FCP 6-I shot a wedding where Pastor had a mic Bride & Groom did not, so their vows need to have audio level raised….

[David Roth weiss]

Sebastian,

I haven’t heard the recording, so I’m in the dark, but if its only the levels of the bride and groom that need fixing and nothing else…

The way I would do it would be to use the razor blade tool to make cuts before and after each passage of the bride and/or groom that need to have the amplitude raised. To do that you need to click on the audio track to select it so that the razor cuts only audio, not audio and video. After cutting each clip, move each of those to a lower track using option+arrow down, so all that need to fixed are on one track.

Now, raise the level of the audio on the first clip. Then copy that using Apple+C. Next, select all of the remaining clips on the track that need to be fixed and paste the attributes (select audio level in the dropdown menu) to those clips. And, boom aloha, if the level change of the background doesn’t kill ya, then you’re good to go. If raising the noise level in the BG is a problem you’ve got a lot more work on your hands that probably requires STP. Next time mic everyone…

I hope this helps,
David

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY

[Greg Ball]

In the future, you should at the very least drop a wireless lav on the groom’s lapel, on the same side where his bride will be standing. That mike should pick up all vows and comments. Their words are more important to them than the Pastor’s

[David Roth weiss]

[greg] “drop a wireless lav on the groom’s lapel, on the same side where his bride will be standing. Their words are more important to them than the Pastor’s”

A good rule of thumb in these situations is usually to mic the people paying for the video…

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY

[Will Griffith]

>>drop a wireless lav on the groom’s lapel
…just make sure the groom turns it off before and after the ceremony. 🙂

You could also just do some ADR on it. 🙂
Would be hilarious in a bloopers section.
Make it sound like a quality kung-fu movie.

Will Griffith
Producer/Editor

[Sebastian Knight]

David,
How what I handle this if I needed to bring it into STP2, if the first option does not work?

Sebastian

Thank You in advance for taking the time to read and reply to my Post.

Sebastian

[Will Griffith]

You can try dupliucating the channels and stacking if you need more volume,
but you will of course add a alot of ambient noise.

Take the modified segments into STP, select an area with a lot of noise and no vocals, then
select process “set noise print”, then select all the noisy segments and apply process->reduce noise then adjust to your liking. Not ideal, but should help some.

Will Griffith
Producer/Editor

[J. Tad newberry]

sounds like David gave you a very good fix. one other thing i will add is that i’m currently working on a project with a similar problem, though in this one the talent had a mic on, but the level was just very low. we raised it as high as possible in FCP (12 dB). works great! and in some cases, the mic level was so low, we raised it to 12 AND duplicated the clip on top of itself. the difference here is that our mic levels were just low – but they were there. talent AND ambient levels were therefore low. in your case, you have a bride and groom who are off mic, so their levels are fighting with your pastor’s mic’s ambient levels. raising their levels will also raise the ambient levels just as much. . . but at least you’ll hear them better? as suggested, maybe taking their tracks into STP and playing with the filters might yield a solution. also, with Davids “cut and move” option, as he suggested you’ll obviously hear the ambient levels jump as the timeline goes from cut to cut. it will take longer, but if you want a more gradual change in ambient sound, you’ll have to keyframe the audio levels from when the pastor talks to when the bride and/or groom talk. the ambient will still go up and down, but at least it will be a little more gradual (kind of like when the mic levels have been set to “auto”).

obviously, you have seen what to do next time. usually, the more mics the better! (or get a boom guy, but that would look purdy funny in a wedding…)

oh, the most important thing here: hopefully, the vows the bride and groom are trying to hear will be remembered in the coming years as they become richer or poorer, get sick or stay healthy, and things get better or worse. if more couples would KEEP their vows today…(okay, off my soapbox for now…)

thanks again!

mh

[Bill Kelly]

Another thing you could try is to isolate the area where the bride and groom say their vows as David suggested, then drop the Compressor filter on it (Effects

[Sebastian Knight]

How do I use a filter on just a portion of a clip?

Sebastian

Thank You in advance for taking the time to read and reply to my Post.

Sebastian

[J. Tad newberry]

you can either drag the filter right to the clip on the timeline, or double-click the clip in the timeline, then drag the filter to it in the viewer, then of course you can tweak the filter in the viewer once it has been applied to that clip.

thanks again!

mh