editing a voiceover work

[HAWG_TRAIN]

first time editing a voiceover for this audiobook, took out the breaths. now i have all the space in between the sentences. there too far apart now. just curious is there any way you guys do it. I just move them closer to sound natural after i took out the breaths to make it sound more rthtymic. but i have to be carefull some are commas and some our sentences. yes this is my first lol...

[antoniosolo]

I had someone in last week doing just this and we removed breaths and then started moving the sound bytes around to adjust timing and then automate with volume. Different world voiceover..one can, over one ear and all sorts of shenanigans....oh and low and high cut was standard for this bloke as well....cheers.

[Cosmic Closet]

First things first:

How was the rhythm of the reader? Was it comfortable as he read it, regardless of whether you took out anything or not? If his pace was fine, then the reading was good. Don't forget that if you change timings between sentences, you are affecting his performance. Don't speed him up unless it is necessary.

Did you record "dead air" while taping him? You know, room noise? I hope you did, because that is what makes for seamless edits. If you felt the need to take out his breaths, then substitute with room sound to make the cuts smooth.

It sounds like, psychologically, you are working yourself into a corner with your question. You have cleaned the recording and are now staring at the dead space you created, and wanting it to go away by cutting into the pace of the reading, even if that is not the real issue.
You most likely need to re-listen to the actual performance of the reader, and make your sound decicions from that. Never forget, the performance is king.

This is just my reading of your post; feel free to add more info or to correct me if I jumped to conclusions.

[NYMo]

Hi there,

Doing my first one this week too !

I recorded just the general room noise ambience and then inserted this into the gaps.

cheers
N
Y
M
O

[Bill@AudioVision]

I find it very strange to have no breaths left in the track. As soon as you realize that the person is just talking and not breathing, it's weird -especially on books. Some talent are good at keeping them under control, others take a big gasp each line and have at it. If needed, I usually find a 'golden' one and stitch it in. I will also just simply drop the level of breaths 10-12dB ... sounds natural but not distracting. Also, never use the breath from a pickup. Use the breath from the last good line - much more natural rhythm.
Have fun!
-Bill

[soundawg]

Use an expander to lower the breaths without removing them.



SOUNDAWG

[Matti]

Find the rythm of the "scene" and go from there with the edits and leave the breaths, with the help of some volume automation. Some mild compression is ok.

Matti

[sleeper1400]

Originally Posted by soundawg

Use an expander to lower the breaths without removing them.



SOUNDAWG

yep. thats all ya gotta do.

[Recman]

I use to take breaths out in songs but soon realised it sounded un-natural. I would prefer to lower it or shorten it or replace ugly breaths with nice breaths. I realised that natural recordings sounded better for me and I never take breaths out anymore unless it suits the song or voiceover better.

[seanmccoy]

I also prefer to leave in as many breaths as possible, just reducing their volume if they're a little obnoxious. But sometimes you have no choice but to take them out, and then, yes, you frequently have to alter the spacing to make it sound natural. An elongated pause with a long breath works fine, but sounds awkward with the breath removed.

[ryancork]

Originally Posted by Bill@AudioVision

I find it very strange to have no breaths left in the track. As soon as you realize that the person is just talking and not breathing, it's weird -especially on books. Some talent are good at keeping them under control, others take a big gasp each line and have at it. If needed, I usually find a 'golden' one and stitch it in. I will also just simply drop the level of breaths 10-12dB ... sounds natural but not distracting. Also, never use the breath from a pickup. Use the breath from the last good line - much more natural rhythm.
Have fun!
-Bill

Seconded,

I really dislike the sound of no breaths. And pro readers are good about breathing, but an expander works great as others have said.

[Matti]

He was asking for VO

Matti

[ryancork]

yea i don't like it in VO. I also hate scooped sounding VO's. I want the reader to sound like he/she is next to me

[gorillainthemix]

I would only take out the breaths at the beginning of each "new" sentence or break. Taking them out in the middle of a sentence will sound unnatural.

