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Problems intercutting location dialogue with location ambient track
I’m sound editing a scene that looks like it’s in the desert, but it’s on top of a hill near a busy road. I have some experience with the FCP audio filters, and I’m just now learning Soundtrack’s capability.
I’ve got a dialogue track that has a lot of white noise. it’s both wind and traffic. the combination of the noise reduction in Soundtrack with some hi and low band pass filters works to some degree in removing the noise from the dialogue track. i can notice that the loudness of the “air” is gone, but there’s still some air noise in the low frequencies that overlaps the vocal frequencies of the actor’s voice. If I over correct with the noise correction it leaves digital artifacts.
I’ve got a location ambient track that i can pull the traffic and wind noise out of with soundtrack’s noise reduction, or I can just use a hi and low band pass filter combo in FCP. When I do this I can preserve the sound of crickets and birds, with the illusion of a gentle breeze – which is what I want. The problem I’m having is that the disparity between the dialogue tracks and the ambient track is pretty big.
See in the dialogue track, by preserving the frequencies that have the dialogue I’m also keeping the traffic lows and highs. If i try and go too far in removing them, i find that the dialogue gets thin like a telephone or walkie talkie. Underneath the dialogue chunks I’ve laid a continuous ambient track, that I’m hoping to use to If I reduce the white noise in my ambient track, then the dialogue comes in with a burst of white noise as well.
Is there a way to reduce white noise that lives in the same frequency as my dialogue? How can I intercut location dialogue with a location ambient track so that it’s not jarring?
Thank you in advance for your suggestions,
Chris -
2 Replies
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This is why many producers use ADR to re-record location dialogue.
If careful use of digital noise reduction won’t solve your BG noise issues, re-recording the dialogue
and syncing it to the image can improve the scene.If the voices match the BG noise frequencies and there is not much difference in levels between them, you won’t be able to “pull” the voice tracks cleanly away from the noise.
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[Chris Fernando] “I’ve got a dialogue track that has a lot of white noise. it’s both wind and traffic.”
That’s not “white” noise. White noise would sound more like static. Traffic noise tends to be a broad-band noise that overlaps the frequencies of the human voice. It will be very difficult to filter it down and improve or keep the quality of the dialog.
Matte’s right, your best bet will be ADR.
Arnie
Post production is not an afterthought!
https://www.arniepix.com/
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