How to make your audio sound INCREDIBLE in your wedding films using Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2018

hey guys my name is Matt Johnson and today I want to share with you how I edit audio in my wedding films using Adobe Premiere Pro and when I say edit audio I mean audio mixing EQ audio sweetening all of those terms that are used to describe making your audio sound awesome is what we're gonna be talking about today this is actually the second video that I've made all about audio and wedding films the first video is called how to record amazing audio in your wedding films and in that video I cover all of the gear that I use to record good audio so all of the microphones that I use cables that I use connectors recorders everything that I use to record quality audio on a wedding day is covered in that video and I will link to it up here in the corner and down in the description for you to check out got it alright let's jump right into Adobe premier alright guys welcome to Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2018 I'm gonna go here to help about Adobe Premiere Pro and you're gonna see that I'm running version 12.00 build 2 to 4 so if you ever have a different version or things look different to you do not worry this is just the person I'm using but this tutorial should work regardless of which premiere version that you are using today I'm gonna be showing you two really cool things the first is an audio effect that you can apply to any of the audio that you've recorded throughout the day and make it sound incredible the example that I'm gonna be using is from a groom reading a letter to a bride but this audio effect can be applied to any other audio source from the day be it the ceremony toasts any other audio that you recording secondly I'm going to show you how to mix the audio of people speaking with the music that you have chosen for your videos so that way one isn't too loud one isn't too soft they mix together well and you can hear everything this is my timeline that I have set up here for my wedding film and we are going to pretend that I've already gone through and edited everything and we are now ready to work on the audio portion of the editing process video track number one here is a video clip that I have of my friend Noah reading a letter to his bride audio track number one here is recorded from a sin Heiser g3 lapel mic that I had on the groom's lapel recording into a zoom h5 no audio effects have been applied to this audio this is directly from the recorder audio track number two below it is the wave music file for the song that I've chosen for the video I have not applied any audio effects to any of the audio tracks so let's see how it sounds without any mixing or audio effects applied at all whatsoever [Music] last you can't really tell what's going on can you no you can't because the audio hasn't been mixed yet so let's hear just how the groom Noah's voice sounds without the music on we'll go down here to track one we'll hit s for solo so it is only playing back the audio from his mic dear Mallory I don't even have to tell you how much and how long we've been looking forward to this day people ask me all the time when I knew I was going to marry you it's it's kind of tough to pinpoint sounds pretty good right we had a pretty quiet room there was no air-conditioner sound there was no echo I'm pretty happy with how his audio sounds out of the mic but we can definitely make it sound better incidentally if you want to see how I recorded this specifically how I put the mic on him how I had him sit etc I have an entire behind-the-scenes video of Noah's wedding if you want to watch that I will link to it up in the corner and down in the description of this video now let's talk about how we can make Noah's audio sound better as I said I use a sin Heiser g3 lav mic for recording the letter reading and I use lav mics throughout the day but lav mics have some deficiencies namely in terms of bass reproduction and also in terms of presence they have issues what do I mean by presence not Christmas presents under the tree I'm talking about presence of how close the person is to the microphone what you run into with a lav mic is usually you are trying to hide it you want it to not be visible so I usually put it down in the chest area of the person so that way I do not have it in the shot the issue they're gonna run into is that the speaker then sounds distant from the microphone and that is not something that we want so how do we make the audio sound better well if you're like me whenever I was starting out I said how does audio sound better make it louder duh that's gonna be easy so I would go through and I would start dragging up the audio saying all right well that's about three decibels over let's see how it sounds now it's it's kind of tough to pinpoint honestly that doesn't sound much better it increases the volume but it doesn't actually do anything to increase the quality of the audio also another thing to keep in mind is that people unless they are trained voice actors are not going to keeping their voice at a consistent volume whenever they are speaking so as you can see from the waveform here we have him take a breath and then he gets louder and then as the waveform dips it gets quieter quieter quieter so as you can see it is not consistent and you're going to be stopped going in and keyframing okay quieter hear louder hear quieter hear louder hear and that can be a major pain you have a long video wouldn't it be great if there was an effect that we can apply that would add bass that would add clarity that would add the presence that we're looking for in our