Dialogue Editing

Beeps, Tones, and Leaders 117
machines. That daily or weekly interaction was an opportunity to learn of
other looming problems.
Even though you’re working in digital, you still have to place alignment tones
(often called “reference tones”) on your tracks. Why?
You have to have a reference tone to daily align the monitor chain in
your edit room.
If you make a rough mix, or “bounce,” of your work as a guide track
for the effects, backgrounds, Foley, or music editors, it must have a
reference tone attached so that other editors can use it at its proper
level.
When you bring the tracks to the mix, each track’s reference tone
ensures that you’ve routed and patched the sound correctly. You can
also see if you have a bad connection (a −6 dB tone level indicates a
missing leg on a balanced connection). If a particular track is not
going to be used on a reel, a missing tone on it will tell the mixer to
ignore it during that reel.
Making a Reference Tone
A large studio probably has a ready collection of reference, or calibration,
tones, either on the internal drive of each computer or on the network. Ask.
A studio’s “Tones Folder” will likely have an assortment of options such as
these:
Sync pop 44.1 KHz, 16 bit Sync pop 44.1 KHz, 24 bit
Sync pop 48 KHz, 16 bit Sync pop 48 KHz, 24 bit
1 K reference @ −18 dB, 44.1 KHz, 16 bit 1 K reference @ −18 dB, 44.1 KHz, 24 bit
1 K reference @ −18 dB, 48 KHz, 16 bit 1 K reference @ −18 dB, 48 KHz, 24 bit
1 K reference @ −20 dB, 44.1 KHz, 16 bit 1 K reference @ −20 dB, 44.1 KHz, 24 bit
1 K reference @ −20 dB, 48 KHz, 16 bit 1 K reference @ −20 dB, 48 KHz, 24 bit
Make sure to pick the reference tone and sync plop to match the sample rate
and word size of your session, as well as the reference level of the studio and
the local fi lm community. Nowadays, most facilities use a reference like
this:
−18 dBFS = 0 VU = +4 dBu
or
−20 dBFS = 0 VU = +4 dBu
This means that, in a properly set-up audio chain, a digital reference of
−18 dBFS (full scale, the standard digital scale with 0 as the absolute highest