• Audio

  Basic formula for sweetening sound in a video edited using FCPX

  Posted by James Dow on October 29, 2018 at 9:01 pm

  I’m thinking my audio could always be improved on most of my FCPX edits. Typically, I will have a lavalier (TR50) track from an interview, maybe some B-Roll Nat sound, wav files of any production music tracks and maybe some Foley SFX. What are your standard work flows for compression, normalization, audio effects, EQ and any other steps to achieve great audio?

  Thanks,
  James

  JPD

  Ty Ford replied 7 years, 2 months ago 3 Members · 6 Replies
• 6 Replies

• 

  Ty Ford

  October 29, 2018 at 9:43 pm

  Hello James and welcome to the Cow Audio Forum.

  Great post production audio starts with using the best sounding production gear. It also begins with being able to make proper sense out of what you hear. Unless you lead with that, you won’t get the best production sound and everything rolls down hill from that. How do I teach you that? How do I teach you to hear (as in, how to process what you’re hearing).

  First, yes, your Tram is a great lav, but it is still a lav. When you step up to interviews with a proper boom mic, the sound quality changes dramatically. Can you now distinguish between lav and boom sound? What booms have you heard? (Do you know if they were they used properly?)

  Second, which camera are you using?

  Third, do you use a recorder/mixer?

  Regards,

  Ty Ford
  Cow Audio Forum leader

  Want better production audio?: Ty Ford\’s Audio Bootcamp Field Guide
  Ty Ford Blog: Ty Ford\’s Blog
• 

  James Dow

  October 30, 2018 at 1:43 pm

  Hi Ty. Thanks for your response, and to all of the great suggestions you’ve shared over the years.
  I can distinguish the difference between boom mics and lavs. I actually have several shotguns (Sennheiser K6 and Audio Technica 835b.) Sometimes I use a Shure FP33 in the field.

  Typically, I record to a SONY a7s, through the SONY XLR-A1M. I take the audio via the HDMI out of the camera, into the Atomos Shogun. I’m usually a one-man-band, so I tend to use lavs, rather than a boom approach. I have a Zoom digital audio recorder, but don’t use it much.

  Thanks,
  James

  JPD
• 

  Ty Ford

  November 2, 2018 at 12:30 am

  James,

  Thanks for noticing. ☺

  Until you are ready to partner up with someone with sound/audio chops, a locked down boom for interviews is a good way to get to the next level. A light stand with a grip head, a fishing pole holder and a dirt bag for stability are your friend.

  I like a Schoeps CMC641. Others prefer a Sennheiser MKH50 or DPA 4018. They sound better than your mics and they cost more as well. Buy a good mic once and EVERYTHING changes.

  Regards,

  Ty Ford

  Want better production audio?: Ty Ford\’s Audio Bootcamp Field Guide
  Ty Ford Blog: Ty Ford\’s Blog
• 

  James Dow

  March 4, 2019 at 4:54 pm

  Hi Ty,

  So if I purchase a Schoeps CMC641for use on a boom pole, would this also be a good mic for use on a podium, to feed mixer to powered speakers for meetings? Just trying to justify the cost to my bean counters.

  Thanks,
  JPD

  JPD
• 

  Bill Davis

  March 7, 2019 at 10:00 pm

  Hi James,
  Ty is apparently busy and so I’ll take a stab at this.

  If you think of sound in the context of cooking, you’re mics are kinda where you get your ingredients. Just like various proteins have different flavors, so do microphones. Some have strong flavors, some are kinda bland. Neither of those are necessarily bad things. You don’t want Rice to taste as strong as, say, Lamb. And while rice is pretty neutral and works with lots of sauces, Lamb, is different. It works WONDERFULLY with, for example, mint jelly to create a flavor combination that is generally celebrated for tastiness. Switch the mint jelly for ketchup, and you might well leave a LOT of people saying MEH.

  The point I am making is that capturing great sound is VERY complex. Even a good ingredient. A nice chicken breast or pot of potatoes, can be stored improperly such that they spoil, or can be badly cooked, or seasoned improperly, such that you can end up with a mess.

  So lets imagine you buy the CMC64 and put it on a boom in a room and start recording. You might expect that with such a sensitive, low noise, quality microphone you are guaranteed a quality recording!

  BUT – just as with starting with a great steak, you can STILL handle things improperly with respect to your sound recording of that fine mic, and get a poor result.

  Lets imagine you put that nice mic in a room with all sorts of unaddressed audio issues. There AC or Mechanical Noise. The room is a 10×10 square with hard, parallel walls and little soft diffusion anywhere. As are the floor and ceiling. The talent was sitting in a chair near the middle of that reflective cube. Having used no baffles during the recording to address any of that, you come back with a recording that sounds kinda awful. It’s tinny, with weird frequency spikes all over the place, because the room was taking the voice, bouncing it around, and it was landing at the microphone element with all manner of echos and room nodes, and phase cancellation issues at different frequencies – which are ALL dependent on what’s present in the original voice – AND how that particular voice interacted with the room itself.

  My point is that it’s not just the quality of the mic that matters. It’s doing it’s job REALLY well. It’s recording VERY ACCURATELY, the awfulness of it’s sonic environment. This is part of why owing just ONE mic might not be a great idea. Seriously, in an awful room like that, a $50 areobics headset mic might have been a better option, not because it’s a better mic, but because it will let you separate what you WANT to record – the person’s voice – from what you don’t want to record, the sound of the room.

  There are techniques for addressing some of the issues. You can open your audio files and spend a bunch of time in your waveforms identifying standing waves and room nodes and painstakingly notching them out to improve the recording. But that’s not very efficient unless you have lots of time and money to perfect things.

  This is getting long and rambly, and I’m sorry for that, but just understand that sound recording is, by it’s nature, increasingly complex as you get better at it.

  FCP X uses a ton of Logic Code as it’s audio engine so you have a massive array of seasonings at your disposal right inside the tool itself. But having a tool and understanding how to use it will always be two different things.

  And the “how” is kinda, never really formulaic.

  Good luck. And keep asking questions like this. It’s how EVERYONE learns.

  Take care.

  Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
  The shortest path to FCP X mastery.
• 

  Ty Ford

  March 7, 2019 at 11:10 pm

  Bill,

  Thanks for stepping in. I was having log in problems and had to call in the boss to figure out why I couldn’t log in. You’ve done a great job in explaining the landscape.

  James, yes you probably can use your new CMC641 as a podium mic. You’ll need a good suspension mount to isolate the mic from the podium. Something like this – https://bhpho.to/2IXVYYM or a combo for

  If you ordered the CMC641 with the B5D pop filter, you’ll need another layer of foam on top of the B5D to keep close talkers from popping through the B5D. Maybe something like this – https://bhpho.to/2J0rXYc

  Try to position the mic so each person is about 6 inches to a foot away from the mic.

  Regards,

  Ty Ford
  Cow Audio Forum Leader.

  Want better production audio?: Ty Ford\’s Audio Bootcamp Field Guide
  Ty Ford Blog: Ty Ford\’s Blog

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