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Audio Post-Production Tips and Workflow
  • sam_sticklandsam_stickland

    (Forgive me if there is one, but I couldn't find a topic on this, so I've started a fresh one).

    Question: In Audition, is it possible to set a volume of one audio track to be based on another? For example, to automatically raise and lower the volume of a room-tone track in response to the dialogue mix? I can't see a way to do this in Adobe Audition. Is it possible in other software such as ProTools or Nuendo? Is this even a good idea, or am I going to end up setting it by hand anyway? It certainly seems like it would be a useful first pass.

  • 14 Replies sorted by
  • MeierhansMeierhans

    You are looking for a compressor with sidechain, so you can feed it with a secobd audio track.

  • sam_sticklandsam_stickland

    Thanks! Once I knew what to call it a quick google search has thrown up SideKick4. I'm off to experiment.

  • KeithLommelKeithLommel

    Just curious why you'd want to do this? Why would it sound better for room noise to get louder and quieter based on dialogue volume? Correct me if I'm wrong, but logic would seem to dictate that room noise should be kept constant with dialogue mixed above it.

  • sam_sticklandsam_stickland

    OK, so this is my first venture into trying to do any post production audio, so any of this could be wrong, but...

    If I remove noises from the middle of a dialog track (e.g. on set noise etc.) it leaves holes in the track where there is noticeably no sound at all, and it needs to be replaced with generic room noise to sound natural again. Of course this can be done by hand by pasting and mixing in room tone, but I was wondering if it was possible to automate this.

    It may well be that I'll discover it's better to copy and paste room tone into the gaps than use a sidechain, but I'm still learning and experimenting :)

  • KeithLommelKeithLommel

    Okay, I get it. I thought you wanted the room noise to be quiet during the gaps and louder when people talk, which would sound very unnatural.

  • soundgh2soundgh2

    During a "tracklay" you'd usually fill the holes with clean atmos recorded at the point of acquisition - or if the mixer has been lazy on set and given you no buzz tracks, pinch a quiet bit from between the dialogue - alternatively you can hard the cut the hell out of it perhaps CEDAR it and pop your own atmos on to taste.

    You can sidechain a compressor over the fill atmos to duck it a few dB when the dialogue is "on" to match the atmos already on your cut dials if you like too - all depends on your source material to be honest - have a play and see what your ear says!

    @`keithLommel sometimes if the rooms noisy or you're filming in a noisy situation (seafront etc etc - if you ever watched LOST you could hear the waves pumping like fook lol) you would duck the added noise by a touch to match - otherwise the noise in the background of the dials + the added noise pops out too much - so you'd drop the added noise a few dB to bed the dials in.

  • sam_sticklandsam_stickland

    FYI: The SideKick4 compressor doesn't have any look ahead, which is kind of limiting it's usefulness for what I want (the room tone should already be up by the time the dialogue track has disappeared).

  • soundgh2soundgh2

    You could copy the cut dials and nudge em up a touch and use that to trigger the key trick :)

  • MacalincagMacalincag

    Has anyone with a Zoom h4n been able to get it to work with premiere pro/audition for Mac?

    My PC has no issues detecting it but my Mac doesn't even see it. In the documentation it only refers to Cubase for usb interface recording, so I'm really wondering if that is the only possible method on the Mac...

  • mrbillmrbill

    I don't think any of the zooms are controllable via usb, other than being recognised as a removable hard drive.

  • Mark_the_HarpMark_the_Harp

    Not sure about the Mac but @mrbill you can definitely use the H4n as an audio interface with a pc if you want.

  • MacalincagMacalincag

    No yeah I use it for my PC just fine... but I wanted to give it a try on my Mac because the fan/water cooler is so loud on the PC it sucks.

  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    Nuendo 11

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