How to help dubbing mixer do A/B switching from edit

[trevora]

Looking for the best way to make the mixers life easier

Budget is very tight so plan is for mix to mostly be the edit stems, with a bit of improvement as time allows. TBH if budget gets much tighter the mix will all be done in NLE...

Pics are either
A: full screen archive (or other locations)
B: contributors watching/discussing archive in room

So ideally the archive FX to the mix would be:

A = regular FX bus
B= FX bus faked to be 'in the room' (levels are already dipped correctly behind DX- although B bus does require a bit more attenuation when reverb added)

I can see that this will be quite time consuming to do manually with keyframes (lots of cutting back + forth) so I'm hoping to automate.

Unfortunately the NLE (Premiere Pro) does not have side chaining but I have tested via Audition and the following seemed to work:

In PP
Add a couple of audio tracks, one with 1k tone where A should be routed, the other where B should be routed (there's never tone on both)

In Au
Use compressors on A/B.busses that mute depending on tone from respective audio track (side chained).

I don't have ProTools available but presume that could work there too?

Is there a better logic? (ie I would rather just have tone on one track - silent for A, tone for B - sidechained to both busses, so one acts as a gate, the other as an inverse gate).

Obvs I would just ask the mixer but they haven't been contracted yet...

[smurfyou]

A little confused, are you trying to mix it before you send it to the mixer?

Typically I'd want it checkerboarded on the timeline. I'm not a fan of ducking.

[trevora]

Mainly think of it as a science project.

I. Can tone on two tracks drive compressors/gates via side chaining in ProTools such that the busses are muted when tone is on the respective sidechain track

ii Can it be done with tone in just one track - such that two busses have their mute status toggled (ideally with some attack/release/hold control)

I

[its2loud]

Originally Posted by trevora

Mainly think of it as a science project.

I. Can tone on two tracks drive compressors/gates via side chaining in ProTools such that the busses are muted when tone is on the respective sidechain track

ii Can it be done with tone in just one track - such that two busses have their mute status toggled (ideally with some attack/release/hold control)

I

1. Yes, you can use 1K tone to trigger a ducking compressor. It will not trigger an actual MUTE of the track. Only an attenuation of the signal

2. Yes, tone on one track can trigger two side-chained duckers. Again, not an actual track or buss mute

Any plugins you use for such ducking will not carry over into Pro Tools for mixing.

[trevora]

Simple AAF example - the tone tracks are the duckers - one attenuates FX A (clean) the other attenuates FX B ('in the room' sound).

Same thing as an Audition project with the duckers in place. Can't get the attack/release smooth enough for it to actually work though.

The version in PP is unusable because the only ducker that works with sidechain there that I can find (beatrig sidekick) has a 100ms limit on the attack - which is really terrible.

I'm thinking that, in reality, the best approach is to use one track with tone - to easily ID to the dubber where we think the 'in the room' sound should be and they will keyframe it based on that to their taste.

If I could've got it working to a reasonable level in PP it would give me a better guide for approvals. But then I'm not particularly happy with my 'in the room' sound anyway. Best left to a professional

[its2loud]

Question,
How much time have you spent trying to figure this out for the mixer when this is something any re-recording mixer would know to apply based on the visuals in the video and wouldn't be using tone as a trigger for a ducker when this type of application is generally done with multiple automating several types of plugins such as EQ, filters, reverb, etc?

exterior scene vs interior scene.

You could also automate this in your edit sequence using various plugs for a temp mix or guide track for the mixer and for approvals by the clients.

[EarHole]

Sounds like you are making your job way more difficult to accomplish something that won't translate to the mixer and even if it did, they may have their way of doing things that are faster and better. Just edit and let the mixer mix. I hate it when the editors start pre mixing with all kinds of plugs ins. I have my own work flow and plug ins that I've spent on and have years of experience using vs the free **** you get from avid.

[smurfyou]

I'd still want it checkerboarded. Or at least drop markers where you want the perspective changes. We can import markers from the AAF.

[trevora]

Originally Posted by smurfyou

I'd still want it checkerboarded. Or at least drop markers where you want the perspective changes. We can import markers from the AAF.

Checkerboard would be a nightmare - cos there's edits + level changes across where the transitions occur.

Markers are a great idea - do duration markers work from Premiere to ProTools?

[trevora]

Originally Posted by EarHole

Sounds like you are making your job way more difficult to accomplish something that won't translate to the mixer and even if it did, they may have their way of doing things that are faster and better.

This is 100% correct. It's an experiment that likely won't work but has helped my understanding of side chaining - which would be a great help for temp mixes at the picture edit stage (auto duck FX + Mx + easily ignored for final mix). Sadly Avid MC has no busses + the side chaining has never worked reliably. PP doesn't support it by default + the one plug in I can find that does support it is not great and introduces glitches in some sequences.

Just edit and let the mixer mix.

I don't know what budgets + turnaround times you work on but sports TV often doesn't stretch to a seperate mix.

If you're in the US you could maybe have listened to my mixes in 5.1 + Atmos on network TV just a few hours after the event (admittedly mostly pass through from live but there's plenty of mixing in Media Composer going on too).

Even when working to bigger budgets/longer turnaround the show won't get signed off as locked unless the mix is a passable representation of the finished article.

I hate it when the editors start pre mixing with all kinds of plugs ins. I have my own work flow and plug ins that I've spent on and have years of experience using vs the free **** you get from avid.

Feel free to replace as you see fit.