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Audio Post Workflow - video vs wav

sfoster

Staff Member
Moderator
One of the guys from my weekly trivia night said he has done some audio post work for live theatre and he volunteered to help clean up my dialogue tracks. ( i have some cricket problems )

Is the audio quality lossless and sufficient to give him just the video.. (i.e. prores444) or should I export all the audio to a wave file and provide him with that instead

if wav.. what would i use for kHz rate and Linear PCM Settings? 48kHz and 16bit sample size. is that significant?
 
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How do you do audio post for live theater?

And, if he is going to edit your dialog and help you with your "cricket" problems, why can't he tell you what format(s) he needs?

His requirements are going to depend very much on what DAW he is using.
 
How do you do audio post for live theater?

And, if he is going to edit your dialog and help you with your "cricket" problems, why can't he tell you what format(s) he needs?

His requirements are going to depend very much on what DAW he is using.

Hahah I'm not sure exactly what live theatre audio post entails. I'm guessing you could balance out the levels and maybe remove some background noise.

I don't think he has nearly the same expertise as some members here but okay I will just ask him what format he wants. thanks
 
Sounds like he flies the PA for a small theater troupe. I would be seriously suspicious of his qualifications. If he isn't charging you anything and you don't give him the original source files, you have nothing to lose by letting him play with the audio.
 
you have nothing to lose by letting him play with the audio.

That's how I'm looking at it. He usually does pretty well at trivia is that's a qualification. God I am terrible. I am there for the movie questions, but I still get them wrong all the time.

Last week they asked who was considered the poor man's Marilyn monroe. I have no clue. Never heard of jayne mansfield
 
If he's using Adobe it should (although I haven't used it in years) be able to import an OMF file. For the visuals a .mov should work okay, but again. I'm not sure.


Last week they asked who was considered the poor man's Marilyn Monroe. I have no clue. Never heard of Jayne Mansfield

She was a VERY popular pin-up girl during WWII.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayne_Mansfield

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0543790/

Jayne-Mansfield-Headshot.jpg
 
...he has done some audio post work for live theatre and he volunteered to help clean up my dialogue tracks. ( i have some cricket problems ).

As Alcove said, you can't really do audio post for live theatre. Although, most professional theatres do employ a Sound Designer and indeed the term "Sound Designer" was used in theatre for many decades before it was used in film. The Sound Designer in theatre basically designs all the various sound effects which will be triggered during the performance. In a sense this is more like a sort of "audio pre" than "audio post" though!

Pretty much every audio program for serious or even semi-serious audio (including Audition) will accept wav files (which are of course lossless). Generally therefore you should always assume that wav is the required audio format unless you're specifically asked for something else, which would be virtually unheard to be honest! The format of the wav should be 48kHz/24bit, which should be the format you have recorded all your production sound in. If for some bizarre reason you've recorded at a different sample rate/bit depth you would normally give the audio post peeps your original recordings and let them do the required transcoding. I'm 99% certain that Audition will accept OMFs, there may even be an Audition specific exchange format you can use if you are using Premiere as your NLE. I seem to remember an "Export to Adobe Audition" option in Premiere but like Alcove, I haven't played with either program for quite some time and I might be mistaken.

BTW, be warned, unless the cricket sounds are very sparse and you've been very lucky, the chances are that the audio post guy will only be able to improve your dialogue tracks marginally. Even the very top people using the very finest audio restoration equipment frequently find that the only viable solution for cricket noise is ADR. As I said, you might be lucky depending on exactly where and how often the sound occurs and it's level relative to the dialogue, but don't get your hopes up too high that it can be made to sound unnoticeable or even significantly better (without also destroying the dialogue!).

G
 
One thing about audition, if you give him the video file it will separate the audio and video for him. If all you have is a video file with the audio, I don't think separating it out a head of time gains anything in this instance.

If you have the separate audio files, I would give him that instead though.
 
As Alcove said, you can't really do audio post for live theatre. Although, most professional theatres do employ a Sound Designer and indeed the term "Sound Designer" was used in theatre for many decades before it was used in film. The Sound Designer in theatre basically designs all the various sound effects which will be triggered during the performance. In a sense this is more like a sort of "audio pre" than "audio post" though!

Pretty much every audio program for serious or even semi-serious audio (including Audition) will accept wav files (which are of course lossless). Generally therefore you should always assume that wav is the required audio format unless you're specifically asked for something else, which would be virtually unheard to be honest! The format of the wav should be 48kHz/24bit, which should be the format you have recorded all your production sound in. If for some bizarre reason you've recorded at a different sample rate/bit depth you would normally give the audio post peeps your original recordings and let them do the required transcoding. I'm 99% certain that Audition will accept OMFs, there may even be an Audition specific exchange format you can use if you are using Premiere as your NLE. I seem to remember an "Export to Adobe Audition" option in Premiere but like Alcove, I haven't played with either program for quite some time and I might be mistaken.

