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Audio Effects Part 2

There's another thing that we can do that this's doctor, surf again. This close this with some music. This may be a shade loud. Be careful. Okay, we have music, which is too loud. And dr cerf, which is too soft. This is typical. Most the time dialogue is recorded to soft music has recorded too loud. I'm gonna pull dr surface loud as I can wait. I want to pull the music down. Okay, jim, I'm gonna ask you a question in a second way. Learn. And then I'm going to ask bernard the same question. Jim, you're ready? We're sitting down. First question to jim. Same question goes to bernard. Jim, why do we add music to a project? We have music to a project to givet atmosphere. I would say okay, bernard, why do we add music to a project? I believe it adds. Feeling emotion kind of gives it. It adds to the to the the how the piece exactly like dialogue tells the audience what to think. Music tells the audience what to feel now. In the old days, if we watched films in the forties and fifties, music w...

as used in the open. And maybe towards the end, when he got to the really dramatic scene but the rest of time it was all sound effects. It was all people talking, but there was no music because audiences off forty, fifty, sixty years ago were easy. They attended theater, it was easy for them to project what the emotion was based upon, what the actors were acting in the nineteen sixties, producers became very nervous. They felt that the audience was not smart enough for the actors were not good enough to be able to convey emotion the producer needed to trigger to telegraph the emotion by adding music to a scene. And if you watch movies from the nineteen forties to sixties toe eighties, music went from being periodic toe blanket wall, the wall music and now we say the soundtrack of the music is so extensive we can sell the soundtrack separately. I've never heard the soundtrack of casa blanca being sold separately, nor, for that matter, the maltese falcon, because music was used in such a spare fashion. The reason we use music is it triggers thie audience on what they should feel the way dialogue triggers on what they should think. Well, if music is an emotional trigger, why do I pull the volume of the music down that's like saying the music is not important, the emotions they're not important because I'm making the volume of the sound softer. This is stupid. I want the emotion to be justus high as thie intellect. But how do I make the emotion of the music nice and loud without drowning out the voice way. Use a different kind of filter. Select the music, go back to the effects and this time we're gonna grab a channel e q filter. Remember that I said that audio human speech, human hearing runs twenty to twenty thousand cycles. Human speech is only a portion of it, but music runs the entire twenty to twenty thousand cycles. So when I select this and go up to the filter, this is the exact same concept. Twenty cycles on the left, twenty thousand cycles on the right, but a slightly different interface. I want to reduce the music around two hundred cycles by about ten d b, and I want to reduce the music again and create this channel, which reduces the frequencies of the music that correspond to a voice frequencies. So the voice consider right inside the channel. But the low end frequencies are nice and loud bass drum and the high frequencies are nice and bright trumpet, piccolo flute and the mid range frequencies are still there, but they are lowered to give me a channel upon which to set the voice. Now madison avenue has been doing this since the nineteen sixties. They have discovered that music is thie emotional driver, but we need to tell the audience what to do, which is why the narrator is saying, go to the store and buy today! I don't want the emotion to drop. I don't want the narrator to be invisible. I want to create a channel for both and that's what the channel filter does now, we still have to tweak the level's a little bit, but notice I brought my levels back to zero let's, just take a listen and see what this sounds like with the filter off unchecked, the blue chuck box and space bar to play way. Okay, now, this time we're going to turn the filter on pulled the master gained down just a bit because dr cerf is a bit quiet. I haven't shown you how to bring him up the way I would in a real live mix, teaching is a problem solving activity way learn by solving problems way, learn faster by example notice that here my gayness set to zero a supposed to mind a six I've got the deep on the high end portions of my music at the fir full level, and I can now start to mess with this channel until it sounds the music sounds the way that I want, and I can still hear. Dr serve, I'm zoning way learned way learn now if dr cerf was where he needed to be instead of iran minus seven around minus three, I could pull the music up a bit more. We don't yet know we will in just a second howto bring dr surf up because I've already pulled the gain up on the clippers high as it can go, but the concept of the channel filter allows me to keep the emotion hi and the intelligibility high at the same time, the which gets me to the next filter of all the filters that exist inside final cut, this is probably my favorite the limiter filter, which is similar except easier to use than a compression field compressor compression filter. What the limiter filter does is the limiter filter takes the soft passages of the audio and makes them louder without making the loud passages of the audio louder. We don't use the limiter filter with music we don't use the limiter filter was sound effects. We do use the limiter filter with narration and with action now, in point of fact, that's not a true statement limiters and compression filters air used throughout the music creation process, but that gets me into way too much off topic conversation. When you get the music after the music has been mixed and delivered by the sound studio it is fully compressed it's fully limited and you don't have to mess with it you're dealing with music it's a finished entity during the music creation process compression and limiting filters air used constantly but not true with dialogue dialogue is recorded on the microphone on set and that dialogue has brought in in its raw form ready to be processed what the limiter filter allows me to do is to guarantee that while the louder portions of the audio remained pretty much constant the softer portions air brought up and it limits or guarantees it limits that the audio will never exceed a level that I specified so here's how this gets applied notice that my gayness set to zero normally for dr cerf I'd have to crank him all the way to twelve let's go back to zero let's just look at where his level is on the eu meters so if I play this starting about