Issues with a new style of dialog editing (in Premiere)

[philper]

Originally Posted by Frank Kruse

You can coalesce the volumes to clip-gain in PT to preserve what they did and null your volume automation at the same time. The biggest annoyance for me are the head and tail fades since I only use their volumes for reference and the music guide.

That requires PTHD, btw.

In any case, having converted what they did to clip gain, the resulting gains are all wrong--particularly re hitting spec, which the editors are only dimly aware of… And I still don't have the edits cleanly done--the conversion just kills the levels in the parts of the flock of clips on different tracks they are using that they don't want. It doesn't make a nice clean dialog cut understandable by a mixer etc, I don't think.

philp

[jeremiahmoore]

I've begun to get this approach on dialogue edits, wherein the final "dialogue comp" is composed using one and two frame keyframe fades atop longer on-track clips. (most of which are not intended to be heard.)

My first step is a "triage" in which I make a copy of the material, and "translate" the keyframe moves to edited-clips-with-fades. Then I can work as normal.

Thus far it's only on a short corporate videos - and thus far always in premiere - but it definitely takes excess time to resolve. Thus far I don't think it's cost me more than 10 minutes on a project, and I've yet to push back w/ client, though I think I will begin to -

(another matter, but this is coming in corporate-videos land in parallel with downward pressure on prices, expectations for faster turnaround, more last-minute schedule changes and reductions in project-scope after booking, and other disagreeable practices.)

-jeremiah

[philip_purcell]

As with some of the replies above, I ALWAYS delete the editors automation when copying AAF clips up to my mix tracks. I keep an unchanged copy of the original, disabled and hidden, at the bottom of my session in case I have trouble interpreting their intention, then do my own trims and fades to every clip, since I find editor's versions rarely work for me anyway. I also delete all their clip gain for the same reason. It actually makes mixing faster, since you're not constantly fighting their weird decisions about levels and fades. Maybe I'm old-school, but it has always been my assumption that the editor's levels and fades are just a rough idea for client preview, and should never be used in the "real" mix. That's my job.