On this video cinematographer Tom Antos takes us through 5 fairly simple ways of improving your sound in editing with Adobe Premiere Pro (some of these things might also apply to other editing software to varying degree).
There are quite a few things that you can do to improve the quality of the sound in your videos. During the pre-production and the production itself, it is important to try and film in a quiet location with as little noise as possible (turn off AC if possible for example) and eliminate echoes if they exist (with sound blankets for instance).
During the production try and use the best mic that you have available and place it close to your talent (out of the frame if necessary or hidden on your talent). Monitor the sound during the recording and repeat if noise does happen during filming.
The better the quality of the original sound the better the final result will be and the less work you will have to do, improving the sound in post-processing.
Talking about post-processing, Antos discusses in this video mostly post-processing tools and how to use them. These include:
- Multiband compressor – this will help you prevent huge differences in sound levels and generally help you increase the volume of your entire sound bit without clipping.
- Parametric equalizer – This allows you to add effects but also allows you to control specific frequencies (increase/decrease the highs or lows).
- Highpass filter – this filter will cut out the lows and only allow the lows to pass through.
- Lowpass filter – This is the opposite (it will allow some of the lower frequencies but block some of the higher ones).
- Mastering – finally you can add other tracks (music for example) and mastering your sound is basically the way you control each soundtrack.
You can find more Premiere Pro related video on this link here on LensaVid. You can also check out more videos dealing with sound recording for video productions here.