Dialogue Editing

Alternate Takes 213
The director hates your replacement line and would rather put up
with the problem noise than give up the special characteristic of the
original.
You misunderstood the point of the line when you made the
replacement, so its emotional key is now missing or incorrect.
The replacement line doesn’t match well either in sound quality or
acting energy.
The editor is very territorial and can’t stand it that you replaced a line.
A week after you replaced a line, you realize that your month without
sleep really did cloud your judgment.
All of the preceding is true for ADR as well as alternate take replacements.
Changing the Speed
Most workstations have plug-ins for “fi tting” replacement lines, whether ADR
or alternates, to match your original, but you need to know how they operate
before you can make them work for you. It’s not uncommon to hear the telltale
artifacts that these voice fi tters create when used irresponsibly. The trick is
to prepare the track before you use the fi tter, never to ask the processor to do
more than is reasonable, and to honestly listen after its every use. If it sounds
weird, it will never get better.
Time Expansion/Compression Tools Time-stretch tools (“word-fi tting” tools
like VocAlign fall into this category) change the duration of an event without
changing its pitch. Unlike pitch-shift tools, which behave like variable-speed
analogue tape machines by changing the sample rates and then resampling,
time stretchers add or subtract samples as needed. If a phrase is too long,
they’ll remove enough samples to get to the right length. If the phrase is too
short, they’ll duplicate samples to lengthen the selection.
You have to know where to make the splices. If you tell it that you can’t tolerate
any glitches, the time-stretch tool will make all of its splices in the pauses
between words or in other very safe places. After all, who’s going to hear the
splice where nothing is said? Or sung? Or played? What you end up with are
essentially unchanged words with dramatically shortened pauses as well as
truncated vowels and sibilants. Thus, if you order a 10 percent length reduction,
the line will indeed be 10 percent shorter but the speed change won’t be
consistent. This is especially noticeable with music, where time compression/
expansion can result in a “rambling” rhythm section.
If you want better local sync, choose a more “accurate” time shift. You’re now
telling the tool that local sync is more important, even at the risk of glitching.