Sound for Video Session: Adobe Audition Multitrack Editor & Q&A

In this week's Sound for Video Session, we'll talk a bit about Adobe Audition's multitrack editor and answer your sound for video questions. We'll also demo a new microphone this week — the Earthworks SV33 — a ridiculous but beautiful studio vocal microphone.

If you’d like to learn how to make great dialogue audio for your film and video projects, please have a look at my courses including processing dialogue audio in Adobe Audition and DaVinci Resolve/Fairlight, recording sound, how to use the Zoom F4, F6, F8, and F8n, and how to get the most from the Sound Devices MixPre series of recorders. We have a course on sound for live-streaming with the ATEM Mini and just added Introduction to Izotope RX for Dialogue Audio.

Gear used or mentioned in this episode. The links below are Amazon.com, B&H Photo, Sweetwater, DVE Store, or other affiliate links. As an affiliate, I earn from qualifying purchases:

- Earthworks SV33 studio vocal microphone — B&H, Sweetwater

- Earthworks ETHOS microphone — B&H, Sweetwater

- Universal Audio Volt 276 USB audio interface — B&H, Sweetwater, Amazon

- Earthworks SR314 - B&H, Sweetwater

- Epiphan Pearl Nano live stream encoder — B&H, DVE Store, Amazon

- Panasonic GH5 camera - B&H, Amazon

- Canon C70 Camera - B&H

- Canon RF 24-70 f/2.8L IS lens - B&H, Amazon

- TA3-M to XLR-F Adapter cable to feed microphones to C70 or Blackmagic Pocket cameras - B&H

- ATEM Mini Extreme & Extreme ISO - B&H, DVE Store, Amazon

- Allen & Heath SQ5 Digital Mixer - B&H, Sweetwater, Amazon

- Sound Devices MixPre II Series Recorders - B&H, Sweetwater, Amazon

- Rupert Neve Designs Shelford Channel, pre-amp, EQ, compressor - Sweetwater, B&H

Take your films to the next level with music from Musicbed. Sign up for a free account to listen for yourself.

Copyright 2021, Curtis Judd

Sound for Video Session: Loudness Normalize your Video Sound in Adobe Audition

How do you get loud audio for your video projects? What if the music is much louder than the dialogue or speaking parts? In this session, we cover the basics of mixing music and dialogue and show how to loudness normalize your video’s sound using Adobe Audition.

Please consider my sound for video classes available over at Learn Light and Sound.

Gear used to record this episode:

AKG C414 XLS large diaphragm condenser microphone - this is my new, main voice over microphone

dbx 286s Preamplifier and channel strip (Amazon) - new vocal processing channel strip. I’ve had a ton of requests for help setting this up so I had to add one to my collection so I can learn how to use it first.

Universal Audio Apollo x6 - Thunderbolt 3 audio interface used to take audio signal from the dbx286S channel strip, convert it to digital, and send to my computer for recording.

Copyright 2019 by Curtis Judd

Outro music from Artlist: Sunscape by Oliver Michael. You can receive a 2 week discount on a subscription to Artlist, a subscription service for stock music you can use with your videos. Check it out at Artlist.

Adobe Audition Analysis Tools

Adobe Audition is an incredibly powerful, rich tool for editing and mixing your sound for film and video projects. Sometimes something doesn’t sound as great as you’d like but you can’t quite put your finger on it. That’s where the analysis tools in Audition can help. Here we quickly show the amplitude statistics, frequency analysis, spectral frequency display, phase analysis, and spectral pitch views. Let us know if you’d like to learn more about one of these.

Links to gear discussed and used to shoot this episode:

Sennheiser MKH8050 Boom Microphone - this is the microphone I used

Sound Devices 633 Audio Recorder/Mixer

Aputure COB 120t - This is the light I used as a key in the talking head clips

Aputure Light Dome Soft Box - Used to soften the key light

Lupo DayLED Fresnel Light with Barn Doors - Used for the “rim/hair” light

Blackmagic design Ursa Mini Pro Cinema Camera - used for the talking headt shots in this video

Sigma ART 24-70mm f/2.8 OS Lens (Canon EF Mount) - Used this lens on the Ursa Mini Pro

Panasonic GH5 - My most versatile small camera for video

Panasonic 12-35mm f/2.8 OIS Lens - incredibly versatile lens that is on the GH5 most of the time

Copyright 2018 by Curtis Judd 

Music - MzA by Cary Judd, used with permission

Sound for Video Session: Q&A Stretch Time & Pitch, Poly Wav, Balanced vs Unbalanced, Zoom F4n

In this week’s Sound for Video Session, we cover the following topics:

0:11 Retime & Pitch Shift to fix an old recording

1:35 Resompling

3:00 Poly Wav Files

6:40 Unbalanced vs Balanced Cables/Interconnects

9:03 Zoom F4n?

Gear and links discussed/used to record this episode: 

Difference between balanced and unbalanced cables/interconnects

Wave Agent application from Sound Devices:

Zoom F8 Audio Recorder

Zoom F4 Audio Recorder

Electrovoice RE20 Dynamic Microphone - used to record this session

Copyright 2018 by Curtis Judd

Outro music licensed from Artlist: Keep an Eye by Back to Dream. Artlist provides high quality music tracks for your film and video projects. You can receive two months off an Artlist account by using our link.

