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Separating Sound Effects, Dialogue and Music?

Hymie

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Well, I'm using Sony Vegas 11 Platinum. I'm still getting used to it as I was working with 7 for the last 4 years but Amazon had it for $25 so I figured it was time for upgrade.

Yes I realize that its going to be a bitch and a half to do, but I did an edit of the movie with 2.0 and it sounded alright a few years ago so I hope now that I've learned a lot more I'll be able to do a better job. I only do edits for myself (i.e. I don't upload them) so I'm probably more forgiving than would normally be expected on this site but I totally understand how hard its going to be to do this edit properly.

If you can post some pics with pointers Neg that would be great. I'm not a complete novice to Vegas, but I'm definitely still adjusting to the newish tricks and layout.

Thanks again.
 

Neglify

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Simply put:

(NOTE: The audio I'm using for this example isn't 6 mono wavs. If you have 6 mono wavs it's the same, just more tracks.)

(NOTE 2: Some people have the audio/video tracks on top and preview on the bottom. The way you do it is the same regardless as far as I know.)

0) Make sure your audio properties are set to 5.1.

new91.png


1) Put video and audio in timeline.

new1u.png


2) If you want to add the new audio on top of existing audio, drag the new clip to the bottom of your timeline.

new2o.png


This will create a new audio track.

3) Right click the 5.1 box to change the designation.

new3i.png


If you want it in the Front L/R channel it will look like this.

new4d.png


4) Now you can edit the new audio however you want. Add fade in, trim, etc.

new6f.png


5) You will notice that it looks like there is no audio in any channel except the Center. You can verify this by muting individual tracks to check what plays out of each. The mute button is the NO symbol on the left.

new10g.png


For this particular clip, there are some minor sound effects in the Front L/R channel. The audience members clapping is in the center channel.

So if you wanted to, you could replace the Front L/R channel audio with the new audio track. You will lose any sound effects that were there before.

Right click the audio track you want to edit, choose "Group" --> "Remove from". (Or you can left click the track and press U on your keyboard.) Then you can split the track (Dropdown menu "Edit" --> "Split" or S on the keyboard) where you want and trim it as needed.

Then you drag that song in the blank space how you want.

new5c.png


Notice the crossfade created. You can tweak that as much as needed by extending or shortening the clips.

(Another NOTE: Like Frink mentioned before, you can also add the new music to the rear channels to make it surround. Do the same thing but for the Rear L/R channels. Make sure the new songs are lined up properly so you don't have the song out of sync across the tracks.)

6) You can add a volume envelope to an audio track by clicking in the dropdown menu "Insert" --> "Audio Envelopes" --> "Volume". This will make a purplish line pop up on the track.

new7zq.png


You can double click on the line to create an anchor point. The volume is set to 0 but with anchor points you can play around with audio levels to your heart's desire.

new8g.png


7) In addition to the volume envelope, you can adjust the volume for individual clips. Click the top of the clip and drag it down. A blue line will pop up and you can raise or lower as needed.

new11d.png


new12.png


Now you know how to edit. Have fun.
 

Captain Khajiit

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:) Great post, Neg! I know it's not what you're pointing out in Step 0, but -- to stop people copying everything exactly as they see it -- shouldn't the sample rate in the picture be 48,000 Hz? :)
 

Neglify

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Captain Khajiit said:
:) Great post, Neg! I know it's not what you're pointing out in Step 0, but -- to stop people copying everything exactly as they see it -- shouldn't the sample rate in the picture be 48,000 Hz? :)

Ah yes, forgot to change that for the sample. Thanks Captain.
 

njvc

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:shock: Most epic-est post eva?
 

Hymie

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Yeah, that really was a great basic how to edit audio in Vegas.

Luckily, once I understood that I wasn't stuck just using the six given tracks and that I could add tracks and just pick their designation to supplement what was already there I pretty much got what I was missing. That was a great informative post though and should definitely not get lost in the middle of a thread like this. Great job and thanks.
 

The Warlord

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Hi guys,

Does anyone know how to isolate dialogue only? I'm currently in the early stages of a Star Trek: Original edit in which I've been asked to isolate the dialogue only, with the aim to then add in new music. I've tried DVD Audio Extractor and Audacity but have had no such luck. Perhaps I'm doing it wrong?

Does anyone have any help on this, perhaps any other software?

I'm using Region 2 PAL DVDs and (I believe) the 5.1 surround sound.

Thanks,

Jon
 

ThrowgnCpr

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there is a thread, stickied even, discussing this. topics merged. read-up :)
 

TV's Frink

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Added a link to Neg's guide in the first post.
 

geminigod

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That looks interesting.

... Sometimes I feel so sorry for Mac users.
 

TV's Frink

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I would, except they choose to be so. :p
 

TV's Frink

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Threads merged.

