the same as the video.
I'll ask her what she prefers, and I'll sort my audio tracks accordingly.
I'm thinking two tracks for dialogue (when dialogue from different clips
overlap), one for room tone, one for music and two for sound FX (again,
to make provisions for overlapping FX clips).
jaybee
Mike Kujbida
With dialogue, put each person on his/her own track.
That way, if she wants to apply any FX at the track level, she can do it
and not worry about it affecting anyone else.
Mike
Mike Kujbida
>
> Another problem is what if I need to apply effects to some clips but not
> others, such as making a voice sound like it's on the telephone? Do I let
> her do that after sweetening, and if so can she work directly on that
> single WAV file?
I prefer to get all sound FXs unsweetened.
That way, I can tweak them to suit.
What sounded good to you at the time may not necessarily work in the
final mix.
Mike
Mike Kujbida
> Mike Kujbida <kXuXj...@xplornet.com> wrote:
>>
>> If at all possible, give the engineer an AVI file to use as a
>> reference. I know that Pro Tools and several other sound programs have
>> an AVI import feature.
>
> She's using a PC with Adobe Audition.
It'll handle an AVI file so give her one to use as a reference.
I get the animation students to gove me one and it makes my life MUCH
easier when doing this, especially if you're trying to get a sound FX to
line up at a specific point or to taper off after it's been used.
Mike
peter
> short project (compressing, normalizing, removing noise etc.). What is the
> best way to do this? Should I export the two-track audio to a WAV file, or
> is there a better way to preserve the edits (breaks in the clips) while
> allowing the engineer to work on them easily (i.e. without an NLE
> program)?
> If I export to WAV, am I locked out of making changes in the montage
> afterwards without having to snip the cleaned up audio to move it around?
I prefer to give away the original sound tracks (before any video editing is
performed) for processing. Then when they are done, I use "replace asset" to
replace the original sound track with the processed sound track. You don't
have to wait for the sound track to continue your NLE editing, and you can
continue to edit after the sound tracks are processed.
If you give the final, edited sound track out for processing, then you can
not do anymore NLE editing.
TheFlaggman
wrote:
Put a single frame insertion into the video track with a burst tone
pulse corresponding to it at key
dead spots through the avi file. Then if you have to separate the
audio from the video by exporting audio only from the NLE package, you
will have the short ref tone bursts to sync video to sweetened audio
returned from engineer. If engineers wants complete avi to get the
big picture you could include that too for reference and they can work
on audio track separately. When comleted, you just have to drop the
audio rack back in and align the tone bursts with the ref frames and
lips of air talent should be in sync with video. A Pro Tools manual
suggested the procedure when using it as the engineering package for
audio. Nice trick as long as one doesn't cut the audio clip in pieces;
which is why I choose to space a few ref bursts throughout in case
clips' lengths get altered.
TheFlaggman
wrote:
Matter of personal preference. Planning at the start to shoot with
minimum noise is best.
If one chooses to edit first then engineer audio sweetness, it is good
idea ( according to Pro Tools
tutorial manual I have used) to insert obvious detectable single
frames into the video with
coincident bursts of tone before sending to engineer. Have it
sweetened and forewarn them
to leave the tones in where they are in the final version. When you
get the cleaned audio back, line up the tone bursts with the known
frames in the video and audio and video should be lipsynced to the
frame. Delete each frame and toneburst maintaining lipsync should work
well.
The other option would be to have audio worked on first; in that case
if the engineer may not be in a position to enhance the audio in a
particular way to match an effect or filter you may want to
incorporate into the video for effect. Engineer would only have the
RAW avi capture file to use as a big picture reference in this case.