Audio Engineer Shows How To Mix Sound In Final Cut Pro - FEAT. Ryan Green

hey friends dylan bates here the final cut bro i am so stoked about today's tutorial because i get to feature a creator from youtube who is making amazing content his name is ryan green he is an audio engineer based out of new zealand at the time i'm making this video he has 149 subscribers and i really want to push that number up for him because he is putting so much hard work into his videos and he deserves way more views so at the end of this video if you like what he has to say make sure you go check out his channel i will have links down below so let's get started with ryan green [Music] hey everyone i'm ryan and thanks dylan for having me on the channel great to be here i want to share five tips with you for how to mix your audio in final cut pro so let's get straight into the first one and that is how to use a normalizer now i find using normalizer is really helpful but unfortunately final cut pro doesn't have one built in as just a normalizer plug-in but there is a slight workaround with this that i'm going to show you what normalize is doing is taking all of your clips and adjusting them so they're a similar level to each other now this is not how you do a final mix you don't want to just normalize it and think you're done but this gets you to a starting point i like to do this right at the start of my process so i import all my clips into my session get them on a timeline and straight away normalize all the audio levels so i'm in a starting place that works it also makes editing your video a little bit easier because you're not jumping for gain levels all the time so once you've got your clips in your timeline select them all and then go over to the inspector on the right hand side the way we have to do this in final cut pro is click on the magic wand icon next to audio analysis that's looking at loudness at noise removal and hum removal now we want to ignore noise removal and hum removal at this point so if it does anything there just untick both of those boxes but that automated loudness setting is actually doing something pretty similar to a normalizer if you want to make it even more consistent you can turn that amount up further and further but just be careful with this because you'll start to hear the noise floor come up as well and that's going to be an issue i found the default settings pretty good second thing i want to share is how to eq your dialogue now i'm not going to be able to totally explain everything about eqs in this video but i did want to give you a few pointers to start off with so firstly grab the channel eq plugin and drop it onto the clip you want to eq then open up the settings for it through your inspector panel now this is one of the really nice things about final cut pro it probably has the nicest built-in eq of any of the editors you can use it's the one they use in logic pro which is an audio production suite and it's really high quality as i said i can't teach you everything now but i just want to give you a few principles really quick fire the first is your low-cut filter this is the lowest band that you're gonna be playing with and on all your dialogue you wanna bring this in and just start bringing it up to get rid of any rumble or gross low frequencies in your audio the human voice just doesn't go that low so you're gonna really safely get up to 60 or 70 hertz before you hear anything some voices you'll even go much higher up closer to 100 hits the way i like to work on this is to move it up until i hear it start affecting the really bottom end of the voice and then i just back it off a little bit at this point you'll clean up any low rumbles going on any hums and it's a great start next you have your low and low mid frequencies which are going from wherever you've left that filter up until say 500 hertz now and here are the frequencies you might describe as warmth and so if you turn these up you're going to get a more full-bodied warm sounding voice but at the same time it's where you get muddiness and this can make it harder to understand a voice so if you're having trouble getting your dialogue to cut through or it feels muddy then try getting rid of some frequencies here the next frequency range we're going to talk about our mids through into our upper mids so taking over from where we left off right up until around 4k this is where you find the real clarity in the human voice these are the frequencies that help us understand what's being said so it's kind of the opposite to the muddiness if you want to get more clarity in your voice you can turn this up a bit the negative side of the effect of these frequencies is that they can sound a little bit nasally and sometimes they can be harsh as well and unpleasant to listen to so if you're getting a nasal sound or it just feels a little bit harsh and unpleasant to listen to try bringing these frequencies down a little bit then we have our top end so from 4 or 5k and right the way up now these frequencies can be really nice people can describe them as the ear on top of a mix and it can really help to make your dialogue feel like it has room to breathe grab a high shelf eq and boost these up to hear what i'm talking about so while these can be really nice the issue with them is that they can make the voice very brittle sounding so don't go cranking these all the way up if you want to make a boost here keep it fairly small it'll make a pretty big impact without you going crazy and if your dialogue is feeling a little bit brittle then just maybe bring these down a little bit the next tip i have is also about eq but this one is a little bit different one of the hardest things in mixing videos is getting your dialogue and your music sitting at the right levels when your music is too quiet the video doesn't sound full and also it's just kind of annoying because there's music but we can't quite hear what's going on but obviously if your music is too loud that's bad as well and it makes