Dialogue Audio Editing Tips and Tricks

1. Learn Your Shortcuts

You should be the master of your DAW. Whether you’re still working in a reliable old workstation or using the most modern option there is, being able to control quickly and effectively is key to doing great work quickly. Here are some examples of shortcuts you should know…

• Change Tools – quickly move between selection, separation, slip and so on

• Timestretch – enter timestretching mode, bring up an ARA device, etc

• Zooming – learn how to zoom in and out, how to revert back, and how to zoom to a selection

• Playhead – move your playhead to your selection, to markers, to the start of a project

• Fade – change fade type (DAW dependent)

• Markers – add markers as you go for quick playhead movement and simple exporting

• Automation – toggle write mode, read mode etc

• Undo and Redo – because accidents happen

• Match Levels – DAW dependent

2. Use Undertone 2 to Match Room Tone, Cover Gaps and Make Better Edits

When editing dialogue, cuts and edits between phrases, and new material that gets added, can be obvious and lead to jumps or complete cuts in room tone. The solution to this is to add room tone cut from dedicated recordings or parts of real recordings, in order to smooth out the background noise. Undertone  2 is a plugin (VST3/AU/AAX/AudioSuite) that does this for you.

Using Undertone 2’s Single mode, you can load in a file of room tone or even a full dialogue recording with room tone in the background, and the plugin will output only room tone – even if a long sample including dialogue was used, thanks to the plugin’s automatic selection of noise using AI.

Check out Undertone 2 and Undertone Lite on their pages here on Audiokids.

3. Work Across Different Channels

Dialogue editing usually doesn’t need the use of many audio channels. This means you could have untapped potential to use more channels to work more efficiently and creatively.

Consider dedicating a whole channel to a certain effect. This way you can quickly move an audio region to change the stack of effects that’s loaded into it. By moving regions onto different channels, you can easily swap out how it sounds. This is especially true when adding special effects from time to time, in the style of a whacky radio show.

4. Learn When to Use Curved Fades

Most DAWs allow you to change the curve of a fade. One obvious way to use this is to make a transition between two equal-loudness audio regions smoother, but there are more reasons.

If an unwanted sound like a bump or a cough happens just after the end of a word, you’ll want to fade quickly after that word, but too quickly and the fade may be too obvious or affect the end of the word. Words ending in “T” can also need a quick fade to remove breaths or other sounds, but these must still be audible.

With a curved fade, you can keep the end of the word and then quickly fade the volume down lower at exactly the right moment. If you’re in a tight spot, this can be a great solution.

5. Reference to Finished Material

The longer we listen to something we’re editing, the more we become used to it as normal. This is even true when our material isn’t good enough, isn’t loud enough, isn’t balanced enough – if you listen to it long enough, you’ll think it’s good simply because your ears are used to it.

What you need is an auditory palate cleanser, so that when you come back to your original audio, you’ll have put it in perspective. First, take a short break to listen to nothing, and then if possible, listen to some professional reference material you know is well balanced and well leveled. Add this into your DAW and listen to it through the same speakers or headphones as what you’re working on. Now when you go back to your own audio, you’ll hear its shortcomings, or you’ll realize you’re doing a great job!

6. Create Macros if Possible

If your DAW allows, you can compile the commands you usually use together into one larger, scripted command. A ‘macro’ like this can be very useful for making your job even faster, but you’ll have to identify the commands you frequently use in combination or as part of a larger action.

In the GIF below, we don’t want to use Studio One’s Ripple Edit feature throughout, but we sometimes want to use it when necessary. We’ve made a macro for ‘Ripple Delete’ which switches ripple edit on, deletes the selected material, then switches ripple edit back off again – all quickly with a single button, and one that can be linked to a keyboard shortcut if we like..

Macros – and their more complicated version, scripts – can be used for even more complex operations. For example, “Select next clip, move it 35 milliseconds earlier to overlap current clip, select both clips, apply crossfade, move playhead to crossfade start”. 

7. Take Your Breaths Away?

Breath sounds will always creep into vocal recordings, that is unless your performer moves their head away from the microphone enough while taking each breath – but this can be awkward and lead to other problems. It’s often better for the dialogue editor to deal with breath sounds, but how should they deal with them?

There are different strategies for breath noises. One option would be to take them away entirely, chopping each breath and removing it to fully crack down on this pesky respiration. But the result can actually be too unnatural – when there are no breaths, we can realize something’s wrong but not know what it is.

Another option, of course, is to leave the breaths alone, keeping them in. If the voice is being treated with compression, then the breaths can be boosted in loudness by this too, meaning that these breath sounds can be genuinely more obvious than they should be.

Perhaps the most cautious way to deal with breaths in voice recordings is to reduce their level a little, but not to entirely remove them. It all comes down to your creative choices – and maybe even the anatomy of the person who was recorded.

8. Know the Signal Chain

Not everyone will have landed in audio editing through the same route. Audio nerds will know signal chain principles from the days of the mixing console, but today’s DAWs don’t make this so obvious. For anyone who doesn’t know the general audio signal path, here’s a standard order.

• Source (audio file)

• Clip Gain – applied to the source file or region (‘track’) if the file isn’t the right level

• Other Track Properties – timestretching, pitch shifting etc

• Track Mute, Solo etc – not to be confused with ‘channel’ mute (depends on your DAW)

• Audio signal leaves ‘track’ and enters mixer ‘channel’

• Volume/Gain ‘Trim’ – often not seen on virtual mixing consoles but was usual on real ones

• Plugin Inserts – usually placed here

• Send/Return – (for bus signals). These can often be switched between pre- and post-fader

• Fader – this may be most amateur’s “volume control”, but it actually comes last in the chain, usually

• Channel Mute/Solo – usually different from track mute/solo

More on Undertone 2

Our software makes it easy to generate room tone and ambience from either dedicated room tone files or recorded dialogue with ambience behind it. Perfect for ADR and other dialogue editing duties, Undertone can save audio editors time and frustration in post production.

Take a closer look at Undertone here.