Dial Premix routing in PT

[yazoo]

Hi!

Have recently read "Dialog editing" by John Purcell and liked it alot.

Im using his system with Dial A --> L , PFX, ADR, etc.
Now Im about to route the channels in PT for a ITB mix.

I searched the DUC for Dial Premix and found a quite interesting approach.

http://duc.digidesign.com/showthread...routing+dialog

Is this a common way to work if you mix ITB?

-How many channels should I route the Dial tracks to?

-Where should I use EQ,comp? Direct on Dial tracks or on a summed aux(s)?

Where should I insert the Cedar Dns2000?
It thought of having the cedar on a summed bus to use both channels but I get confused when it seems like the right way to route Dial tracks is more than one track.


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And a last question here, I talked to a director about film mixing and told him about the approch with Dial A -L and other stuff that I learned from Johns book. But the director incist that its common to have a fader for every character during premix, for me thats the opposite way from John Purcells work method any opinon in that from you Pro guys/girls?

Regards
Benny

[Branko]

...But the director incist that its common to have a fader for every character...

Who's mixing the film?

[yazoo]

Originally Posted by Branko

Who's mixing the film?

Im going to mix the film and wants inputs from as many people as possible!

The big issue for me is the routing of the channels after the dialog editing is finished!

regards
benny

[JSPurcell]

Originally Posted by yazoo

Im going to mix the film and wants inputs from as many people as possible!

The big issue for me is the routing of the channels after the dialog editing is finished!

regards
benny

How to split the dialogue tracks? By shot? By character? "Tomaato, tomahto." Personally, I stand by the "by shot" organization scheme, since most of your mixing and editing issues relate to shot, not character. To me, it just makes for better order when entering the dial pre-mix. Besides, on CU shots, splitting by shot and by character are the same thing. There are circumstances when you want to cut apart a 2-shot, for example, such as when one character is very off mic, or one character has a booming voice, and the other's voice is thin. Then, you must do these supplemental splits. I generally think that slavishly splitting by character can result in more mixing grief than organizing by character, but if your director has a "better" idea, don't argue too much. Do the job, take the money, move on and decide after the gig if you liked this "by character" organization. Who knows, you may love it!

As for dialogue pre-mix record tracks, I usually get away with eight. (3 x dial record; 2 x ADR record; 2 x ADR reverb return; one internal scene match reverb). But sometimes I use 12 or 16 tracks, depending on the complexity of the mix.

[CHD]

First of all I want to thank John Purcell for his track organization scheme, by which we happily standardized our workflow. In my experience, the better the dialog recording quality, the less original tracks I need. I usually split booms by shot and lavaliers by character (within one scene). A track for each character through out the whole feature length seems not efficient, provided the vast automation capabilities of ITB mix. My PT automated Cedar 3000 (similar to 2000) is inserted into two additional tracks and I move regions to that tracks if necessary. All EQ, compression, exciters, reverb sends etc. are on original tracks, not busses. I do a lot of manual gain riding rather than compression. If needed, I add tracks with Speakerphone for telephone/PA voices. I usually record dialogue premixes into 2 or more 5.0 tracks.

[Henchman]

The way I do it is as follows:
I create 2 auxes that have my dialog processing plug-ins along with a Cedar inserted.
I have a 1 more, same as the first, no cedar, and then I have the master dialog Buss/Aug, which then goes to the re-record track.

Each dialog track has aux sends as re-assigns , to each individual chain as well as the master Dialog buss which are easily muted. And easy to keep track of, so no double bussing occurs.
I also have aux sends on every channel as well as the dialog processing chain for the reverbs etc.
This gives me complete flexibility as to what goes where and when.
I can freely pan dialog anywhere in the soundfield when needed. I can send verb pre or post processing at any given time.

Plus, because of the various gain stages, I have numerous places I can add boost when needed for very quite dialog.
I also have various stages where I can filter out noise, bit by bit, so I can deal with even the most offending dialog, when needed, without having to overdo any given process at one time.

[O.G. Killa]

Originally Posted by yazoo

But the director incist that its common to have a fader for every character during premix,

That's completely BS. Every situation is different. But for the most part, the same character in the same scene will sound noticeably different in each angle/shot/camera setup. If the director shoots a scene with two actors facing each other talking, they block and light the whole scene facing Actor 1 over Actor 2's shoulder first... they shoot that for half a day and get maybe 6 to 10 takes... take a break, change the whole setup, blocking, lighting, etc to the other side of the room and shoot over Actor 1's shoulder facing actor 2... then maybe the next day they come back and setup the same scene with a wide angle shot of the two of them.

In each "setup" the mics have to be positioned in completely different spots to stay out of the shot, not to mention the lav mics may sound different from movement or taking it on and off throughout the day (s) of shooting.

Because of this, in my experience anyway, it is always SO MUCH EASIER to mix when things are organized by scene/angle/take...

Anyway... when mixing in the box... I have all my dialogue tracks feed a DIA STEM bus. It might be 3 channel, 4 channel or 5 channel dependong on what needs to be done for the film. From the dialogue stem audio track, I send that out to a "Final Print" stem that gets mixed together with with the SFX and MX. Depending on what is needed I'll either put the noise reduction on the C of the DIA STEM, or I'll try to create a mono aux after the DIA STEM track for the noise reduction and then have the aux feed the final print.

I usually setup all my individual tracks like a console would, I put a gate, EQ and then compressor on every track and put them in bypass. I have sends to each reverb for that stem (for dialogue I might have one or two mono verbs in the C and then maybe one or two stereo/quad verbs for ambience) Then automate them to turn everything on as needed.

You could also setup a separate send from the individual channels to the Noise reduction on a send/bus. I've done that before as well... I just perfer to have it later in the chain usually.

The other thing you can do, which this has worked pretty well for me the one or two times I've done it. Tell the dialogue editor to put any off camera dialogue on separate tracks and any "futz", etc on separate tracks...then assign them to subpaths within the bus. If all your on screen dialogue is on one group of tracks, set them all to "C" within your DIA STEM. Anything that is off camera and needs to be panned would be on a second group of tracks and those could be L/R or Quad within the DIA STEM, and so on...

There's really no "right" or "wrong" way to do it. It really just depends on how you like to work and what the film calls for. Sometimes if thee isn't that much going on adn the tracks were recorded well, you don't need to do a crazy, elaborate bussing/setup. But then other times you might need to...

[Henchman]

Originally Posted by yazoo

And a last question here, I talked to a director about film mixing and told him about the approch with Dial A -L and other stuff that I learned from Johns book. But the director incist that its common to have a fader for every character during premix, for me thats the opposite way from John Purcells work method any opinon in that from you Pro guys/girls?

Regards
Benny

Absolute nonsense for todays mixing. I fact, since everything is automatable, I like to boil the edit down to s few tracks as possible, so I'm not searching through tracks to find something.