V. Audio & Video // FEB 8th
This week we will dip our toes into the wondrous world of music video production! For this we will work with the NLE (non linear editor) Davinci Resolve by Blackmagic Design 
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Since Version 17 is still in Beta-Phase, I highly recommend using Version 16. It is always nice to test new functions, but Beta-Software is often still quite buggy. In my case, definitely too buggy to do professional work with (and I already tested Version 17, I needed several re-installs to have it work only to find that I need to re-install again).
Please use this thread if you have any questions concerning the workbook or general questions concerning Audio and Video!
Click here to access Session 5: Audio & Video // Feb 8th (Live!)
Find the other sessions here: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
Download the second workbook here
Please keep in mind that video production often puts high demands on your computer, so you might find it very slow or nearly impossible to work with DaVinci if you have outdated or not so powerful hardware.
Minimum system requirements for macOS
- Mac 10.14.6 Mojave
- 16 GB of system memory. 32 GB when using Fusion
- Blackmagic Design Desktop Video 10.4.1 or later
- Integrated GPU or discrete GPU with at least 2GB of VRAM.
- GPU which supports Metal or OpenCL 1.2.
Minimum system requirements for Windows
- Windows 10 Update
- 16 GB of system memory. 32 GB when using Fusion
- Blackmagic Design Desktop Video 10.4.1 or later
- Integrated GPU or discrete GPU with at least 2GB of VRAM
- GPU which supports OpenCL 1.2 or CUDA 11
- NVIDIA/AMD/Intel GPU Driver version – As required by your GPU
- A minimum NVIDIA driver version of 451.82 is recommended.
Minimum system requirements for Linux
- CentOS 7.3
- 32 GB of system memory
- Blackmagic Design Desktop Video 10.4.1 or later
- Discrete GPU with at least 2GB of VRAM
- GPU which supports OpenCL 1.2 or CUDA 11
- NVIDIA/AMD Driver version – As required by your GPU
- A minimum NVIDIA driver version of 450.51.06 is recommended.
I will post the answers to the questionnaire on Feb 17th!
After the live stream, submit your assignments by replying to this thread!
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I am confused... was there a problem with my submission in this thread? It is no longer here. Pray tell if I made some kind of mistake.
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Debbie Oh, right, you are using logic right now! Then you should use the space designer, it as an awesome convolution reverb that gets shipped with logic!
We all look forward to yuor submission!!! And don't worry, we all feel the same: when I record something I usually find after some days ten different things I might want to change! But this is perfectly normal, sometimes we just need to let things happen and go :)
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martin But to answer your question: Nimbus is compatible with Logic and it is still a great plugin, especially with a deal like that (you would need a so-called iLok-Account, this is a standard requierement for a lot of payed plugins, though. This ensures that only you can use a certain piece of software, iLok-Accounts are free)!
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Hi Martin,
Firstly, thank you so much for the recording course. Some went a bit over my head I'm afraid, but as a total beginner, you presented a huge amount of help in getting started with recording.
I've been playing guitar for only 2 years or so, so please forgive the mistakes in the submitted performance. I used fairly low end mikes (Tonor TC20 XLR condenser), face on about 4 feet in front of guitar, a Scarlett 2i2 interface, no compression, minimal eq alteration, and some reverb).
Video synch was done in Hitfilm Express.
One question - I noted that as I moved audio file from reaper to Hitfilm, the "ceiling" on the gain levels seemed to change, with the soundtrack going into the red zone in the new programme. I had to reduce the levels in Hitfilm, and though there was no distortion audible there, once the file was rendered it seems ( to my untrained ear ) to have some clipping around the 1:10 - 1:20 mark. Is it a normal problem to have this gain difference as files are transported to different programmes?
Anyway, thanks for listening, and again for the course.
Colin
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Colin O'Regan Hi Colin! Wonderful sound! Next time I'd recommend to go for a more narrow mic placement, I have a the feeling that there is missing a little bit pf panorama image in the center of your soundscape, but the overall sound you captured is wonderful!
