CineMontage

Q4 2019

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87 F A L L Q 4 I S S U E T E C H N O L O G Y Brad Engleking: "Phase/time aligning multiple mics is now a one-click process." You Talkin' to Me? W hen it comes to cleaning up tracks, iZotope RX 7 is hands- down the crowd favorite. But making a dialogue track shine requires more than just cleaning. There's sound quality, character, clarity, and sync to consider, as well. Here we look at two different tools that can help improve the dialogue and save you some time. AUTO-ALIGN POST BY SOUND RADIX G re a t d i a l o g u e s ta r ts w i t h g re a t production sound. But conditions on-set are often challenging for the sound team. There isn't always room to get a boom in close, and if an actor has an amazingly low and gravelly voice, a boom that's too far away might not capture that charac- ter. The lav mic will, but it might sound too chesty or too close, and not have enough room on it for a medium shot. Each mic track is imperfect on its own, so why not mix the two together for the best of both worlds? " B u t w h a t a b o u t p h a s i n g ? ," y o u might ask. S o u n d R a d i x 's A u t o - A l i g n P o s t (https://www.soundradix.com/products/ auto-align-post/) plug-in phase/time aligns two different mic tracks of the same take so you can play the lav and boom tracks together without creating that unpleasant phasing sound. "Before Auto-Align Post, a dialogue editor might try to phase-lock different tracks of the same take by micro-edit- ing them until it sounded great. That's a very long and trying process. And it's nearly impossible if the actors are moving around because then the phase By Jennifer Walden relationship changes over the course of the scene (because of the delay time). Auto-Align Post detects that, as well, and fixes it," explains re-recording mixer/ sound supervisor and Guild member Brad Engleking at TBD Post (https:// tbdpost.com/) in Austin, TX. "Phase/ time aligning multiple mics is now a one-click process." Auto-Align Post is an AAX AudioSuite plug-in that works in Pro Tools on Mac and PC. (Sorry Reaper fans, this one won't work for you.) The interface is easy to understand and overall the process is simple. First, determine which track you want to use as the reference and which one you want to process. In Pro Tools, select the dialogue you want to process. Next, open the Auto-Align Post plug-in via the AudioSuite menu. In the plug-in window, click on the Reference T ra c k d ro p - d ow n m e n u a n d c h o o s e the track in your session that you want Auto-Align Post to use as the reference. The dialogue you are processing will be aligned to this reference track. Then hit "Preview" (to see how the dialogue will be affected) or hit "Render," which will replace the dialogue you selected with a new audio file that has been phase/time aligned to the reference track. If you'd like to see this in action, Mike Thornton at Pro Tools Expert has an excellent and informative demo: h tt p s : //w w w.p ro - to o l s - ex p e r t .co m / home-page/2018/8/22/how-to-use-auto- align-post-from-sound-radix-to-get- multiple-mics-on-moving-sources-in- time-and-phase-expert-tutorial. Ready to try it out? Sound Radix of- TWO TOOLS CAN HELP SAVE TIME WHEN EDITING DIALOGUE

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