Sound for Video Session: FCPX to Audition - Sending Audio for Mixing

In this week’s Sound for Video Session, we look at one way to get audio out of Final Cut Pro X and over to Audition so that you can mix it with all of the tools that Audition and other plugins have to offer. 

If you are aware of other ways to accomplish this, feel free to share in the comments!

Gear and links discussed in this episode: 

XtoCC - app to help get audio from Final Cut Pro X to Adobe Audition. You can buy this in the Mac App Store or here.

Electrovoice RE20 Broadcast Microphone

Antelope Audio Orion Studio Audio - Computer Interface

Outro music licensed from Artlist: Keep an Eye by Back to Dream. Artlist provides high quality music tracks for your film and video projects. You can receive two months off an Artlist account by using our link.

Copyright 2018 by Curtis Judd

Sound for Video Session: Premiere to Audition with Dynamic Link & Mix vs Isolated Tracks in FCPX

In this week's sound for video session, we discuss two questions:

- How do I get a sequence from Premiere Pro CC to Audition CC and back again?
- I can record a stereo mix (L & R) plus isolated microphone channels on my recorder. When should I use which and how will those come through in Final Cut Pro X?

Gear used to record or discussed in this episode:

Electrovoice RE20 Dynamic Broadcast Microphone
Antelope Audio Orion Studio Computer Audio Interface - record with your pro-level XRL microphones directly to your computer
Sound Devices 633 Audio Field Recorder for film production - my main recorder for film/video

Outro music licensed from Artlist: Sunscape by Oliver Michael on One Moment. Artlist provides high quality music tracks for your film and video projects. You can receive two months off an Artlist account by using our link.

Copyright 2018 by Curtis Judd

Sound for Video Session: Dialogue Processing Demo in Audition

My audio doesn't sound all that great straight out of my camera or recorder. What can I do to make it sound better?

Here's a demonstration of how I processed the sound which was recorded with a JuicedLink Riggy Assist 222 into a Panasonic GH4 using Adobe Audition.

Remove Echo/Reverb from Dialogue Audio

Ever find that your dialogue audio recording ended up with a lot more echo, which is technically called reverb, than you remember hearing when you were shooting? It happens. Many of us shoot on location and you often get less than optimal audio. Here’s a look at two plugins that you can use in Adobe Premiere, Audition, and just about any other digital audio workstation app for editing audio to reduce that annoying echo or reverb sound and make it sound more like you’re having an intimate conversation with your talent.

You can’t always remove all of the reverb, but you can definitely minimize it in most cases.

Audio Hiss Noise Reduction

https://youtu.be/1lIjFBG6w58 Sometimes I find that my audio has audible hiss in the background. This is often what is described as a noise floor and is the hiss produced by your microphone, preamplifier, cable, or possibly other things. In any case, it isn’t an awesome sound.

In this episode we look at one way to reduce that hiss in your dialogue audio without affecting the dialogue and we’ll use Adobe Audition CC (2014) to show you how.

The clip with the hiss was recorded with a RØDE NTG-2 shotgun microphone, compressed and loudness normalized to -19 LUFS (since it was a mono file, this is the perceptual equivalent of -16 LUFS for stereo files). I hadn't really noticed this much noise in this mic in the past. And this was all recored as I'm starting to evaluate the new RØDE NTG4+ which I received a few days ago. So far, I'm wondering if maybe there's something wrong with my copy of the NTG4+. RØDE is arranging for an engineer to contact me so we can figure out what's going on with this new mic so it may be a few more weeks before we can publish that review.

Thanks for the Feedback!

Wow! Over 90 responses to our last episode where we asked what you wanted to learn about next. And the funny thing? The answer is pretty much, "Yes, all of the above!"

So that's good news to me. It means that all these ideas I've had running through my head are pretty much in line which what you all would like to cover!

We have the first one on order: the RØDE NTG4+. It should arrive some time in March and we should have that review posted somewhere near the end of the month.

Then in April we should see the RØDELink wireless lavalier system. This one is quite interesting. I don't think we'll see pros that work in certain situations move to this new kind of wireless system right away, but maybe I'm wrong about that. What makes this different is that it uses the 2.4Ghz range, the same range that most WiFi networks use. The other wireless systems on the market that have been in use for many years use UHF frequencies. Apparently, the FCC in the US is looking at re-allocating some of those frequencies to other purposes so its going to be rough for some in the next little bit.

With these new wireless systems that use the 2.4Ghz range, on the other hand, you have to potentially worry about interference from WiFi and other consumer electronics (like cordless phones) interfering.

Ty Ford recently posted a test he did with a similar system: The Audio Technica System 10 wireless lavalier system which recently introduced a DSLR receiver for their kit which retails for around $450 USD. The main down-side to the Audio Technica System is that it doesn't use a standard plug for the mic so you're committed to using AT's mics.

In any case, Ty said that he was able to shoot several hours with the AT system 10 and did  not have a single drop-out. That's pretty impressive.

But before we completely nerd out on audio gear again, we'll first cover the Atomos Shogun. Again, not a full review because there have been a bunch of those already. But more a discussion on what it does for one's workflow. I'm finding that 4k is a lot more expensive than just buying a Panasonic GH4...

And of course Audition and Resolve were popular votes as well. We've got plenty to cover there as well as we dive in and learn more on the audio and color fronts.

So thanks again for your input! We've got lots of exciting things to cover in the next few months!