there we learned by solving problems we learned faster by example ok most of his audio is hovering around negative twenty negative eighteen he's got this big spike that bounces to about nine and it goes back then we learned by having somebody give us two between negative twenty and negative fifteen as the guys in the control room yelling each other right now saying will somebody turn the volume up we would all agree that this volume is too soft so we need to fix it I could grab the game and drag it up listen to what happens now we learned faster by example then we learned by having some problem is I've got that big spike it faster I could drop key frames and we learned how to do that yesterday and drop it down but even then my audio is gently bouncing between negative six and negative nine this is too low I wanna have my audio bouncing around negative three consistently around negative three hold the command key down I'm going to reset my volume back to zero select the clip scroll farther down stroll up where my hope it's not under q it's under levels this is my absolute number one favorite filter of all filters that exists inside final cut its inside levels inside the logic category and inside that is called limiter the compressor filter is a good filter and if we had more time I would show you how it works I use compressor all the time when I'm doing a more full bodied mix using adobe audition which is an audio package that I send most of my heavy mixes from final cut ten to audition to do the mix but when I'm mixing inside final cut I want something simple fast that works great I used the limiter filter grabbed the limiter filter dragon on top of the clip the filter is now applied to all selected clips or to all to that to that clip or all selected clips select the clip go up to the audio tab inside the inspector there's the limiter this is the interface. There are five controls here. Four of them are always set the same way soft knee should always be on the release needs to be any number greater than two hundred fifty look ahead should always be left to two milliseconds so two milliseconds any number greater than two fifty and softly should be lip if this's thie on ly person talking in this case this audio is on ly dr cerf if dr surface the on ly audio in this or the narrator is thie only audio there's no sound effects there's no music set the output level two negative three. What that says is at no time will my audio ever exceed negative three d b. If this narrator or actor is part of the mix, sound effects, music, that kind of thing you need to allow room for the sound effects and moves music toe occur set this level two negative four point five negative four point five allows room for sound effects and music to fit underneath the voice without causing distortion because remember, your audio must not not once not ever, ever exceed zero d b because this is dr cerf talking by himself and there's no other music there's, no other sound effects, not yet, at least all the way I'm going to get over to the doctor surf interstellar internet that we started tow put together over the last couple days. I'm going to set the output level two negative three negative three when the clippers by itself negative four point five when the clip is part of the mix, so look ahead to release any number greater than two fifty soft knee on output level negative three the way you set this filter is you play the clip and you increase the game while you're watching thegame reduction, you know that you're starting to reach the peak where it's throwing away gain it's limiting the output. When you start to see this move in this particular case, it's going to be around eighteen d b, you adjust the filter because this gain setting is different for every clip you adjust this game setting, so you're throwing away between one and three d b of gain. This means that the loudest portions of your clip are being limited at negative three d b while your softest passages are being amplified, I'll illustrate this in just second, so let's, go back to here and let's start to limit the clip, so we're going to play it. What I'm going to do while it's playing said you don't have to listen to me talk while dr surface talking I'm going to be increasing the gain of the clip you'll hear the clip get louder as it gets louder after a certain point you're going to start to see it pulsing in here I want to have a pulse so at the loudest portions of the clip it's throwing away one two three dp of game here we go we learned by solving problems we learned faster by example then we learned by having somebody give us some rope teo procedure case have notice how everything is louder we learned by solving problems we learned faster by example and notice how when he hits the word faster it prevents it from getting any louder the negative three d b so if throws away a lot of the game what's happening is let's pretend this point right here is that negative thirty just pretend I'm adding nineteen devi of gain which takes that soft passage to negative eleven let's pretend this point is negative twenty I ad nineteen d b of gain except I hit the limit of negative three so twenty plus nineteen but it throws away to di b so that at no time does the output level exceed negative three ah limiter filter makes the soft passages of the audio louder and prevents the loud passages from exceeding the level that you specify we learned by solving problems. We learned faster by example notice over here. It's. Right. A negative three. Well, let's, go back to the channel filter. Select this clip. We've already applied the channel. We cue the music let's, apply the limiter filter and again, we can save presets the exact same way. Select the limiter filter. Get rid of that one limiter filter. Click here. Set this to negative three. Set this to any number greater than two fifty which simply determines how long the filter is going to stay in force. And I remember the number was of nineteen d b and we'll pull the game down back to zero. Hold the command key down. Here we go now, let's. See if we can hear a difference in dr cerf versus the music teaching is the problem solving activity way learned by solving problems. Now let's, go back to the channel and I can bring the channel, leak you up a bit more solving activity way learned by solving problems way. Learn faster by example and hear how suddenly the combination of the channel q on the music allows me to make the music nice and loud and it allows me with the use of the liberty filter to make dr cerf nice and loud, and yet the two of them don't fight each other this is this is like commercial audio production wanna one you have to hear the narrator you have to have the music you have to punch the emotion and you can't have it exceeds zero d b these filters give you the control to do that many times we want to create a telephone