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FCP & Audio Normalization
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“Interesting. The audio post houses we use start from scratch, they don’t use any of our levels at all. They don’t want us manipulating the audio in way.”
Billable hours?
Seriously though, I understand what you’re saying, but this usually has more to do with control. The mixer wants to control it all, especially old time mixers, because that’s what they’re used to.
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” -
[Tom Wolsky] “Billable hours? “
Nope. Flat rate per episode.
As for control, of course they want complete control. Just like I don’t want anyone delivering footage to me that’s already been effected in some way. Especially Color Correction. I hate it when I get color corrected clips.
Most video editors make sound worse by filtering when you should just leave it to the audio post houses to handle this if you’re using one.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
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[Tom Wolsky] “Seriously though, I understand what you’re saying, but this usually has more to do with control. The mixer wants to control it all, especially old time mixers, because that’s what they’re used to.
“It’s a holdover from the days of analog audio when the noise floor would increase every time an amplitude change or a mix-down was applied to audio before output to tape.
In the digital domain there are no ill effects from adjusting amplitude or pre-mixing, however, audio pros see so much bad audio, they just assume that starting over from scratch will make their lives easier. Sometimes they’re right, sometimes not…
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.
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My point about sending our levelatored audio to the audio post houses is that they have not rejected the gain adjustments and minimal compression that levelator applies. It has passed muster with them so it is good enough for us. We mix most of our audio in house so the one trip out to levelator has been a real time saver and an extremely useful tool in the post audio we do in house (80%). And since most of our work starts with interviews shot by different cameras at different levels and noise floors, levelator is a lifesaver getting all these levels straight before we mix in the music and effects.
The audio post houses can still add their special recipe’s to the final mix as they do normally with or without our without our levelatored track, and that is my point.
It’s that good.
Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media -
Firstly, the desire to get audio that has not been pre processed is not old school or billable hours based. As an audio post pro who also runs FCP for grading & online, I can assure you that material that has been normalised or compressed in any way is not what I want. The reason is simple. My gaining, EQing and compressing tools are vastly superior. For example, on a Fairlight all EQ & dynamics are done at over 70 bit floating point resolution. 32 bit floating point resolution is the minimum for mix processing.
Most disturbing are ill informed ideas. David Roth Weiss’s quote -“In the digital domain there are no ill effects from adjusting amplitude or pre-mixing” is so wrong and the sort of miss education that makes my job harder. Please don’t ever think you are helping a sound mixer by premixing. Think how hard it is to color correct a composite layered shot with titles. You can’t unpick layers or avoid affecting text. I am sure you will all understand that this is a mistake and an audio premix is no different.
By using FCPs filters to change gain or EQ, this leaves the base sound unaffected and so when it exports via OMF, us sound pros have the raw file, not a normalised or pre compressed signal. Most normalising doesn’t use sophisticated floating point processing. If you send files out to something like the Levelator, you are firstly baking in compression and also losing timecode reference on the files. It also means you have to export wav or aif files, process them and then reimport. I presume this means manually resyncing unless, horror of horrors, you are making long aifs of whole tracks which means handles are gone when it finally gets to sound post. Either way it sounds like a lot of manual work to round trip, just to use an automated leveler.
If you need to use this tool to gain match your final mixes prior to podcasting then it says to me that your original sound post was poor. Don’t use it on broadcast finalised mixes as it will likely make your mix illegal and it should be totally unnecessary anyway.
Finally I can see why these guys developed the product and it makes sense in their application, but please don’t use it if you are going to sound post from FCP. I am not bagging the Levelator. It has applications for creating a standard loudness on finished material for the web that is not already broadcast standard.
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[David Roth Weiss] “In the digital domain there are no ill effects from adjusting amplitude or pre-mixing, however, audio pros see so much bad audio, they just assume that starting over from scratch will make their lives easier. Sometimes they’re right, sometimes not… “
I was just about to comment on this, but I see Michael Gissing already gave a much better reply than I ever could.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
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Thanks for taking the time to chime in here Michael. I was going to say something along those lines, but you are much more eloquent and knowledgeable on the audio Post side than I am.
All filters have their uses, but if a project is going to audio post, just leave everything raw.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
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Just so that I wasn’t speaking without knowledge, I downloaded the Levelator and dropped a wav file of a short film final mix. Levels do change so broadcast spec is no longer correct.
Secondly the compression/limiting is what I would classify as soft character. For me this is not good as it flattens a good dynamic. A great limiter caps peak levels but doesn’t soften or flatten the sound. I won’t get to technical on compressor limiters characteristics, but suffice to say this product will help smooth some vocals, particularly narration, but it is not ideal for sharp transient effects. It might help some music, but most music is pre processed anyway.
I also think it would not be ideal for final mixes that are complex and have strong dynamic sound effects, but Ok for music & dialog simple tracks.
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[Michael Gissing] “Most disturbing are ill informed ideas. David Roth Weiss’s quote -“In the digital domain there are no ill effects from adjusting amplitude or pre-mixing” is so wrong and the sort of miss education that makes my job harder. Please don’t ever think you are helping a sound mixer by premixing. Think how hard it is to color correct a composite layered shot with titles. You can’t unpick layers or avoid affecting text. I am sure you will all understand that this is a mistake and an audio premix is no different.”
I was not referring to adding compression or other processing Michael, and I completely stand behind my statement regarding premixing, which does not raise the noise floor as in the analog domain.
Could premixing in the wrong hands create difficulties for the rerecording mixer, of course.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.
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I think Rich Rubasch, who suggested Levelator, specifically referred to using this for narration tracks, not for final mix exports.
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”
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