Speech volume

Forum|Forum|7 years ago
July 7, 2018
3 replies
667 views

I record talking-head video using a wireless lavaliere and the result often has a substantial range in volume based on either how I'm talking or how I move my head (it's the mic that came with the Sennheiser ew 100 G3, so it should be a good mic, and it's positioned reasonably well).

I can't seem to find a straightforward way to smooth out the volume once I've placed the clip in the sequence. I can easily raise the total volume just using the slider (the line that goes across the entire clip at the center), but my challenge is that want to bring up the areas that have lower volume to be more consistent with the rest.

Thanks!

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M

Meg The Dog

Inspiring

JayNewWeb wrote
I can't seem to find a straightforward way to smooth out the volume once I've placed the clip in the sequence.

Create a submix track and route the lav mike track to it. Apply a Multiband Compressor to the submix track. A good starting preset for the Compressor is the "Broadcast" preset. A compressor is a tool that will help control changes in audio gain.

I can easily raise the total volume just using the slider (the line that goes across the entire clip at the center), but my challenge is that want to bring up the areas that have lower volume to be more consistent with the rest.

Use the pen tool and apply keyframes to the "line that goes across the entire clip at the center". Once you apply them, you can raise a lower the keyframes to control the gain of selective areas of the clip:

MtD

R

rodneyb56060189

Legend

That's pretty cool, meg dog. I don't know if it might matter, but regarding 'noise' I think there's a 'room tone' kinda thing that can also be applied judiciously to cancel out some of that after doing what meg dog suggests. But maybe that's built into what she suggested. I only have cs6

: )

J

JayNewWebAuthor

Inspiring

Thanks for all the advice.

I did research using the lav mic under the shirt the other day and found good YouTube videos on how to use gaffer's tape in various ways.

I did that in search of how to secure the mic when wearing a t-shirt. I didn't realize that under the shirt was also advisable for more consistent volume. That's interesting. The fact is that for my purposes the time for taping it under my shirt is more time-consuming than I prefer in ideal world, and I don't have any reason to want to hide it as far as visuals go.(And I rarely do anything for business with a t-shirt.)

A powered mic is perhaps i my future but for now I have to work with what I have. Note that I'm doing strictly fixed talking-head shots and therefore don't need to hide the transmitter -- it can be on my belt on my side -- so my only challenge is with the mic itself and its cable.

I didn't realize separately recording ambient noise was beneficial. It never seemed like anything was missing with my current approach and in fact I make sure to turn off the AC and even hope the fridge won't run because all background noise seems to be an impediment. I don't have anything to record ambient noise with anyway. Perhaps I'll add that into my procedures in the future if it's really advisable.

I tried "Essential Sound > Dialogue > Balanced Male Voice" and left it at those preset defaults, and that sound pretty darned good so far:

It added a lot of volume and it seems to have a really good overall sound to it. I can't tell yet if it smoothed out the volume levels yet, though. And idea if it does that as part of the processing?

Is that perhaps my best bet for all my recordings? Just do that and I'm done?

By the way, there's no reason to separate the audio track from the original linked video-audio to apply that, correct?

I'm familiar with how to apply keyframes to selectively adjust volume, but that kind of granular adjusting is just not practical for my needs -- I'd like to be able to avoid putting in the time when I can. I need to bang out videos pretty quickly, and sometimes pretty frequently.

I was looking for some kind of compression that would do a good job. I assume that's part of what the Essential Sound presets are doing?

I'm curious how applying those Essential Sound presets differs from doing this:

>>> Create a submix track and route the lav mike track to it. Apply a Multiband Compressor to the submix track.<<<

And can you please elaborate on how to do that? And is "Broadcast" ideal even if I'm one person and it's going online for business use?

Finally, if Essential Sound is not smoothing out the volume, can I apply that and the Multiband Compressor?

Thanks so much!

R

rodneyb56060189

Legend

most people put lav on tie or shirt collar or something like that, mostly thinking that if it's close to mouth it will give you good sound.

On movie sets the lavs are taped to talent and hidden from view. The wire from lav goes inside shirt, bra, or whatever, and gets routed to the transmitter in a way that hides all of it from camera.

Basically if you tape the mic to your breastbone it will pick up good sound. You need to mix it with ambient sound to some extent ( like a boom mic ) but that can get tricky depending on distances ( can create a slight echo if you can hear talent with boom mic ). The main thing is that it sounds natural.

There's a way to put little things on lav with tape ( like little paper corners ) so that clothing doesn't make stupid noise on mic when you move. There's probably some stuff you can google about using lav mic taped on talent to hide mic, with advice.

Most live TV shows and news shows, etc., use lav mics that you can actually see. This is not true on movies.

It's just faster to do it that way.

Also, it's kinda intimate, hiding mic on talent. You have to take off shirt, etc. and let sound person route the wire and let him tape the stupid transmitter on, etc.

The good thing is that once you get your levels you are going to get consistent sound level. When mixed with ambient it will sound pretty normal.

: )