Once the clips on each track are the same volume as each other, the mix between tracks needs to be balanced. Typically you would organise your sound track on the time line by the type of sound. So, in a simple mix for example, all the Dialogue would go on track A1, the Sound Effects would go on A2 and the background Music would go on track A3.
To keep the different sounds separate and easy to hear, you would usually set the Dialogue to peak at -6 dB, the SFX to be half as loud at -12 dB and the Music to be the quietest at around -18 dB. This way the Dialogue is not going to be drowned out by the Effects or Music but all the ambient sounds are still going to be audible under the actors lines.
Also, having the loudest track at -6 dB means there is still room to add really loud spot effects like an explosion or a gun shot which should be even louder than the dialogue.
Mixing the tracks is done in the Audio Track Mixer window:
The Mixer consists of a set of Volume sliders, one for each audio track as well as a Master control which sets the volume of the final output to the speakers. Its a good idea to change the labels on each slider to match what you have on each track. This also changes the names of the tracks themselves.
As the sound track is playing, the Level Meter gives you feedback about the changing volume of the sound. The loudest part of the track is marked by a Yellow peaking line:
Using this you can work out which track is the loudest and balance it out with the others.
Having control over the overall track volume is really useful but what if you have more than one Dialogue track or you have multiple Sound Effects for different characters or shots? For example it is really common to have a separate voice track for each actor especially if they are mic'd up with a lapel mic each and you're using a boom as well.
On top of that, if you loose a line during filming, you may have to re-recorded it afterwards in the studio and dub it onto the edit in post. You could easily end up with two voice tracks per actor and a scene could have any number of characters.
As another example, imagine you're editing a restaurant scene. You will need background SFX such as multiple conversations, plate and cutlery sounds, footsteps, chairs moving and countless other sounds which will probably all be recorded separately, so you quickly end up with lots of SFX tracks in your edit. Add all the Dialogue tracks and you have a big problem: how can you balance the Dialogue with the rest of the sound mix when there are so many different volume levels to set?
This is where Sub-mixes come in...
A Sub-mix is just a special kind of sound track which aggregates or combines two or more tracks into one with its own sound control. To create a Sub-mix all you have to do is Right Click the header of the timeline and select Add Audio Submix Track
This adds an extra, empty track on the timeline and an extra volume control in the Audio Mixer Window. You don't add clips to this new track. Instead you set the tracks in the Mixer to go to one of your Sub-mix tracks. All of the Sub-mixes then go to the Master and end up going to the speakers. Grouping similar tracks in the timeline into Sub-mixes in the Mixer gives you a new Volume control which lowers or raises the volume of all those tracks at once.
To set the individual tracks to go to a particular Sub-mix, pick the name of the Sub-mix from the menu at near the top of the Mixer window.
This way you can adjust the volume of all of the Dialogue or all of the Sound Effects in one go, no matter how many tracks of each you have, and still have control over the individual tracks to balance everything out. Just make sure you rename the Sub-mixes to keep things organised.
No comments:
Post a Comment