I recently rendered a few scenes of my movie to dvd and took them down the local cinema for a test just to see what it looked like on the big screen.

To my horror one of the characters voices appeared to sound very distorted on there sound system. All the other characters with spoken lines seemed to sound correct.

I am edititing on a standard pair of speaks with Premiere Pro. Here are two samples of the character. The first is un-altered and the second has an increased volume of 20%.

http://www.gorecartoons.co.uk/107.mp3
http://www.gorecartoons.co.uk/107a.mp3

Both sound fine to me even when played back on a tv, so what could cause this strange distortion at the cinema? The volume was up and down, but it sounded as if it were being played down a long tube, any ideas?

I increased the gain of her voice to the max, do you think this could have caused a bad rendering wen burining to dvd?

Are you watching your levels? Open up the "audio mixer." If your audio is hitting red, you know you're done for--the audio will distort. You need to make sure it stays in the yellow.

EDIT: I just listened to your 20% increase clip and opened it up in Audition. It's clipping like whoa. You can't just blindly increase volume. You need to watch your levels. Try searching for a tutorial on handling sound. You need to learn to use a compressor to even out volumes and then a limiter to keep everything under the red. If you give any theater/TV station/etc video with an audio track that clips, they'll just laugh at you.

I took the liberty of fixing up that clip for you just to see what I could do with it:

http://www.frozenphoenixproductions.com/misc/107fixed.mp3

First, I normalized the clip so the audio levels maxed out without clipping. Then, I applied a compressor, which brings up the low-volume areas and brings down the high volumes, so everything looks about the same. The settings I used were a 5.5:1 compressor above -24dB, and a 1.3:1 expander below the -24dB threshold. This takes out some of the low-noise background. I boosted the sound 12dB, then normalized again. To finish things, I boosted it 1dB and then hard limited at -.1dB, so nothing would touch the red--sort of like trimming the grass, you might say, if you looked at the visual representation of the sound as waveform. Doesn't that sound better?

This message has been edited. Last edited by: funkbomb,

Very nice funkbomb, this should be used as a lesson for all.

elliott...

Thanks funkbomb, what kind of sound system were u using if I can ask?

Least now I know the actual files arnt currupt, did you edit it all in Audition or did you use Premiere?

I did an experiment with the original file.
First I normalized (standard options) and then did a hard compress with the dynamics in Audition

http://www.gorecartoons.co.uk/107aac.mp3

Again this is based on the original, not the 20% increased version. Wat do u think? I havent tried to remove background noise as I'd like an opinion first?

This message has been edited. Last edited by: bign2000,

I use a $50 pair of Creative speakers, but when I'm mixing i use my $500 cans...(headphones for the non-audiophiles)

I use Audition for most/all of my sound mastering. When I'm doing a movie, sometimes in scenes I'll just scrub down the dialogue tracks with SoundSoap to get rid of any background noises, then just slap on a compressor in Premiere.

You might want to ease up on the threshold on that compressor, or take down the ratio a bit. Seems a bit heavy. Other than that, you get the idea.

Also, in audio mixing like when I mix for my band, common practice is to take down other elements before you ever take up another. I like to try to apply that same reasoning to sound mixing for movies--if you have background noise tracks that you've edited in and you want to get your dialogue heard above it, try taking a parametric EQ to the background noise and selecting out certain frequencies that your dialogue occurs on, so as to make a "pocket" or hole of sorts for your dialogue to sit in.

Thanks for the advise. Yeah I used a heavy Compression (didnt notice the medium option at first).

So what your saying is, get rid of the background noise first, using noise reduction in Audition for example.

Then normalise and then compressing?
Something I noticed when I was experimenting. Some tracks dont seem to normalise, what should I do with them? Just compress them?

And as for that file I did in my last post, would that be loud enough for a cinema speaker do u think? My biggest worry is that it wont be heard

EDIT :: WOO HOO
Just discovered the Paramedic EQ in Audition - I can now remove them nasty muffled ppppp and fffff

quote:

So what your saying is, get rid of the background noise first, using noise reduction in Audition for example.

Then normalise and then compressing?

Yes. And then normalize again.

quote:

Something I noticed when I was experimenting. Some tracks dont seem to normalise, what should I do with them? Just compress them?

If they don't normalize, that means they're already maxed out, in fact they might be clipping, which means you need to make sure they don't hit the red. Compression usually takes levels down anyway, so yes, just compress them.

If your audio levels stay mostly in the yellow, they will be loud enough for cinema speakers.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: funkbomb,

Thanks man, you've been a big help.
Luckly when I tested it the other day thats all it was, a test. Its not premiering for another two months so should be plenty of time to tune tune all the sounds and music

Based on the files I sent, would you say there sound apart from a tweak here or there - I was worried I'd need to re-do them.