in this video i'm going to show you how to make your voice cut through the mix
be it background music sound effects or both with some very simple sound mixing that anybody can do
i'm raphael and welcome to the channel where our goal is to always fix it in camera and
then finesse it in post and i always appreciate the early thumbs up because today is all about
finessing your audio in post what we will walk through today can be done in any software as
long as it has eq capabilities but i'm a fan of final cut pro so we'll be using that in this video
getting good sounding voice in videos has always been a struggle i've never known what to look for
in the audio mix i just knew if it sounded good or not and i have friends who do that professionally
and make it seem easy and i will share what i've learned so you can get to a good place fast in
your sound mix first and foremost this video assumes that your audio was recorded well i made
a video about some best practices for recording audio the link is in the description what we are
trying to do is to make sure that the voice and the music audio frequencies don't overlap too much
and that each has their own space to play in the frequency it's about creating audio
contrast think of it like this it's like using the same color to design something if the colors
are too similar it's hard to distinguish what is what the same is true for audio frequencies
the usable voice frequency band ranges from about 300 hertz to about 3 400 hertz
for males typically it's a little bit lower on that scale and for females it's higher
and music can fall across an even wider range and depending on the types of instruments used
the frequency can follow right where the voice lives so the goal is to make sure that the voice
has a priority in that frequency space with little interference in the intelligibility
so we'll cut the frequency out of the music where the voice is most prominent
first once you've done your edit and all your audio is separated to its proper roles
dialogue effects and music i would put them in the compound clip by pressing option g
then right click on the compound clip and select expand audio components this is where we will do
all the audio adjustments and mix for the dialogue effects and the music this is final cut's way of
making an audio bus i would love if there was a way to apply these effects and controls to all
the audio parameters to whole audio lanes it would make this process so much easier first
we'll deal with the music as a base lower the volume so it's bouncing around negative 20 db
apply the channel eq effect from the effects browser on the icon to open up the parameters
we want to cut around the 1k mark pull it down about -18 db
we'll do a wide sweep cut for now and refine a little later this is the area where the voice
frequency tend to live before anything i add a light vocal denoise to get rid of any background
hiss that may be present in the audio and doing this first ensures that any hits won't get
amplified with anything that we do next first add the compressor effect found in the audio
levels effect panel simply a compressor is used to compress a sound's dynamic range that is it
makes the louder and quieter parts of the sound's performance closer to each other in the level
this is where i would check the input level to make sure it's not peaking i would leave the
threshold at around negative 20 db the threshold is the level that the signal needs to raise above
in order for the compressor to begin to work if the signal is too low or doesn't cross the
threshold the compressor will simply allow the signal to pass through unchanged i set the ratio
to 4 to 1 which is pretty good for the voice the compression ratio determines how much gain
reduction the compressor applies when the signal passes a threshold level for example the ratio 4
to 1 means that for every 4 decibels the signal raises above the threshold the compressor will
increase the output by one decibel i generally leave the makeup as is but the makeup gain
parameter refers to the gain control at the output of the compressor compressors reduce the level of
loudness signals so after implementing compression you usually end up with a quieter signal and this
is where the makeup brings that level back but i turn on auto gain to do this for me with an
output of 0 db i turn on the limiter and the limiter takes compression to the extreme and
provides more use in the mastering process during mixing in fact a limiter is a type of compressor
with a really high ratio and as the name suggests limiting sets a limit or a ceiling for the output
level i set it to negative 3 db this ensures that nothing goes above that and then i adjust
the output to around negative 6 db now add the channel eq found in the audio eq effect panel
is where we'll make sure that it's only giving us the frequencies we want what we want to look
for is any resonance frequencies and remove them like so they have their purpose in place
but mostly they take way too long to set up to get the right shot especially motorized sliders
there is a dedication to using these usually pre-planning and understanding the limitations
i find them fantastic for product shots and for shots that are planned for them
