Favorite/best techniques to blend ADR...?

[Rick Burnett]

Sound track pro has some SERIOUS bugs in it. The two which drove me absolutely NUTS:

(1) Bite volume random changes. When bouncing out the stems, STP would sometimes randomly change the level of certain audio bites in the tracks. I had invited the director over to listen to the progress and he's like "Why the hell is that voice almost not able to be heard?" We ran down into my studio (we were watching in my theatre) and played back the original and it sounded right. Wrote out the whole thing again thinking it was me, that one was fine and ANOTHER bite near it changed volume.

(2) Automation is SERIOUSLY broken When I setup a project for a movie, I usually create 5 or 6 aux tracks that contain general reverbs on them. I call them things like BATHROOM RVB, STREET RVB, LIVING ROOM RVB, and use them to add a little room response to foley, sfx, and ADR. In STP, I automated the send value to each of the aux tracks depending on the scene so I could easily channel in the room response when needed. When I wrote out the stems, the automation was NOT consistent. Not only did the ramps and such of the automation happen in the wrong places, even the send levels were not right. It was HORRIBLE.

The best two apps I use for mixing film are Digital Performer or ProTools. I have and use both, although I use PT more because where my mixes go from me use PT about 98% of the time. I tried Logic just for the heck of it, but it couldn't handle such a large project without crashing (this was LP8). For scoring however, it's awesome. The memory management and AU performance in Logic is FAR better than any other DAW I have EVER used! I use some AMAZING sample libraries (Symphobia) that use a TON of resources. I CANNOT wait till all the AU I used go to 64-bit (Logic is already at 64-bit now).

 

[Jim Hoffman]

Great points here. A quick note about reverb. A good thing to remember is most dialogue lines were recorded on set in mono. No matter how clean an environment there will always be a bit of "reverb". When mixing use a MONO verb to match the existing lines. Then add the envirmental multichannel reverb to everything equally as a whole if you chose to use one. I see so many mixers making the mistake of using stereo reverbs to blend an ADR line to mono sync lines.

Can't stress how important a great performance by the talent is. The acting doesn't stop because you're in the studio now instead of on set. Make them as comfortable as possible. Also I've found gettin them into a routine of not using headphones on both ears or at all helps them recreate that performance. Actors change their tone so much when monitoring through headphones. It's so unnatural an many inexperienced performers don't make the adjustment necessary to recreate the moment.

 

[Marti D. Humphrey CAS]

I just have been more clear!

Having editing audio in FCP, ProTools, Logic Pro, Digital Performer and SoundTrack Pro (which I will NEVER use again), I found all of them don't handle an hour an a half of 60+ tracks the best. Especially in fight films where I have CRAZY foley.

Rick,
I mix movies with "Hundreds" of tracks playing back and it's no problem
in Pro Tools. You need to have the right amount of power to make it work.
Our 2 systems , one for Dialog, Adr, Group and Music. The other is for Sound
Effects, Sound Design, Backgrounds and Foley.it is not uncommon to have 180 tracks on each system playing back simo.

 

[Rick Burnett]

Rick,
I mix movies with "Hundreds" of tracks playing back and it's no problem
in Pro Tools. You need to have the right amount of power to make it work.
Our 2 systems , one for Dialog, Adr, Group and Music. The other is for Sound
Effects, Sound Design, Backgrounds and Foley.it is not uncommon to have 180 tracks on each system playing back simo.

Absolutely I agree with you, as I have synced together multiple systems in the past to get higher performance. There are a LOT of factors that need to be taken into consideration depending on your needs.

For instance, if I wanted to do as you've mentioned, I'd use a ProTools HD (TDM) system and link two of them together if I needed that many tracks.

I am using ProTools Native with the Complete Production Toolkit to get me the max tracks AND 5.1 mixing inside. If I were ONLY editing audio files, I wouldn't think I'd have a problem with PT in this capacity. I have never had an issue of how many tracks, but what those tracks contain.

