Best way to merge audio

Patryk Rebisz wrote on 5/23/2006, 8:51 PM
Hey i have a song playing in the background and then from time to time cut aways of people saying stuff (intercut to a party scene where we basically see people having fun). Is there a way to automate volume control so that when the people are talking in one clip the volume gets adjusted on the music track???

Comments

farss wrote on 5/23/2006, 10:13 PM
Yes,
and it's not a good way but compression will do this.
In general I apply some compression to speech, simply because it's vital that the viewer can understand what's being said and most voices need a little help as the average listening environment is fairly noisy.

Having got the speech OK you can add the music and apply some compression to the overall mix. But it's hardly a good approach. A better approach is to leave enough room in the spectrum for the speech to fit, in other words use Eq to ease out (gently) that part of the spectrum that the speech lies in.
Doing this you find you don't need to duck the music so much, if at all. Result is far more pleasing.

There's also a plugin that'll write an automation envelope which one can invert and use to duck the music. I've only had a brief play around with this and well, it does seem to take a lot of fiddling to get it to really work right.

TorS wrote on 5/24/2006, 6:51 AM
I second Bob's middle solution (the spectre). Also, remember that even if there is room, the music between voice bit does not have to be loud, unless you are going for that as an effect.
Tor
Rosebud wrote on 5/24/2006, 8:47 AM
See the free SIDEKICK plugin at http://www.twistedlemon.nl/
Patryk Rebisz wrote on 5/24/2006, 9:53 PM
Ahhh.... you guys are talking way over my head! I remember buck in college the tecaher showed us how to automate such thing in Pro Tools. A few clicks and he was done...
farss wrote on 5/24/2006, 10:35 PM
Bet he didn't show you how long it was going to take to render out :)

Also I bet he had VOs that were as smooth as silk.

But that plugin that Rosebud linked to would let you do it in a few clicks. Just read all the notes on the authors site. Seems it has been tested with Vegas 6.

Bob.
Patryk Rebisz wrote on 5/24/2006, 10:41 PM
I drag the file into my Audio plugins directory and nothing....
farss wrote on 5/25/2006, 12:23 AM
You have to add the plug to the chain.
And you have to add it to two tracks.

There are some destructions on how to use the plug on the guys web site.

So say you have two tracks, one has the voice and the other the music. You click on the FX icon in the track header, select Add and find the plugin and add it to the chain. I'd suggest you could delete the rest of the FX in the chain.

You do this for BOTH tracks. Then follow the instructions from the site to make one the master and the other the slave, so in your case the one with speech on it will be the master.

I'd go through this on my local Vegas machine but it's tied up right now.

Bob.
Rosebud wrote on 5/25/2006, 1:19 AM
>>> I drag the file into my Audio plugins directory and nothing....

make sure to set the VST directory in Tools > Preferences > VST Effects
Patryk Rebisz wrote on 5/25/2006, 7:01 AM
Are we talking about V5 here....? As i don't see anything VST related.
Rosebud wrote on 5/25/2006, 7:34 AM
Oops.. no, i'm talking about V6...
You need a VST wrapper with V5.