Usually Reaper shouldn't add any more gain during the export process, take a close look of your metering and see if it already clips during playback! Sometimes the reverb can cause trouble, depending on the way you set it up you need to reduce the "Dry" signal to -inf (if you have it on a separate track). Can you attach a screenshot of your mixer and open all of the plugins?
BTW, I love that you implemented multiple camera angles!!!
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martin Hi Martin, thanks so much for your comments. Here's the screenshot of the track in Reaper. I'm not sure where I made the mistakes. As I mentioned, the track didn't seem to have level issues until it was processing in Hitfilm Express, and after lowering the levels there it also seemed fine to me, until it was played in Youtube.... If you can spot what I did wrong from the screenshot, that would be great. Thanks again .. C
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Colin O'Regan Hmmm, the settings look correct, so I don't think it's a Reaper issue. I have never used Hitfilm Express, so I don't know what kind of processing is going on there. Can you send me the audio file from Reaper and maybe export only the audio from Hitfilm as well (there is probably an option to export it as a .wav?)
It's a little odd that the distortion occurs in a part of the song that doesn't seem to be dynamically intense.... We'll need to dig deeper!
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Colin O'Regan well done Colin. That's a nice recording. Funny how we both chose pieces by Tatiana Stachak.
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martin Hi Martin. While I have attached the Reaper audio file below, together with the Hitfilm audio output file (called Editor). I'm not sure if this is in a form you can read, but I can't find another way to export it from the project files. I really appreciate you taking the time for this - many thanks again. C
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Derek Thank you Derek - yes I was struck by that when enjoying your video also. This is a piece in the Trinity College London Grade 5 book, which I am trying to achieve on my own as I don't have access to my teacher since our first lockdown last March. It looked straightforward on the score........Boy, was that a mistake.
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Colin O'Regan hi Colin. The piece I played is in the list of additional pieces for grade 5 I think. It was included in the Trinity grade 5 book for the previous syllabus. I hesitate (and I'm not qualified) to give any advice but I think it might be wise to try to get some advice from a teacher (maybe via zoom) before entering the exam. I thought your performance sounded really good but a good teacher would really prepare you for all of the different aspects of the exam and make sure you get the highest mark possible. Good luck with it :-)
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Colin O'Regan
There is definitely something going what I don't understand
First of all, you have peaks in the 20khz range, that looks like some regular electrical buzz which are always exactly 1.638s apart, very strange! But they don't seem to cause the peaks, because the Reaper output is well below that with -11db. 
The output by hitfilm on the other hand seems to normalized, but it is only sample peak normalized. This can cause some issues with so called intersample peaks, I am pretty sure that this is happening there. To avoid this, you need a true peak limiter and have hitfilm not do anything with your audio. You need to check if somewhere within your video software is a normalizer (maybe a checkbox during export?) which is causing trouble. I'd do the normalization within Reaper, as it is a dedicated DAW it's probably safer. But just to be safe, this is exactly the reason why we normalize at around -0.1db! 
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martin Thanks so much Martin, I'll check that out when I'm doing my next recording, as I can't see anything in this project in Hitfilm that would affect the audio track that way. Now I just have to practice another piece to make it worth recording!!
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Colin O'Regan Awesome!
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Hi Martin
This is a video I've just done. My laptop is very old (will be upgrading to a new desktop soon) and not powerful enough to run Da Vinci Resolve. The only software I've found that works is an old version of Premier Elements (V9) and a product I found last year called Videopad (an Australian product) which is free but I've upgraded to the paid version (about £60) as it includes the green screen and other effects. Even with that it's taken me part of yesterday and all of today to process the video on my laptop (multiple crashes) as I had to layer everything up in multiple edits rather than just processing it in one pass. The video was done on my phone and the audio also recorded on the laptop and then edited in reaper before being synchronised with the video in Videopad. I had to do a couple of little cuts in the audio (and video) within Videopad as there were a couple of longish pauses in the recording where I had to think what came next so I tried to shorten them. There are a few things I would have liked to tidy up but I don't really get a good preview of the output before rendering it and I ran out of time (and patience).
