How Dialog Should Sound! (Basic Film Audio Design) 

This guy is cutting frequencies with a -10/-15db boost and a bit wide Q factor and says the change is subtle "subtle" lol

I'm surprised. First: yes, the human voice very much does make sounds below 100 Hertz. I don't know where you got that from, it's demonstrably false. Second: why don't you just group this bus to another track to gain an extra instance of the equalizer? Third: Yes you can very much remove the fundamental frequency, because we're ought to make the voice sound better by any means should we choose so. And since we talk constant ringing, you want to avoid all of those for clarity. Fourth: Do not keep the EQ bands active once you found a frequency you found jarring when you try to find the next. Because chances are that you are getting a false positive that way as you alter the source material for harmonics. You are changing the phase alignment and make different frequencies pop out more if you cut others. Once you have all the constants that you think are a problem, keep the frequency but start at 0db and pull them down a little until you figure out which of the ones are more jarring than others. Also don't be afraid to boost certaian frequencies which cause another phase shift that can actually counter ringing frequencies due to a wider spectrum that is heard. Fifth: EQ is only one instance. (Multiband) Compression, de-essing, noise reduction are just as important for a clean, smooth and transparent audio track. Sixth: Alter the audio in an actual DAW, because it has far more power and flexibility and you're not limited like any video editing software is. Then import the tracks back into the project :) Seventh (from Edit): Check audio track alignment. Even with the marker, and even with auto-align software, there is a chance you are off by more than one frame. This sometimes causes the image to be "blurry" as we subconsciously try to lip-sync the audio in our brain and when it's slightly off, we feel that. Others feel it more actively with more acute senses. Whenever the audio is too separated from the video track I feel like the video is "blurry" when the audio track doesn't line up perfectly. Sound travels really slow, so even a few meters of distance to the speaker can already have an offset of a frame or two, and not all capturing devices are made equal in terms of latency.

So I've been doing some reorganizing today, so probably gonna end up doing that tonight!

Sound design is fascinating and this is a topic that I always enjoy watching. So yes more of this type of guest would be great.

Sorry, but it sounds awful. This sort of notch filtering is a bad idea on speech that is meant to sound natural, because it's correlated with the room-bound impulse response. For a radio voice, maybe, but here the main issue is the microphone technique. If you need to use more than 5-6 db of notching, and you use very narrow Q like this, you know you're in trouble. What you deemed was the voice's 'fundamental' wasn't the fundamental - it was the room's main resonant frequency and this is where most of the problem occurs. There is a key frequency at 2K that can make sound tiring, and there is another key at 8K where presence and "air" can make a lot of difference in the perception of intimacy. Maybe you should stop using headphones to monitor, unless the audio was captured with a dummy head.

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FYI boosting a frequency by 10-20db in not "a little" as dude says, that's an EXTREME boost which will likely cause other problems: artifacts, phasing issues .. it's like gaining up a shot 20 stops after filming ... it breaks shit. In the audio world you can typically get results by cutting 1db in the right places and MAYBE boost by 1-3db in certain spots. Filter out the rumble frequencies below 90hz on dialogue and boom.

The sound on that clip still sounds awful even after the corrections....

Funny enough, I thought that the way Mark processed his own voice for this video was a bit overboard haha. Mids are scooped like crazy, and it sounds like he's heavily boosted his highs and depending too much on his de-esser/compressor to keep it controlled. This might keep his vocal consistent and purposeful for this video in particular, but a little harsh sounding overall I felt. Great video though.

Supervising Sound Editor here. This is a bit wrong, sorry. First of all, EQing is NOT a main part of the sound editor at all. That is a job for Re-Recording Mixer. Second, "searching" for the harsh frequencies and aggressive attenuating is not what a sound mixer does. The sound mixer should have a trained ear and shape the color of the dialogue, based on the actual scene, required mood, color the speak for special directors' wishes (like Nolan does), and so on. Making those steep band cuts will influence a lot of phase issues and even make the dialogue sound unnatural. What the video is maybe trying to say is, cleaning and tweaking badly recoded dialogue. Which yes, job for an editor. But that's more like a "crisis alert" moment and performing attempts to "repair" the dialogue, not the actual mix. Btw. check the videos from Thomas Boykin. He's having a great videos about mixing.

I don't understand what we are looking for in sound. I can't recognise this "ooo" sound. To me, everything kinda sounds the same. Can you explain it a little more? Thank you.

15dbs is not a little bit 😂😂🤣. But it’s a pretty decent tutorial. At the end of the day, what matters is the sound you get out of it, so whatever sounds good!

i couldn't hear these sounds he was talking about. I am wearing headphones.

a fader isnt a blunt tool. it is blunt when the hands are too heavy. Sorry Guy, I like your videos but your presenter is all talk and little craft.

