Is Vegas Pro 12 a sufficient Platform for Sound Mixing a Feature Film (Sony VS Cubase)

[Debbie King]

Hi Steve:

Thank you for responding.

I am relieved to know that I can use Sony for all audio mixing. I do not know Cubase that well, and my composer will be creating the music in Cubase and saving it in separate tracks for me to drop on the Sony Vegas timeline for mixing. Is that how I would do it, if he sent me separate files?

He will create the music for the full length of the film on about 16 tracks so that I can mix the levels of each instrument. We discussed it today and I decided that I did not want a stereo file because if I received a stereo file and it was not well mixed, I would not be able to do much with it. Please let me know if you do it differently.

Many thanks,

Debbie

[John Rofrano]

[Debbie King] “1. The limitation that I experienced was the cleaning up the background noise. It was an easier process with Audacity. “

Understood. This is what I use Sound Forge for as well. Same type of program for the same purpose.

[Debbie King] “2. I would like to keep the workflow smoother. The reason I asked about Cubase, is because my composer will be using Cubase to created the music. He will be sending me the audio files to drop onto the Sony Vegas tracks (stems, I believe); still trying to understand what Stems actually mean. When I used to record years ago, we saved the recording on 16 tracks on a DAT and when we mixed, we would be able to mix the tracks separately. Is this what stems are?”

Funny I just answered this from your other post and I see Scott did too so you know now that stems are a submix of tracks like a group or a bus.

[Debbie King] “3. Thank you. I was wishing to be able to use Sony to mix everything, since I already have Foley, ADR and some music on the timeline.”

I think you’ll be fine mixing everything in Vegas Pro. It’s quite capable.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Debbie King]

Hi Scott:

Oh, I see. Wouldn’t you have to mix down the separate sections; for example mix down the woodwinds, brass, etc? Sounds great. What are pit files? By the way, I have already been having crashing with just the video and dialogue with some bed track music. When you say music bed track, are you speaking of a stereo track that has been mixed, like a stock music track?

[Debbie King]

Hi John:

Thank you for your response. I see! Can stems be remixed? Like creating a bus for the dialogue and discovering that it needs to be remixed, or the bass drum is too loud in the stem, etc? When dialogue is stemmed, is there a risk that if the synchronization is off a bit, that it cannot be fixed without starting with a clip and audio file that has not been stemmed? In other words, is this a part of mastering the project?

[John Rofrano]

[Debbie King] “Can stems be remixed? Like creating a bus for the dialogue and discovering that it needs to be remixed, or the bass drum is too loud in the stem, etc?”

No, and that’s not your job. The person giving you the stems has done the mixing already. That was their job. If you or the producer don’t like the mix, you go back to them and have them remix it and give you a new file. Stems are a way of giving you some level of control over just a single stereo mix but not the full level of the original tracks. This is done because quite often dialog, music, and sound fx need to be mastered to different broadcast levels.

You used the analogy of a 16 track recording in another post so I’ll use the same analogy. When you’re ready to have your 16 track recording mastered, you mix it down to a 2 tracks and the mastering house takes over. At that point, all they have to deal with is Volume, EQ’s, Compressors, Expanders, etc. They don’t get to remix it. Stems are like your two track master. You can play with volume, EQ., etc. but you’re not the mixer anymore.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Scott Francis]

Each stem does require a mixdown. I usually pan my sub hard left and right and do two in a stereo mixdown. Once I bring them into Vegas I separate them into 2 tracks and that saves me 1/2 of the time to mixdown than doing subgroups in mono.

The stems (subgroups) can be mixed in Vegas FAIRLY smoothly, but the more you process and the more tracks I tend to have Vegas get more unstable…just being honest. I wish it were not the case. SVP13 is a bit more stable than 12. I use Waves plugins and they do take a bit of resources…
Hope this helps!

Scott Francis
Mind’s Eye Audio/Video Productions

[Colin Morris]

Hi Debbie,
Scott and John have described stems pretty well and I think that would be the way to go if you are responsible for everything. I usually mix the dialog first using Sound Forge and Audacity from within SVP. This keeps the dialog with any picture edits within Vegas.
Stems come in really handy with sound effects and music. For example, I would track music in Cubase with all necessary processing and plug in effects, then mix down all the tracks to 2 music stems. The music stems would then go on to 2 tracks in Vegas.
I would also recommend picking up a reference book or two:
Audio Post Production for Film and TV by Mark Cross is a good recent reference.
Good luck!

Colin Mendez Morris
ArsMusica
http://www.arsmusica.ca

[Debbie King]

Hi Colin:

Thank you. I am so sorry for seeing this post so late. I was paying close attention to my earlier posts. I will definitely get the book.

I was talking to the composer the other day about stems. He was going to make about 4. Now I see that two is sufficient. Thank you so much for this information.

All the best,

Debbie

[Debbie King]

Thanks John. That’s great to hear. I have been using Audacity and was wondering if I needed to get anything else.

Thank you.

All the best,

Debbie

[Debbie King]

Thanks Scott:

I appreciate the feedback. I was thinking about upgrading to 13, because of the crashes I experience when rendering. It has not happened lately, but when I was rendering my trailer it happened often.

Thank you for the info on mixing down the tracks to two stems.

Best,

Debbie