Getting Good Sweetening Services (Any Tips?)
 

Hi,

I just finished working on my first real, for-hire, paid real money (albeit a little) 15 minute corporate video. I rented a nice DVX-100 and did my best on lighting and all the good stuff.

I assumed that the onboard mic would be adequate, and in many cases it was, but unfortunately, there is still a lot of hiss, and sometimes there are unwanted background sounds (someone walking by, slamming a door, stomping on the floor above).

I really want this film to be the best it can be, and have been looking into hiring a professional to sweeten the audio, as I have tried myself but have really been unable to figure out how to do this myself.

So, I am wondering if anyone has some tips for me, specifically:

1) What is the going rate for this kind of thing? Do they charge flat or per second of sound, etc)

2) How do I go about finding someone, and what can I look (or listen) for in a portfolio/reel that will indicate this person knows how to do the work?

3) How is the raw material usually provided to the engineer? Do I output a minidv and send it? Will he/she need all the original gigabuyes of video files? Can I render all the different tracks with different audio problems to one straight track and send that? etc etc

4) Are some ways that I can save money, either asking for specific types of service or perhaps doing some of it myself?

5) Can someone recommend a place or engineer?

Thanks!

Ethan

1- What audio editing software and noise reduction plug-ins do you have?

IMO, it's worth learning some audio clean-up... if you're a one-man army, you need to know at least a bit of everything.

Pick up a copy of Jay Rose's Audio Postproduction for Digital Video... see http://www.dplay.com

You could learn how to...
Remove sounds and stick room tone in.
Noise reduction to get rid of hiss and other constant noise.
Editing in parts of words from elsewhere. (Very time consuming, may not be worth doing.)
ADR. (Very time consuming.)

You can sometimes cheat by laying a music bed over the background noise.

2- To point out the obvious, it's significantly less time-consuming to record good audio in the first place.

You could export an OMF with 2-beeps.

3) How is the raw material usually provided to the engineer? Do I output a minidv and send it? Will he/she need all the original gigabuyes of video files? Can I render all the different tracks with different audio problems to one straight track and send that? etc etc

Ethan,

You say it's a corporate video, but you didn't specify what's going to be DONE with it.

Typically a corporate video NEVER goes directly to broadcast where any type of actual engineer would be involved. Rather, it would usually be destined for a dup house where a technician would take whatever you give them and copy from that.

You need to talk to the dup house to determine what THEY want as far as submission form.

Most of them will happily take a DV or DVCAM tape and prepare the work for dup/replication from that point. You should expect to pay some basic authoring charges to prepare DVDs from a digital master tape in this situation

But it's just as common for folks to take a DIY approach to all the authoring and preparation work. That won't be delivery on tape, but rather delivery on a DVD with all the menu/navigation stuff done - that the dup house can simply clone.

Again, the ONLY way to know for sure is to identify the dup house you're going to use and ask THEM how they want the work delivered.

Good luck.

Bill, I think Ethan is asking about how to send audio to someone else for fixing. One method that would work is to export an OMF with 2-beeps. (2-beep = have a frame of tone 2 seconds before and after program start... this is to ensure that sync is correct when you bring the audio back in.) Big handles are good (to edit in syllables from elsewhere), though some apps have file size limitations as to how big the OMF can get.

To clarify the above questions, this is going to be replicated to DVD.

I am trying to avoid using background music in places where I don't really want it. What I really need to do, I think, is read that book that everyone is recommending. Does Sony Vegas export "OMF files with 2 beeps"?

Thanks for all your help, if anyone can still answer some of the other Q's I will appreciate it!!

Hmm I don't think Vegas outputs OMF files without this:
http://www.cuibono-soft.com/

2- 2-beeps you make yourself.