Dialogue Editing

Fixing Noises 197
Figure 12-2 Good room tone can usually be found nearby. Note that the selection
is smaller than it could be. Leaving a bit of usable room tone outside the selection
creates a handle that gives you maneuvering room when removing the noise. The
handles also allow more fl exibility with crossfades.
If you can’t copy a short piece of room tone adjacent to the offending
noise, fi nd a piece from another portion of the take. (See the section on
room tone in Chapter 10.)
Usually, you’ll make a small crossfade at the head and tail of the insert
to avoid a click and to help smooth the transition. This is especially
true when the underlying room tone is very quiet or if it contains
substantial low-frequency information.
A couple additional tips and tricks will come in handy:
If you smooth your edit with a crossfade, don’t allow your fades to
enter the area of the noise you’re covering. If you do, you’ll hear
vestiges of the noise and you won’t be any better off than when you
started. As a rule, listen separately to all fades you create—fade-ins,
fade-outs, and crossfades—to ensure that you haven’t left behind a
little gift.
Pay attention to the waveform cycle when inserting room tone. Most
workstations can perform a decent, click-free edit despite wave cycle
interruptions, but if there are a lot of low-frequency components in the
room tone it’s hard to avoid a click. Help your workstation do its job
by lining up the waveforms as best you can, then make crossfades to
smooth the leftover bump.
Removing Short Clicks with the Pro Tools Pencil
Very short, nonacoustic sounds such as static discharges and very brief cable
clicks can be removed with the Pro Tools Pencil. (Most workstations have
similar tools that enable you to redraw the soundfi le’s waveform.) When used