Honestly, I don't get it. For the most part, I don't hear single frequency bands poking out of the spektrum while sweeping. I just hear a massive resonance filter. Also, why would you want to take out the bands that are characteristic for the voice in question? The more you apply this concept to a voice, the more you reduce its sound to a whisper, i.e. you are left with the sibilants in the end. And those get squished in the de-essing stage later, so what have you gained other than reducing the overall volume?? Also also, if you put this EQ on your voice bus and send _all_ dialogue through it, you process _every_ voice with the settings that are characteristic to *_one_* individual voice. And then, of course, you ommited de-essing, compression etc. etc. But okay, this was not meant to be comprehensive - but in my experience, those are far more important than basic EQing.

Sound is so huge in film. Always underestimated.

One of the best EQ's in the world... lol

why do i feel like this guy has no idea what he's talking about

Bad EQ handling. And it didn't sound better after

That is the exact type of pro audio editing on a film tutorials that we can't find on youtube. More of this please. Same for color grading (the kind that exists on youtube, does NOT mirror how hollywood colorists work -- for example, they only talk about colors, not about texture).

This Guy Edits, it looks like his page is CinemaSound.com not CinematicSound.com

Bill Skarsgård got a twin sister or something?

How can someone teach so wrong and people still dont get it ... God 🤦

Please, do not follow theses advices ! Cutting harmonics is a real real real bad advices. Clean up a dial, a good starting point is cutting with a low pass filter around 70hz to 100hz (make your choice with your ears). Then, with your ears, find potential echoes, and lower with eq. You can boost (be subtle, around 2-3 db), between 1-3kHz. Gives more clarity. If you have noise, use a light denoiser. If you have to much room, use a deverberator. If you still have trouble, call the sound engineer, and ask him to be more precise for his next recording. Shit in = shit out

"One of the best sounding eqs in the world"... essentially every digital parametric eq shares the same source code. You can make reaper stock plugins null with waves, fabfilter and DMG. Same same.

4:28 - This is very, very misleading. Plenty of male voices have fundamental frequencies below 100hz. (They may not have been properly captured on set, or with a sub-optimal mic) In this instance where you're trying to balance the DX with SFX, walla, ambience, music etc. - the best practice is to roll off the lowest frequencies. IMHO this is a good idea, but when you're dealing with just DX in an environment with no other sounds, sometimes leaving in the very low frequencies will create a sense of warmth and intimacy. Just my 2 cents 🙂

How do you download and use the presets any tutorials on that im really interested also wen u use the presets anyway to adjust to your own liking ?

Your attenuating cuts should be way smaller than this. Also, often you want to cut out that sibilance you mention that sits above 5k. For dialogue, you usually want to put a High Pass Filter on too to eliminate low frequency noise not made my the actors voice.

When you see two back to back frequencies using two markers instead of one expanded you start questioning so much lol

5:12 this is the worst advice that exists, I feel. If you do this technique you will always find a frequency that stands out to you. Can this help for reducing resonances from a poorly treated recording space? Sure, but you will find frequencies that stand out to you to notch whether you should or not-this is the most poisonous technique for beginners and is the audio engineering equivalent of a witch hunt.

I hate mostovies have more music and background nouse and dialogues ate totally understandable specially me coming from non english speaking background its cery hard for me to get untill its clear i saw all 6 seasons of the flash never got this problem but when i watch hollywood movies many of them have unhearable dialogues i hate it specially horror movies have the worst case they force u to full ur volume as dialogues ate like 1% of loudness of the movie and just too kuch background noise justto make us freakout but i just left watching movies at all bcz of this stupidity

I like how you make it clear how long you’ve been doing this which doesn’t stop you from being flawed

I think "basic" should probably not be in the video title, but i'm sure this will be very helpful to me some day. Right now? So lost 😅

Are you sure male voice starts at 150Hz? Seems really high to me. That's already more like female voice.

I love how there's absolutely no fluff in this tutorial. Straight to the point, and Mark makes it all really easy to understand. Thanks guys!

I see Stephen Still, The talent and press click.

I dont care about the terrible sound but what I do care about is that CELLPHONES GO DARK WHEN YOU HOLD THEM ON A CALL.

Title of this video should be please by DaVinci resolve. I don't see how showing people the most basic of all functions EQ, is in any way useful. Clip editing clip choice are far more important and come before EQ.

Wow! This must take hours and hours to do a whole 2 hr movie.

