This should be a really simple thing, but I can't do it

Forum|Forum|8 years ago
August 10, 2017
2 replies
4400 views

Every time I google this, I must be using the wrong terminology, because I can't find the answers, so I will explain this in long form here:

I'm working on a project with a team member that's using Audacity, but I'm using Audition. He's doing the foley, while I'm doing dialogue and music.

To make life easier for me, he works in multiple tracks so that two sound effects aren't ever fused together. That way, I can move them separately, adjust the volume separately, and so on. However, to get this many tracks, there is a lot of complete silence in between. When I say "silence", I don't mean "microphone is recording but nothing is happening" silence (as my google searching seems to keep defining the word) but total zeros in the wav form silence. No sound at all. (Please, someone tell me the correct professional term for that. Complete silence? Utter silence? Absolute silence? Air break? Dead air? Silence that is actually silent? Negative infinity decibels? No idea.)

So, what I should do, now that I've dragged and dropped the foley tracks into place, is get the blade tool and mark every point where the silence starts or stops. Then, manually click and delete every silent clip, so that the only clips which remain are clips with noise in them. From there I can adjust the timing, volume, and other properties of each individual clip without adjusting the track as a whole. I can also glance at a section of silence and know with absolute certainty that there is no sound in that section, because instead of being in a bright purple rectangle, it's the dark grey of there being absolutely no clip in the multitrack editor at all.

Doing this manually would take forever, and I might delete an actual sound by accident because I didn't zoom in far enough to see the subtle wave form.

What is the automated way of doing this?

This topic has been closed for replies.

griggsymedia

New Participant

You might find the diagnostics tool “mark audio” to be helpful (in the waveform editor). You can set thresholds for what qualifies as “audio” vs “silence”. The tool can create markers—indicating the duration of the silence—that would likely get you close to what you’re looking for.

SteveG_AudioMasters_

Community Expert

griggsymedia wrote
You might find the diagnostics tool “mark audio” to be helpful (in the waveform editor). You can set thresholds for what qualifies as “audio” vs “silence”. The tool can create markers—indicating the duration of the silence—that would likely get you close to what you’re looking for.

So you didn't look at the screen grab just above your post, then?

SteveG_AudioMasters_

Community Expert

Q4T wrote
So, what I should do, now that I've dragged and dropped the foley tracks into place, is get the blade tool and mark every point where the silence starts or stops. Then, manually click and delete every silent clip, so that the only clips which remain are clips with noise in them.

It's digital silence, and you can't delete it as there's nothing to delete! You can only delete real clips - the ones you inserted yourself. The rest of the space is simply that - digital silence, because nothing is playing. If you want background sound of any description at all, you have to add it yourself.

Jon ChambersAuthor

Inspiring

You misunderstand.

In all the places where there is digital silence, in the multi track editor, I want there to be no clip there.

So, imagine I've got a clip that goes, "Bang! Ting! Boom!" I want Three clips. One that goes "Bang!" one that goes "Ting!" and one that goes "Boom!" If I hit play, it will still sound no different, but now I can drag "Ting!" back and forth without "Bang!" and "Boom!" moving with it.

Yes, I could manually put two cuts between "Bang!" and "Ting!", and another two cuts between "Ting!" and "Boom!", remember this is the multitrack editor, I click between each pair of cuts so that I now have three very short clips instead of one very long one.

Jon ChambersAuthor

Inspiring

So if we understand it correctly these tracks are actually already synced to picture and the effects within them are foley effects are in the correct positions to sync? But visually you would like to split the single file into individual clips? Normally video post production would just accept these files complete with digital silence as they are as you don't want to mess with the sync.

So how many separate audio cues are there in one of your typical Foley files? One way to help you see where the audio in the clips is is to add Markers. Once added they can be named. Then you can easily find them from the Markers List and click on the names in the list to jump to them.

Well, I'm just starting, so there is no established "typical" yet. Though I always try to learn the techniques for one scale above the current project so they'll still be relevant as my projects get bigger.

The point is, I do want to mess with the sync, but I want to knowingly mess with it. As in, I might be listening and think "that sound came in too early. Let's delay it slightly" or "this one was too loud, let's turn it down". Stuff like that.

Last time I tried this, if I wanted to move a sound, I had to get the razor tool, make a cut before, make a cut after, drag it until it was cross fading. It was really tedious, especially if I made the cut too close to the sound, and the digital silence cross fading into digital silence must be a waste of hardware resources.

If I wanted to change the volume, again, razor tool, look for the silence, cut, cut, adjust the clip volume. The whole time thinking, "There MUST be a faster way of doing this."

I am unfamiliar with markers. Would using them be faster than what I'm already doing? I'll learn any trick to shave off an extra second.

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded