Question about dialogue editing.

[harmonica44]

Should I put each actors voice on the same tracks or should I have different tracks for each? If an actor makes a noise like a laugh or cough, while the other is talking it can then be heard of course. Or I can put just the coughs and other noises on a separate track.

And when applying the room tone, do I have to put it on the same track as the dialogue, in between all the breaks, or can I just put it all on a separate track only, and that works as well? Thanks.

 

[Columbus]

I'm not an audio expert by any means but on all the projects I work on it helps me a great deal when I give everything its own track just from an organizational and mixing standpoint.

 

[harmonica44]

Yeah I put all the dialogue one one track, but then just realized maybe I shouldn't have, when one actor is suppose to interrupt another. If I put the room tone on a separate track though, I will have two room tones. That track and all the room tone that comes in the dialogue tracks as well. Is that okay? Oh I also forgot. When it comes to doing an actor's voice going from the left to right channels, as he or she walks by, should I put the track on both channels and just make it louder and louder, on one channel as she walks by, and quieter, on the other channel?

 

[Cracker Funk]

I prefer a separate track for every line of dialogue. My last short film had 117 audio tracks.

 

[harmonica44]

Every line of dialogue, wow! Why is that?

 

[Cracker Funk]

That's just how I roll. I also own 32 toothbrushes, because I prefer to use a different toothbrush for each tooth in my mouth. And I can use up to 40 forks when eating dinner, because I prefer a separate fork for each bite.

Now, some people might say that this question you've asked is one that you really could have just figured out on your own, and that the amount of time spent creating this thread is more time than you would've spent figuring out that you should use as many audio tracks as you need, and no more.

Not me, no, I like to live a life of extravagance. Every line of dialogue gets its own track, baby, yeah now we livin large.

 

[Alcove Audio]

The dialog gets checkerboarded. Remember that ALL of the audio between lines of dialog is stripped out. Each character gets its own dialog track and ADR track, and there are a minimum of two room-tone tracks.

Scene-4-------------------------------------------------------------Scene-5----------------------------------------------------------

DX-A|..............................DLGDLGDLGDDLG..........DLGDLG........................DLGDLGDLGDLGDLGDLG................
ADR-A|.............................................................................................................................................................
DX-B|..................DLG...................................DLG............................................................................................
ADR-B|................................................................................DLGDLGDLG..........................................................
DX-C|..DLGDLG.................................................................................................................................DLGDLGD
ADR-C|...............................................................................................................................................................
DX-D|.............................................................................................................................................................
ADR-D|.............................................................................................................................................................
DX-E|.............................................................................................................................................................
ADR-E|.............................................................................................................................................................
FTZ-A|.............................................................................................................................................................
RT-A|rtrtrtrtrtrtrtrtrtrtrtrtrtrtrtrtrtrtrtrtrtrtrtrtrtrtrtrtrtrtrtrt.............................................................................
RT-B|................................................................................rtrtrtrtrtrtrtrtrtrtrtrtrtrtrtrtrtrtrtrtrtrtrtrtrtrtrtrtrtrtr


Each dialog track gets its own automated EQ, noise reduction and compressor/limiter

This pattern also continues for Foley, each character getting a footsteps, cloth, props and other track. So for ten characters there is ten tracks of production dialog, ten tracks of ADR, minimum two tracks of room tone and 40 tracks of Foley. There may also be a few Dialog Futz tracks (phones, PA systems, etc). Then you have as many sound FX tracks as needed. I, and many of my peers, group ambience/BG tracks as a separate group and use a separate sub-mix. I've had as many as twenty tracks just to build an ambience, even though one track may have nothing but two bird calls.

Huge track counts are purely organizational, and, if you have it available, you use huge numbers of sub-mixes. It is not at all unusual to have over 1,000 audio tracks. An "old school" Pro Tools TDM/HD system was limited to 256 audio tracks, so five would be synced together - one each for dialog, Foley, sound FX, Ambience and score/music; sometimes an additional system would be used for intensive processing like reverbs.

It always drives clients crazy to watch me organize for two or three hours (I always tell them not to come) but getting properly organized saves huge amounts of time later on. I also create large numbers of sub-sessions - separate sessions for editing Dialog, recording ADR, recording and editing Foley, Sound FX & Ambi/BG, and music editing for each scene - so I could have two or three hundred sub-sessions whose results are pulled into either reels or a super session depending upon the needs of the client.

 

[Cracker Funk]

Alcove, I don't doubt any of that advice as being the best. However, you're an audio editor, working within pro audio editing software. The OP does not fit either of those categories. I have to assume he (like many of us) will be editing audio within his video editing software.

