Sadly, it seems as though audio is always on the back burner for a lot of video editors. But as I like to say, good audio WILL make your video LOOK better. It’s true! In this week’s Tuesday Tip, I’d like to reinforce the idea of making your vocal tracks sound better with tools that you already have in your NLE arsenal.
Our dedicated ProTools HD ProControl mixing console in our record studio is nice for big mixes, but for the simple video edits with one or two VO tracks, using your NLE's built-in audio tools will more than suffice to help turn your raw (potentially thin) audio into great sounding audio that can really bring your video's quality up a notch.
Often times when vocal audio is recorded on set, especially if it was directly recorded from a mic to the camera’s input, the vocal track itself may be a little thin. This isn’t entirely bad, as you don’t want to overly process the incoming sound before it gets recorded into your camera or double-system sound device.
Once your video edit is complete, take a little time and fatten up those vocal tracks a bit by using dynamic compression. Every NLE application has dynamic audio compression plugins. In essence, compression is like an automatic volume control. When the recorded volume is low, the automatic volume is raised up. Then when the recorded audio is peaking really high, the automatic volume is then lowered. Different compression plugins implement different controls and features, but they generally work similarly in nature. And like anything else, some have better compression quality than others.
If you’d like to read about this topic in more detail, check out the published article I wrote back in 2006 in the very first premiere issue of the printed Creative Cow Magazine. It may be a few years old, but the article is just as valid and useful today as it was the moment it went to print!
Direct web converted article on Creative Cow:
http://magazine.creativecow.net/article/audio-techniques-for-video-editors
Entire magazine issue in PDF form:
http://magazine.creativecow.net/issue/our-premiere
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