where a shot has to be repeated over and over again for vfx layering or repeat takes but for
the most part they too just sit in a case for when they are needed which isn't that regularly and
don't even get me started on the travel size ones because majority of the time they just stay in the
backpack instead i've always found more success with the portal rail like this one from rig wheels
once it's set up you test your shot what i typically listen for is that humming or singing
sound and try to reduce it and i just look for very noticeable ones and cut them out by three to
five db and i only do this for the big distracting frequencies and each voice and location produces
different resonance then i would bump up the overall high end to give more presence overall
next i would add the de-esser de-essing is the process of attenuating or reducing sibilance or
the harsh high-frequency sounds that come from dialogue or vocals using letters like s f x sh
and the soft c's it's an often necessary process when mixing audio but it's rarely easy especially
if you're just getting started i still find it a bit tricky and i generally just check the monitor
to see what it's picking up and just leave it they have their purpose in place especially motorized
and with all these effects you can save presets if you're working with
the same voice and location to get to a starting point really quickly
and right after this i would listen to both the music and the voice and see how they play together
and adjust the volumes accordingly to make sure that it feels balanced overall understanding the
limitations i find them fantastic for product shots and for shots that are planned for them
where a shot has to at this point you're good to go with your mix with the built-in tools
but if you're anything like me there has to be a simpler and streamlined way to make sure that
the voice sounds good this is where some of my few favorite plugins come in handy and i'll be honest
i was very hesitant at first because i am not an audio engineer or an audio guy at all so plugins
were the last thing on my mind until a friend recommended that i would download the free trial
and i've been using accusa since era 4 to help make the audio editing process a lot easier
overall but they reached out recently to see if i wanted to try out what was new in era5 they have
really tried to take the complexity out of audio editing and mixing with some pretty cool tools
to tackle most audio issues with a few clicks that most people face this includes a denoiser
a de-esser a plosive remover which reduces those hard p's and f sounds when you're too
close to a mic voice leveler which is in essence a normalized function to bring up lower end sound
up to be closer to the higher end volume but with this effect i found that you have to be
careful because it can bring up background noise so you have to make sure that you're recording in
a quiet place or add a denoiser before adding the voice leveler there's also multi-clicker and my
two favorite the voice deepener and voice audio eq i find myself using the voice audio eq very
often as it does about 90 of all the stuff that i showed you before but with a very simple control
just move it around until you find the sound that best suits what you're looking for first you find
a clean 5 second section with the voice click the learn button let it analyze with its built-in ai
and when it's done you want it a bit more airy do you want more clarity
or more body and just tweak the position and the intensity to your liking and you're good to go
today we're gonna talk about the best ice cream place in town i've always felt that a good gelato
place was missing around here but it's finally here and it's amazing sometimes though i'll
double up the voice layer and add auto voice eq to one and leave the other one clean or maybe
add a little bit of denoise and just blend the two layers together because sometimes i find the
effect still a bit too intense i also like using the voice deepener because this is really handy
depending on the mic that you record with it helps bring back some of that low end that can be lost
with mics that lean towards the high end pickup they also have a cool voice changer plugin that
has some pretty fun effects with presets you can transform regular voices into any character you
can imagine there are three types of profiles that you can apply the character the environment and
effect by using or combining any of these profiles you can make creative scenarios out of otherwise
normal voices both era 5 and voice changer work on windows and mac in most nles and audio editors
there's a link in the description for a free trial for both era 5 and voice changer they
also have a monthly subscription or a perpetual license if that's the way you want to go there's
also a link in the description for my free final cut preset that i used in this video
for you to use as a starting point in your workflow if you found this video helpful here's
a playlist of more final cut tips and tricks and i do a live stream on my second channel
where i do deep dives on the creative process and discuss freelancer financials as always thanks for
watching give this video a big thumbs up subscribe i'm rafael i'll talk to you soon bye for now