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Sound Levels For Output.
I have a project that I am about to output (as soon as I have a clear answer to this question). I want to down mix all of the dialogue, ambience and sound effects into one track because for the most part I used production sound and didn’t add many sound effects (except where absolutely nessecary.) I plan on my music being on a seperate track.
Before I do this I have a question.
What is a good level for the average dialouge level and what is good for an average ambience level.
I do not trust my own ears really. They are not trained. Also, what is the best way to downmix these. Simple instructions would be great and I would be grateful!
Also, as a side question, if I were wanting to make a dvd using standard definition footage that would be letterboxed on standard television sets and fill the entire screen on widescreen sets, what would I need to do. I know only that the video needs to be cropped to the proper aspect ratio. I do not know what other settings are needed and where. Thanks so much!
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1 Reply
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I’d encourage you to learn to trust your own ears as no metering is anywhere near as good as the human ear, although you do need decent quality speakers (not necessarily expensive audiophile stuff, but they need to have a reasonably flat response over the full audio frequency range). I generally set the dialogue so that it peaks between 5 and 6 on a PPM then adjusting the effects, ambience and music so that it sounds “right”. If you don’t have access to a PPM (I use PPMulator via Audio Hijack Pro when I do this, although I take it to a Dubbing Mixer in a proper sound suite for most of the broadcast stuff) you can get close by having the speech mainly around -12 on FCPs meter and never going above -6. Ambience is hard to give a suitable level for – it might sound fine at 20dB below speech, but 30dB or 40dB lower than speech might be right depending on the precise nature of the sounds.
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