PT9 native is NOT the most efficient running software instruments. Especially when I use Kontakt with HUGE sample libraries. Typically, since the films I am working on are low budget ($25k to $50k), I end up writing a lot of the incidental music for the films as well. For this I will load up maybe 5 or 6 tracks with different types of piano, strings, toms, deep drums, and ambient sounds. Given the 4G limit of OSX and the fact the OS and PT itself chews up about 1G of that, I am left with 3G of memory. I try to use 'stream from disk' on all sample libraries that I can, with some of the samplers, this just does not work. Since I REALLY put a lot of effort into my scoring, for many of the scenes I am adding 2 or 3 more instruments and quickly I start to max out on PT9 native.

I'd also like to add that PT9 does not support automatic delay compensation (ADC) which is a HUGE pain when I am using my UAD2 DSP cards.

Edit: By the way, was looking at the list of things you have worked on. Nice! I am a HUGE X-files fan and the music of Mark Snow and the mixing of the shows in general is an influence on the work I do.

The solution here if I want to do entire movies inside of PT would be to do my scoring outside of PT (or another session) and just import those bounced tracks back in.

However, what I like about the 30min sections in my case is I found that since the picture is never truly LOCKED until NEVER Many times, it just makes managing shifting around the audio easier for me. If they add or remove say a minute of material in the first part of the film, I just shift the video around on the other two pieces and they remain the same since I take care of lining up all the parts in the final pass.

That said, there are A MILLION ways to do any of this. What limitations or solutions one person reaches are probably totally different than another persons. I just wish Avid would fix the huge midi editing bugs in PT Native and give it ADC like all the other DAWs have, and have had for YEARS.

 

[Rick Burnett]

Rick,
I mix movies with "Hundreds" of tracks playing back and it's no problem
in Pro Tools. You need to have the right amount of power to make it work.
Our 2 systems , one for Dialog, Adr, Group and Music. The other is for Sound
Effects, Sound Design, Backgrounds and Foley.it is not uncommon to have 180 tracks on each system playing back simo.

Absolutely I agree with you, as I have synced together multiple systems in the past to get higher performance. There are a LOT of factors that need to be taken into consideration depending on your needs.

For instance, if I wanted to do as you've mentioned, I'd use a ProTools HD (TDM) system and link two of them together if I needed that many tracks.

I am using ProTools Native with the Complete Production Toolkit to get me the max tracks AND 5.1 mixing inside. If I were ONLY editing audio files, I wouldn't think I'd have a problem with PT in this capacity. I have never had an issue of how many tracks, but what those tracks contain.

PT9 native is NOT the most efficient running software instruments. Especially when I use Kontakt with HUGE sample libraries. Typically, since the films I am working on are low budget ($25k to $50k), I end up writing a lot of the incidental music for the films as well. For this I will load up maybe 5 or 6 tracks with different types of piano, strings, toms, deep drums, and ambient sounds. Given the 4G limit of OSX and the fact the OS and PT itself chews up about 1G of that, I am left with 3G of memory. I try to use 'stream from disk' on all sample libraries that I can, with some of the samplers, this just does not work. Since I REALLY put a lot of effort into my scoring, for many of the scenes I am adding 2 or 3 more instruments and quickly I start to max out on PT9 native.

I'd also like to add that PT9 does not support automatic delay compensation (ADC) which is a HUGE pain when I am using my UAD2 DSP cards.

The solution here if I want to do entire movies inside of PT would be to do my scoring outside of PT (or another session) and just import those bounced tracks back in.

However, what I like about the 30min sections in my case is I found that since the picture is never truly LOCKED until NEVER Many times, it just makes managing shifting around the audio easier for me. If they add or remove say a minute of material in the first part of the film, I just shift the video around on the other two pieces and they remain the same since I take care of lining up all the parts in the final pass.

That said, there are A MILLION ways to do any of this. What limitations or solutions one person reaches are probably totally different than another persons. I just wish Avid would fix the huge midi editing bugs in PT Native and give it ADC like all the other DAWs have, and have had for YEARS.

Edit: Also, I took a look at the projects you have worked on. Nice! I am a HUGE X-files fan and Mark Snow is a DEFINITE influence on my work, as the general mixing of the shows as well.