Apple Final Cut Pro 5 - Manual (Page 805)

18 Part I Media and Project Management
Using Sequence Markers for Sound Effects and Musical Cues
It’s common for editors or directors to play through an edited sequence and locate, or
spot, places in the Timeline where sound effects should go. This is sometimes referred
to as a sound effects spotting session. You can add markers to your sequence to indicate
where the editor or sound designer should place sound effects. For more information
about adding markers, see Volume II, Chapter 4, “Using Markers.”
You can also add music scoring markers to indicate video frames where you want specific
musical cues to line up. Scoring markers can be exported along with a QuickTime
reference movie into Soundtrack to create original, synchronized musical scores.
Cleaning Up Audio
Once you’ve organized your audio tracks by sound category and properly placed your
sound effects and music, you can clean up noisy audio clips and fine-tune levels in
preparation for the final audio mix.
Even when you strive for the best location recording possible, you’ll usually need to do
a certain amount of cleanup for every track recorded in the field. If you’re working with
vocal tracks, you might find yourself editing out background noises between lines,
deleting comments from the director, or even trying to replace words that the actors
tripped over during an otherwise perfect take. Final Cut Pro gives you a fine degree of
control when editing audio clips, so you can make these kinds of changes.
You can also choose to edit your audio in a different application. For example, setting
an audio editing application capable of destructive changes as your audio file editor
would allow you to quickly make permanent changes directly to the source audio files
on disk. (You might want to do this to use a noise reduction filter available in that
application to clean up a particularly noisy clip.) In this way, you can apply effects or
special sound-sweetening filters before continuing work on your edit. For more
information on specifying external editing applications, see Volume IV, Chapter 22,
“Choosing Settings and Preferences.”
Adding Audio Filters
Along with setting volume levels for the audio clips in your sequence, you may need to
apply audio filters. Some filters, like Compression and Equalization, can be used to
improve audio that’s already good, making the dynamic range of a clip more
manageable or further clarifying an actor’s voice. For audio clips with distortion,
interference, or unwanted sound, you may be able to use a filter such as Hum Remover
or DePopper to try to make the clips usable.