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Old 05-24-2016, 06:11 AM   #1
JoshDoody
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Default Audiobook: How to splice an ambient noise clip into a gap between words?

Hi everyone, this is my first time posting here on the forums. I'm recording my audiobook and have found Reaper to be VERY useful so far.

What I'm trying to do: I'm manually editing out breaths and clicks that occur in the dead space between phrases. It seems the best way to do this is to splice in ambient noise (from a different part of the recording) over the gaps between phrases.

Before I go on, here's my ultimate question: What's the best way to do this?

I'm curious about two things:

1. What's the best way to actually insert a segment of ambient noise? Should I trim the segment to fit the gap? Or just "squeeze" (drag the edges until they snap) the ambient noise segment into the available gap?
2. What's the best way to automate this with a macro?

I'm experimenting with macros and they're really powerful. I would like a macro that does the following:

- I copy a short segment (1-2 seconds) of ambient noise to my clipboard
- I highlight a time selection
- I hit the macro key
- Reaper replaces the highlighted time selection with a trimmed portion of the ambient noise segment, cross-faded with the surrounding audio on either side of the selection.

The best I've been able to do is a macro that does the following:

- I copy a short segment (1-2 seconds) of ambient noise to my clipboard
- I highlight the time selection
- I hit the assigned macro key
[The rest of these will be verbatim the name of each action]
- Set ripple editing off
- Go to start of time selection
- Item: Split items at time selection
- Time selection: Remove time selection
- Item: Remove items
- Item: Paste items/tracks

What it does: Turns ripple editing off, deletes the time selection I made, pops the ambient noise clip in there, snapped to the beginning of the deleted time selection.

What it doesn't do: It doesn't snap the RIGHT edge of the ambient noise clip into the END of the time selection I deleted, so I have to manually drag the end of the pasted ambient noise clip back until it snaps in place.

So I'm able to do most of it with a macro, but this requires manually re-sizing the pasted clip of ambient noise AND I'm "squeezing" (not trimming" the inserted segment.

This is a small thing, but if I got it working the way I want, it would save me hours of time when I edit the book.

Thanks for your help!
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Old 05-24-2016, 09:17 AM   #2
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Hi JoshDoody, this is something I've been trying to make happen ever since getting into Reaper, and I've posted in several places on the net and even resorted to bumping my own threads here : 0

http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=175702

and haven't found a solution. Maybe your wording will attract someone who knows how to make it happen.

The biggest issue I can't solve is how to make the room tone paste in the length selected rather than the entire size of the audio held in the clipboard. Yes, so then not only do you have to move the to the right back into place but instead of not needing to change the pacing of the narration at all in order to cover the gulp, you also have to shorten the paste from 2 secs to 1/2 or 1/4 or 2/3 every time just to get it back to where it was rather than it respecting the selection (only over the gulp). So that if the selection is shorter than the length of audio in the clipboard you don't end up having to do anything with the audio to the right after the paste and you're on to the next edit.

Haven't found an action or SWS extension to complete this equation.

Sadly, I fear the amount of words required to explain the function in enough detail is causing eyes to glaze over : )

Those not glazed over, chime in!!!!! : )
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Old 05-24-2016, 09:56 AM   #3
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I spent several hours googling and experimenting before I posted this. I couldn't find anything, but I wonder if that's because I'm not using the right terminology. As you can see, this is why I registered for the boards.

My main concern with my current approach is twofold:

1. Too manual - I have to manually drag and resize the pasted segment every time. It's faster than it could be without my current macro, but still slow.
2. I'm "squeezing" a too-long segment into the deleted time selection. I should probably be trimming it to fit. I might be introducing artifacts or something by squeezing. (Fortunately, it's room tone and my room is quiet/dry).

Is there any way we can reach out to Reaper with a question like this? Figuring this out would literally save me hours of editing and would likely result in a better finished product.
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Old 05-24-2016, 10:23 AM   #4
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JoshDoody View Post
I spent several hours googling and experimenting before I posted this. I couldn't find anything, but I wonder if that's because I'm not using the right terminology. As you can see, this is why I registered for the boards.

My main concern with my current approach is twofold:

1. Too manual - I have to manually drag and resize the pasted segment every time. It's faster than it could be without my current macro, but still slow.
Yup.

Quote:
2. I'm "squeezing" a too-long segment into the deleted time selection. I should probably be trimming it to fit. I might be introducing artifacts or something by squeezing. (Fortunately, it's room tone and my room is quiet/dry).
Yes, just trim it, no need to time compress it. The end result has no audio issue, such as artifacts, it just takes extra steps.

