Is there a way to automatically adjust an audiotrack when there's voice-over?
 

hey folks,

i've been searching for a plugin or a neat trick for this problem for quite a while - perhaps someone here knows what to do:

most of my projects contain backgroundmusic with voice-overs. so everytime there's no talking i'd raise the audio level of the bg music via keyframes in premiere (which is a pain in the butt). so when i'd like to edit something in the middle of the clip, cut something out for example, i have to adjust EVERY bloody keyframe in the bg musics' track afterwards as they are not in the right place anymore.

isnt there a plugin or something that i can set to lower the volume of audio track X for y about of db everytime theres audio in track Z?

Thanks folks!!
:)

I could use such a plugin right now myself!

I don't know if Premiere has an ability to 'bus' signals to various places, but the way to do this would be a compressor plugin with a 'ducking' or 'sidechain' input.

The idea is, whenever a signal comes into this sidechain input, it lowers the level of the main signal running through it (the music).. The dialogue would be routed to the master output and at the same time into the sidechain of the plugin. This could be done with an aux send. I'm sure there are VST plugins available with a sidechain somewhere. I'll look for one tonight, I think it'll help me out with this project I'm doing too. :)

Eric

Thant would be AWESOME!! it nearly doubles my production time cause evertime there's a minor change somewhere i have to re-edit the ENTIRE project :(

I just found this one and I'm trying it out at the moment. The trial version inserts a static sound every so often (white noise) and it's a bit expensive, but it seems to work quite well.
http://www.db-audioware.com/sidechaincompressor.htm

You insert the plugin on your dialogue track and and on your music track.

On the dialogue track, set the.....

Okay scratch all that.. I tried to do a save and switched back to this window, and Premiere Pro 2 encountered a serious error and needs to be shutdown..

The idea behind the plugin is great. It has several buses built in, and you set one copy of the plugin as a sending plugin, and the other as a receiver. So when the send (dialogue) goes into the music side, it lowers the level based on you settings.. Worked great until I hit save..

Thankfully I picked Save As and gave it a new name.. Ugg, PPro2 corrupts files so quickly. No other program I've worked with in recent years has so many file weaknesses.

Eric

ok this software seems to be exactly what we are looking for - unfortuneately ive experienced the same problems you have. when i activate the external trig i get a extreemly strange beeping sound on my speakers and after i close the project premiere crashes :(

For interested parties, from the Mac/FCP perspective it's interesting to note that although Soundtrack Pro shares most of the same plugins as Logic, the compressor only features a side-chain input within Logic. I can't see any way to duck audio without exporting the multitrack mix to Logic.

It's always intrigued me as to why Soundtrack Pro isn't completely integrated with FCP anyway - why do we have to have this nonsense of sending audio files to another application for professional processing? And why are the audio plugins in FCP so poor in comparison?

Sorry, If I've gone a bit OT.

Yup, the random noises are part of the free trial, so you're 'encouraged' to purchase the plugin. :)

I don't understand the crashing though.

Try searching for 'free vst compressor sidechain' on google and you'll prolly find some others.

It needs to have its own bus setup like the send/receive one in this one, for it to work properly, I believe. It may work on an aux send in Premiere, but I'm not sure on that.

I remember using another one a few years ago, but I don't remember what it was called :(

no its not the 'usual' noise from the trial, its a sound like the pc crashes^^

i don't quite understand the concept of this 'sidechaining' actually - never heard of it before.

the tut tells me to set the voice track to send, the music to recieve and both with 'external trig' to on but nothing happens^^

Actually, you need to cut and lock the picture before working on the audio.

Colin, sorry I didn't see your post at first. :)

I believe Adobe Audition has the same 'feature' of making you bounce audio back and forth between apps. I don't know why they can't just combine them.

The best candidate for combining a suite into one app would be all the Sony apps. They all look nearly identical and all are strong audio and video apps.

We'll see what the future brings I guess. :)

Daniel,
The idea is that one plugin sends signal to another (voice track to music). They both to be turned on and then one set as send, one as receive.

The reason you saw no change is the threshold needs to be lowered on the receiving end, so that the compression is triggered. Right now, it's set at full volume, so nothing can cross it and become compressed. :)

ok i figured it out - it actually was working every time i've got this annoying sound from my soundcard. tried it on two different pcs, one with another X-FI card, same result (extrem loud noise), my laptop with crappy on board soundcard works fine. this plugin performs AMAZING! the only option i miss is a sort of prefetch thingy that reads the audio from the voiceover track and lowers a few ms *before* the voice starts talking.

a shame it doesnt seem to work with creative x-fi cards :(

Hmm, that's interesting it's not working with the X-fi. Is it set to a different bit depth or bit rate by chance?

Are you able to save without it crashing?

I agree, a read-ahead would be nice, but that's not really how this works. You *could* fake the effect by inserting a Delay after the Compressor send. Set it to 100% wet/effect, so you ONLY hear the delayed sound and no original. 1 tap/repeat, at 100% volume. Then delayed it by 3-5ms or something. You'd probably be happier with 100ms or more of delay, but the idea is you'd make the music drop before you heard the voice. It's fine for a voiceover, but not if you're going to see lips moving onscreen. :)

Or for that matter just some usable plugins in FCP without having to open soundtrack or Logic.
I asked our editor why he couldnt just apply some compression/limiting to raise & even out a dialog and he let me know it was too time consuming to open the track in Soundtrack etc etc.
As audio is such an intregral part of any project,those tools SHOULD be built into the program... or at LEAST some third party solution!

ok the info with the x-fi was wrong, just had the same problems on my laptop. seems to be generally buggy. tried it with three pcs under XP with Premiere CS2/3 :(

i thought about creating the delay effect by simply putting a mutet audio track in the nle where i insert the voice-over audio a little bit to early to be in sync and then add a second effect to the music track with a different input bank setting. but as the effect itself seems to be broken... :(

i've already mailed the guy for help.