And to answer your question, no, Sony Vegas cannot do this (to my knowledge). This thread has some useful ideas on how to do it, however.
 

seciors

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I didn't see it mentioned anywhere on this thread yet, so i'll chime in with saying that MPEGStreamClip is a free application on the Mac (and I think for the PC as well) that will easily separate ac3 5.1 into 4 separate AIFF files (AIFF is preferred over WAV on the Mac). You end up with files for:
L/R in stereo
Center in mono
LFE in mono
Ls/Rs in stereo.
You just do need to do 4 separate "export to audio" commands to get the 4 different files. This is how I split ac3 files for use in my edits all the time.

if you really want to have the two stereo pairs split into their own separate files as well (usually this is not necessary except in certain situations, which you can handle in your editing app at the right time), you can import the stereo files into Audacity (also free and available on the Mac) and export each channel separately as its own AIFF mono file.

However, like I said, it's easier to work with the stereo pairs in your video editing application and split them inside the editing application when you feel the need to. All the major Mac video editing apps let you do this.

so there Frink, we mac users have options too! :p
 

ThrowgnCpr

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that useful information for splitting surround streams on a Mac. Thanks [MENTION=9560]seciors[/MENTION]. However, it should be noted that this thread is specific to separating SFX music and dialog. While separating the channels is a first step, there usually is mixing and crossover, and will involve much more manual manipulation of each track.
 

seciors

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I understand Throw. But like you said, the first step is to get the channels separated.

So, to follow up with more info for Mac users, once you have the streams separated, the main work for doing manual manipulation for separating SFX and music from dialog will be in the video application itself, or in combination with an application like audacity (which has been mentioned previously and does have lots of filters available for working on individual tracks such as the center channel, if you are trying to get rid of unwanted sounds).

However, I want to make sure Mac users (and Frink ;-)) know that Final Cut Pro X (which is now the de-facto video editing application on the Mac) has a lot of audio functionality built-in.

First, there are a great many audio filters out-of-the-box, as well as quite sophisticated equalization controls where you can analyze frequency levels in realtime. The funcionality these provide are way beyond my own humble audio filtering capabilities. But they are there for those who know what they are doing, and I would think they are on par with many of the previously mentioned applications on the Windows side.

Furthermore, there is also no limit to the number of audio tracks you can add and mix together, on any of the 6 surround channels. There is also a surround sound designer tool, which lets you customize how any track gets mapped to the surround sound mix. Additionally, you can group audio into compound clips, and then use all the aformentioned tools on that compound clip. This lets you stack effects in the order you want. There's also no limit to the nesting of compound clips.

Finally, there is a pretty useful retiming tool, which you can use to change the length of an audio clip without changing the pitch. This sometimes works very well, and sometimes not so well.

As for specific techniques that apply cross-platform, I want to add that if you are removing something from a channel, you have to add something else in its place. Otherwise there will be a dropout that WILL be noticed by someone listening with a surround sound setup. This is most important if you are removing things from the center channel (the most common case). Usually I replace such removals with whatever is on the L/R channel, and just remap it to the center channel. Sometimes you can only use the L or R channel if the sound you are trying to replace bleeds through on one or the other.

I'm sorry if any of the above was mentioned earlier in the thread -- I did read the entire thing, but it was last night and my memory is not the best when I read things late at night!
 

emanswfan

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I know it would depend on a movie's DVD or Bluray specs, but if you had two corresponding language mixes, could you use it to seperate the dialogue from the music/SFX? For example I take an original (probably english) mix and invert it's phase with the corresponding spanish (or french or whatever) mix (same 5.1, 2.0, or 1.0 mix) and it should theoretically cancel everything out except those two types of dialogue. Than if you mixed the mixes together and used the result from the first inversion, you could cancel out the dialogue and be left with the music/SFX and then use that with the original (probably English) to cancel out the music/SFX leaving just the original dialogue. Would this possibly work with the proper workflow?

Just a random thought, sorry if it has been mentioned before.
 

seciors

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emanswfan said:
I know it would depend on a movie's DVD or Bluray specs, but if you had two corresponding language mixes, could you use it to seperate the dialogue from the music/SFX? For example I take an original (probably english) mix and invert it's phase with the corresponding spanish (or french or whatever) mix (same 5.1, 2.0, or 1.0 mix) and it should theoretically cancel everything out except those two types of dialogue. Than if you mixed the mixes together and used the result from the first inversion, you could cancel out the dialogue and be left with the music/SFX and then use that with the original (probably English) to cancel out the music/SFX leaving just the original dialogue. Would this possibly work with the proper workflow?

Just a random thought, sorry if it has been mentioned before.

If someone could explain how to do this, that would be pretty cool. I don't really understand why using two different languages would be necessary, but hey, a lot of this audio stuff is over my head! (I really do wish I understood audio better!)
 
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