BTW, be warned, unless the cricket sounds are very sparse and you've been very lucky, the chances are that the audio post guy will only be able to improve your dialogue tracks marginally. Even the very top people using the very finest audio restoration equipment frequently find that the only viable solution for cricket noise is ADR. As I said, you might be lucky depending on exactly where and how often the sound occurs and it's level relative to the dialogue, but don't get your hopes up too high that it can be made to sound unnoticeable or even significantly better (without also destroying the dialogue!).

G

Thanks! that was very informative. Too bad about the crickets. I was able to improve it an okay amount by overlaying some other cricket sounds between the dialogue tracks as they switched. I think I did get it to the point of not being a distraction. I won't get my hopes up that he can do any better, thanks.

Since wav is lossless, I'm thinking there is no advantage of sending him OMF instead


One thing about audition, if you give him the video file it will separate the audio and video for him. If all you have is a video file with the audio, I don't think separating it out a head of time gains anything in this instance.

If you have the separate audio files, I would give him that instead though.

Ah yes but then you run into the problem of codec.. I know h264 compresses video, so I have to assume that it compresses audio as well. So then do i have to export in prores for him? etc.. at least i know wav is lossless now
 
I was able to improve it an okay amount by overlaying some other cricket sounds between the dialogue tracks as they switched. I think I did get it to the point of not being a distraction. I won't get my hopes up that he can do any better, thanks.

Then why send him the files at all?

Ah yes but then you run into the problem of codec.. I know h264 compresses video, so I have to assume that it compresses audio as well. So then do i have to export in prores for him? etc.. at least i know wav is lossless now

Since wav is lossless, I'm thinking there is no advantage of sending him OMF instead

Most codecs compress the video - and audio! - in one way or another; that's why you use an OMF, so the transfer of your audio files is lossless. Another reason for an OMF is that you get the individual audio clips (with handles - I ask for ten [10] seconds) in the time-line so you can organize and edit them separately. As an audio editor I like a fairly high resolution video so I can see details, especially when I am doing Foley. I also prefer a .dv stream (which I run on a separate drive) as I almost never get problems with visual slow downs, jitter, etc.
 
Then why send him the files at all?

Because there is still room for improvement.. I think for a youtube video it's okay but if I were to really scrutinize I don't think it was good enough to be played in a theatre. if you're listening for it the switches between audio tracks are definitely noticeable.

Plus some other little things. one scene i forgot to turn off the pool heater & filtration so i'm hoping he can clean up the humming. Another scene the line of dialogue I want to use wasn't completely lining up with the actors mouth.

I'm hoping he can fix all of those..
 
And he has the gear, knowledge and experience to do a better job than you can? There are light years of difference between doing theater work and audio post.

He seems to have a passion for audio and volunteered.
Doesn't hurt to give him a chance. Plus like I said he's better than me at trivia.

They asked what year king kong came out. I said 1923. it was in 1933. I haven't seen that movie :no:
 
I still have a long list of supposedly good movies to watch

Then you had better get at it. If you watch only two movies a week thats 104 films every year. Each week I watch one movie I want to and one movie I "need" to. The "need to" list is an incredibly varied as far as genres go, mostly small budget films that did well so I can study how they made it sound so good on such a small budget.
 
Then you had better get at it. If you watch only two movies a week thats 104 films every year. Each week I watch one movie I want to and one movie I "need" to. The "need to" list is an incredibly varied as far as genres go, mostly small budget films that did well so I can study how they made it sound so good on such a small budget.

I watched about 500 films last year.. I've watched two so far today and read two screenplays yesterday. There's just so much material. I won't feel properly educated for a few more years. I would like to have seen top 100 afi, top 100 time, best picture winners, etc and i always add a movie to a list if it's mentioned and referenced in a film book but i haven't seen it. such as dolores clayborn, the piano, etc
 
IMHO 500 films is overload. What you should try is reading the screenplay, watching the film, reading the screenplay again, then watch the film again. Dissect it, study it. Pick a few "all-time classic" films to watch; why do they stand the test of time?

Being an audio specialist it's easier for me; I try to recreate sounds I hear in films. I read articles & books, watch BTS DVD extras about audio post, watch instructional videos, etc. This is the educational part.

I spend hours doing crazy, weird and stupid things with audio files. I push my gear and my creativity to the limits. This is the experimental part. I learn a much from the "failures" as the successes, because some of them yield very interesting results.
 
IMHO 500 films is overload. What you should try is reading the screenplay, watching the film, reading the screenplay again, then watch the film again. Dissect it, study it..

I am just now moving into the dissection stage of screenplay to film. I imagine I will be seeing many less films this year. Also only have about 200 left in my queue now.

I am trying to both write and direct so it was very important to me personally that I not be ignorant of the classics.
 
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