This is not good advice. Those frequencies are ringing because of the room that the actress is in and this doesn’t represent the norm for eq correction. If you are trying to get rid of those rings i would make the eq narrower and cut less. But this is more like correction and not “a basic grade” whatever that means. You should be gently tone shaping as an editor - not trying to go in and surgically correct every tiny ring. You will be wasting your valuable editing time. If you are trying to make a good experience for your director. what you are trying to achieve is consistency between takes. That means using much gentler wider cuts and Qs to balance the over all tone of each scene / microphone. Use your ears and use restraint - better rough and balanced than “clean” and thin. That will achieve the desired viewing experience for your director before its handed to an audio professional - which it absolutely must be if you want it to sound great.

Wasn't sure I heard the tone.. I will play it again with headphones.

The first scene is so weird. It's like he's traveling in a different car heading in a different direction as the girl. Maybe because he's traveling to screen left and she's traveling to screen right? Or maybe cause they're so far off the side of the screen. Anyone else notice this?

oh no lmao appreciate this guy but unfortunately..... he doesnt really know what hes doing. Looks like a colorist if hes using Resolve NOT an audio engineer or dialogue editor. i bet hes making great money on youtube tho.

It sounds like she's talking through a tube at the beginning.

This channel has like a dozen cross-promotions & join here for this & subscribe there for 2 free months, etc. Too much. Way too much.

what about band 1 and band 6, can't bro just enable them??????

The number of ad breaks on this was ridiculous.

I don’t hear anything when he’s editinf

I was looking into Alex Audio Butler extension , what is your opinion. Is it worth it?

When he cuts to the audio expert and his voice sound ultra compressed 🤨🤨🤨

I dont know why, but.... i really dont understand

Does anyone know where to get the hat that he’s wearing at 10:26?

Sending this to Christopher Nolan

Hey That's Stephen Stills. He's the talent.

Mark Webber is one of my favorite actors. I love 13 Sins.

How funny. I just watched hacksaw ridge with redhead in it

Awesome. I kind of hate sound design as I only partly get it. I’m the visual Director/DOP guy... unless I one man it! Then I need to figure it all out!!! Hence watching this! Thanks 😀🕺🏻🎥🏖🇦🇺🎄

Do not Eq like that, if he makes money i should be rich by now.

Does anyone know how to record dialogue specifically so you can also record foley in post?

"reduce it a liiiiittle bit" *makes a 10dB cut :D:D

ok. so let's reduce the gain and q factor.

Wow, clear as mud. I hardly have any idea what's being done.

Then this process is for from edit bay to release.

Guys, I think I might be deaf

Omg I am stuck with this time to make things change

yes please to more guest experts share pro-tips on editing and post production (but still with Sven's own take and thoughts too)

I Love to Edit..Sacrficed my daily old job for it..bcus i want to do what i love in life.Learning alone only by watching youtube videos..no other options open fr me..u teach the core main asoect of editing and i try to learn as much as i can..Thank u so much.Love from India❤️

I don't know why Mark Edward starts off by saying that Fairlight is one of the best and then goes on saying that it's really limited. He did a similar video for The Film Look channel where he worked with Audition and used A LOT of frequencies, because you can stack Parametric Equalizers in Adobe software -> Even directly in Premiere, because it's the same plugin. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-nzaEPHByCIk.html Another limitation is the Q Factor that doesn't let you go too narrow, so you can't really pick one very problematic frequency and tone it down -15dB, therefore you have to go wider and only tone down -9dB because otherwise you would be affecting neighboring good frequencies that you want to keep. But all in all, you work with what you have, because this sort of work on audio is definitely needed. And as he said, you don't need 30 years of experience, just a little bit of practice.

you cant save that sound. its messy lol

My question is me speaking as an absolute newbie. I've been reviewing a few tutorials on Davinci Fairlight basics, and I find there are so many approaches in the EQ. In your video @8:45 the final EQ looks like the letter W with 4 V-shaped troughs where everything is below the line. I've seen another tutorial where the person takes the same approach as you except with 2 small V-shaped troughs with everything below the line. Also, at the both extreme ends the lines are flat. What I don't understand is that there are other tutorials where the final EQ looks like the letter M -- where the extreme high and low frequencies are made low below the line, and then there are usually 2 peaks that go above the line. As a newbie, seeing all these different approaches, I'm confused how come there are so many different approaches and I'm struggling to know which advice to follow. Do you have any guidance on how a newbie can sort through the so many different approaches?

Really bothering me that there's only 4 bands here. Not sure if DaVinci resolve allows VST plugins, but if so, Cockos makes a really good EQ that comes with Reaper. The lack of a low pass and high pass is really bothering me. High passing and low passing would really help cut down on room noise from the microphones.

this is absolute gold. I am always looking for the best way to edit audio for film and this has been the best yet explained video for it. Thanks

I think that audio was a bad example because it sounded almost identical with the finished product because of the room's reverb. Still sounded kinda crappy in the mids. I would love to have seen him edit a clip with a background noise or a 60 cycle into silence

Can't you just export the audio and import into a daw then you can use similar plugins that can give you inifinite bands to work with. And there are so many other functions you can use to fix this sound.

