audio mixing

Hi, I want to adjust the audio mix of a scene I am working on. I want to raise the music track substantially but i want the other audio tracks (room atmos/ background TV) - to adjust exponentially in relation to the music track . Is there a way i can do this in one go rather than adjusting every track ? For example, If I raise the level of one track is there some way all the other tracks can adjust accordingly ?

Thanks (Im using FCP 6.0.4)

"Exponentially"? You're basically asking for the computer to do the mix for you and "make it sound right". Doesn't work that way.

You can, say, raise the music 4dB and raise everything else by 4dB at the same time, or raise the music 4dB and then raise everything else 6dB. But you can't have one operation where the computer raises the music 4dB and everything else 6dB. Also, FCP doesn't distinguish music, sync sound and FX for you; you'd have to do the old-time editor/sound mixer's trick of assigning specific tracks for various sound elements (for example, A1-A6 is dialogue only, A7-A10 music only, A11+ FX, etc.).

To raise or lower the levels of a group of clips by a certain amount, select them in the timeline and press OPTION-APPLE-L (Modify - Levels). Enter +4 to raise all of them 4dB, or -6 to lower all of them by 6dB, etc. All levels keyframes will follow, unless any clip has reached the maximum level of +12dB, in which case they will top off at 12dB and not move any farther.


www.derekmok.com

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you'd have to do the old-time editor/sound mixer's trick of assigning specific tracks for various sound elements

Hey! I'm not THAT old!! BTW...assigning tracks makes it easier if you are exporting stereo stems to an Audio Engineer...separate the SFX / VO / MUSIC / AMBIENT on it's own track pair.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Sure. The trick is old because it works and makes sense. Nobody who works with sound for any amount of time fails to come across this trick sooner or later.


www.derekmok.com

Check out Soundtrack Pro. It might be able to do stuff like that. Lift& Sound Palette maybe?? The workflow shouldn't be that hard.. Of course, it will be more complicated than plain FCP sound mixing.

Thanks for your advice Derek, in response to your statement - "You're basically asking for the computer to do the mix for you and "make it sound right". Doesn't work that way. -

That's absolutely not what Im asking the computer to do, Id have to be quite stupid to assume there is a way I can get the computer to mix my audio for me, and Id have to be extremely lazy to think like that. I was simply asking if there is a way to raise the levels of some tracks in direct relation to others in one time saving move. Having done that I am free to go in and make closer adjustments to my mix.

As you are obviously very proficient in Final Cut, Im sure you are aware that the more time saving tricks you can add to your arsenal the better. Thanks again for your advice, Ill give it a go.

You can't do that in Final Cut Pro, at least not that I know of. Grouping your faders together is something you can do on quite a few digital mixers (Pro Tools, Logic, and maybe Soundtrack Pro). Pretty out of this world for an NLE..

Track assignment is a very good practice, however. It keeps your mixes neat. Then when you want to raise the overall volume for a particular scene, select them and raise them (apple L or Ctrl + or -).



www.strypesinpost.com

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Grouping your faders together is something you can do on quite a few digital mixers (Pro Tools, Logic, and maybe Soundtrack Pro). Pretty out of this world for an NLE.

No it's not. Avids can group faders - I do it everyday.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Ah.. Cool.



www.strypesinpost.com

> No it's not. Avids can group faders - I do it everyday.

Do I detect a tear in your eye when you said that last part, Joe?


www.derekmok.com

It sux to admit...it's one of those things the Avid has over FCP.

We're dumping the PC Avids very soon...waiting for purchasing approval & ordering. Should be sometime in November. It's a bureaucratic nightmare...seems to our higher ups that Macs have been labeled "non-standard equipment" whatever that means. Probably since all the designers / software engineers / TD's / audio engineers / IT / marketing / general office people (600 + employees) are all PC. We will have the only 4 Macs in the Studio

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

gmc.

the easiest way to do what you want is in 2 passes, as derek suggests,
however i use a slightly different technique:

Control - and Control = will raise or lower selected clips by 1db.

Control [ and control ] (right under - and =) will raise / lower by 3db


i've re-mapped those commands to
Control +/- (number pad) for 1db
Control Option +/- (number pad) for 3db.


a cool thing about these commands is that you can make them while still playing your clips in the timeline.


cheers,
nick

Grouping Tracks in STP2 is simple. Select the tracks in the mixer window. The in the tracks tab press Cmd + G. Then you can name your group. Raise or lower a fader in any of the tracks in that group & they will all raise or lower. However my 1082 control surface wont recognize the group it has to be done with Soundtrack Pro's faders.

