More technical info to support notes on LA B

1. Unit 24 LAB – Hardware, Software and Processes
 You need to use the notes in the tables on the LA B post on the blog to demonstrate
your understanding of a range of different issues.
 Most of them are very very obvious to you from your experience of video editing –
using equipment, recording processes, keeping records, moving data into editing
programmes and so on.
 A few involve more technical issues about sound. These additional notes are here to
help you with those.
More information about technical sound issues
‘Hardware and Software’
‘Multi screen systems and converters (eg Matrox DualHead2Go)
 This is a piece of hardware that allows you to connect your computer (MAC or PC
through an AV port to two separate monitors, enabling you to use one as an editing
work station and one as a monitor
 It’s different from just using the viewing window in the edit programme because it
allows you to view in full screen and listen to the soundtrack as it will be exported –
in full quality.
Stereo soundstage setup for editing versus use of stereo headphones
 As a rule, anyone working with sound works with headphones (from ‘live’ radio
presenters to editing technicians in a studio)
 Headphones enable you to focus on the sound in your programme to the exclusion
of everything else and provide you with a very very clear audio of the L/R balance
 For most of what you produce, however, your audience (or at least some of your
audience) won’t be listening on headphones but through speakers. You need, at
least as a final check, to listen to your editing work through stereo soundstage
speakers to check that the effects you can hear clearly in headphones actually work
in ‘broadcast’ audio.
 This is especially true when you have directional sound and multi-directional sound
(which will be true for more advanced film production, for example, but will also be
true for games).
Converting sound bites from monophonic to stereophonic clips
 Some sounds tend to be recorded in mono (single track, so you hear exactly the
same if you play through L/R speakers) – especially dialogue (or vocals for a song)
 You may then want to be able to split those mono tracks into stereo tracks (which is
easy – duplicate the mono track and convert the two mono tracks to a ‘single’ two-

2. channel stereo track – any audio editing programme can do it) and then think about
assigining different L/R balance to different sections of the audio
 For example-
o You have a soundtrack recorded of a conversation between two people, one
positioned in the right of the frame and one positioned in the left of the
frame. The sound is recorded in mono.
o You take the mono soundtrack, duplicate the timeline (so you have two
mono tracks) and convert the two mono tracks to a single two-channel stereo
track
o You now have a two-channel stereo track with two identical channels, one
balanced Left and one balanced Right (so you will hear the same through
each headphone or each of two speakers)
o You select the audio of the speaker to the right of the frame and you shift the
L/R balance of their audio slightly to the right – and so on with the other
speaker to the left
‘Processes and Techniques’
Using ‘Normalising’ function to make sure levels of each clip match
 ‘Normalising’ is a standard editing function in audio editing.
 It makes sure that all of the clips on your final timeline have the same standard for
peaks and troughs of the audio signal – in other words, it will cut off all parts of the
soundwave above or below certain points in all clips
 The effect of this is to ensure that the different clips you have put together on the
timeline sound better together, have a more consistent volume level across the
whole piece despite being recorded at different times and in different situations, and
don’t have drop outs, distortion or clicks because of particularly high or low levels.
 Issues include
o Normalisation will reset any specific L/R balance effects you have created
unless you tell it not to – so remember to click the box that tells it not to!
o Normalisation gets rid of peaks and troughs so if you have planned and
created some particularly loud or quiet sound within your piece you need to
check that it is still as you want it to be after normalisation.
o Save your pre-normalised project so you can revert to it if necessary if
normalisation does anything unexpected.