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Need tips to calibrate my sound of my movie
I am doing a racing car montage, and I never implemented engine car before (it was only music). I try to compensate car sounds with music, but it very hard to balance clip by clip. Each car sequences have different engine notes and sometime it get buried by the music, sometime the other way around.
I try to adjust the sound from each clips but the end results once the exported movie is largely different than what I have in the editor, like music is way too loud in my player than it was in the timeline. Plus to make it worst, Youtube change the level again so it never accurate on how I have to adjust the sounds in the editor. I feel I have completely ruined my movie by changing the audio level on every clips. I’m no expert in sound editing but I try with baby steps.
I’d appreciate some pointers, thanks!
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2 Replies
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Often when we’re struggling with sound there are two issues to deal with first (these are some of the big ones and they apply to all audio production, not just sound-for-film):
1. Frequency overlap: One frequent issue is that the “meat” of our sounds overlaps with the “meat” of our music. Using an equalizer to notch out some “space” in the music can make a big difference. The same goes for the SFX, we want to fine tune them against the music (and other sounds) as well. If you’re not familiar with EQs in general I would do some reading to start. You can work with complicated systems like a side-chained multi-band compressor (almost like a dynamic equalizer) however, start with EQ: it is the most fundamental audio tool after the fader/volume knob and compares well with the 3-way colour corrector in many ways (high, mids, lows vs. white, greys, blacks, etc.)
2. Headroom: A common behaviour is to try to often “turn things up” when the opposite should often be the first move. You can make things louder, or you can make them louder than other sounds by making the other sounds not-as-loud. If we keep turning things up, eventually we have nowhere to go.
Don’t be afraid to play around – just make sure you save a few versions of your project along the way!
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There is no intuitive interface, not even the nipple. It’s all learned. – Bruce Ediger -
The second tip is a good one, although it makes me wonder if I need to do two phase. Since the sounds of the sequential movieclip are drastically different, should I solve the track of the movie clips before putting music ? Or I put music first and gradually increase movie clips after?
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