What are people's experiences with Auto-Align-Post?

[mgoorevich]

Originally Posted by Cheesehead

I find it sad that some people are shooting film now and relying on just Lavs for dialogue, with the boom as an afterthought.
Its always been acceptable for TV I suppose, but the boom should always the best mic to use. Its the most natural sounding mic, at the correct distance. The most expensive mic's on set and therefore best sounding.
Proximity effect on Lavs is horrible sounding and needs surgical EQ work to improve it.
The sound of a good boom mic with a skilled boom op should be all you need for good dialogue. No need to add Lavs in at all.
Auto Align Post is a great tool to get you out of an issue that previously would have needed ADR.
Lavs should be a backup insurance policy.
Sorry for the rant, but it bugs me.

Well said!
We should be prepared for a new era when we'll get no boom, Lav tracks only processed with some NoiseAssist plugin or upcoming new NR plugins implemented into cheaper recorders.

[Pete Gates]

Ha ha ha, you've touched upon my personal current pet hate - Location DNS hardware units. They should be banned! Ahhh didn't know NoiseAssist, just Googled it, FFS!

Pete

[Cheesehead]

Location DNS hardware units. They should be banned!

Aaaaargh! Surely no self respecting Sound Recordist would inflict that on us.... would they?
They can use it on their mix track if they want, but please not on the iso's.


Interesting what you say Pete about the stylistic change in the way films are recorded. Watching a lot of films before Lav mics were invented it was perfectly acceptable to have a wide shot with a 'roomy/ Airy' sound and personally I still think that's fine as long as the dialogue is understood. Some shots on older films I have trouble working out how they captured the sound so well in the circumstances and they're clearly not dubbed!



A lot of it seems to be down to discipline on sets, all these people milling about and on their headsets and of course, the importance of good sound recording was more appreciated in those days.

[mgoorevich]

I had some PM conversation with Cedar about their DNS2 boxes using on sets and how they promote them. I also had a similar discussion with someone at SoundDevices.
Both manufacturers see it as a democratisation for all who needs it process and they "hope" it won't affect recordists delivering the iso tracks to us. They also think that many modern productions often don't get to the post sound.
Also the recordists them selfs are not completely aware of the problem since they continue to deliver the isos tracks. They say it aimed for some life streaming and IFB tasks...
But it seems that they don't realise the problem. And this problem will at first impact the better sound recordists. A novice using DNS2, NoiseAssist or other built in the box NR plugin, will be delivering "better sounding" tracks for less money from the producer POV. And indeed "it will sound surprisingly good" from the speakers of the off line editors. Similar to a situation with the Lavs when they often ignore a good boom operator, we'll get poorer recorded material by less experienced recorders.
My last hope is for iZotope coming with the new plugin called un-DNSer or un-NoiseAsister

[KingTor]

The production mixers I know well aren't any happier about this trend than we are. It's all about what the producers what and they want to hear the final mix in their comtex. I'm surprised they aren't asking for effects editors and Foley artists to be performing love on another stage and having that mixed in to what they hear. And where is that lazy composer anyway? Alright, I'm exaggerating now. A bit.

I love mixing perspective and using the boom heavily if not exclusively, but it's not what the producers want. They'll say "there's something wrong with the sound on the wide shot” and I'll say “that's perspective” and they'll say “oh. That's good. I like that, but just not so much perspective, ok?”

I also don't like using noise reduction very much, just a light touch with a Cat43a used to be all we had and it worked, and I still prefer just a light touch with iZotope Dialog Denoise to all the many tools we have. Then the producer will say “that scene is really noisy” and I'll say “that's a sense of space; they're on a street corner in Manhattan, that's a noisy place” and again “oh. That's good. I like that, but maybe just not so much sense of space, ok?”

I think a lot of producers, and a lot of people in our business, think mixing perspective and space is lazy and/or cheap, but it's a lot easier to throw money at it and process the crap out of it than it is to creatively work with what's there (on set and on screen) to really bring the audience into a world.

So I keep spending money on plugins (*by far* our highest investment in processing is for the dialog chain) and keep demonstrating how much better it is if we spend a little more time tinkering to craft the sound a bit more.

smart phone my ass

[minister]

Definitely prefer the sound of a well-placed boom.

When this first came out I thought, "Eh, but I've gotten pretty good at manual alignment when I need it and it's rare to mix sources, don't need it". Then I got stuck with a film with wide shot after wide shot. Or, actors never saying the same thing twice in alternate takes (so I couldn't cut in a line from a different boom angle). Auto-Align-Post did a better job than I could and much more quickly. I use the boom as reference because that is my main sound and I want to maintain that sense of sync (though, it is so slight, I doubt anyone would notice in most scenes) Then I blend to taste. Definitely worth the investment!

[Ryan Young]

Just to clarify, I much prefer the sound of a well placed boom, 9/10 times. My question was purely timing-wise and time-travel-consistency-wise in a purely technical standpoint for choosing which channel will be the anchor.

Originally Posted by Ryan Young

Hi Pete! Hi everyone.

I just finished using it on a feature film and I'm very pleasantly impressed! I kept the settings to "create individual files" and "clip by clip" so it can preserve my edits as well as my clip gain automation.

I had already gone through and done a full edit and pre-mix pass on all booms and all lavs, and exported a mono stem of each (mono boom, mono lav).

Then I saw this thread.

So, previously, during the sections where I wished I could use both, and hand-sunc my boom to match my lav, I was really frustrated with the varying delay, phasing, and phase cancellation.
NOW, I use my (muted) lav print as my key input across the board so any boom clip I wanted to double up with my lav, I'd select, preview, render (in dynamic mode).

It's honestly been really easy and helpful; haven't had a single issue yet. Well worth buying it, even though I was able to process my entire feature in about 30 minutes while in my trial. This helped so much with adding space and brightness to some muddled and lifeless lav tracks.

[minister]

Originally Posted by Ryan Young

Just to clarify, I much prefer the sound of a well placed boom, 9/10 times. My question was purely timing-wise and time-travel-consistency-wise in a purely technical standpoint for choosing which channel will be the anchor.

If you are using the boom and it's "timing" 9/10 times, why change the timing for the 1/10 times?

[Ryan Young]

Ha, fair enough of a question. Here's my extreme and ridiculous example.

Let's say it's a shot of someone 200 feet away hitting a snare drum, just once. There's a shotgun mic near the camera (200' away from the drummer), and the drummer has a lav on.

The sound of the shotgun would be delayed compared to what we're seeing on-camera much more than the "direct" source of the dummer's lav because of how long it takes for the sound to travel that distance. So, my reasoning is like the lav is like a direct feed versus the "live" feed, so to speak. Obviously, in that situation, the boom would be aligned, unless you wanted the realism of distance, right?

[Brandonx1]

If you have the lav and boom in phase, you can mix them together. Many mixers like the sound of both mics mixed.