Dave

...now wouldn't it be GRAND if Soundtrack Pro was simply incorporated into FCP? Why bother having 2 apps? Why not just incorporate Motion & Color in as well? One monster app.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

hear hear!
well i dont know about a monster app, but improved integration would be a great thing

there are things in STP that are probably overkill for FCP,
but i'd love to have immediate access in FCP to the STP audio filters.
they are a world better.
plus the fader ganging that's been mentioned.

Kevin mentioned a while back the turn-around between FCP & Color left him using FCP a lot of the time for CC.


nick

>it's one of those things the Avid has over FCP

Avid has a few things over FCP (dang! incorporate script logging in FCP!), but not especially audio tools... grouping faders is cool, but the in-built tools are limited (at least the last time I tried using the Adrenaline).

FCP needs an interface change to work with audio tools properly (i'm sure you can't add a custom GUI in FCP). The one thing I can't stand about using sliders or angle adjustments in a 6 band eq is that you can't visualize what you're doing to the audio.

But Joey is right. It would be great if Soundtrack was integrated in FCP. I barely touched Color due to the roundtrip process needed (it's just not practical when you are facing fast turnarounds). Motion and Color would be great- 4 point corner pin motion tracking for vignette masks, color and composite in the same shift... hell, do finishing in Color/Motion and create scrolling credits, finalize lower thirds in the same app..



www.strypesinpost.com

I'll go ahead and be the weird one here: I kind of wish Final Cut would do less.

If you compare Final Cut to a high-end finishing system like Smoke (that's where my background is), the basic features are pretty comparable. Both have open-format timelines to an extent, both have multitrack audio features, both have soft effects like simple DVEs and text overlays, stuff like that. But when you dig down into some of those key features, you see huge differences. The keyer in Final Cut is ludicrous to the point of being nearly useless; the master keyer in Smoke is one of the best keyers in the world. Why? Because Discreet started with the keyer in Flame and brought it over.

Apple doesn't have to do things like that. The architecture of the Mac system makes it possible for Final Cut Studio to be an integrated suite of products. Unlike a Smoke system where even if you happen to be dual-licensed for Flame, switching over means shutting down your whole system and effectively rebooting.

I'll tell you what I think Final Cut Studio needs, and it might sound a little nuts: I think it needs a unified timeline. I think it should be possible to open up Final Cut, start assembling an edit, hit a button or invoke a menu command or something and pop over into Soundtrack or Color or whatever with the timeline automatically and transparently intact. Basic tools like slip, roll and lift work the same way in all applications, but each application gives you just the specific tools you need to focus on editing or sound design or compositing or whatever. You don't have to deal with XML any more between FCS apps, because they'll all be able to read and write the (presumably new and redesigned) Final Cut Pro file format.

It's kind of a pipe dream, really. The four creative FCS apps are all fundamentally different; if I remember right, only two of them originated at Apple. Besides, we've got to remember that only a small percentage of Final Cut Studio customers are finishing on it. I have no idea what the numbers are, but I'd be shocked if half of one percent of all the installed Final Cut seats are used for finishing. And the kinds of changes I dream about are really oriented toward turning it into a full-fledged low-end or indie finishing system.

Final Cut's accessibility is a real burden, if you think about it. I mean, when Autodesk sits down to think about Smoke 2010, they don't have to waste time considering whether to support the latest consumer camera from Sorny or Panaphonics, because nobody's gonna buy a quarter-million-dollar finishing system to cut their home movies. But people do buy Final Cut to cut their home movies; I know, 'cause that's how I got started with it. People also buy it to use as an offline editing system, an alternative to Media Composer. People also buy it, occasionally, to do full online editing and finishing. It runs across the whole spectrum. So Apple's decisions on what to change and what to improve and what to add are just that much harder.

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People also buy it, occasionally, to do full online editing and finishing.

You make that sound like a small number...it's much more than "occasionally", my friend. Whole studios / Broadcast facilities all over the world are dumping their very expensive proprietary systems for FCS on the Mac. Mine being the latest (EA Sports).

I am just waiting for Apple to purchase & add a hefty 3D app to FCS

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Well, it's semantics. I'm not totally sure I'm right about this, but I'd be willing to bet that the number of people who finish on Final Cut versus the number of people who use it for offlining or for non-broadcast or non-film work is fairly small. What are there, a million installed suites of Final Cut out there? I'd be surprised if there were more than a few thousand Final Cut finishing suites, TOPS.

But again, I'm not sure I'm right. I'm just making an educated guess.

