Audio Quality fixes???? help

[David Roth weiss]

STP has a pretty good noise reduction. The STP tutorial that comes with FCP Studio tells you how to use it properly.

DRW

[Michael Gissing]

>>Any advice? and What filters do you usually use to sweeten audio?

No. If you have so little regard for getting usable sound on location then I have no advice at all. “sweeten”ing audio is like polishing a turd. No matter what you do it is still a turd.

[Bob Cole]

[Michael G] “No matter what you do it is still a turd.”

In principle I agree. But in practice, you can get away with a lot nowadays. You might be surprised at the before-and-after of a dialog track that was in here last week.

A very astute sound mixer friend was able to make this problematic track (recorded too close to a very noisy HVAC system) sound really really good, using only STP. The key was to use each filter just a little bit. In this case, a little bit of low-end roll-off; a little compression of voice only; for some parts, a little normalization; a little more compression of the mix; and a little limiting. It sounded really great in the end! And these were non-professional voices.

Of course I agree with you about trying to do the best you can on location. The tracks would have been a lot better if recorded on a sound stage. But sometimes, you just have to roll with what you have, and thank your lucky stars there are tools that can “fix it in post.”

— Bob C

[Bob Cole]

I forgot — we started the fix with low end roll off, then noise reduction, then the rest as I described.

Experiment! And use very good speakers, or else headphones.

— Bob C.

[David Roth weiss]

Jeeze Michael, that’s really helpful and certain make his job a whole lot easier. I think somebody got up on the wrong side of their bed today.

[Delano Bryant]

yeah well “us” editors get stuck polishing that turd. And you should know that by now. What is done in the field is out of our hands.

[Delano Bryant]

Thank you Bob, btw. after making the changes in STP, I just save as the sequence and it automatically saves it in the FCP folder correct? or do I need to re-export it TOO FCP?

[Delano Bryant]

David, when I finish correcting the audio. Do I save as MIX or what for it to automatically update back in FCP? Its been awhile since I’ve used STP I forgot moving files back to FCP.

[Bob Cole]

I’ve had a lot of trouble with the round-tripping between FCP and STP. I’ve resorted to exporting as a new QT file, saving the results of the STP session as a copy, and reimporting the file into FCP. I know that the way it’s supposed to be, but I’ve had so many FCP crashes with STP round-tripping that I gave up.

[Delano Bryant]

thank you