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Audio on Track

Jul 1, 2005 12:00 PM, By David John Farinella

Rescuing, repairing, and reviving sound for corporate videos.

Most corporate videos aren't likely to draw legions of fans for midnight screenings any time soon. Yet, in their own way, corporate productions can be every bit as influential as a typical big-budget summer blockbuster. After all, corporate video productions, by their nature, are designed to have a specific economic impact on the business world. Such videos are a crucial tool that businesses large and small use to communicate important messages to customers, employees, and investors across the globe.

To that end, a corporate video's aural quality greatly impacts that message's overall effectiveness. Unlike that of feature films, however, audio postproduction on the average corporate video rarely gets the respect, time, and budget that it deserves. This reality therefore creates a tremendous challenge for audio post professionals on such jobs.

Ray Rettig, president of Cotton Hill Studios (www.cottonhill.com) in Albany, N.Y., knows all about such challenges. In recent years, his company has provided audio services for such large corporations as Kodak, IBM, and General Electric. To serve the needs of clients of that caliber, companies such as Cotton Hill are usually hired either by production companies working directly with the corporate client or, in some cases, by ad agencies that handle all video work for those clients — for marketing material used both out-of-house and inhouse. For big clients — the Kodaks, IBMs, and GEs of the world — Rettig reports that Cotton Hill can generally use high-end production and postproduction tools for corporate video work. That often includes shooting on film or various HD formats, using original music over production music, and spending more liberally on postproduction fixes, particularly in the audio categories of dialogue and sound effects.

On the other hand, many clients simply do not have budgets of that magnitude. In those cases, Rettig says, the first area to get trimmed is often audio post services. In those instances, audio post sometimes amounts to little more than waving a wand over the tracks — making sure dialogue, music, and sound effects tracks line up and are reasonably audible. That, and the occasional addition of canned production music, is often the end of the story. But facilities like Cotton Hill that specialize in this kind of work have, over the years, developed more sophisticated approaches for adding quality audio tracks to corporate videos. Rettig recently shared his company's methodology with Video Systems.

The Approach

According to Rettig, the pipeline used to distribute, manage, edit, and polish audio on such projects often varies, depending on whether Cotton Hill is dealing with a video production company or an advertising agency directly. More often than not, an agency will act as in intermediary between Cotton Hill and the production company, only stepping in during the final mix sessions.

While working with production companies, however, Rettig says that his team generally receives video that is close to final quality, and an OMF file either via FireWire, a CD, DVD, or an FTP site.

“We don't lose any fidelity with the FTP, because we do it uncompressed,” Rettig says. “That gives me all their media and all their cuts. The beauty of that is that it allows me to have their media at my disposal, so if something is up-cut, I can actually draw out the waveform, and the media is there for me to play with and use. Also, I can clean up any music edits or cross fades, or anything like that.”

The OMF file is then imported into the facility's Digidesign Pro Tools HD|3 Accel system, locked to a Sony UVW-1800 Beta SP machine.

“Normally we'll ask for a Beta SP tape,” Rettig explains. “Many times, they'll provide us with a QuickTime file, and we use that in lieu of the Beta tape or along with the Beta tape. Basically, those audio files come in, and we take a look at those, and then depending on how far the production company has gone with it, we'll go from there. Many times, it's dialogue and nat sounds [ambiance tracks] that come in on the OMF, and we have to go and build all the sound effects and the music cuts, and everything like that. Other times, the OMF comes in, and the video editor has a good idea of what he or she wants, and there are music cuts and sound effects and dialogue and nat sounds, and it all has to be leveled and cleaned up and mixed properly to make it sound right.”

For viewing the imagery while building audio tracks, Rettig adds that his audio engineers prefer to receive QuickTime files and work from there, but the company still tends to rely on the Beta SP format for client presentations.

“QuickTime videos are small, so when they play on your computer screen, you can see them and work with them, but it's not like a presentation,” he explains. “In our studio, we have a television mounted in the [overhang] directly in front of the console, and the picture from the Beta deck shows up there, so our clients can sit in the control room with me and get a good presentation of the video on that TV. For actual working purposes, the QuickTime is sufficient for the most part, but if there are a lot of intricate synchronization issues, I do prefer a Beta tape only because it's a little clearer and easier to see.”

Within the Pro Tools system, Rettig's team utilizes dozens of plug-ins to clean up sounds and create sound effects. For many projects, his company relies heavily on the McDSP FilterBank EQ plug-in and Audio Ease Altiverb V5 sampled acoustics processor plug-in to clean up dialogue that typically hasn't been recorded in the best conditions.