it hard to hear what's going on this trick is really helpful if you're struggling to get that balance right what you're going to do is again grab that channel eq but this time drag it onto your music not onto your dialogue then you're going to make a fairly wide cut somewhere around 2k play around between 1 and 4k in the upper mid range and you're just going to cut these frequencies out as i said before these are what give our voice clarity so if we take them out of the music there's more room for the dialogue to cut through here start with 3 or 4 db to see how you like it but you can keep going further maybe down to 9 or 10 db although that's going to be pretty extreme [Music] but if you have a part of the video where you want to sound really full and you really want the music to be huge but still have the voice cut through you can go pretty hard on this trick and it will help you get there the fourth tip is how to use a denoiser now i don't love the denoiser that's built into final cut pro but it'll work if you need it be really careful with denoising though this is one of the things that can leave heaps of artifacts and leave your dialogue sounding really artificial i know some people just chuck a denoiser on everything but really only go in there if the noise is actually distracting you from what's going on in the video i think you can probably get away with more noise than you actually realize so i don't feel like you have to get rid of all noise in all your videos all the time but anyway once you check your denoiser onto the clip again and open up the settings it can feel a bit daunting to know what's going on the default settings that come up are also pretty terrible so this is how i recommend setting it make sure your threshold and your reduction all the way down this is going to be doing way too much de-noising but it's how we start now play a little section of your video that only has noise there's no talking going on and slowly move the threshold up until that noise disappears right when that noise goes away you found the point where the noise ends and the voice is going to begin so that's a good place to leave your threshold now play a bit with actual dialogue going on and you can have to do way less reduction than this you should never ever be doing 100 decibels of noise reduction i find actually starting around three to five decibels is actually where you want to be so have a listen there and see how it sounds this is going to get you in the ballpark of where you want to be for denoising just a little extra tip here if you need more de-noising it's better not to crank up that threshold having one denoiser doing heaps of de-noising is going to sound really obvious really quickly you'll actually have better results if you drop a second denoiser on this is because you can repeat that process of setting the threshold again and you're actually doing smaller bits more accurately rather than just doing one broad swing at denoising so try stacking a couple of denoisers on top of each other rather than just using one if you need more denois now this last tip is possibly the most important it's going to make sure that your mixes sound good to the viewer when they end up watching it and that is that you need to listen on different systems see maybe you're editing on a decent pair of headphones and you get it sounding good but then you listen through laptop speakers or through a phone and it sounds flat and lifeless so what you want to do is find at least three or four different places you can listen to it so maybe it's your phone your laptop some headphones and your tv something like that and just listen back to your mix on all of those things that's going to help you work out if it actually translates well across different systems or if you need to go back and adjust some things now once you've done this with a few videos you'll start to get a feel for it and you'll know how it should sound to say in your editing headphones and how that's going to translate well to other systems so you won't end up necessarily doing this for every video you ever put out but if you just commit to doing it for three or four videos you'll get a much better idea of how your headphones are translating to other systems and just for one more kind of bonus tip on the same topic i actually recommend you listen at different volumes as well it's funny what jumps out to us when we listen at different volumes if you listen really loudly often the music sounds quite full and great but if you listen really quietly you can kind of only hear the main thing so sometimes i'll turn it down really really quiet until i can only just hear it and see what stands out that's going to help me know if my dialogue is actually sitting above the music or sound effects or whatever else or if i want a really impactful musical hit that still needs to hit even when it's listened to quietly so try listening at different volumes being careful of your hearing and see how your mix translates that way as well i hope that this has been helpful and that it helps you out in your productions thanks again dylan for having me on the channel thank you ryan so much for coming out of my channel i really do appreciate it and all of your incredible insight into the world of sound design if you're not yet subscribed to ryan make sure you go check out his channel i'll have links below and also have one on the end card if you like videos just like this one remember to push the like button and consider subscribing if you want to see more and i will see you next week [Music] you

Channel: The Final Cut Bro

Views: 1,772

Keywords: The Final Cut Bro, final cut pro x, tutorial, audio mixing, final cut pro, how to, audio mix, sound engineer, kingtutspro, audio engineer, how to mix sound in FCPX, mixing sound, how to sound mix, audio mixing tips, audio, engineering, how to mix audio in final cut pro, eq, dialogue eq

Id: ZVo5SyBGqcw

Length: 9min 40sec (580 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 09 2021