audio and save us from having to do all those steps well I have good news for you there is a plugin for that the effect is called an audio compressor and what it does through a lot of audio witchcraft mumbo-jumbo is that it essentially makes the quieter portions of your audio say where somebody is whispering into the microphone or has a quiet voice it makes those louder and it also takes the louder portions where somebody is yelling into the microphone etc and it makes those quieter and what you end up with is a beautiful audio track that is not too loud that it's not too quiet that you are able to mix in with your audio audio tracks very well with very little effort on your part it's incredible let's add that audio effect right now we're gonna go over here to the effects tab in premiere and we're gonna search for multiband compressor and under audio effects you're gonna see obsolete audio effects ignore that we do not want the obsolete version we want the new version and so you see here it says multiband compressor we're going to click and drag that over here to our audio track and then we go over here to the effect controls tab and you'll see that we have a new effect called multiband compressor next we're gonna go to here and click Edit and that is gonna open up the multi-brand compressor settings which my goodness when you first look at these this can be quite intimidating but do not worry I have good news for you because we are not going to have to worry about any of this because Adobe makes preset so 99% of this you do not need to worry about it all next we're gonna go up here to presets and we're gonna click the drop down menu and as you can see you have a ton of preset options and the one we want to select is broadcast but you'll notice isn't broadcast already selected Matt well premiere is kind of weird in that whenever you first open up the multiband compressor it says broadcast but it's not broadcast there's actually no settings applied at all it just shows you the preset so to make broadcast active what we actually need to do is go down and click on any other random preset that we want here so in this case I'm gonna it's like drums and as you can see it has made a bunch of changes of settings but these are not the settings that we want so we're gonna go back up here to the drop-down and we're gonna select broadcast and there you go this is the preset that we're going to be using but we're gonna make two small changes to it down here under attack and release what is attack and release are we attacking something technically yes the way that a compressor works in very simple terms is that it is actively analyzing your audio as it is playing and it is making changes on the fly to the volume level so if it is quiet it is going to notice and it's going to get louder if it is loud it is going to notice it's going to be quieter what the attack and release settings are affecting is how quickly the compressor notices that the volume has gotten louder and how quickly it works to change that so whenever we change the attack we're going to go over here and we're gonna change the attack to one millisecond because as soon as the audio changes we want it to notice and say okay change the audio make it quieter louder this is especially useful whenever you have somebody speaking because you want it to be very quick if they get louder or quieter it's not a song where it can gradually happen it's gonna generally happen very quickly release is what occurs after the audio has been attacked by the compressor and either made louder or quieter and generally we want this to be a smoother roll-off but we still want it to be quicker than the default so we're gonna change this to 250 milliseconds so that way somebody speaking really loud they get quieter and the compressor makes changes gradually to their audio these two changes to attack or release are the only adjustments that you need to make to the broadcast preset for the multiband compressor that's it your audio is now ready to go but to make sure that you do not stress about having to remember these changes let's make things easier so we're gonna click the X here and we're gonna go over here to a multiband compressor and we're gonna right click and we're gonna click save preset this way we do not have to remember all those settings we can just go and apply this quick preset every single time so we're gonna name this preset something cool like Matt multiband compressor you don't have to use my name if you don't want to but hey you can it's cool we're gonna click OK and if I click the X here under the effects tab and I click presets you're gonna see Matt multiband compressor is right here and so if we drag this down to the clip on the timeline you're gonna see that another multiband compressor appears Matt's multiband compressor ooh fancy same exact thing now you don't need to worry about it we don't need that though so we're gonna delete that because hey we've already applied the multiband compressor now one last thing if you do not want have to go through the hassle of making this preset two whole steps oh my gosh I know and you want to help me out too I have made my own preset available and a download so you don't have to go through and save your own preset you can just download one straight for me and there's a link right down in the description granted I do have one hoop that I want you to jump through to get the preset and that is to sign up for my email newsletter yes give me your email please I promise I won't spam you but I will send you camera news and other video news that I find interesting please sign up I would absolutely love it the link is down in the