Advice on how to edit silence

elijahlucian


Hey guys, I am looking to find out how you all edit silence in sonar. breath removal etc.

I am doing some voice acting stuff lately, and I am using a to gate out the soft breaths but because of the nature of voice acting, the heavy breaths before a part do not get gated out properly, an increase in the gate's threshold only leads to the start and end of phrases being cut off... 

I tried to find out maybe a hotkey that works, but right now i seem to be forced to render the gated,compressed file and then remove the breaths manually using a wave editor... 

just seems like something you could do in sonar with little trouble.

Envelopes should work nicely.  Still requires manual labor, but they can automate just about any thing that works with good affect.  Volume, compression, expansion - -the list goes on and on!

You can also use envelopes with selections. Nodes are added automatically so you don't need to deal with setting any back to 0dB. Check out this video...

* Cakewalk SONAR: Automating Data Selections
http://www.digifreq.com/digifreq/video.asp?ID=6

Scott

--
Scott R. Garrigus - http://garrigus.com
* Author of the Cakewalk Sonar and Sony Sound Forge Power book series: http://garrigus.com/?PowerBooks
* Author of the Cakewalk Sonar ProAudioTutor video tutorial series: http://garrigus.com/?ProAudioTutor
* Publisher of the DigiFreq free music technology newsletter: http://digifreq.com/?DigiFreq
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Hey - Elijah - can you fix the link for checking out your tunes?

Bob Bone

Envelopes are OK but if you are editing a vocal track, that can get a bit tedious. And takes too long. 

I like to move the track I'm editing to the top so it sets directly under the time line bar. I SELECT THE TRACK.

Now.... I zoom in as far as I need to see the breath sounds and other noise in the wave in the track...

I click and drag on the time line and I see a darker gray section appear in the timeline and also in the track as the "selected" area. Now I go to PROCESS>APPLY EFFECT>GAIN>MUTE  

It's quick, easy, and it works well. If you goof up and get too much or not enough.... EDIT>UNDO...and try it again. 

I use the mute function all the time and have even used it to remove a click in the middle of a guitar track and it was so fast, you didn't hear the edit to mute and back..... 

very useful. 

I'm weird and edit this stuff in in iZotope RX2. I like being able to see sibilance, breaths, lip smacks, etc. visually. 


Peace,


Tunes

I like using The Dynamics function in VVocal, that way I can also raise or lower as needed on each word. Works great for removing headphone bleed as well. Good luck.
Kev.

David


V-vocal is awesome for this , you get a visual as you lower the level.
  Also what works really fast is to use a clip gain envelope ,
left click /drag over area( below the envelope) 
pull down above the envelope to lower volume,
  Both work great for sssss 

thanks for this, I was racking my brain trying to remember how to do this.


I was trying to drag the line, then read your post. doh!


:) perfect that is rather quick,. I kind of wish it selected the clip and the automation at the same time, oh well. it's definately workable.

V vocal or a 3rd party editr (Soundforge here) ..before staing any serious session , wake up in the morning , orange juice , and cleaning of take with soundforge ;)

Use the aim assist line, line it up on where the lyric actually ends and begins again. Select from now thru now and delete that space.

Mute tool. There may be a way to select the whole track and filter all sounds under a certain db?

M_Glenn_M


Am I the only one who splits tracks into clips for this?
I regularly split between waves and roll back or forward to clean up in between.
I feel it is the cleanest, is very easy and requires the least CPU?
With the smart tool you only need to hold Alt and the split is at the cursor.

No you are not the only one. I do exactly the same thing.

M_Glenn-  I do it that way too.  It really doesn't take much time to use the Trim/Split Clip tool and hit delete.

I agree Bristol, about the ambiance on quiet passages. 
When other instruments are present I don't think you notice and you can slip fade the clip at the end.  
But for those sensitive passages I might also try an expander, which reduces quiet signals. 
I don't delete however, I just clip and roll it back.    

alright guys, here is the verdict.

I tried the envelope tool and that seems to create the right effects for what i want, however when if i choose to delete a portion of the project then i have to move not only the audio but the automation.

so. what i did is created another  shortcut for delete, which was alt-d the reason for this, is that when im using control to move left and right with my mouse scroll wheel i used to have to shift from control over to the delete key, which means eyes off the screen to see the delete key, thus more time. trust me, it adds up.

so with my new left side delete I can now move left and right in the track view without issue, select using left mouse and delete the breaths between words.  after i remove the breaths i bounce all the slices to clip, just for ease of moving around

bristol, i used to think the same, but when it comes to video games, there is complete silence between takes, trust me i checked for myself, I loaded skyrim and removed all sfx,music,and ambience and it is complete silence for sure, to confirm this, i exported a voice file from the game and looked in the editor. the reason for this is once your audio falls 20db, the room ambience would become inaudible anyways. the ambience and in game music provide the natural noise floor you would otherwise need. also, the last thing you want when you are trying to create a space in a video game (which makes use of reverb in the game engine) is conflicting spaces such as room ambience, for this reason i record the vocals in a "dead booth" a 5x5x8 space of 6" of mineral wool, definately does the trick, i dont really like it for music, but excellent for voiceover.

Bristol...  I agree about the silence.  But if the result sounds bad, unnatural, or any other negative way, then I wouldn't do it.  That's where artistry and skill come in.  And if there is any pop noise whatsoever after the trim, a small fade in/out usually takes care of it.

I have to trim nearly every one of my guitar clips because of the hum/noise just prior to the lick I'm going to play.  (I live in a very RF noisy area).  If there's noise inside the lick, it usually has to stay unless it's totally "non-musical" (lol), and I have to EQ it out if possible since I don't have any cleanup software.  Luckily, sometimes the "noise" lends credence that a human actually played the part and it's somewhat "musical" in that sense.  lol

My music is usually very dense, and the trims aren't noticeable.  In fact, in the last piece I did ("Clouds On Fire" in the Songs Forum), I got lazy and just left the guitar lick noise on most of the clips because I couldn't hear it, and there was a LOT of trimming that would have to be done.  LOL  (Now if the piece were for a client, or for pay....)

So I think the musical piece/passage sort of  determines what methods of cleanup can/should be used.  I would not say there is a right or wrong way to do it.