The importance of audio

Posted on September 2, 2007 by Melissa Worden

We interrupt this holiday weekend to bring your attention to a post by Cliff Etzel ~~Angela Grant~~ (on Angela Grant’s blog) on how audio can make (or break) your video (I was determined to take the weekend off for some much needed R&R, but this post needs to be shared).

She offers these tips (and more, so be sure to check out her post and comments):

* The use of audio editing applications for editing voice overs such as SONY’s Sound Forge, Adobe’s Audition and other similar applications will help to provide a professionally edited voice over that imparts information to viewers about what they are watching. Training materials exist that can provide the basis of audio for video for Sound Forge and Adobe Audition. You can bring your video clips into your audio editing application, compose your script while reviewing your footage, and then read a written audio narrative script according to scene, transitions, etc. Plugins allow the cleaning up of audio tracks in our video footage. All it requires is the willingness to learn how to edit audio. Learn to use these applications, for they will become a part of the credo of the Solo Video journalist.

* Do your voice overs in a silent area, preferably with sound absorbing material on the walls nearby to reduce possible room echo. Building a simple voice box out of egg crate foam and foam core and using this as a simple sound booth will greatly enhance the sound of your audio narrations.

* Utilize a separate mic if possible, such as your shotgun mic or use a voice recorder and then import your audio narrative into your audio editing application to tweak and render out a final clip to import into your video project.

* When on location, and I have to go back to my motel room, I utilize my Rode shotgun VideoMic on a table top tripod attached to my Laptop, and then utilize blankets, towels, etc in a semicircular pattern around the mic to help deaden the noise and echo in the room and this creates a makeshift sound booth when reading a script. It actually does a pretty respectable job in a pinch when editing on location and you don’t have access to a sound booth.

And this is a BIG one:

As our work is seen by more and more people, the legalities of music in a video has to be addressed. The use of copyrighted music and/or sampling of said music is ILLEGAL without proper licensing. Again, being informed of the various tools available for scoring music for video is a key to C.Y.A. If you want to add music, musical scoring can now be accomplished with little or no experience with such applications as SONY’s Cinescore, Adobe’s Soundbooth and Smartsound’s Sonicfire Pro. These applications, with a little hands-on training, allow you to produce royalty free musical scoring to your video projects without worry of copyright infringement.

OK. That’s all for today. Get back to your holiday. I’m headed to the beach!

Comments

4 Responses to “The importance of audio”

Technolo-J on September 3rd, 2007 2:22 pm

A hard day’s night…

I wrote a 27-inch story and cut five related audio slide shows this week.

Then I gladly took some……
Angela Grant on September 3rd, 2007 9:31 pm

I’m glad the post was helpful! I actually didn’t write that one. I’ve taken on two contributors recently. Cliff Etzel is writing a weekly column on Wednesdays about gear and software.
Melissa Worden on September 4th, 2007 12:57 pm

Oops. I missed that. It has been corrected.
Angela Grant on September 4th, 2007 8:33 pm

Thanks!