Dialogue Editing

ADR Editing 287
Soft transients—the gentle beginnings and ends of phrases—will suffer the
most.
To better hear and “see” the reference track, process it with a high-pass fi lter
and perhaps also add a boost at around 2 kHz for better voice articulation.
Be brutal. You don’t care what the reference sounds like; you just want better
resolution to increase the signal-to-noise ratio and provide more detail in the
waveform. Ugly, maybe, but you should be able to hear more voice information
and VocALign will be able to match waveforms more accurately.
Naming New Regions
As you dissect and process ADR takes, the region names will become increasingly
indecipherable. Each time you edit a region, you add a suffi x, and every
process that creates a new soundfi le appends its suffi x as well. By the time
you’ve pieced together the best takes and then pitch-shifted, time-stretched,
and VocALigned, the region names have been reduced to unreadable
hieroglyphics.
For each region, you have to keep track of the code and take number. If later
on you or the director wants to know which take was used—or not—you’ve
got to be able to divine that information quickly. Beyond that, there’s room
for even more diligent naming. When I perform a process on a region, I like
to give it a name that describes that process (see Figure 15-16). Thus, if I timestretched
a region to make it 7 percent longer, I add “+7%.” Same goes for
pitch changes and EQ. If I use a high-pass fi lter to remove some wind rumble,
I include the fi lter’s frequency. It doesn’t take long, and the information can
be very valuable later.
Figure 15-16 If you have the time and patience to create a “paper trail” of ADR or
alternate take regions, you may save time in the mix if changes are necessary.