[zvenx]

I mostly use to manually take them out. But I recently bought voxengo voxformer just for this purpose and it works great for me.

rsp

[glitchfactor]

I would never take them out for a book. Number 1 it's WAY too much work, and Number 2, it doesn't sound natural.

Editing / sound quality for an audio book is going to be COMPLETELy different than for a 60 second radio spot. If it's for radio, then yes I usually do what you are describing.


Justin

[bigdoghat]

Originally Posted by HAWG_TRAIN

first time editing a voiceover for this audiobook, took out the breaths. now i have all the space in between the sentences. there too far apart now. just curious is there any way you guys do it. I just move them closer to sound natural after i took out the breaths to make it sound more rthtymic. but i have to be carefull some are commas and some our sentences. yes this is my first lol...

I do a lot of audiobooks. And while I agree that all breaths removed sounds weird - some companies insist on it so you have no choice. And on the other end of the scale I do audiobooks for companies that insist that the least amount of breaths are removed. If there's no preference, then leave them in - but, if the reader is taking too long to get to the next paragraph then I'll slot in room tone and shorten the gap slightly.

Here's some timing tips - ms = milliseconds Cut yourself some set pieces of room tone first - it saves a lot of time. VERY IMPORTANT - Listen to the piece of room tone that you start with very loudly and make sure it's completely clean. When I first started, on one program, I noticed about 5 hours in that the piece of room tone I was using between paragraphs had a tiny noise on it and had to go back and replace every single one! I start by finding a clean piece of room tone that is 4 seconds long and cut my smaller pieces from that. Also VERY IMPORTANT - for God sake don't forget to turn the volume back down before you hit play on the dialog!

Regular new Paragraph 1400ms or 1500ms - if the reader is blazingingly fast then 1185 or 1250ms

New paragraph after a very big and poignant moment - 1750 (I use this a lot) - 2250ms

New sentence - 750ms - 1000ms - I find myself mostly using 750ms, 875ms and 900ms but again if it's a fast reader, try 750ms more than the other two. BUT - vary them, don't use the same room tone length for each sentence, it sounds weird. A couple of 750's in a row is okay but 3 or 4 in a row sounds odd.

Commas - definitely no more than 500 ms - and no less than 125ms. I use 185, 250 and 325 the most for commas, the odd time, 425 or 500

Dashes - 500ms or 550ms almost always does well here

Dialog going back and forth between two characters - 750 works for a lot of this but if the answer is a quick one say, an indignant response to a statement, use 625ms. Don't go any lower than 625, it's too hard for a listener to keep up with the fact that characters have switched if the pacing is any quicker. If one character says something that requires a thoughtful answer 1000ms works pretty good most time or even 875 or 900. If one character asks a very difficult question that requires the answerer to give decent pause for thought you can go anwhere from 1185 to 1750 but 1750 is really pushing it. I use 1185, 1250 and 1400 a lot.

If you hear the inner dialog of a character following another character's outer dialog then 1000 works almost every time. Eg Character Mike to John "I wouldn't lie to you John" insert 1000ms John knew that Mike lied to him all the time. If it's a fast-paced read you could try 750 or 875/900 but defo no lower than 750 and no higher than 1000

Sometimes the reader will breathe in immediately following the end of a word - don't try and take this breath out, the word will sound clipped and the edit will be obvious - I dip the breath down in volume when I have to leave a breath in. And in general, if removing a breath creates an audible edit, you have to leave the breath in.

Now all that being said, when I have the luxury of time on an edit (but that's rare) I will follow the reader's timing exactly, inserting pieces that match exactly their pacing and only use pre-cut pieces of room tone for scene changes and new paragraphs or new thoughts. All this is still relating to a program where all breaths are gone by the way.

These are the room tone lengths that I cut and I name them as shown below in this list

4000 (ms as in 4 seconds) for chapter breaks
3000 - for pauses between scenes
2500 - for pauses between scenes
2000 - for pauses between scenes (the director should have written on the script what pause lengths they want)
1750
1500
1400
1250
1185
1000
900
875
750
625
550
500
425
375
325
250
185
125
90
75
50
25
10

All pieces of room tone under 100ms I use to remove tiny noises if straight up editing them out messes with the timing of the word.