Though admittedly, the line is starting to blur. If you're not working on features or on TV spots, the trend seems to be moving away from an offline-edit-online-finish model. Features obviously still have offlines most of the time because they're usually finished in 2K, and TVC production seems to use the offline-online model simply because it works so well. Maybe that's changing.

Final Cut is great in a lot of ways; I'm a huge fan. But as I mentioned my background is in the Discreet world, and the difference between Final Cut and a dedicated finishing system like Smoke is pretty drastic. Smoke has basic features that are geared toward the online editor conforming a cut to an offline. For example, in Smoke 3:2 pulldown management is a core part of the system, because until recently tapes from telecine always had 3:2 in them. The EDL environment in Smoke is really strong also. It even extends to basic stuff like the primary and secondary video tracks and the ability to hotkey-toggle various blend modes between them for overcutting. Final Cut has just never been designed to be the last step in the edit workflow, receiving an EDL and a Quicktime and a stack of tapes from the telecine and letting the operator quickly and efficiently finish the cut.

Doesn't mean Final Cut sucks; quite the contrary. It just means Final Cut works best when it's used in a different way. Final Cut is more like an offline editing system that's grown to include the ability to do online work, rather than a system that was designed from the start to be an online or finishing system.

But when you dolly out and look at Final Cut Studio as a single product, the story's a little different. We can argue about personal preferences, but between Final Cut, Soundtrack and Color, the box basically contains everything you need to run a complete, albeit slightly ghetto, post house. Soundtrack is no Pro Tools, and Color is no Resolve, but the basic capabilities are there. I'm not a fan of Motion, but okay, if you really want to press the point I guess Motion is to After Effects as Color is to a Resolve; does the same basic job but not nearly as well. And if you add Shake at the bargain-basement price of $500, then you've got offlining, onlining, compositing, motion graphics, sound mixing and color grading all on your Mac, all for a couple thousand bucks. Pretty amazing, if you think about it.

>I am just waiting for Apple to purchase & add a hefty 3D app to FCS

With full-on drag and drop 3D templates.

The versatility of Final Cut is great. Personally, I love being able to play with the cool toys. I mean, hell, let's say the graphics guy went back home, I can stabilize the shot in Motion (AE/Nuke/whatever is probably better, but Motion is found on the editing suite), and drop off the amendmended offline to the clients so they get a better idea of what it looks like, then the graphics guy can work on it when he gets back into the office, and probably do more than what I can and pop it back to me to assemble it. It's powerful enough for you to run it in an indie post house and meet some kind of basic requirements for online.. It's great for an offline kit.

The downsides, is that when a machine can do all that, the editor may be required to do all that on that same machine. That's when sometimes we have a problem. It's not a problem with the software, it's rather mindsets... Polish an audio mix on PC speakers!? Cam ops are never asked to write a script, and maybe it's because cameras today don't come with Final Draft, a monitor and a printer, but more importantly, it's a dedicated professional skill. Whereas, post production may just be an afterthought sometimes..



www.strypesinpost.com

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The downsides, is that when a machine can do all that, the editor may be required to do all that on that same machine.

Why is that a "downside"? Increase your rate card = CHARGE MORE MONEY!! That is all negotiated up front. If the client's cheap, give him your new rate card including what services you will provide and show them what it would cost to split off the jobs to individual people...then watch them smile.

It is a giant "upside" in my town. I do the work of 3 people in my market and clients love it. It's the main reason I was recruited by EA Sports (my title is Senior Video Editor / Compositor). This ain't LA / NY where everyone specializes (Edit only / grafix only / colorist only / audio only / etc). Times have changed BIG TIME and if you want to survive in a rinky-dink market like mine, you have to diversify.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Well, the downside comes when client expectations get all out of whack. True story: I'm one of those little-bit-of-everything guys. I think my strength is in creative editorial, but I know enough about compositing, graphics, sound and color grading to find my way around most of the time. Like you said, Joey, they're good skills to have.

But a client came to me a few weeks ago and asked me to do a spot ? singlehandedly, mind you ? that featured 3D mouths composited onto live-action footage of animals and lip-synched to voiceover dialogue. Setting aside for a minute the fact that that idea is so played-out to be eye-rollingly lame, I had to explain to my client that doing what she asked for would involve calling up Rhythm and Hues and sending them half a million dollars. "But you've done all these other things," she said, and she was right, I have. But they're all things that I just barely pulled off, and that took me an insane amount of time, and that even so are a quantum below 3D mouth-replacement on live action footage.