What's the film title?

Well, completely agree with all what Khunvyel said and that just the basic of mixing dialogue. Sorry to say that but working on a proper daw will be much more convenient, no any pro will do post with Davinci! I mean I'm not gonna edit a movie on Nuendo right? Also doing some eq sweeping like he's doing will always end up with tones of resonating frequencies and luckily that he doesn't have a 31 bands because he'll end up with a flat and inconsistent sound. The dialogue he's working on will to me need first some restauration, cleaning etc. with RX more than eq at first, then I'll rather use dynamic eq rather than parametric eq and that will be just a small part of the work to get a, as you put in the title of the video "How dialogue should sound". And to finish, the dialogue includes room ambiance so, hard eq on it with also affect all other sounds, room tone and other sounds that are happening during the scene. Sorry, I don't want to be mean but the content of that video is completely wrong. And about the 100Hertz, last day I recorded a VO and the talent's voice was going down to 57Hrtz, yes very low voice but just to say...

Good illustration

Probably sponsored by the egg industry. Vegans cannot participate in this challenge. Very disappointed! But cool video!

there are a lot of really weird things about this EQ strategy. firstly, 15dB is A LOT. i’d only use that much if there’s an audible background noise in the recording. second, don’t use tiny bands to specifically eq out harmonics. the pitch of voices change, so use a small dip. i don’t know if he’s doing this intentionally, but the reason why it’s a good idea to EQ in that part of the frequency spectrum is to reduce proximity effect from the recording so it sounds like the person isn’t standing incredibly close to you. and, it should one small, wide dip, maybe 1-3db. you should MOST CERTAINLY eq sibilance! we evolved to be most sensitive to that frequency of sound (see equal loudness contour graph). the only part of this tutorial that i’d 100% get behind is the sweeping frequencies strategy. In The Mix has a good video on editing vocals for music, pretty much the same should apply to this. this is a difficult thing to learn because it requires you to listen to audio in a new way, so don’t feel bad if you can’t get it immediately. our brains are wired to adjust our hearing based on the context we are in, so it’s difficult to know what to look for. while you’re eq’ing, try to compare your voice part to another recording of speech you know you like. the juxtaposition should help emphasize where problem areas are.

Sounds worse afterward... This is the opposite of what I have been taught.

There are much better equalizers. Free: Ardour. Cheap but good: REAPER. But then, you're exporting and reimporting. Fairlight does have the advantage of being built-in.

How much of this functionality is in FCPX? Or should one clean up the Actors Dialogue in another Product as - eventually - I’ll be ramping up to 12 actors in a couple scenes where each has lines...

Really thorough breakdown but man, I couldn't follow any of it! Thanks for your time though!

The Man, The Myth, The Legend, Mark Webber, F1 driver and director

Good nice

I had to use close-captions to finally understand what David Craig and Rooney Mara were saying while lying on the bed near the end of David Fincher's "Dragon Tattoo" movie. Sometimes it's just a matter of upping the volume, or having someone who doesn't know the script being there in the final mix.

So good! Im in a biiig situation right now where I have to deal with a feature film editing once I have to mix dialogs recorded with different mics and frequencies. Im kinda of strugglin to balance it all togeter. Im using the SSL Wave plugin to king match it but I'm not sure its the right way. Anyways. Nice tutorial, man. I'll try to use some of these methods to try to get it done. Thanks

I remember first learning everyone always said only lower maybe -5 d maximum...maybe that was just for music..or audio that already sounds great, ill have to try this one.

This was the first time I've watched an audio tutorial and walked away feeling like I can do this.....Gracias

Decades?

Couldn't I just rip the audio, throw it into samplitude/sequoia, edit it, and sync it back up?

Nope.

Though the guy in the middle made some good points, his own audio had huge sibilance problems...

I think the actor director doesn't care that much about the sound design, he focues more on the acting

Too sutil for my ears. I can't really tell apart with or without the effects.. Thats not good for my editing skills. lol

That's actress Teresa Palmer. They probably scrapped that audio.

Although the quality of the presentation is good, there are many dangerous half-truths in this film. I work in audio post for a living and encourage people to look elsewhere for more substantive and qualified advice on sound designing.

Another detail to get right is that the iPhone would turn it’s screen off when you’re on a call and hold it up to your ear, not leave a super bright white screen on.

Uhm, you are aware that when you are sweeping at +10db you are basically creating the problems that you turn down afterwards, right? And -10db cut omfg.

I use this technique all the time. I didn't know you weren't supposed to attenuate the fundamental though. Interesting.