editing/mixing
ProTools: The Mix
Region Cross-Fades
If you are fairly confident
of the placement of your elements, there's another technique that you might
find useful, which takes advantage of some of the strengths of the computer.
Instead of meticulously tweaking breakpoints or writing real-time automation
with a fader, trying to make music duck smoothly under a narration, another
way to go is to make a new region under the narration, reduce its level with
an Audiosuite gain command, and apply crossfades between the regions. ProTools
is very good at making nice-sounding crossfades, so with this technique, you
use the power of the software to do something that's hard to do by hand.
When using a computer graphics
program, no one draws geometric shapes by hand anymore, one gets a better result
by letting the machine do things like that. It's the same case here, the software
can quickly do very complicated math that will often make a better-sounding
fade than you could even if you spent a lot of time on it.
This technique writes some
extra soundfiles, and limits how much you can slide elements around later, but
can be a quick and good-sounding process if used when you are sure that the
elements will hold their positions in time.
Drag the selector tool over
a range that extends a bit further than it seems like you'll need. You want
to reduce the volume of more of the soundfile than length of the final duck,
so that you have some extra play to apply crossfades later.
After a while you can start
making good guesses at how much to reduce the gain. Until you get there, you
can experiment with breakpoint automation or faders in the mix window first,
to get a sense of how far to take the soundfile down so that it sits at the
right level under the voice. Try not to apply several gain processes in a row,
the sound quality will suffer, it's better to "undo" and try again if the duck
doesn't sound right.
As long as you remain in
"slip" mode you can adjust the borders between the loud and soft regions while
keeping the audio in sync.
Make fades (command-F) and
experiment with the fade shape to find the best transition between loud and
soft. The fade duration can be adjusted later by dragging the fade edges with
the trimmer tool.
If you are confident of
the placement of all your elements, this technique can be very fast and elegant,
and sonically pleasing.
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