The downside, to the extent that there is one, is that clients can sometimes be confused into thinking that one do-it-with-the-computer thing is more or less equivalent to any other do-it-with-the-computer thing. You can color-correct? Oh, then you can fix this underexposed shot. You can do graphics? Oh, then you can replace the label on this can of soda in the talent's hand. You can pull a key? Oh, then you can roto this long-haired blonde girl out of this shot that was filmed on a busy city street in the shadow of an office building on a windy day. No problem, right? It's all just computers.

It's the equivalent of expecting that your carpenter, because he can build you a coffee table, can carve a life-sized, anatomically accurate nude bust of Angelina Jolie. It's all just wood, right?

I couldn't agree with Jeff more. And I honestly believe that some clients -- not all, mind you, but some -- play dumb. "You're so good at this stuff, why don't you do this for us?" "We don't have the budget for an FX artist, can't you help?" I think the climate of filmmaking is pretty rotten right now -- you have very well-to-do producers driving Mercedes-Benzes asking for deals because "they don't have the money". And some of the mid-to-low-level people use "low budget" as an excuse for not paying people, but at the same time demanding everything and the kitchen sink. You can try negotiating for limits all you want, they'll just ask for more and more as the project goes on. Well, if you don't have the money, don't friggin' ask for all those toys. Shoot something you can afford and make it great. Don't ask for a $20 plugin that can simulate a car-crash scene.


www.derekmok.com

>anatomically accurate nude bust of Angelina Jolie.

...and without even seeing Angelina Jolie too. I'd patiently wait for the the day they manage to integrate an HVX200 with Final Draft, a keyboard and a printer.. Then we could perhaps see pre-production as an afterthought. Someone send this suggestion to Panasonic!



www.strypesinpost.com

Like I said...charge them for it. If you can't do it, tell them you have to farm it out for big $$$ and suggest a more economical solution. You have to be ready with alternate suggestions.

I know about client hand-holding. One client came to me with a clip from an orange juice commercial. It was a huge sweeping jib shot down to a full shot of an orange grove worker picking oranges from a tree. The client, who has been amazed by what I have given her to date then asks the million $$$ question. There aren't enough oranges on the trees in the grove and she wants me to paint them in (3D oranges / 3D tracking / the works). Needless to say, that didn't get done. I suggested a reshoot in more of the growing season where there were already oranges on the trees because what she wanted me to do would have cost $50,000. She opted for the reshoot.

I have another rule of thumb (I actually have a "Rule of Thumb" list) for clients: NEVER let them know ALL your capabilities & how fast you can work. If you promise something in a day - the next one they will expect in an hour. Under-promise / over-deliver (if you think it will take 2 days...tell the client it will take a week. This way you can deliver early and look like a star).

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Some nice opinions over there

I also feel FCP (as well as most other pro Apps) are doing too much and in too many ways. What's the point in adding new FCP sound filters or compositing effects if they are still going to suck? Then, you have pull-down menus and icons for everything (but some are only icons and some only pull-downs). Confusing and difficult...

Back to the original question:

YES GMC205, THERE IS A WAY TO DO WHAT YOU WANT! (almost)

Record, (or draw) audio keyframes for your source track.
Select/Paste attributes to all your destination tracks.
Create new tracks/ Copy all your destination tracks to them

pronto! there you have it:

Adjusting your source track + 3 db will adjust your destination tracks by +6 db

I think you mean "Presto" Pronto means "quickly".

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

It's a can of worms, Joe... Good points on the rule of thumb..

Mine is to know what you can do and know what you can't. That way, you know what promises you can make.

Haha. I really missed grouping faders. It looked really cool on digital mixers... Thanks Dave, for the tip!

>What's the point in adding new FCP sound filters or compositing effects if they are still
>going to suck?

FCP audio filters. That's one bunch of tools i hardly touch, aside from the cross fades, gain, basic 3 channel EQ, and the occasional dab of the reverb when i can't survive without it. I don't see the point of a notch filter without a Q setting, and gain controls (and that's one which I don't touch).



www.strypesinpost.com

grafixjoe Wrote:
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> Under-promise / over-deliver (if you think it will take 2 days...tell the client it will take a week. This way you can deliver early and look like a star).


HAHA!! That's what Scotty used to do in Star Trek, and he would look like a miracle worker.... sorry.... nerd moment.

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Mine is to know what you can do and know what you can't. That way, you know what promises you can make.

Sooooooo.....are you saying you quote your clients the exact day & time you will be done with a project without giving yourself wiggle room for changes / crashes / tech issues / aliens abduction / etc?

THAT IS CRAZY TALK STRYPES. Good luck with that

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.