Audio post help

[Michael Chen]

Hi all,

I've been making short films for a while. I upgraded from the stock mic to a ME-66 which i borrowed for my shorts.

The quality improvement is alot. But i've seen short films that undergo post-audio in professional audio mix house and it really sounds a lot better.

My question is, since I cant afford for such service, what can i do in post to improve the quality?
I have no knowledge in sound at all, so any general tips that can improve the overall sound quality?

Need some guidance.

[Aaron Koolen]

If you go Here there are links to two good sound books that most people starting out are recommended to read. I have them and I think they're invaluable.

What is wrong with your sound that you want to improve? Is it too "echoey"? Is dialog too "tinny". Does there seem to be too many sounds? Muffled? etc, etc.

Aaron

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

Jay's site has lotsa great stuff, his books are quite good as well.
A few plugins can go a long way, one I recommend for any DV editor concerned about audio is the iZotope Ozone. This plug can work one of two ways; totally auto for 'beginner' mode, or totally manual, for those who know what they are doing. There are several in-between options too.
http://www.izotope.com

they have a free plug or two there also. Play with Ozone for a while, I guarantee in a few minutes, you'll have far better audio, even if you don't understand exactly why.

[Michael Chen]

Aaron,
the sound is not as clean, and sometimes its a bit echoey.
I'd like to know what's the general stuff that people do with their sound. For example, generally i'll do some colour correction for video to make it look better, but how bout sound?

Douglas, i'll check out the website soon thanks.

[Aaron Koolen]

Hi Michael. Aquisition really is the key and you should do whatever you can to get good sound on the day I reckon. but if you can't a few things that I did on my LadyX episode were:

1) Raise the dialog frequencies a little to give them more "presence". It worked quite well in my LadyX cause if you listen to the original sound it was very muffled.

2) If there is background noise, then some noise removal might be in order. I've only ever played with Noise Reduction by Sonic Foundry and that's worked pretty well for me.

3) Sometimes low rumbles and things got through to my track, so a simple high pass filter to chop them off can work a bit. Too much though and it sounds crap and can bugger with dialogue but if you're desparate.

I'm not sure how to remove reverb (echo) so can't offer much help there sorry.

Aaron

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

Removing echo can be semi-accomplished by using a convolution reverb in reverse. Sony's Acoustic Mirror can somewhat accomplish this.
Cutting off low end, using a smooth gate, pumping the remaining bottom/low end, dropping the low mids, and kicking up the very high end are all good places to start experimenting. Sometimes panning a voice in an overall mix will help kill some of it's clunkiness. Compression can help too. Not having heard the file, it's really hard to tell you exactly where to start.

Here's where most video people screw up....it's easy to get an acceptable picture, because people are reasonably forgiving of picture. People NEVER forgive bad sound. We live our lives based on sounds. Our ears are a lot more sensitive to sound than to picture. Hence my constant statement of "Audio is 70% of the audience sees." I even have a 2 hour lecture and demonstration on the subject.

[Alessandro Machi]

Michael, I just don't see enough in your original post to understand what you are not happy with.

You should take a moment and explain a typical scene in one of your movies. Perhaps the simplest question is, is your microphone mounted to the camera, or are you "booming" your shots?