Apple Final Cut Pro 6 - Manual (Page 620)

Chapter 17 Audio Editing Basics 287
II
Minimize differences in tone and quality between audio clips in the same scene.
All audio has some kind of background noise, often referred to as ambience or room
tone. Sometimes you’ll find that the audio from the different shots you’re using in the
same sequence has differences in the background ambience. For example, if you shoot
a conversation in a city park, and the shoot lasts all day, you may notice that some
shots have more traffic noise in the background because of rush hour. Assuming you
don’t want to rerecord the dialogue for the whole scene, you’ll need to edit more “rush
hour” background noise into the clips that don’t have any so that all the clips sound
the same within the same two-minute scene. Otherwise, the traffic noise in the
background will pop in and out from one shot to the next, which will call attention to
your edits and distract the viewer. Usually, the shot with the highest ambient
background noise level dictates the ambient noise level for the entire scene.
Using Waveform Displays to Help You Edit Audio
As you work in Final Cut Pro, waveform displays can be very useful for navigating
through parts of your audio and seeing at a glance how the levels in a track indicate
things like the words and pauses in dialogue and the beats in a piece of music.
Waveforms are displayed in the audio tabs of the Viewer.
Waveforms for a stereo
pair of audio items