Apple Final Cut Pro 7 - Manual (Page 1002)

Tips for Cutting Dialogue
Here are some tips and tricks for taking care of routine dialogue editing problems.
Use cross fades to smooth out problem edits
If you’re having trouble finding an edit point between two audio clips that sounds smooth,
try using a transition instead of a straight cut. More information on audio transitions can
be found in
“Refining Transitions Using the Transition Editor.”
Use subframe audio level keyframes to eliminate pops and clicks at edit points
If there is a popping or clicking sound that you can’t get rid of at an edit point, you can
eliminate it by opening the clip in the Viewer, setting audio level keyframes within the
frame with the clicking, and fading those few audio samples all the way down to –60 dB.
See
“Example: Setting Subframe Audio Keyframes to Eliminate Clicks” for instructions.
Use keyframes to eliminate microphone pops in a voiceover recording
Although you can use the Vocal DePopper filter in extreme problem cases, if you just
have one or two pops in your audio resulting from words with the letter P, you can get
rid of them by opening the clip in the Viewer, zooming in on the P sound, and setting
four keyframes to lower the audio level and soften the sound.
Use room tone to fill in audio gaps in a scene
When you edit dialogue, any part of a scene that doesn’t have dialogue or clean source
audio should be replaced with room tone from that scene, as described in
“Audio Editing
Basics.” This includes the beginning and the end of a scene, even if nobody is talking. If
room tone only happens while people are speaking, it will sound odd. The entire scene
should have the same background noise.
If someone mumbles a single word, salvage the rest of the take
If someone messes up part or all of a word, either by mumbling or swallowing it, you can
sometimes take part or all of another instance of that word, or of another word that has
the sound you need, and use it to replace part or all of the misspoken word.
For example, suppose an actor was supposed to say, “Get those cats out of that tree,”
and instead said, “Get dose cats out of that tree,” accidentally swallowing the “th” sound
in the word those. If you need to use that take, you could copy the “th” sound from the
word that and paste it over the botched beginning of the word “dose.” The change is so
small that nobody will notice the difference. The result in your sequence would look
something like this:
1002 Chapter 61 Tips for Better Audio