Sound for Video Session: Fairlight Questions
A week after publishing our new mini course on editing and mixing dialogue audio in DaVinci Resolve's Fairlight, I received a few interesting questions from my friend Jacob Fenn. Here are his questions and my answers.
While processing the audio for this session, it occurred to me that one of my answers was not very clear. Jacob asked, “Is it possible for Fairlight or any other digital audio workstation app (DAW) to clip since they do all of their processing in 32-bit float?”
This is the short answer: The internal processing of Fairlight will never lose data to clipping as long as the source audio was not clipped. However, when you export your mix, if the audio exceeds 0dBFS at any point in the mix, the exported audio will be clipped.
Fairlight Mini Course: Dialogue Mixing in DaVinci Resolve's Fairlight
DaVinci Resolve is an amazing video post app for editing, coloring, adding visual effects, and mixing sound. And with free and studio versions, anyone can produce very high quality videos and films. Fairlight is the incredibly powerful audio mixing module within Resolve.
We are happy to announce a new mini course on how to edit and mix dialogue and simple music intros and outros.
In the course, we’ll teach you:
- How to configure the Fairlight settings
- Import and sync your audio clips
- How to get around the Fairlight page
- How to use track layers
- How to choose which mic to use in a dialogue edit
- How to set up your channel mapping
- How to use keyframes and automation to dynamically adjust track and clip levels
- How and when to bounce tracks and timelines
- How to loudness normalize your final mix
One of the tricks with online courses is what to do when you have a question. We have you covered there. You can email me any time when you sign up for the course. We also hold weekly Sound for Video Sessions where we cover sound for video topics in more depth and even have Q&A sessions once or twice a month.
Music from Artlist: Sunday by Rich Young Pixies - Amazing Journey. You can receive a 2 month discount on a subscription to Artlist, a subscription service for stock music you can use with your videos. Check it out at Artlist.
Copyright 2019 by Curtis Judd
Sound for Video Session: Zoom F4 Firmware, Fairlight, & Sennheiser XSW-D Wireless
In our first audio-only Sound for Video Session, we cover the new features Zoom added to the F4 recorder in the 3.0 firmware update. Now F4 users have AutoMix an the Advanced Hybrid Look-Ahead limiters that were previously only on the F8 and F8n.
We also cover my impressions of the Fairlight digital audio workstation page in DaVinci Resolve 15.2.4. It is getting pretty close to the point where I can move to Fairlight and away from Adobe Audition. There are still some minor issues. In fact, in mixing this episode, I learned that Resolve has issues exporting audio only projects. Sigh.
And finally, we talk about a new wireless lavalier microphone I just received in for review: Sennheiser XSW-D Portable Lavalier Set. I have yet to do the review, but cover some of its features here. This is a consumer/prosumer grade wireless system that is made to be as easy to use as possible. The review should appear on my YouTube channel in the next few weeks.
Gear used/discussed in this episode:
Zoom F4 (Amazon) audio recorder
DaVinci Resolve - Free video editing, coloring, and audio mixing
Sennheiser XSW-D Portable Lavalier Set - Wireless microphone system for those who need wireless to be as simple as possible
RODECaster Pro - Mixer and recorder used to record this session
Golden Age Project R1 Active mkIII (Amazon) - Affordable ribbon microphone which I used to record this session.
Copyright 2019 by Curtis Judd
Outro music from Artlist: Call on Me by Kick Lee. You can receive a 2 month discount on a subscription to Artlist, a subscription service for stock music you can use with your videos.
DaVinci Resolve Fairlight Overview Part 2
Mary from Blackmagic Design put together a two part series as an overview on how to use the Fairlight audio mixing panel in DaVinci Resolve. For those not familiar with DaVinci Resolve, it is a free application that allows you to edit, color grade, add compositing effects, and mix your video projects. Fairlight is the audio mixing portion. Long, but great information for those into audio post for film and video.
DaVinci Resolve Fairlight Overview Part 1
Mary at Blackmagic Design has put together a couple of Fairlight overviews to familiarize yourself with the Fairlight interface. For those not familiar with it, Fairlight is the digital audio workstation built into DaVinci Resolve which is a free video editing, color, compositing, and mixing app. Fairlight is the audio mixing portion and it has come a long way in terms of features over the last couple of years.
Sound for Video Session: Fairlight Audio First Impressions
In this week’s Sound for Video Session, we take a first look at DaVinci Resolve 15 Beta’s Fairlight audio panel. This is a full-fledged digital audio workstation (DAW) within a comprehensive video editing, compositing, grading, and finishing application. We aren’t going to dig into all the details, but try to answer the question about whether one can now switch to DaVinci Resolve for audio mixing? The answer is different for everyone, but I hope you find this helpful in making the decision for yourself.
**Update: Several astute viewers have pointed out that you can set the loudness target (LUFS) in the settings. That's great news! It still is not an offline process - still need to play through the entire piece - but it is a step in the right direction.
Gear and links discussed/used to record this episode:
DaVinci Resolve with Fairlight Audio (beta or production and free or Studio versions)
Electrovoice RE20 Dynamic Broadcast Microphone
Allen & Heath SQ5 Digital Mixer/Audio Interface - This is my first time using this to record a Sound for Video Session. Seems like it worked nicely.
Copyright 2018 by Curtis Judd
Outro music licensed from Artlist: Keep an Eye by Back to Dream. Artlist provides high quality music tracks for your film and video projects. You can receive two months off an Artlist account by using our link.
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