• Apple Final Cut Pro Legacy

  Ducking— How Do I do It?

  Posted by Redford Givens on October 11, 2008 at 4:32 pm

  I’m trying to learn how to do automatic “ducking” in Sound Track Pro.

  This is to say, how can I keep the background music from drowning out the narrative without adjusting every clip?

  Someone told me that there is a feature that adjusts sound levels so the voice track is always dominant.

  I cannot find the term “ducking” in the Sound Track Pro manual, so I’m lost.

  I repeat my earlier suggestion that writers of program manuals include an extensive glossary aimed at beginners in their how-to books.

  Kill all robots

  Redford Givens

  Redford Givens replied 17 years, 10 months ago 4 Members · 6 Replies
• 6 Replies

• 

  Tom Wolsky

  October 11, 2008 at 4:55 pm

  Why wouldn’t you ask this on the Soundtrack forum?

  All the best,

  Tom

  Class on Demand DVDs “Complete Training for FCP6,” “Basic Training for FCS2” and “Final Cut Express Made Easy”
  Author: “Final Cut Pro 5 Editing Essentials” and “Final Cut Express 4 Editing Workshop”
• 

  Redford Givens

  October 11, 2008 at 5:09 pm

  [Tom Wolsky] “Re: Ducking— How Do I do It?
  by Tom Wolsky on Oct 11, 2008 at 9:55:05 am

  Why wouldn’t you ask this on the Soundtrack forum?

  All the best,

  Tom

  I did post on Soundtrack forum, but no response so far.

  If anyone can point us to where info about “ducking” in FCP or SoundTrack is available we will be grateful.

  Kill all robots

  Redford Givens
• 

  Steven Gonzales

  October 11, 2008 at 7:06 pm

  You need a bus input (sometimes called a side chain) to a compressor plug in. I don’t know if Soundtrack Pro has this (I don’t use it much).

  You take your controlling channel into a bus, then that bus as an input to a compressor on your music track. When the controlling channel gets louder, the compressor forces the music track to get quieter.

  So look for a plug in compressor that has this ability.
• 

  David Bogie

  October 13, 2008 at 3:18 pm

  That’s only the second time in forty years in the biz that I’ve heard the term “sidechain.” The consensus on the Apple forum seemed to be, no, STP is not set up that way, maybe Logic is, but we also allowed that ducking music under voice is best done manually anyway. Ducking other audio tracks for other purposes was not covered in the discussion that I recall.

  bogiesan

  This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”
• 

  Steven Gonzales

  October 13, 2008 at 5:10 pm

  I had sound classes with an old radio guy.

  Your comment about the rarity of the use of sidechain made me hunt, and surprisingly it’s in a wiki article, and explained pretty well:

  Side-chaining uses the signal level of another input or an equalized version of the original input to control the compression level of the original signal.

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_range_compression
• 

  Redford Givens

  October 15, 2008 at 5:19 am

  [david bogie] ”
  Re: Ducking— How Do I do It?
  by david bogie (bogiesan) on Oct 13, 2008 at 8:18:36 am

  but we also allowed that ducking music under voice is best done manually anyway.

  That’s the conclusion I came to. By the time I figure out how to make STP do it, we’ll miss every deadline. It’s likely that whatever method is needed to make STP do the ducking is inferior to simply listening to the clips.

  This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.””

  For crying out loud, the manual was written by robots and is total gibberish to humans.

  Kill all robots

  Redford Givens

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