Tweaking Audio in PP1.5

[William Mcqueen]

Finger pokeing problem: I meant to say that the levels fall between –
minus 6dB and minus 12db, Not between minus 12 and minus 16.
Sorry about that. Bill in Toronto

Folks!

I have a short 7 minute project which has a number of clips with varying levels and quality of audio. I’ve tried to “match” the clip audio levels of all the clips, but still feel a little inexperienced in raising the overall level of the entire timeline audio out and the voice levels seem to fall mostly between -12dB and 16dB. There are four tracks, with an unused submix and unused master track.

Unfortunately, I have excellent hearing, and noticed a bottom hum of about -30dB underneath the spoken audio. The camera operator didn’t hear it when he was taping, but of course you can see it the mixer display.

Without disturbing the current edit, I’d like to try in a “final mix down”, sweeting
the audio mix. I’ve tried the “dehummer,” but I don’t seem to be able to get it to work out very well. and I would like to find a combination of raising the spoken voice levels (since they are low) without raising the hum background. Not sure how to use the submix….

Any suggestions, templates, recipes or direction, appreciated.

Bill in Toronto

[Tom Scoville]

Bill,

To get rid of the hum you have a couple of options. You probably have 50 or 60Hz that needs to be squashed. The sticky part is that there may well be harmonics (120 Hz, 240 Hz, etc)that come into play. You might try applying the parametric EQ to just a clip on the timeline. It’s in the effects window, under audio effects. You will need to bring the frequency down to 60Hz, maybe lower, and set the Q to 1 or lower. The Q is the width of the slice you will be taking-a lower setting is better but will require more tweaking to get it right. Now grab that level slider and bring it down to maybe -12dB and if all goes well, your hum will be gone and you’ll still have some body left in the audio track. I have not played with the De-hummer but I’m betting it’s a notch filter with a few settings to tweak.

The level problem may be as simple as a few clicks. You can try right clicking the clip and select Audio Options, then Audio Gain, and click Normalize. This might be the fix if the levels are consistent throughout that clip. If not, you may need to slice the clip up where the level is very low and apply this same technique to each piece. Last resort would be one of the dynamics filters, like the multiband compressor. It’s a great tool but can create problems, like audible pumping of background noises, hum, and hiss. But for a good quality VO, it has become one of my favorite “flavoring” devices.

You can play around with any of the audio effects without doing any damage by simply saving your project under another name. Then, if you end up with something that sounds worse than where you started, you still have the original project. Coming off a long stint in the linear world of TV news, I love being able to play around without the fear that I can’t return to square one if things don’t work out as I planned.

Hope this helped….

Tom