Question regarding volume levels for feature length movies

Posted: Sat Feb 25, 2006 11:22 pm

Found it. Thanks! 79db it is. You are using an x curve. Are you mixing in a large space, with theatrical monitors?

Posted: Sun Feb 26, 2006 12:20 am

"Modified" X-curve 1.5 instead of 3, on the highs, no low end roll off.
Smaller room 3000 cu.ft. with JBL LSR6328Ps and LSR6312SP sub

Posted: Thu Mar 02, 2006 5:26 am

so thats why i see enhanced mix for home theather thanks Smile

Posted: Thu Mar 02, 2006 11:03 pm

Enhanced mix for HT also means the center channel (dialog) level is boosted 3 dBs, so you dont jump during the "action" "explosion" scenes.

Posted: Tue Apr 18, 2006 5:50 pm

Going back to optimizing the volume, I have found that by far the
best but most painstaking method to adjust the fluctuating volume
levels of dialogue, while getting rid of most of or all of the noise,
without degrading the audio quality at all, is to import the track into a
sequencer and work on it a little at a time using only volume
envelopes and nodes.

Posted: Fri Apr 21, 2006 12:44 am

Guys,
Re-Recording is an ART! It's not running your mix through a "Normalizer". I don't know any of my peers who use a "normalizer".
Re-Recording is a skill that is perfected by years of hard work and not one device that makes your movie louder! Evil or Very Mad

Posted: Fri Apr 21, 2006 12:37 pm

Using volume envelopes and nodes is a slow process which you may be
unfamiliar with. Is is not a normalizer, compressor, limiter or any other
automatic process.

Posted: Fri Apr 21, 2006 7:12 pm

Are you talking about breakpoints (nodes) and ... well I don't know what a volume envelope is. These terms may be specific to a particular program. like Cubase or Cakewalk. And how does this process get rid of noise without leaving gaps in your dial? I've been doing audio triage on a feature for two months now. I've used Waves restoration, Equim, Dolby cat.43A, and a Ceder DNS 1000. I am open to all other techniques at this point! Exclamation

Marti, I have known mixers who work at assembly line mix rooms, who actually normalize all the dial to level it out fast. I could never bring myself to do it. I'm not being snobish, I just hate how it sounds.

Posted: Sat Apr 22, 2006 1:06 am

Aracu,
I don't know any of your work, so call the process what you may. Post your name and credits and then we can talk. As for Charles commenting on the assemblyline mixers, who taught them to mix? Who did they ever study under? They are all "cut and paste" editors who call themselves mixers.

Posted: Sat Apr 22, 2006 11:55 pm

Charles, in most sequencers, like Nuendo, Cubase, Sonar, but not in
most audio editors, like Soundforge, if you import audio tracks
you can apply "volume envelopes" which start visually as one horizontal
line through the middle of the track, representing no volume change.
Then by applying "nodes" you can raise or lower the volume in any
precise measurement by raising and lowering the line which is like a graph of how you are adjusting the volume. It is a time consuming process but can work better than automatically processing the volume
with normalizers, compressors and/or limiters in that you are not
leaving it up to a machine to make the decisions, and the envelopes are non-destructive and easily adjustable, especially in Cakewalk/Sonar. They are not meant to be used necessarily to remove noise, but in many situations can be used effectively for that purpose without deteriorating the audio quality at all, by lowering the volume strategically, in the spaces of the dialogue.

Posted: Sun Apr 23, 2006 11:43 am

The technique you describe is called rubberbanding by Avid and FCP editors.

Posted: Wed Apr 26, 2006 10:01 pm

For complex mixes involving lots of tracks and fluctuations in
the relative volumes of dialogue, sound design and music, using
volume envelopes and nodes can bring everything precisely
into control in a completely non-distructive, re-adjustable
way. A mixer's paradise. The same goes for panning, with pan
envelopes and nodes. I doubt that there is a more efficient
technology available for mixing. I have noticed, though, that
some sequencers have more limitations built into their "volume
envelope system", Cakewalk/Sonar being more flexible than
Nuendo or Cubase. I haven't tried it with Avid, the
"rubberbanding" process looks similar.

Posted: Wed Jun 14, 2006 10:01 pm

Vegas Video also for very flexible volume envelopes,
with the added advantage that time stamped wav
files will automatically jump to their proper place on
the timeline.

Posted: Thu Jul 06, 2006 6:59 am

CharlesDayton wrote:

Are you talking about breakpoints (nodes) and ... And how does this process get rid of noise without leaving gaps in your dial? I've been doing audio triage on a feature for two months now. I've used Waves restoration, Equim, Dolby cat.43A, and a Ceder DNS 1000. I am open to all other techniques at this point! Exclamation

Marti, I have known mixers who work at assembly line mix rooms, who actually normalize all the dial to level it out fast. I could never bring myself to do it. I'm not being snobish, I just hate how it sounds.

wow nice plug-ins Smile

..are you using production sound? a sound recordist should always have those ambient noise for audio post production use, try puting some roomtone on the whole scene to mask those edit points

Posted: Wed Jul 12, 2006 10:32 am

Yes I was using production sound. I tend to look at ADR as a last resort. Yes I was creating fill tracks with room tone. The problem was generally a combination of under recorded dial in conjunction with camera noise and sometimes generator noise as well. A lot of the noise was fairly broadband, and when you start notching across the spectrum, the dial really suffers. It really took a combination of all those tools to save some of it.

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