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Derek It is amazing how a lot of you guys put so much effort into special effects, maybe I should do a live stream only on green screens and other special effects
Yes, video editing takes a lot of processing power from a machine! I used to work on laptops until more and more video work came in (every audio product nowadays needs accompanying videos as well), so I needed to upgrade to a non-mobile powerhouse (because the same specifications I have now would just be too expensive as a laptop. And since I do all my professional editing at home anyway ...).
The audio has remarkably low noise levels for being recorded on a laptop mic, did you apply some noise filtering after the edit?
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martin hi Martin. No the audio was recorded into Reaper on my laptop (condenser mic and behringer audio interface). I processed it in Reaper (noise removal, little bit of eq and reverb then normalised). It was then synced with the audio from the phone in videopad and then I removed the phone audio track. I have in the past recorded directly into the phone using the condenser mic and a preamp plugged into headphone/mic socket but not on this video
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Derek Awesome, well done!
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Hi Martin. Hope you don't mind but this is a recording I did for the Sor Opus 35 challenge. I recorded the audio and video on my phone. I used my Apex large diaphragm condenser mic into a Behringer tube preamp (mainly to get the phantom power but also to set the gain) into the mic/headphone jack on the phone. I then added eq and reverb in Cakewalk by Bandlab (reverb was a preset called 'Segovia'). Cakewalk allows me to edit the audio in the video and resave the audio and video as an MP4. I couldn't figure out how to do that in Reaper. That way I didn't have to sync the edited audio. I then added the title in Videopad. Also somehow there was a click in the audio so I zoomed in with Videopad and just removed that tiny section - you may hear where it was done
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Derek wonderful! Ultimately, I just wanted to show you workflows and approaches! What tool you will choose in the end is totally up to, and you applied the techniques wonderfully! And what could go wrong with a reverb preset called "Segovia"?
It seems to me that the levels a little bit low, you could try to bring them up with a limiter or by normalizing. The click you were referring to was probably at 0:19-0:21?
it would be great if you would consider recording something for the next Excerpt Masterclass with René Izqierdo as well! -
martin Hi Martin thank you very much for looking at this. You're correct about the normalising. I tried to find out how to do it in Cakewalk but couldn't figure it out. I was going to edit the audio within Reaper to do it but then I would have had to sync the audio and video again. I shall look into using the limiter or try to find a solution on the web. Thank you again and thank you for these workshops they have been really useful. Derek
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Derek Easiest way to normalize would be to use a limiter that ships with cakewalk! But there are different pricing options for Cakewalk and they come with different plugins. There must be a plugin search dialogue box somehere, if you look for a limiter there is surely one to be found (I think they're called adaptive limiter or concrete limiter there). You can go back to our livestream "All About Dynamics", where we talk about the general approach of normalizing and limiting, the workflow should be somewhat the same in Cakewalk
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Hi martin , Still planning to do some video editing!
I've been awfully busy with my work so very limited time unfortunately. -
Hi Martin,
I'm starting to work on video using a Canon 80D camera. The lighting in the small room is not ideal. Can you recommend a good lighting solution/kit that is reasonably priced?
Thanks, Barney
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Barney Hi Barry! For my live streams I use a quite inexpensive LED panel by Neewer which is lighting the wall so that I get a very diffuse and soft light on my face (that's a general trick when you have a small light source: bounce it via a big surface onto your subject!)!Aputure released some budget lights that look great! This light together with their new Light Dome SE will render in a very professional look similar to this recording I did with similar equipment (though slightly more expensive than one single LED Panel by Neewer).
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Hi Martin,
Thanks for the lighting information! I changing the camera aperture to 1.8, which seemed to help and may be good enough. But if not, I have your suggestions for lighting options. I appreciate your expertise.
The recording you did here is awesome! The video and audio is wonderful. (Is that the natural ambiance of that space,a s there is plenty of reverb?). The subject was quite interesting on many levels-- the history of the music and Segovia, as well as the Hauser-- fascinating!
I can certainly understand why you are hired for these recordings-- the results speak for themselves. thanks for sharing it!!
Best,
Barney
