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Frustrating times with audio automation
I seem to have continual issues with the automation feature of PPro CS4. Projects I work with almost never automate correctly, with faders completely ignoring anything on playback. Adding keyframes to audio timelines works, but as I’m from an audio background I find that method of working far less accurate. I have no third-party plugins installed, and running on Vista 32. Can anyone advise?
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8 Replies
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Don’t automate.
I have been editing on some nonlinear box or another for a good ten years. And I have never been pleased with anyone’s audio automation.
I set overall levels with a Volume adjustment. Then I will change audio in the timeline by expanding the audio channel and keyframing changes, then listening to the result.
Computers tend to suffer from lag when trying to record keyframed audio changes that are done by doing an auto keyframe animation. I want my changes to stick, so I simply don’t edit using automation.
What if there were no hypothetical questions?
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if it’s any consolation i found the same problems on the mac side. the audio mixer automation was totally unreliable, unpredictable and ultimately unuseable for me. would be nice if it worked properly but i fell back on keyframing as well.
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Thanks for the replies, my workflow now seems to be: create a rough mix in PPro, render the timeline as an AVI, then render out each individual audio track and import the lot into Audition. Now that works really well, but it’s a slower workflow (and of course Audition doesn’t come as part of CS4 Production Premium so there’s the extra cost involved too).
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What is it that you cannot do in Premiere Pro? I’m assuming you are working with real audio and not foley and ADR and you don’t need to do sound design.
Sound designers I have worked with have always worked in Digidesign’s ProTools (part of Avid) and they have used hardware controls (that are real time, from what I have seen) But even they do keyframing.
Only reason why I would send just regular video to a sound designer would be to clean up audio that is unacceptable for broadcast. And I’m not running into too much of that.
But for music, you can add stereo tracks, you can do mono (or stereo) audio for primary content (voiceover and dialog) and add effects tracks as needed all within Premiere Pro.
I’ve not attempted a 5.1 audio mix but even the version of Premiere Pro that I’m using (1.5) has that capability.
What if there were no hypothetical questions?
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Mark, all I’m doing is interview footage interspersed with other footage and a music bed which I dip (or try to dip) as needed. I could mix in one pass IF I could get Premiere Pro to automate instead of having to fiddle with keyframes. Incidentally, I find it impossible to delete multiples keyframes, having to delete just one at a time is irritating.
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You can lessent the rate of the automatic keyframes upon write mode in audio mixer in the preferences>audio… tick the ‘minimum time interval thinnig’ box and set to somewhere between 100 and 500 for a lot less keyframes, but you can also delete multiple keyframes by using the pen tool and marquee selecting a group of them to delete a large amount of selected keyframes.
– Jon Barrie 😉Jon Barrie
aJBprods
http://www.jonbarrie.net -
Thanks Jon, I’ll try that out just as soon as PPro 4.2.0 has installed…
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With respect to non-automated keyframe addition:
I use two techniques to keep things easy and light:
I will happily do a “dip” in audio levels using four keyframes around the dip, with audio levels set as the audio begins and then dipped to where audio should be for a dip into narration or actuality audio, then back up at the end. I don’t regard four keyframes all that hard to manage.
But if things are getting complex — especially for music tracks where there is no video connected to the track, I’m quite happy to razor blade the audio, apply a volume control and set volume and then do an audio crossfade from one to the other. Sure, I have audio cuts all over the piece, but those crossfades give me exactly the right level transitions as I need them without any keyframing of the audio.
Where I have video connected to audio, I tend to use keyframes, but one can unlink audio and video, add a cut with a razor blade, relink or make the three (or four) audio/video tracks into a Group and keep working.
Keeps me off the faders.
What if there were no hypothetical questions?
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