Soundtrack Pro Workflow

[ This article was first published in the February, 2011, issue of
Larry’s Final Cut Pro Newsletter. Click here to subscribe. ]

Here’s another audio question Anita Talevski asked:

What do you think is the best strategy to approach audio editing/sound correction?

 

For Example. . . I have the project in STP and the clips I am going through and editing now but which do I concentrate on first? Effects? Actions Noise, gain, amplitude, getting rid of clicks and pops? Do you think its better to go through all the clips and do one effect like getting rid of clicks and pops and do a normalize and then go back through the clips and apply other effects or should I finish one clip and then move to the next?

 

. . . I have no idea which order to do things in for sound editing other then what is posted on Lynda.com.

 

I have never been taught this except through your tutorials on Lynda.
Then I need to apply music from the STP supplied sample music, which is actually the first thing I did last time to this project but then I trashed all that work for some odd reason.

 

A 10 minute piece has now taken me two months and I still haven’t gotten anywhere.
Please help. I feel that I am almost close enough to getting this.
Thank you for your help.

Larry replies: Anita, generally, and your workflow can differ, I recommend the following steps in this order:

1. Clean up audio clips with problems first (like noise or hum)
2. Set a quick gain for the entire track so you can hear what you are doing
3. Edit and trim to remove excess breathes, bad edits, add ambience where needed, and fade to smooth transitions into clips. Basically, finish the edit and make everything sound clean
4. Apply filters to tracks
5. Fine-tune the levels so the mix sounds as perfect as possible
6. Export for final output.

Here’s the first question Anita Talevski asked.