Audio effects best practices? (still left in the dark)

I'm coming a little late to the party, per usual. But I have finally had enough projects when I really needed the ability to add Audio Effects to the "master" clips or "source" clips, but can't because that feature doesn't exist. I kind of understand that of course the video features in a video editing program are always going to predate and outnumber the audio, fair enough. It also doesn't help motivate the engineers to build this capability into the software when others offer what is for them a work-around of using track mixer. But let me ask, if video effects no longer worked on source clips and everybody had to do the same work-around akin to the track mixer, plus had NO ability to save their parameters as presets, do you believe there would be a rather vocal response??? Yeah, I'm pretty sure there would be. So let's please get away from the track mixer solution and instead direct all future inquiries to the topic on the feature request board that covers this topic quite well:

feataure request board post for master audio effects 

Thx,

- DK

Phillip has a good overall response.

As to audio questions on this forum in general, most of us don't spend that much time with audio. Sad but true. The best place to ask audio questions is frequently on the Audition forum, and at times, even when the question is more based in working in Premiere than Audition.

Why? The two apps audio stuff under the hood is near identical, except in Audition you can do things you can't in Premiere.

There are all sorts of odd limitations in Premiere's audio setup. For instance ... much of my work is editing my tutorials, with only my own vocal as audio, recorded always through  the same mic and setttings. There will be maybe six to eight clips of audio to start with, and after editing, on the sequence probably 50 "clips".

But it's all exactly the same sound!

So I tend to use the Track mixer with added effects in the top 'rack' of effects slots. It fixes my whole video perfectly. I'd love to save the 'rack' as a preset ... but you can't!

You need to save the sequence, strip out the media from it ... and store that sequence in a 'helper' project of essentially templates to reuse. Drag/drop the sequence into a new project, then add media to it. Why not just have Track mixer presets? Dunno, and I've certainly asked!

Next ... you can't add effects to the Clip mixer, you have to add them directly to the track. I suppose that sort of makes sense ...

And then, when you do add effects, they have lists of presets. Like in say Dynamics Processing ... it has a long list of I suppose you could call them "internal" presets. But you can't save your current settings and just call them up next time you add the effect.

No ... you have to right-click the effect in the ECP, save as a preset ... and pull from your saved presets bins. I'd much rather just be able to modify and save a preset within the effect. Ah well.

As to your idea of applying the ESP to a group of clips, some of the audio folks I know are horrified by that. However ... what they do is setup their go-to rack of audio effects with settings in the ECP, then select the group, and save the entire stack as a single preset. Which works.

I'd rather just be able to save a rack of presets in the Track Mixer. Ah well.

Neil

Just a user like yourself here, and while I may not have specific answers for you, I can at least talk a little bit about my audio experience/workflow (again--my thoughts/opinions/experiences, I may be wrong about some things or others will disagree)...

I think you'll find a lack of professional insight about using Essential Sound because there may not be that many professionals that are using it. Speaking for myself, while I think there's some great things in ES, and maybe it's a great way to lay out some basic keyframes, it's best used in a more simplified project. It may be my own personal preference, but I prefer more manual control over what is happening if I'm the one in control of the mix, and the tools to make a decent audio mix in Premiere exist without ever opening the ES panel. The other side of that is that in many professional applications, editors are going to be sending a mix to a sound engineer, so again - no need for ES.

The one thing that all of these approaches has in common, however, is organization. Part of being a professional editor means meticulous and logical organization of your files both inside and outside of Premiere, and certainly inside of your timeline. True--it would be nice to apply effects to a master audio track. I actually didn't know that wasn't possible. However, I don't see any reason why you shouldn't have your audio organized in your timeline in a manner that makes sense. You can break up audio tracks by who is speaking, different microphones, sound effects, music. You can create submixes/buses to route multiple tracks into one for adding other corrections. If your audio is organized it's going to be a lot easier to make that mix with or without ES. If you're going to send your mix to Audition, it's easier if it's organized. If you're going to send your mix to a sound engineer, they are going to damn right demand that it's organized, and the first thing they are going to do is probably organize it further.