In video editing, massive amounts of tracks just gets awkward, not because it's difficult to keep organized, but because screen-space is limited. I only have so much patience for endless scrolling, especially when the window I'm looking at only holds a small number of viewable tracks. And you don't always need to automate EQ for an entire track, but just a single clip. And instead of labeling each track, you can label each clip. So, you can fit many different audio clips on one track, so long as none of them overlap each other.

The number of tracks used really depends on the project. If it's a well-funded project, then the editor wouldn't need to ask this question, because they'd be sending the dialogue off to someone else to edit. But if the editor is a non-expert, using video editing software to edit dialogue, then minimalism does have it's benefits.

h44, I still think you should use a separate track for each line of dialogue, though. Cuz it's big-pimpin.

 

[Columbus]

Holy crap Alcove. I thought I was getting ridiculous on one my school projects because I had 8 tracks.

 

[WalterB]

Alcove, you are not helping him, you are confusing him and you probably just caused over a dozen new questions

Use common sense.

When lines of dialogue are not overlapping, you can put time next to each other. (Why would you put things on different tracks when you have space on 1 track? Unless you like to keep an visual overview of different audiosources: but I shouldn't say this, because this will make you ask when you need to keep that overview. It won't sound any different on seperate tracks.)
When they overlap: use seperate tracks.
The 'room noise' should be all over the room on a seperate track.

'Actor noise' like coughing that shouldn't be there you can 'mix it away'.
If you don't now how to add keyframes to make fades and to adjust volume: google 'adjusting volume in Premiere Pro'.

 

[josh-ozirigpro]

Welp that certainly makes my projects look ridiculous in comparison!

Sure am glad I'm not an audio dude!

 

[knightly]

My Audio mix for Scavengers had quite a few tracks. Each actor had their own dialog track. Then roomtone... These were volume balanced to sound good and sent to a submix.

Footsteps and "hand noise" for each character had their own track and sent to a submix.

Music on its own submix

background noise was about a dozen tracks and after being balanced, it was sent to a submix.

The submix allows you to adjust groups of volumes without changing how they relate to one another, just an over all volume for that group.. so I could adjust dialog, foley, ambience and music separately as groups rather than having to dig inside and move 20 sliders if I needed the overall volume of the ambient noise I'd built to change.

Separate the actors' dialog tracks... different voices also need different EQing to sound like they live in the same space (remember that reality doesn't matter in filmmaking)... so with a separate track for each actor, I can apply an EQ to the whole track much more easily for this purpose.

So although a bit smaller, my workflow ends up like Alcove's... but I also come from the audio world in my younger days.

 

[Alcove Audio]

Alcove, you are not helping him, you are confusing him and you probably just caused over a dozen new questions

I'm educating him about proper techniques and established protocols. And, if you hadn't noticed, there was some serious misinformation being bandied about - jokingly to be sure, but some folks don't get that.

Besides, most of the shooters on this forum will have projects with only two or three main characters, the barest of Foley work and no ADR at all. So they will end up with three DX tracks for main characters, two more for other dialog, two for room tone, three or four Foley tracks, ditto for sound FX, perhaps two tracks for ambience/BG and a track for score and a track for source music. That's less than 20 tracks, not an outrageous total for an NLE.

'Actor noise' like coughing that shouldn't be there you can 'mix it away'.

Actually, unless it's part of the dialog it should be edited out completely.

 

[harmonica44]

Oh okay thanks. I have been putting all the dialogue on one stereo dialogue track, unless more than two people were speaking at the same time, then I would put the separate speaking on another. Or if one actor makes a breathing noise or something like that, that adds to the character, I would add a separate track for breathing. All my Foley is on other tracks than the dialogue, but I don't have a separate track for each Foley sound, unless it's a sound that is suppose to happen at the same time as other sounds. But not a separate track for every different sound. But I could redo it like that if it's best for volume. Music I would definitely add on another track, in the locked edit.

So if the character doesn't do anything audible, with their voice that I want, such as breathing, should I not put anything in between the spaces of dialogue on the track, and just leave them blank?

 

[WalterB]

I'm educating him about proper techniques and established protocols. And, if you hadn't noticed, there was some serious misinformation being bandied about - jokingly to be sure, but some folks don't get that..

You are right about the jokes , but you can't explain irreal numbers or non-lineair differential equations to someone who hasn't mastered simple calculus yet. Step by step is the way to learn, so handing out a simpler solution together with the protocol* that doesn't spin one's mind might be useful.
Sometimes it's more about getting the job done, than about how the job is done in the professional world.

*) The protocol is most useful when more people are involved in post-production.
Or when overview is getting lost in all the tracks.
Organising tracks like that also makes communication between the editor and the soundengineer much clearer.

Actually, unless it's part of the dialog it should be edited out completely.

True.
(Volume to 0 has the same result )

@ Harmonica:
In Premiere Pro volume is not affeced by on which track you put something. Nor is it affected by the amount of audioclips on 1 track: it plays them 1 by 1 anyway.
Stacking multiple sounds will increase total volume offcourse.

 

[knightly]

CF is messing with you.. he's doing that sarcasm thing that he does If not, he may want to reanalyze his workflow.

Dialog should be mono and in the center. Most of the work you do will not be stereo. Some ambient noises, and some off screen noises will be spread across the sound scape, or panned to one side or the other to illicit an effect on the audience, other than that, mono centered is the way to go. For stereo tracks, just music and ambience really.

 

[Alcove Audio]

Stacking multiple sounds will increase total volume offcourse.

Stacking identical audio clips for any reason is a horrible idea. If one of them slips out you can have all sorts of phase problems.

 

[harmonica44]

CF is messing with you.. he's doing that sarcasm thing that he does If not, he may want to reanalyze his workflow.

Dialog should be mono and in the center. Most of the work you do will not be stereo. Some ambient noises, and some off screen noises will be spread across the sound scape, or panned to one side or the other to illicit an effect on the audience, other than that, mono centered is the way to go. For stereo tracks, just music and ambience really.

Oh okay I thought that it should be stereo because if I have it on mono it only comes out of one speaker when played back. But that's because my sound recorder records on stereo only, and if I leave the track mono, it only comes out one speaker.

Stacking identical audio clips for any reason is a horrible idea. If one of them slips out you can have all sorts of phase problems.

Okay thanks. What do you mean by slip out? You're saying I should leave spaces of nothing in between the sentences?

 

[Alcove Audio]

Oh okay I thought that it should be stereo because if I have it on mono it only comes out of one speaker when played back. But that's because my sound recorder records on stereo only, and if I leave the track mono, it only comes out one speaker.

If you remember, you are recording dialog at two different levels. You split the stereo track into two mono tracks and mute the safety track. Pan the remaining track to the center of a stereo mix or send it to the center speaker of a surround mix. If there is a distorted transient on the primary dialog track go to the safety track and pick up the undistorted piece of dialog and paste it into the primary dialog track.

What do you mean by slip out?

One of the stacked duplicates may accidentally be moved by a millisecond or so and create a phase cancellation. There should be no need whatsoever to create duplicates for volume purposes.

You're saying I should leave spaces of nothing in between the sentences?

Yes, cut out all of the audio between lines of dialog and drag it to an inactive track.

 

[WalterB]

Stacking identical audio clips for any reason is a horrible idea. If one of them slips out you can have all sorts of phase problems.

..........
Okay thanks. What do you mean by slip out? You're saying I should leave spaces of nothing in between the sentences?

One of the stacked duplicates may accidentally be moved by a millisecond or so and create a phase cancellation. There should be no need whatsoever to create duplicates for volume purposes.

I never said stacking identical audio clips.
I said stacking clips will increase volume. (I maybe should have said different clips.)
You just created a 'problem', raised a question and gave a very technical anwser, which means nothing to Harmonica. It results in him saying he needs to cut the crap: which is true, but it has nothing to do with stacking or your explanation. (You are a real expert, there is no doubt about that .)

Stacking means different clips at the same moment (vertically arranged on different tracks).
Slipping out and leaving space have no relation to each other.

If you remember, you are recording dialog at two different levels. You split the stereo track into two mono tracks and mute the safety track. Pan the remaining track to the center of a stereo mix or send it to the center speaker of a surround mix. If there is a distorted transient on the primary dialog track go to the safety track and pick up the undistorted piece of dialog and paste it into the primary dialog track.
.............

In Premiere Pro you can make the right or left channel move to the center of a stereomix by using 'Fill Left' or 'Fill Right'. This disables 1 channel and 'copies' the other channel in it, resulting in a mono output.
Using the safety track as Alcove discribes is a great way to get the best of the 2 channels in your stereotrack.
In Premiere Pro you can achieve this by making cuts in front and right after the distorted word(s) and disable the 'Fill Left (or Right)' effect and use the opposite 'Fill'-effect. (If you used Fill Left, you need Fill Right and vice versa.)

Btw, the audio effects can be found in the effects window in the Stereo-Audio-effects-folder.