description to download the preset and sign up for the newsletter okay let's listen to our audio again I'm gonna go back to the beginning here and I'm gonna turn off the multiband compressor so you can hear it as it was before dear Mallory I don't even have to tell you how much and how long we've been looking forward to this day okay now let's turn on the multiband compressor and see that sounds dear Mallory I don't even have to tell you how much and how long we've been looking forward to this day dude this is so good oh my gosh you hear it you hear the extra bass you're the extra presence it sounds so much better but let's look at our audio levels over here on the right you should always be checking your audio levels and if I hit play here dear Mallory I don't even have to tell you how much and how long we've been looking forward to this day it's almost peaking it's very very close that's a little too much so let's work on bringing this audio level down a little bit you have two ways to do that the first in the way that I usually do it is that I go down here to my audio track and I click and I drag it down so it's quieter another option you have is actually to go back up to multiband compressor and you'll notice there's a section here called output gain and let's lower our gain to negative 4 close that and if we hit play people ask me all the time when I knew I was going to marry you and you can see that also lowers down the volume I have not personally noticed a difference between dragging the audio down on the timeline or using the output gain in multiband compressor but I would think that using the output gain setting a multiband compressor where it's applying all the effects would work better but I have not been able to hear that personally so for me I just use the audio level controls on the track on the timeline okay now you know how to make your audio recording sound amazing I apply multiband compressor to all of the audio tracks that recorded and it makes them all sound phenomenal I absolutely love it but at this point we need to talk about something else namely how do we mix these two audio tracks together how do we make it so Noah's speaking is not overpowered by the music in both sound well ideally you don't want your speaking audio and your music to be at the same volume because then they're gonna be competing with each other but what volume level should we set it to what decibel level should we target well if you google it there is about a billion answers and all of them seem to be mixed because honestly your volume level is going to vary from song to song and audio an audio clip and more so even than that whenever you start researching what audio level should I hit you're gonna see a lot of people talking about broadcast standards namely you gotta hit this level you gotta hit this level because it's broadcast you don't be blowing out grandma's TV from 1965 but I'm gonna say in my experience most of the advice given to people in regards to audio levels for their videos is irrelevant because most people these days are gonna be watching your video on their computer on YouTube or Vimeo or Facebook or even worse they're gonna be watching your video on a cell phone yes we've reached the point where everybody's watching things on their phones now so all of your hard work of mixing your audio levels perfectly for televisions is irrelevant because people gonna be watching it on a six-inch screen with a mono speaker that's how people watch videos now so it'd be clear if you are making a television commercial or anything for broadcast reach out to your contact and figure out what audio levels you need to be hitting but if you are making wedding films and YouTube videos and other things like that that are not broadcast these are the settings that I use instead as a general rule for all the audio that I've recorded on the wedding day so letter reading ceremony speeches toasts things like that I want all of that level after mixing after multiband compressor is applied i wanted all to be hitting negative 3 decibels which you're like Matt that's loud that's like really close to peaking I realized that but if you take into consideration people are watching it on their phone or other small speakers that is the way that it is gonna sound best without them needing to adjust their volume at all so let's go back into our video here and let's adjust the audio track so that whenever Noah is speaking it is hitting roughly negative 3 DB by setting this audio track to negative 4 decibels I find that on average it's hitting around negative 3 decibels on my audio meters dear Mallory I don't even have to tell you how much and how long we've been looking forward to this day now let's talk about music because music is a different beast entirely every single song is different so you are not going to be able to rely on oh hey let's try to target negative three DB that is not going to work for music because every single song has different instruments different volume levels and you're going to need to take that into consideration but here are some guidelines for quieter ambient music such as solo guitar so a piano quieter string movements things that are not building to some massive Christian note in that case I usually am targeting about 10 decibels lower than I am targeting for my audio track so if this audio track of Noah's speaking is at negative 4 I am gonna want to probably target negative 14 for a quieter audio track but this audio track is not a quieter audio track if we go down here and I'm gonna play it so you can hear it [Music] as you can see this is a louder music track definitely not one of the loudest by any means but