Prepping for Post Audio in Avid, Premiere, and Final Cut Pro X

In this episode of 5 THINGS, Michael covers the essentials for ensuring a smooth handoff from creative editorial to post audio in ProTools. This includes formatting your tracks and preparation within your NLE (Avid Media Composer, Adobe Premiere Pro, and Apple Final Cut Pro X). 0:00 Introduction 3:40 Sync 5:34 Video 7:32 OMF and AAF 9:41 Odds and Ends Complete transcript at http://5thingsseries.com/prepping-for-post-audio/ Closed Captioning available. What 5 Things do you want to know about? Let me know! Web: http://5thingsseries.com Facebook: http://facebook.com/5thingsseries Twitter: http://twitter.com/michaelkammes/ Episode Excerpt: 1. Track Layouts How much time have you spent cleaning up problems and mistakes from onset? Or from other editors on your project? Often, audio folks have to do the same thing. Reorganizing work from the creative edit is usually the first step in post audio. You can help alleviate this in a few ways, and it will help you in your rough mix. First, organize your audio. I know when it comes to video, you traditionally checkerboard your video, collapsing into as few tracks as possible. But when it comes to audio, we want extreme separation and organization. This means separating audio into the minimum of 3 categories, and thus sets of tracks. In post, we call these FX, MX, and DX, or Effects, Music, and Dialogue tracks. This is a good start, as audio folks routinely need to create stems, or isolated mixes, of each individual sound type. What is typically preferred, however, is to arrange even deeper. This would include audio tracks for each characters dialogue, and separate tracks for voice over. It may also include organization by sound effects types, like soft effects…such as ambiance, vs. hard effects, like a door slam. Not only does this help post audio, but it does allow you in video post to easily find and change the audio without soloing and hunting around for the right piece of audio. Track labels: DX (Dialogue), FX (Hard and Soft Effects), and MX (Music) What should also be done is to adhere to odd-even pairing. This means putting stereo tracks on tracks 1 and 2, 3 and 4, and so on. Correct audio track layout: odd-even pairs Avoid even-odd pairing, such as tracks 2 and 3, and 4 and 5. Incorrect audio track layout: even-odd pairs This also includes not putting mono files on stereo tracks. As an aside, nothing is wrong with having stereo tracks and mono tracks in the same sequence. Lastly, if you process or render any audio files – whether you send them to another application, or simply apply a permanent effect, don’t forget to leave the original on the timeline with the volume down or muted. If you export the sequence for post-sound and have rendered effects, the sound folks are then stuck with your permanent mix, which may need to be changed down the road. It’s like you getting a compressed video and having little way to get back to the original file. In fact, many audio folks will simply skip your effects entirely by ignoring them when importing them into the audio session. Help the entire project out and keep the original around. Be cautious when using tools like Plural Eyes to sync audio, often using this tool to sync second-system audio can remove the original audio for the scene….and your sound folks may need access to that. ...and that's all we have room for! Check out the entire episode at http://5thingsseries.com. #5THINGS #PostAudio #Audio #OMF #AAF #Sync #VideoEditing #FCPX #Timecode #ProRes #Dialogue #Workflow #Logic #X2Pro #RoomTone #MichaelKammes #Moviola #PostProduction #Mac #Windows