I edit on Pro Tools and use Quick Keys with it - Quick Keys is a macro program that costs about 90 dollars and is a good investment if you plan to edit a lot and can confirm that it works with your editing software. It will greatly speed up your edits. I don't know about other editing software but with Pro Tools there is a region list that sits to the right of the edit window and all my cut pieces of room tone (regions) are visible. I drag them into the editing window as I need them. I also use a Wacom Tablet instead of a mouse, initially because of muscle stress from using the mouse but actually the tablet is very fast. Dragging in a piece of room tone from the region list to the edit window is literally a small flick of the wrist. It takes about 3 days to get the hang on using a Wacom Tablet and it's very frustrating while doing so but it's way faster than a mouse or a trackball once you become proficient. This is for editing only by the way. Trying to mix music with a tablet is a nightmare and trackball is definitely the way to go there!

It's hard to get the hang of this when you first do it - but you will get good at it and it doesn't take that many edits to gain self confidence. A very good practice is to ask the director (if possible) if they have any notes regarding the edit and if they're happy with the pacing of the reader - you'll often get some useful info like - 'the reader kind of blazed quickly from paragraph to paragraph but it is what it is' - it's good to have this kind of info because later you could begin editing and decide that it might be good to slow the reader down a touch between paragraphs and do an awful lot of extra work that is unnecessary. The bottom line though that I get from everyone is, try and maintain the original pacing of the read (if director is happy with the pace) using your cut pieces of room tone that are the closest in length to the breath you're removing. And while you might think that this is going to ruin the natural feel of the program, it's already ruined by all breaths being taken out, so don't stress too much about that! lol However, you will find from time to time that using the pre-cut pieces of room tone sounds weird on a particular edit and in this case I match the reader's pacing exactly and that usually does the trick. But, believe it or not, 9 times out of 10, the pre-cut pieces work great.

This whole system that I have, I learned from a guy who is considered both a veteran and one of the best in the business and from time to time I have also seen other editors' work and have yet to come across someone who doesn't use pre-cut pieces of room-tone when removing all breaths. Where your skills as an editor and your decision making really comes into play is to now and again add a little extra time at the end of a dramatic scene to give it more poignancy or to allow the drama of the scene to sink in before the next one starts (especially if the scene change, to you, feels too fast). Or even shortening pauses in back and forth dialog to add excitement. And I hear this from directors a lot, eg "the read is good but if you hear anything that should be sped up or slowed down then definitely do it". And the reason they say this is because you have a better perspective because you're hearing the program as one continuous thing as opposed to when it's being recorded with stops, starts and re-do's. BUT - don't re-pace an entire program, it's not okay to do this without the director asking you to. Sometimes a reader is just crap (authors reading their own work is something that springs to mind) and it's not your job fix their pacing on every single line unless you are specifically asked to. You have a free rein to add your own personal touch but within reason and not too much. I usually find myself adding a little time or taking away a little time in scenes that have big emotion - but only if needed, I'll never do it just for the sake of adding my 'personal touch'!! And don't go crazy, this is gruelling work and you can't spend too much time on any one thing or you're not going to make the deadline if you have one.

Pacing tip: If you're editing on headphones and you're not sure if pacing is right on one particular thing you've done, then mark that spot, come back to it later and listen on speakers with maybe 30 seconds pre-roll. It will be obvious right away if something is off.

Something I also used to do after handing in my first few edits was to listen back to programs I had done on speakers and critique my pacing. Make note of where things feel too fast or too slow and the length of room tone that you used and what it was for i.e. a comma, a new sentence, a new paragraph. When I first started I would go as high as 750ms for commas until it was pointed out to me that this was too long - so you might become aware of stuff like that by examining room tone lengths where pacing feels off.

Right! Got to get back to my edit now - as I said, it can be gruelling and distractions are always welcome! Best of luck.