Dialogue Editing

ADR Editing 283
one that’s in the computer you’re working with. For what we’re doing,
most of them are pretty good.
Choose a time expansion or compression ratio to change the length as
needed. There are two schools of thought on how to calculate the ratio
desired. By switching the workstation time display from timecode to
minutes and seconds, you can accurately compare the length of the
original phrase with the ADR line you’re time-stretching. Then you
can calculate the ratio that you’ll type into the “Ratio” cell of the time
expansion/compression plug-in. Frankly, I fi nd all of this a bit tedious.
I prefer to guess at a ratio, give it a try, line up the result, and undo if
my guess was wrong. It’s not a very scientifi c method and may be just
a little rebellion from an otherwise disciplined dialogue editor. Either
way, come up with a ratio that works for you.
If your chosen ratio works well for one part of the word/phrase/region
but not for another part, you might have to perform several time
expansion/compression operations. This is where the safety copy you
created comes in handy. Once you’ve created a time-fl exed region,
don’t reprocess it. Let’s say you expanded a region by 4 percent to
match the original. It’s a good speed match except for a short section
in the middle that’s running slow. You’ll be tempted to time-fl ex that
section since it’s sitting right in front of you. But then you’ll be
processing an already abused soundfi le. Time expansion/compression
is a nasty business hardly free of artifacts, so instead of recooking the
processed region, go to the safety copy and see if it solves the prob -
lem, given that part of the ADR line may need no time expression/
compression at all. If you need to squeeze specifi c parts of the line at
different ratios, this original region will give you far better results.
If things aren’t working out, go back to the other acceptable takes.
Once you’ve started down the processing path, it’s easy to forget that
better, low-tech options may be available.
If you’re satisfi ed that you resolved the fi rst problem (in our rather simple
example, the word “now”), move on to the next issue (“brown”). Follow the
same steps. Rarely do you need to go word by word, and it’s preferable to
fi nd the longest workable word strings to create a more natural fl ow, minimize
the chance for weird edits, and lessen your work. Still, sometimes you
have to tackle a line a word at a time.
Piece together all of the resulting regions—newly processed sections intercut
with pieces of the ADR buy take. You may encounter some bumps, so don’t
be afraid to move the edit points a bit earlier or later than the obvious word
beginnings. Music editors often use the downbeat (in our case, the beginning