Dialogue Editing

Reducing Ambient Noises 221
the mixer during the dialogue premix that say, “I can’t believe you did
that!”
Preparing for Noise Reduction
Broadband noise reduction plug-ins often have enormous latencies, so you
usually can’t use them as real-time processors amid your other tracks. If you
did, your processed tracks would be miserably out of sync. Instead, you have
to process the tracks and create new soundfi les. However, before processing
you have to make a copy of the original region. I place this safety copy on
one of the junk tracks, in sync, of course. Some people put it on the X, Y, Z
tracks, but I like to reserve those for ADR-related regions. Truthfully, this is
between you and the mixer.
Since any AudioSuite operation will create a new soundfi le, you may want
to open up the beginning and ending handles of the region fi rst. (See Figures
12-8 and 12-9.) Just because the edit works well before noise reduction doesn’t
mean that the transition will be effective once the tracks are cleaned. Previously
unheard background sounds (such as “Cut!”) may emerge after cleaning.
Similarly, track cleaning may alter the balance between adjacent shots,
necessitating a longer handle. Pulling out an extra bit of handle—if available—means
you’ll have to redo the fade after noise reduction is complete, but
you’ll be left with a better set of options to play with.
Noise Reduction Tools
One reason noise reduction so often turns out miserably is that editors don’t
understand the tools. This is one of the key arguments that mixers have
Figure 12-8 The highlighted region of this soundfi le needs to be processed. Any
AudioSuite operation will create a new region without handles.