Post-Production : Dialogue editing for documentaries by Andrew Macht

Adobe Audition. Its designed for it. great noise removal tools, Video sync, sound sweetening. Its part of the Adobe Production Suite and is perfectly integrated with Premier. I use it every day.

Thanks for your input, but I was more concerned with the workflow than the Digital Audio Workstations.

I find workflow to be a very personal process, also, very project dependent. I also think that your DAW makes a huge difference to your workflow process; horses for courses. When mixing and editing on the run I also find Audition to be great as it allows for easy workflow organising - with regards to my personal workflow process. In terms of basics; Are you getting all the content at once, or piece by piece (scene by scene)? Are you getting a frame-locked edit or are you mixing during production? How much control do you have over the audio side of the project (Often I work with people - for the first time - who want to have a lot of control over every process, which changes my workflow process. Other times I work with people who trust my judgement, which has a completely different workflow process). This is all hoping that we understand 'workflow' as the same thing. Also, probably wholly unhelpful...

The film I am currently working on is in the post-production process, and I am recieving the film in sets of reels through .omf format and starting my process from there. For me, personally; I am working in Pro Tools. I've used most DAWs on various project throghout my career and tend to find that the workflow during the dialogue editing in post-production is fairly the same. DAWs are based on professional grade to cosumer grade and mostly personal preference. My question is mainly wondering about the workflow as a dialogue editor during the post-production process than mixing as the production sound mixer during the production process. When I say, "workflow" I refer to the process upon recieving an .omf , video file, and production logs; then editing. To the send off of the dialogue edit to the Sound Effects, ADR, Foley, and Music departments. I am focused on how you go about editing your dialogue before you send it off for the other departments to view. However, if your the person responsible on a low budget project for the entire audio post-production process; I would still love to hear your feedback on how you go about your edit.

As an addition, I would also keep the focus of discussion on editing documentaries as the dialogue editor.

A lot of the workflow can be automated with RX4 including deverb, ambient replacement, leveling, and loudness compliance. Much of the workflow depends on the production sound recording. Was it boom only? Were lavs used on separate tracks? Was a boom used with lavs? Did lavs have wind protection? A lot of production errors are NOT fixable in post. Production sound has to be well done! Lavs on separate tracks need to have non-speaking mics muted to eliminate any phase distortion (this seems to be number one post error I hear in docs and low budget films).

Hey John, Thanks for input. How would you go about editing a session of dialogue for a documentary? Whats your workflow on starting out? Thanks, Andrew Macht

Picture has to be cut and locked before editing dialogue, All tracks need to be kept separate for a specific voice if possible. If multiple angles with multiple cameras and multiple audio tracks then voices are separate for each sync'd combination of cameras and audio. Any wildtracks or VO needs to be on separate tracks. Any live musical instrument hopefully was recorded on separate track. Each track is exported separately as 32bit float along with proxy video. Tracks and proxy video are loaded to DAW. Manually level tracks if too muck variation or use RX4 to auto level tracks. DO NOT NORMALIZE dialogue tracks! Once leveled then clean out noise, spectral errors, etc. Adjust for loudness compliance.

Thanks John, most of my workflow begin after picture lock. But, during the production im working on, the picture changed so, I was forced to reconform. Really it is a pain. For workflow, I open pro tools; DAW of choice, then import everything from an .omf file. After the .omf is imported, I open up my guide track usually a .wav file sent from the video crew, then I import my .mov file and bring in the audio from the video. I sync the guide and video up after audio is loaded from the video. Then check sync of my .omf tracks. After sync is completed, I open up additional blank mono audio tracks , or stereo tracks if the stereo tracks are needed. Usually, I open 6 tracks labled Dia A-F, 2 tracks labled 2 VO A-B, then open up 6 more tracks and lable those Scene A-F, then I add in 4 tracks labled PFX A-D, and add 2 more and label those Work 1 and 2, then an additional 2 more and label those Junk 1 and 2. After all tracks are labeled, I go through and listen to the .omf tracks. Usually 2 mics are provided, and I check for any doubling up of audio as in two of the exact same audio takes are playing at once. I check this by inverting one of the tracks with a plugin. If I dont here anything, I delete one of the duplicated tracks. I do this for every track in the .omf until the end of the reel. After removing duplicates. I then copy and paste all those tracks in the .omf to the Dialogue A-F staggering to every other track, I work this out scene by scene until then end of the reel. Once tracks are copied I hide all the tracks from the .omf, usually during the copy of tracks or listening for duplicates, I end up adding in markers to split up my scene boundaries. After the .omf tracks are hidden, I go through the session again and split out any unblanced room tone on the adjacent track below the corresponding track, with splitting out any production sfx to the PFX tracks. If a scene is something on related to an interview like people playing cards I move the entire scene to a Scene track. After, everything is moved. I do a quick mix with clip gain and balance the levels of all the tracks. That is really the beginning of my session setup. After that I begin editing and correcting. Any thoughts on this would be appreciated. thanks, Andrew Macht

Andrew, A couple of things right out of the bins I see is to consider having them cut each scene as a separate sequence. That way each scene is in a separate container and changes to cuts in one scene will not affect unchanged scenes. Then contain each scene in the DAW. I'm a little confused about the "guide track" you are using. Normally a "guide track" is sync audio from the camera and would be contained in the .mov in sync with the video on the NLE timeline. Anything direct from camera (video crew) doesn't make sense. So you really need to explain your use of "guide track" as this SOUNDS like a lot of extra work.

Hey John, The .wav file I receive is easily synced, just adds an extra step though. However I do this because having a video editor process both audio and video into one file can compress the audio to the video specs. I want to have the best audio provided for when I do A/B comparisons. This step can be avoided if you so choose. For the reconform, I usually split up the tracks to scenes, having the scenes fall adjacent to each other. I believe we are on the same page as this, just you diverted in video editing. Hopefully, the video editors knows how to edit because if the are not making use out of sequences for each scene it will make more of a headache down the line. If you could attach photos in this app, I would send you a picture of the session to help clear this up.