fcp audio mastering

[Shane Ross]

Watch each one and adjust the audio on each so that none of them peak above -12. 30 videos..shouldn’t take that long. Use the mixer FCP provides. It’ll be a snap.

Shane

Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[Michael Gissing]

[Shane Ross] “Watch each one and adjust the audio on each so that none of them peak above -12.”

Better still, LISTEN to each one. Apparent loudness is much more than meter watching. Set your audio monitoring levels with good speakers or headphones. Don’t touch monitoring volume again.

Use your judgment to assess apparent loudness. If you have access to a phons meter, use it.

DVD audio mastering is really a specialist job for audio facilities with EQ and dynamics processors. Shane’s -12 db rule of thumb is OK but broadcast peaks are -10db on a digital scale (FCP uses digital scale) which is a more universal level. If you set the first clip to peak at -10db then use your ears to gauge the rest, relative to that first clip.

To keep a handle on things, jump around within the 30 clips and hear if they match apparent loudness.

[Zackery Bent]

Thanks for the advice Shane and Michael. It makes sense to me to master the tracks in FCP not letting them bounce past -10db. I did do a bit of a test yesterday just by bouncing from video to video listening on feel. For the average viewer of a product like this, they just don’t want it to blare at one moment and whisper at another. So going by ear seems like an okay fall back method.

I do have sound engineer that I could work with. So if I wanted we could make it really professional by going that route. In a scenario like this would you put all of the videos in the timeline and export one big audio file to be mastered or send all 30 as individual audio files?

Thanks again for the advice…its tough working solo sometimes!

[Michael Gissing]

Send files via OMF export to an audio post suite.