Glenn, you're saying there's no way to compress audio levels in FCP without switching apps?!

Daniel, so really, you got lucky with 1 out of 3 computers working properly with it? :)

I FOUND IT!!! AHHHHHH IT WORKS SO ABSOLUTELY GREAT!!!

-> http://www.twistedlemon.nl/site/inde...d=19&Itemid=32

AND: ITS freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee


*dancing*

Awesome!! :)

Although not the most straightforward to adjust while listening, FCP has a couple of serviceable compressors. Just select the audio and open the filters submenu. (this is from memory, I don't have FCP at home).

It just seems weird they wouldn't share all the plugins between apps.

FCP will indeed "see" any installed third party Audio Units, however it falls down on execution since (to the best of my knowledge) FCP cannot display the AU native GUI - you just get lines of parameters, no graphical buttons and knobs :-(

GarageBand does automatic ducking built-in, surely it can only be a matter of time before they include it in the Pro apps?!

I do miss Sony Vegas, but then that started out as an audio app at Sonic Foundry so it's not a big surprise it caters well to the audio guy who wants to edit pictures.

Does Avid on OS X do automatic ducking on vocals?

I wouldn't know, I'm not a fan of Avid/Digidesign's policy of "If you want good performance, buy our $30,000 version instead. Native CPU's are just not powerful enough!" So annoying :)

Sorry, we seem to almost have two threads going now - that's my fault!

For me, the compressors and many other audio plugins in FCP are really quite poor and sound (as well as look) dreadful compared to those shared by Logic and Soundtrack Pro. It's also that much harder to achieve the desired effect as there are no visual references or meters.

Yes, FCP will see external audio units plugins but strangely not those native to Logic and STP. And a number I've tried aren't recognised at all by FCP.

As has been mentioned, I'm sure we can't be too far away from a situation were deep and professional audio editing and mixing is properly integrated. It's a real nuisance right now.

Another question if I may. Being mainly a composer and Logic user, I've literally only just started using Soundtrack, so I may have missed something but it appears that when doing 'round-trip' audio edits by sending individual clips to the waveform editor, you can only send mono files. This seems another bizarre 'feature'. Processing two halves of a stereo file in separate passes is crazy! Please tell me I'm wrong.

Thanks

C

Hello Eric,

While ducking actions of some software can be helpful, it seldom does a really great job. It's sort of like shooting with autofocus.

Ducking doesn't look at the freqency content. A music track with horns usually interferes more with voices than one without, for example.

I suggest using mix automation instead. If you do have changes later, you redraw the automation at the changed areas.

Regards,

Ty Ford

ok, while the plugin posted by me a few posts above seems to work in preview mode, premiere fails during rendering on every occasion. the plugin itself works great in audition tho. so there's an extra step needed: export the voice and music track, load it into audition, apply the effect, render it, put the final .wav into premiere. kinda sucks but better than adjusting trillions of keyframes evertime a customer wants a last minute edit^^

Wow, that just sounds like an ugly mess!

I wonder if the plugin that only show up in those apps would appear in anything else? I know some PC apps have Direct-X and VST plugins that only work in those apps and are either hidden or pop up an error 'this only runs from within application ____' if they are visible and accessible.

Hi Ty,

I agree with you 100%.. For standard, smooth background music though, ducking can work well. Even dance music would work fine. For stuff with trumpets, just listen to the Latin radio stations (they all seem to share the same voiceover guy ;) I guess they just duck the stuff with horns a bit lower.

I've been working in the audio and video industries for about 18 years and normally don't do much with ducking. It can be useful for a quick thing here and there though :)

Oh that stinks! I didn't try rendering with it. On my system, if I dbl click the plugin (to open it), my screen turns fully grey. The pointer is visible and if I hit Alt-F4 or Alt-Tab, I can get back Premiere and my desktop and all. But there's no visible plugin. I found if I right-click and pick 'Edit', it appears fine. I tried it in Sonar 6 to be sure and it works fine in there.

There must be something out there that works directly in the timeline...somewhere.. :)

OK, so what's wrong with the confusingly-named (not!) Compressor/Limiter Audio Filter, BUILT-IN to FCP?

Maybe it's not good enough for your editor, but that's another issue. Does he even know it exists?

Well, sometimes people are confused when you change the suffix on a word and don't realize it's the same basic word? :)

there has to be, we aren't the first guys to want this, right? i think the VST interface from premiere simply is crap.

I agree, it's very poorly conceived. I found yesterday that the bundled 'Compressor' plugin was crashing my project and/or was corrupting my project file if I was able to save and close it at all without locking up. I don't know if this is a known issue or not, but it wrecked my afternoon until I decided to just stop using that plugin. Now everything has been fine since then. Go figure. :)

Vegas works very well with it, or the BlueCat plug in.

With the Premiere 'Compressor' plugin?