Pasting Room Tone

[justinpbrown71]

I have an audio narration I need to clean up using a clip of pre-recorded room tone.

Is it possible to copy the room tone clip (in its entirety), highlight a section of the targetted track to paste to, then paste so that, regardless of the length of the room tone clip, only the targetted section length is pasted onto? At the moment the targetted area is being replaced by the entire length of the room tone clip, so that 30 seconds of room tone is added. I have approximately 6 hrs of audio to clean up undesirable lip smacks and noises between phrases, so need a quick and efficient method. Cutting room tone into exact matches of space between potentially hundreds of phrases is not viable.

Is there a method that would fulfil my requirements?

[scook]

Could add the room sound as muted clip(s) into a second take lane and use comping to replace the unwanted sounds in the narration lane with the room sound

or

use volume automation between two tracks

[justinpbrown71]

14 minutes ago, scook said:

Could add the room sound as muted clip(s) into a second take lane and use comping to replace the unwanted sounds in the narration lane with the room sound

or

use volume automation between two tracks

Sorry, I don't understand. Comping doesn't seem relevant, unless there's something I'm missing about this method, though I did read the page via the link you posted.

Also I have, essentially only one track (per chapter of narration, approximately 10mins each) which is edited for best performance. But there are lip smacks and occasionally unwanted sounds between phrases; it is these sections of unwanted sound I wish to replace with room tone.

[scook]

Yes, I understand.

Comping will do this by allowing you to replace one part of a clip with another

As an experiment

• create a track
• open the take lanes
• copy a narration clip into the lane
• add another lane and copy the room sound into another muting the clip
• try comping between the two

 

 

[justinpbrown71]

9 minutes ago, scook said:

Yes, I understand.

Comping will do this by allowing you to replace one part of a clip with another

As an experiment

• create a track
• open the take lanes
• copy a narration clip into the lane
• add another lane and copy the room sound into another muting the clip
• try comping between the two

 

 

Thanks for the instructions scook, but I simply don't understand. I have read your instructions and the comping instructions on the page via the link, but cannot relate them to what I desire to achieve. I have only one take. This method seems to be for compositing multiple takes into one.

Thanks for your time anyway.

[scook]

You actually have two takes, the narration and the room sound

Here is a small video showing how to replace parts of one clip with another. It consist of the parent track, a take lane with the "room clip" (which is muted) and another with the actual performance. The lanes are zoomed in quite a bit but could be zoomed more. Then I replace part of the performance with silence from the muted clip using comping. Then notice how one can progressively replace one clip with another to fine tune between the two. The result of comping the two is shown in the parent track.

 

[justinpbrown71]

1 hour ago, scook said:

You actually have two takes, the narration and the room sound

Here is a small video showing how to substitute "silence" for part of a clip. It consist of the parent track, the take lane with the "room clip" and another with the actual performance. The lanes are zoomed in quite a bit but you could go further. Notice how one can progressively replace the clip with sound with using the other clip.

 

Thanks very much for the video. I will try that method.

But which am I editing? The original track or the take? If the take, then I can see (as in your video too), that the audio levels have changed, the audio looks to be louder. Also, I want to export my original track before editing, but when I delete the take, the original clip is also deleted.

I wish there was just a simple copy and paste option for this.

Also, having duplicated/copied/bounced the room tone track to a size adequate to use as a take alongside the original audio clip, when I add the room tone track to a take lane, the excess is also added onto the end of the original clip. Why is this?

Edited September 18, 2020 by Justin P Brown
More information added.

[scook]

All tracks have one or more takes.

What I proposed is adding a second take of room sound and comping between the performance and the room sound track.

Comping occurs in the take lanes. The results are displayed in the track.

 

Always work with a copies until the method is clear. Even then, I would work with a copy and saving the original tracks just in case.