“They'll go out and shoot these things that are interview-based, and everybody that they interview is in a different location,” he explains. “One guy has the air conditioning rumbling behind him. Another guy is at the top of the stairs in the auditorium. The other guy is at a convention with people milling around him. So a lot of it is what I call ‘cleanup work.’ Many times, they use the [onboard] mic on the camera. If you are lucky, you get a lav mic or a boom mic along with that. So a lot of it is not real creative work, but you've got to make the stuff sound good, and that's the first challenge.”

Rettig meets that challenge with a number of noise filters that he has created within FilterBank. “Many of the noises behind these shots are common — ground hum, air conditioning noise, or ambient noise that is unwanted and diminishes the quality of the dialog tracks,” he explains. “So I apply those filters within Pro Tools to take out some of the rumble, hissing, or [other noises].”

According to Rettig, one of the things that Cotton Hill did to streamline its studio time was to input its sound effects libraries onto a hard drive that is networked with the company's Pro Tools system and an archival system, as well.

“We had our intern take all our sound effects libraries and use [Apple] iTunes to turn them into labeled WAV files,” he explains. “We've made them into digital files that are all online, so it's very easy for us to audition sound effects. I can search for [sound effects] right in my Pro Tools timeline, using the workspace window.”

Cleaning Up

A recent project that came to Cotton Hill as an OMF and QuickTime combination was for a company that specializes in financial services for students. Rettig used the facility's Pro Tools system to perform extensive cleanup work on the video's entire soundtrack before adding sound effects and finishing off the mix.

“Basically, everything was in place for that one, but all the interviews were shot in different rooms, and the levels were all screwed up,” he says. “They needed some sound effects for the transitions, and the music edits were close but not quite great. We took the OMFs and opened them up, looked at the QuickTime, and went through the entire thing and made it right.

“There were some cumbersome music edits, and I fixed those jarring edits so that the timing was proper and the musical beats remained steady. A lot of the interview levels were drastically different, so I leveled those using FilterBank, and that made the dialogue clear, defined, and legible.”

While those types of jobs provide a large chunk of his company's work, Rettig prefers those occasional corporate projects where he can work hand-in-hand with the video's director.

“It gets fun, creative, and challenging when we get to work directly with the director that's putting the piece together, and he'll say, ‘OK, we're going to need a piece of original music for this, and we'll record all the dialogue with you guys.’ I basically record all the materials that go into [that kind of video] and put it all together,” he says. “That's fun. Some people have budgets for that, some people don't. We've done stuff for GE like that, and also some stuff for Kodak and IBM of that ilk. I guess the larger corporations have that budget.”

For instance, Rettig worked hand-in-hand with director Marty Bohunicky during a recent project for the New York State Medical Society's Organ Donation Program. That job was a complete post assignment, including cleaning up dialogue from Dr. Kenneth Moritsugu, M.D., M.P.H., deputy surgeon general of the United States, and placing it within a pair of scenes.

“There were two five- or six-minute vignettes in the video about organ donation and about how a person should be treated after they have lost a loved one in an accident, ” he recalls. “There was a positive vignette about how it should go, and there was a negative vignette of how it shouldn't go. So the job was to tie in Dr. Moritsugu's interviews, and we did all the audio post for these two vignettes with dialogue and music.”

After he's completes the work, Rettig delivers the project back to the client in one of two ways — either a two-track mix or as stems.

“We call it plug-and-play, so basically the video editors have to take that direct mix and lay it back into the timeline in the Avid, and it's basically done,” he says of the two-track mix. “They shouldn't have to touch it from there. I usually export that as a stereo AIFF file. If it's a little more of a complex mix — if there's maybe one or two voiceovers, multiple interviews, multiple sound effects, multiple cuts of music, multiple nat sounds — then I'll also print stems. I'll print all those out so that the editor can just line those all up, and if something changes or if he's not happy with the way that it's mixed, he can then go in and tweak it a little bit.”

While Cotton Hill normally uses Digidesign's Pro Tools for these jobs, Rettig does believe that budding audio engineers could perform basic post services on such videos with either a Digidesign M Box or directly within an Avid's basic Pro Tools setup.

“I think if they could import a movie into [M Box], and be able to look at that picture while they are either recording or editing, it seems like they would be able to do that,” he says. “They may not have as many capabilities as someone with a more sophisticated system, but they might be able to do that. Plus, most Avid systems come with a basic Pro Tools system, as well as an assortment of EQs, filters, and reverbs.”

Rettig concedes with a chuckle, however, that most Avid editors aren't planning to become audio editors any time soon. “A lot of those Avid guys don't want to hear about that stuff; they don't even want to know it's there. But for those that are ambitious, there are a lot of tools that you can use in the Avid for audio.”

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