What filters to use and how to copy actions?

Hi Everyone,

I'm working on a rather large audio file project. It's three hours long but for managability, I have broken it up into nine segments. I will have nine different audio files that I will be working on individually. Once I apply actions and filters to one AF, I will want to copy those actions/filters to the other AFs. How do I copy the actions and the filters I like from one file to the other eight?

What I'm trying to accomplish with this project is to enhance the overall audio which are conversations that took place during a meeting. I would like to raise the overall level and maybe apply some filters to make the voices clearer and punchier. What filters should I start with to accomplish my goals?

This project is due yesterday so prompt help will be greatly appreaciated.

Thanks in advance for advice,

Shelley

shelleyrae Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Hi Everyone,
>
How do I copy the actions and
> the filters I like from one file to the other
> eight?

Like in FCP right-click on a segment and copy attributes. Then past to other seqments.

> What I'm trying to accomplish with this project is
> to enhance the overall audio which are
> conversations that took place during a meeting. I
> would like to raise the overall level and maybe
> apply some filters to make the voices clearer and
> punchier. What filters should I start with to
> accomplish my goals?

You will find that except for lighting, sound issues are the toughest thing about doing video with location sound. It's mostly about how the sound was captured. At a meeting with a talking head(s), you need mic each participant. Why are the voices not too clear on your sound capture?

With a 3 hour timeline it might be better to use the FCP audio filters even if they are not real time, as you can copy and paste the attributes of the filters, etc in the timeline and doing this in STP would require you to render the audio and not allow for live changes back in FCP.

> This project is due yesterday so prompt help will
> be greatly appreaciated.

As always, isn't it?

> Shelley

Thanks for the info.

The project wasanother one of those "rush" jobs. My client needed me to clean up these previously recorded tracks to so they could be audible for his transcriber. Basically all the voices were present - just needed to be louder and clearer.

I scanned Larry Jordon's "repairing bad audio" tutorial and learned how to adjust the gain by normalizing instead of increasing amplitude. This was a good quick fix there but there was a annoying buzz in the background that of course got louder with the gain increase.

I tried the analyze clicks and pops, hums, etc. and the entire waveform turned red so didn't go there - that happened before on another project and when I clicked "fix all" it took about an hour to process 15 minutes of audio without any noticable improvement.

I read somewhere on one of these forums that there are different filters to try for decreasing/improving overall hum, wind noise, etc. I have used the noiseprint feature in STP successfully on other jobs but could not get a clean noise print from these tracks.

Can you think of any good tutorials for learning how to use filters in both FCP and STP? I'm not an audio person but it sure comes in handy to know a few tricks.

Thanks.

I did audio recording for several years and I can't tell you that there is a good way to learn which filters to use where. I read a lot of books on audio and digital recording to learn what I know.

For hum in the background you can try an EQ and try to squelch that frequence with out destroying sounds near the frequency. If the hum is low enough, you can try a LowPass Filter and set it's range from 100 Hz down to 0 Hz, or something like that.

If Soundtrack Pro sees the hum as your entire waveform - that is BAD news.

Sometimes it is necessary to tell the client, I will try to resolve this but with this kind of problem, I doubt it can be resolved.

Not everything can be fixed in Post!

Considering the first question: how to copy-paste actions?

You do it differently

Duplicate the project (with the specific settings)
- leave the actions as they are, but delete the audio.

- you have an empty track + custom actions:
Paste in or fill the empty track with the "untouched" audiofile

- put the action off and on and there you go (play around with it and it will work)

good luck!