ADR tips

[KSutton]

I've always wondered what tricks there are to matching studio-recorded dialogue with production sound. Any advice?

[Strider]

FCP-
What setting do you use with the verb as to not give it away? i expect a really short room-with cut highs to mask reflections. Especially when the scene is dry. When score is in it's a lot easier to get away with imperfect matches.

It would be nice to have a magic eq button for everybody, but it's like you have to reinvent the wheel in every session. I've even found the same talent to sound different the next session (maybe it's at a different time of day-so they're tired, or last time they were just getting over a cold and they had a great deep tone which is now gone), so my channelstrip settings always change for them.

I guess I'll just have to get used to it.


Mark

[CCash]

I haven't used it, but I would think VocAlign would be the holy grail for ADR.

[fatcatpost]

I'm no expert, but I find using a little D-verb (or other reverb), with the high end rolled off, helps to get that "Ambient" room sound, along with strange EQ techniques. Production sound is often boomy, with the midrange sucked outt of it. Obviously covering the hole with background noise from the production sound helps a lot as well. Hope this helps a little. Any other tips would be appreciated, as I often struggle with ADR matching as well.

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[Strider]

I don't have that flexible of surroundings at my prod company. That'd be really cool though to have a studio big enough to have a good natural reflective room ambience.

Mark

[KSutton]

I haven't seen Vocal align but has anyone seen the way Digital Performer time compress/expands? It shows a preview using the waveforms. That would be handy when trying to match stuff up. My question was on the tonal matching though. Has anyone tried recording the ADR in a live room as opposed to a moderately dead room? I've wondered if that would be more realistic than reverb.

[Peter Steinbach]

I use lexiverb quite a bit to match room ambience. For some reason, the "plate" algorithm seems to work better for me than the "hall" algorithms. I usually set the rt60 to about 0.4 secs, all roll off high freqs at about 2k. If you dont have lexiverb, true verb is quite good at room simulations. I suggest you become very intimate with automating the plug-in parameters. I usually have a different EQ curve for every damn sentence. BTW, I really like the Filterbank EQ for ADR. Make sure the ADR track has the same dynamic processing as the production dialogue.
As far as Vocalign goes, it can be very useful, but is not the holy grail of ADR editing. You can download demos of it that function for a few days. Frankly, I found that I would rather edit the ADR myself, and spend the money on beer or something.
Don't be afraid to steal bits of the production dialogue to make your edits better. Sometimes I will snip of the final bit of a word from production and paste it on to the end of a word of ADR. Try stuff like that, sometimes it works.
Another thing....Crossfades, crossfades, crossfades. They CAN be the key to a succesfull edit.
You may notice I keep using ambiguous words like "can" and "sometimes" and "quite a bit". There are no rules, as long as you edit looks and sounds good.
ADR editing is definitely something that you will get better at with practice. I can't really describe it, but there is a technique, or philosophy (or something) that you need to really make it work. You WILL understand this ineffable thing the more you do it.
Good Luck, ps

Ooops forgot to mention room tone. Very important. I always try to use tone from the take in question, if possible. It often works better than room tone recorded specifaclly by the production mixer (if in fact they DO record any at all)

OK this really is the last thing. I'd be carefull about recording in a live room. It MAY work great, but if it does'nt you've really painted yourself into a corner. You can always add ambience, but you can't remove it.

[This message has been edited by Peter Steinbach (edited January 08, 2001).]

No it was'nt!

[This message has been edited by Peter Steinbach (edited January 08, 2001).]

[doug sjostrom]

Anyone tried worldizing ADR? This is a technique used on FX a lot where you play the dry clean signal thru a speaker in a medium to large room and record that back into your session so you have a real reverb. Many people mix the dry and wet to get a good match. You can play w/ the mic - speaker placement to get what you are looking for. I have never had the oportunity to try this, but it sounds like a great idea.

[georgia]

One of the things I do is to record the ADR with the SAME mic used in the production setting. I often work directly with the Sound Mixer from on-set...

One of the guys I work with often (he does a lot of TV work) anyway , he brings in his mics and we re-record dialogue with his gear at roughly matching distance/setup..

works wonders at matching dialogue from production tracks...

other wise we tend to do the EQ / verb thing as mentioned above...

cheers

georgia