Voiceover…a quick question..

[Chris Tompkins]

Maybe the computer can edit everything for u?

[James Veitch]

Hey, if bad djs can speak into a mic and have the music fade down and up when they speak, then I think FCP ought to be able to.
Also, i’m not asking the program to do anything creative, simply fade down and up at specified points.
Thanks for your help.

[Andy Mees]

audio ducking is not in FCP’s feature set at present … if you feel this would be an valuable function for you, then head on over to the feedback page and submit it as a feature request. you can directly access the feedback page from within FCP by going to the Final Cut Pro menu > Provide Feedback

[James Veitch]

Thanks Andy,
Much more helpful.
I just see it as an invaluable timesaver. I will submit it. I did look through Jerry Hofman’s book before posting and couldn’t find anything about it.
Thanks again.
James

[Boyd Mccollum]

[James Veitch] “Also, i’m not asking the program to do anything creative, simply fade down and up at specified points. “

actually, I think it wouldn’t be as simple as that, and there are a world of creative choices that are being made, even in a simple voice over. Simply choosing to do a fade down and up is a creative choice. Plus you’d need to adjust any number of presets to have it do what you want it to do. How much should it fade down? How quickly should it fade down and/or fade up? How long should it wait for pauses while you’re speaking? How should it fade down or up when you have mulitple tracks, some of which don’t need to be faded?

Recording the voice over is also just the start. Often you end up moving the VO (even by one or 2 seconds) and then you’d have to go back into the automatically generated keyframes to reposition your fades…. In the end, as each VO is different and interacts with the footage differently, even within a single short sequence, you may end up making more adjustments getting your presets set for automation, then doing the work afterward.

Also, this type of automation is something that could create a lot more problems for those most likely to use it, basically the less experienced user. They would be the ones that don’t understand keyframing

[James Veitch]

Hey boyde, I completely see your point and, in actual fact, this is a feature you’re more likely to see in imovie or suchlike.
Many thanks for your reply.
James

[Dean Sensui]

Rather than add keyframes in levels, I cut up the music track, set the music under the voiceover at the appropriate levels, then drop crossfade transitions to smoothly ramp the music from one level to the next.

The advantage of doing it this way is it’s much easier to adjust the timing of each fade-down ad the crossfades are easily shifted, and I can make corrections en masse by selecting all the appropriate sections and making changes with the “gain adjust” menu item: Modify-Levels (opt-cmd-L)

Dean Sensui — Imagination Media Hawaii

[Michael Gissing]

The mix tool makes it possible to ride levels around a VO without laborious keyframing. The way to make this sort of thing simple is to have a mix divided into stems – music pre mix, FX pre mix, dialog pre mix so you are only riding a few faders under the VO. This is how it is done in pro audio post. FCP however has no such ability to group and route pre mixes.

A ducking device does this automatically, but the problem withing the FCP structure is defining what gets ducked by which track. I doubt it would be a useful plug in because the FCP mixer is so basic.

[Chris Paul]

Garage Band has ducking buit in. It does not link to FCP the way Soundtrack does but it is certainly cheap and you can watch video while recording audio with it. Wouldn’t hurt to demo it and see if it works for you.

Chris Paul
POV