multiple instruments things are hitting I've actually cut the song so there is some quieter points that you can see back here and it is built up to a louder moment so with that in mind we're going to want to turn this music track down lower than we would if it was a quieter music track let's start dragging down our audio volume down to about negative 17 now let's see how this sounds with the two audio tracks played together so I'm gonna unsolo this track so now both tracks are audible and we're gonna hit play dear Malorie I don't even have to tell you how much how long we've been looking forward to this day hey we're that's pretty good we're getting pretty close here so as you can see it's really about making sure that your music track does not overpower your recorded audio track in any way my top priority whenever I'm mixing audio is clarity of the voice of the person speaking I do not want the music to be competing with that I want you to be able to clearly tell exactly what every person is saying and I believe you're able to do that with about this volume keep in mind though that is just for this specific audio track if you are working with a different song that's louder you're building up to this Christian know maybe they're couples about to kiss and the minister speaking prioritize still being able to hear the person speaking even whenever the music is going on because otherwise your audience is going to get confused and distracted and wonder why can't I hear what they're saying the music's too loud you never want that to happen three more things to keep in mind whenever you're mixing your audio first do not peek never peek always keep an eye on your audio meters and make sure they do not go into the red because if they go into the red and start peeking you are going to have issues with distortion on people's speakers and that's the last thing you need to be hearing from your audience so make sure that your levels are mixed below peaking second I recommend you purchase a good pair of studio monitors I'm talking about speakers not screens to be clear here studio monitor speakers because what those are gonna enable you to do is hear clear crisp sound and it is going to show you exactly what your audio sounds like do not trust your laptop speakers if that's what you're editing on purchase a good set of studio monitors so you can tell what your audio sounds like I'll have links down in the description of this video to studio monitors that I recommend purchasing third purchase a good pair of head do not trust the earbuds that come with your cell phone go out and purchase a good set of over your headphones so that way you can listen to not only your audio through speakers but also over headphones which are two ways that your audience is most likely gonna listen to your video and also listen to your video on your cell phone play it back on the phone and see how it sounds on those speakers listen to it from as many audio sources as you can and that's gonna make sure your yo sounds best across a wide range of devices I will have links down in the description to headphones that I recommend as well that's it thank you so much for watching hope this video was helpful to you and gave you some great insight into how to edit the audio in your wedding films and make it sound incredible or any other films for that matter honestly I do also want to say that I do not consider myself an expert in any sense of the term whatever comes to audio mixing or EQ or anything like that there are people that have whole jobs that are fully devoted 24/7 to mixing audio well I'm not one of those people I just want to show you how I do it in Adobe Premiere but that said if you have a better way to do things or a different way to do things that you think works better please leave me a comment let me know because I'm trying to get better at this and I would absolutely love any help that you can give me you may have also noticed in this video that I do not cover things like how to repair audio that is less than ideal so audio where you have air conditioning units squeaking or a truck driving by loudly or dogs barking or birds cawing overhead or any other sort of thing like that because honestly that is about a zillion different variables and there's different way to handle those sorts of audio issues and so if you want me to cover a specific thing like that please leave me a comment and I will consider doing something like that in the future with that as always if you have any questions or comments please feel free to leave one below or get in touch with me through my website who is matcom is also a massive help to me if you would consider liking this video and subscribing if you want to see more videos like this in the future there also links down in the description of this video to sign up for consulting with me one on one or check out my Instagram or my Facebook pages or to check out my wedding film production company all that down in the description thank you so much for watching and have a great day

Channel: Matt WhoisMatt Johnson

Views: 287,494

Keywords: whoismatt, wedding audio, audio for wedding, audio wedding, wedding videography audio, audio for wedding videos, how to make your audio sound incredible in your wedding films using adobe premiere pro cc 2018, make audio sound better, how to edit audio in premiere pro cc, how to edit audio in premiere pro cc 2018, premiere pro cc audio, premiere pro audio, how to make audio sound better, multiband compressor tutorial, multiband compressor premiere pro, premiere pro audio mixing

Id: YgoSbPyVYw4

Length: 18min 31sec (1111 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 07 2017