 

Try the steps described in the experiment using the smart tool or the comping tool

 

Comping is non-destructive. Flattening merges the comped tracks into a new take lane muting the other take lanes. Note: this does not affect the comped clips because comping mutes clips not lanes. So the original comped takes are still there and intact.

 

It is very much like pasting but takes less clicks as the "pasting" happens when the selection is made.

 

[justinpbrown71]

Many thanks for the explanation. I appreciate your taking the time to help. I now have a different issue I have to take care of before I can embark on this task...

[justinpbrown71]

On 9/18/2020 at 4:40 PM, scook said:

 

I have a problem with this method. As you can see from your video, the volume of the take lane track is higher than the volume of the original track; how can this be rectified? How can I prevent the volume from being automatically raised? The visual representation of the the take copy of the original track is noticeably larger.

What I encounter is that the sections of room tone I add (in place of the spaces between the narration phrases) play back at a lower volume than the original spaces between the phrases on the narration track, even though outside of the take lane comping setup, the room tone track and spaces inbetween the narration phrases on the original track sound equal in volume.

[scook]

The take lane track is the original track. I made the take lane taller than the parent track. There is no volume difference between the parent track and take 1.

The levels do not change between a parent track and a take lane.

 

[justinpbrown71]

2 minutes ago, scook said:

The take lane track is the original track. I scaled the track to make it easier to see. There is no volume difference between the parent track and take 1.

 

You can see in my screenshot, Track 4; the take track copy of the original track is visibly larger then the original representation above it, which, I believe, signifies an increase in output volume. I have not increased this myself. How else can the increase in original track volume, (or decrease in tone room track volume), be accounted for?

[scook]

It just means the take lane is physically larger on the screen not that the clip is louder.

It is possible to drag the lane to make it even larger but this does not increase the clip volume.

 

[scook]

I see T1 is muted.

When comping the lanes should not be muted, the clip(s) need to be muted.

[justinpbrown71]

45 minutes ago, scook said:

I see T1 is muted.

When comping the lanes should not be muted, the clip(s) need to be muted.

Yes, I was trying to test the difference in playback when each of the take lanes was muted. I am so frustrated with this work. There is only problem after problem. I don't know what to do. I will have to find another method where the volume descrepancy doesn't occur. Thanks for your time and input.

Edited September 20, 2020 by Justin P Brown

[John Bradley]

Is the particular room sound important?

If not, I'd think the easiest thing to do might be to gate and compress the audio, edit out whatever unwanted noises made it past the gate, and then add some synthetic ambience (say, a nice covolution reverb) afterwards.

Just a thought.

Though fwiw, those recorded signals look very low, and might be getting somewhat lost in the room sound even while you're talking. More sophisticated repair might be necessary. (e.g. RX6/7/8 have de-noiser and de-reverb plugins, I believe.)

Edited September 20, 2020 by John Bradley

[justinpbrown71]

1 hour ago, John Bradley said:

Is the particular room sound important?

If not, I'd think the easiest thing to do might be to gate and compress the audio, edit out whatever unwanted noises made it past the gate, and then add some synthetic ambience (say, a nice covolution reverb) afterwards.

Just a thought.

Though fwiw, those recorded signals look very low, and might be getting somewhat lost in the room sound even while you're talking. More sophisticated repair might be necessary. (e.g. RX6/7/8 have de-noiser and de-reverb plugins, I believe.)

The room tone is the ambience of the room I record in, so is necessary to use in conjunction with the recordings I am doing, for consistency. The room tone is simply a recording of the ambience of the room without myself in it. It is a specific tool for patching inbetween phrases where lip smacks or other undesirable sounds might occur during recording.

To the narration tracks I have added EQ, compression and boost, to achieve the specific volume parameters required by ACX for audio book use, for noise floor, peak and RMS. I have added the exact EQ, comp and boost to the room tone track, so they are equal in volume and noise level.

The signal looks low because it needs to be; between -18 and -23 db RMS, peaking at -3db, with a noise floor of at least -60db. These are the ACX requirements for audio book submissions.