effect and in the old days I would use a high pass and low pass filter to be able to achieve that however there's a filter inside final cut that makes that a lot easier if I select the clip go to the effects filter I can never remember where it is so wanna click the all category and typed the word telephone and here's the telephone filter just grabbed the telephone filter drag it on top and well it's just you want to think undo that so like the razor blade tool I'm going to cut hit the pier and cut the clip here and I'm going to apply the telephone filter to this middle clip so you can hear a before cuba before six outside hand is a son I'm effective having been trained as a mathematician okay, so now we go to the the telephone filter when we click on telephone filter we have a variety of different choices smooth analog cordless, etcetera, etcetera go with cell phone, ear piece I think that's the one that I want it sounds the most degraded anyway, take a listen certificate here, a different sect of having been trained as a mathematician and later is a computer scientist thinking logically trying to do designs that air rational uh, understanding the consequences of architectural decisions are all part and parcel of the architecture of the internet and it's. Now, if you've got a close up of somebody listening on the phone and nodding their head, I recorded this at the highest possible quality on set I drop in the telephone filter, cut to a person listening on the phone I still use the same on set audio, but you buy that isthe listening on the telephone in a heartbeat one more time, just take a listen. This is before computer scientists thinking logically trying teo designs that rational and here's another cool thing if I select the trim tool highlight the attic point and trim filters, air replied, based upon the duration of the clip, I just changed the duration of the clip, which means the filter has also been restricted. Scientists thinking logically trying to do designs that are rational uh, understanding the consequences of architectural decisions I love playing with audio audio gives us a chance to make stuff sound the way we want always always, however, on set, record your audio with the best possible quality and make sure that at no time your audio levels exceed zero do you have some general guidelines on where to set fully music and dialogue? Dialogue? He said between three and six yeah, foliate and and what I recommend is set your member our audio levels cannot exceed zero d b I set my my total mix bouncing around negative three I tend to have speakers bouncing between negative six and negative nine when it's part of the mix, I tend to have sound effects bouncing around negative twelve and I tend to have music bouncing around negative eighteen so total mix around negative three speakers around negative six effexor on negative twelve music around eighteen now if I've got an orchestra, the orchestra be softer if I've got a slight little flute or acoustic guitar guitar will be louder but those air those are in the ballpark kind of settings and and you use your ears to make it sound good? I'm going to ask for questions and we'll talk outputting jim what's got generally and on top of that wide eyed productions are what had pictures would like to know in what order to usually lay down your tracks usually start with the voice and then you go to music and then to fully or what's what's that general order usually work on I always build the story first, so I always start with the story all of my talking heads and then all of my narration even if it's a scratch track narration if I'm hiring a narrator than ill, I'll get them working on it but I'll use a scratch tax I could start to cut picture the absolute number one thing you have to have to do is you have to have the story if you don't have a completed story nobody's gonna watch so I do what's called a radio cut I added all of my talking head, all of my interviews, all of my principal action all of the narration, whatever it is that's driving the story from a on audio point of view I edit all that in the first pass then I go back and add sync sound b roll that has sound attached with it then I'll go back and start to spot in sound effects then the last thing I do is go back and add music so the orders always build your story first because people watch a story with no music and watch story with no sound effects but they won't watch a story when the story doesn't exist always be mindful that does the deadline khun change so build this story sync sound wild sound music great and f r sorry vfx by art would like to know in what order should we set the filters? Should we first used the to make you the voice, then the limiter to fix the peaks the limiter always needs to be the last filter you apply it always needs to be at the bottom of the stack. So for instance, if I was supplying the limiter filter and I was applying the fat chick you filter I go to fat e q uh let's clear telephone fat que les just drop uh here fat there is dropped the fat geek you filter and then dropped the limiter filter in and notice when I select this clip fat geek you filter is listed first limiter is listed second the limiter or compression filter must always be at the bottom if you get your order incorrect just grab the name of the filter and changed the position by dragging the filter from one position to another the limiter filter must always be at the bottom if it's anywhere other than the bottom you lose it ability to prevent distortion this is ah amplification and distortion prevention tool that must be at the bottom of the list off all the effects before you do anything else and when you are using the limiter filter volume needs to be set to zero you don't raise the volume sorry the volume needs to be set to zero so that you're not amplifying it after it goes to the limiter the last amplification occurs through the limiter volume is done set to zero which means the same level of which it was recorded other questions? Terrific. Yes, um, I'm going mad, like I would like to know. Does larry have recommendations regarding how to measure levels so it means different television dial norm loudness levels. Try that one more time. Jim. Does larry have recommendations regarding how to measure levels so it meets different television dial norm loudness levels? Yeah, we can't measure loudness inside final cut if you take a look yesterday at the session on on audio, I gave you a link to some third party audio filters that give us meat oring for both for both lk f s and for average loudness, and you can apply those meters is a third party plug into final cut, which you can then use for measuring final cut. Natively only supports peak measurement on the d b f s scale, but those filters would lie to the kind of measuring that you want for broadcast. Final cut out of the box does not.