Sound for Video Session: Process Dialogue with Izotope RX and Nectar

In this week's Sound for Video Session we cover some of the tools in Izotope's RX app and Nectar plugin which I often use to process dialogue audio.

Gear used to record this episode:

Electrovoice RE20 Dynamic Microphone

Antelope Orion Studio Audio Interface

Linear Phase EQ Plugin Special Pricing

In our last sound for video session we covered high pass filters. One thing I showed was that applying a high pass filter can mess with your waveform's symmetry, essentially robbing you of headroom. Then I showed that the RX5 high pass filter, didn't see to have that effect.

It turns out that RX's digital high pass is what is called a "Linear Phase EQ" which means that it is generally won't change the phase of your waveform when applying a high pass. That's a good thing.

But Izotope RX is a pretty expensive piece of software and not all of us can afford that. As an alternative, I just received an email from WAVES, makers of audio plugins, with a deal today on a linear phase EQ (which includes a high pass filter) and a linear phase multiband compressor for $69. The normal pricing for these two is about $300 USD. WAVES makes quality plugins so if you are in the market, this is probably worth a look.

Dialogue Audio Post Processing for Film and Video

http://youtu.be/VcMOBrdbHgk

I always do at least some post-processing of my dialogue audio. I think some are under the mistaken impression that you can just buy a decent mic, record, and publish and you'll have awesome sound. That can be fine for quick-and-dirty videos, but if you really want good dialogue audio, you’ll need to do some post processing.

This is an evolving process as I learn, but this is what I do currently to get pleasing, prominent, good sounding audio that plays back reasonably well, even on mobile devices. For TV the only difference would be to normalize at a lower loudness (-24 LUFS).

This is what I do in Adobe Audition. This is a pretty manual process but gives you lots of control over the final sound. If you willing to sacrifice a little control for a quicker workflow, you can try using Auphonic.com to automate the process.