Quote:
Is there any way we can reach out to Reaper with a question like this? Figuring this out would literally save me hours of editing and would likely result in a better finished product.
Not only is this the best place to ask these questions, but the developers truly do check the posts and respond. There's a humongous user base of Reaper users who can do the kind of things, such as advanced Reaper scripting, that I simply have no brain for and this is the board to find them, and they will post if they have something to add. I've had questions responded to directly by Justin, and my inclination is to think he and the rest of the crew do see every post on here in short order to see if there's a thread they should jump in.

But I dunno. I've been periodically posting about this and haven't gotten a response so if it can be confirmed it can't be done then a feature request is in order.
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Old 05-24-2016, 11:05 AM   #5
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How do you recommend I trim it? Right now, my macro leaves me with a pasted segment that's longer than the time selection. So what's the most efficient way to "trim this long section where the next section begins and cross-fade it into that next section"?

Maybe I could use two macros:

1. Remove the offending time section and pop the ambient noise segment in there, snapped to the beginning of the time section.
2. I click on the beginning of the next time section (trim point) and hit the macro key to trim at that point and cross-fade the pasted section into the next section at that point.

That would still be a lot better than dragging the longer section back to snap it in.

Thanks did your reply and for codifying I'm not just missing an obvious solution!
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Old 05-24-2016, 12:39 PM   #6
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Can you produce long items/files of the room tone so even if you want it only in the gaps, you could place an expander on the tone track and sidechain it from the vox?

This, I imagine would be much easier than trying to automate adding short files. How long an example of the room tone have you access to?

There seems no sense (to me) to manually splice it into your vox track if you have more than two or three instances -produce/build-up a parallel tone track and use dynamic processing to blend it in where it's needed.

Shout back if you need any help with the stages.




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Old 05-24-2016, 02:15 PM   #7
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I grab 10-15 seconds of room tone at the beginning of each session (one chapter per session). It's my home studio, so I have access to as much room tone as I want.

Can you link me to any good resources on the technique you mentioned? I kind of get it, but not quite.

I'm just trying to get rid of clicks/pops/breaths in the gaps between script.

Thanks for all your help!
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Old 05-24-2016, 03:58 PM   #8
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I tend to use an expander on the way in and then add blanket room tone or ambience to taste. I record very dry for this kind of thing though -Reflexion filter and duvet behind kind of thing.

I'd make a loop from your room tone and then duck it with a sidechain from your vox, with the threshold extremely low and maybe some look ahead for seamless fades. Think Reagate will do the ducking.




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Old 05-24-2016, 04:26 PM   #9
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I still don't QUITE get this, but between me and my audio engineer friend, this is enough for me to figure it out. Thanks for taking the time!
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Old 05-24-2016, 08:31 PM   #10
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planetnine, you can't use an automatic process to edit what JoshDoody is talking about, because the plugin can't tell the difference between an ugly sound and a sound that should stay in, for example a natural breath before a sentence and one which has an ugly slurp sound in it. For example, audible.com requests that all paragraphs begin cleanly but that breaths within paragraphs remain unless they take the listener out of the moment, in which case remove them, which is pretty much the standard approach. It's an easy one hit keystroke on a selection if you can paste to only fill selection. You're jumping from edge to edge checking the punch-ins and adjusting to make seamless and hitting the markers in between for other issues, including those kinds of noises, and taking them out is as fast and easy and jumping to them via a marker, selecting the spot and hitting your macro and jumping to the next edit, not even listening to what's in between. Anything more, such as grabbing item edges just to put them back where they started, is extra time spent

You don't want to replace with room tone or even make lower everything between sentences automatically. The expanding and processing approach is really what the mastering person might use but not the editor. There are ways around it, such as the splitting, moving, pasting, adjusting the duration of the full paste to what's desired, and moving item edge back into place, but, as we're saying, even with full use of actions you still end up unnecessarily adjusting the room tone paste and the item edges on the right.
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Old 05-25-2016, 02:29 AM   #11
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Edit the breaths and smacks out manually (snip-snip), let the expander fill in the gaps. set the expander threshold down at room tone level so it ducks at all but digital silence.

If only one or two, then edit-in room tone. If lots, use a side-chained expander in duck-mode.



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Old 05-25-2016, 06:33 AM   #12
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Again, thanks to you both for your time and help.

To make sure I understand planetnine's suggestion:

Edit the whole track for flow/content (ignoring breaths and clicks), then go back and trim out the breaths and clicks between paragraphs without ripple editing so there are intentionally gaps in the track. Tell Reaper to fill those gaps with a looped sample of room tone.

Do I have that right?

It does make sense to me and sounds much easier than what I'm doing, but ours be easier still if I could tell Reaper to insert that room tone automatically when I create one of those gaps in the final pass.

Thanks again!
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Old 05-25-2016, 09:38 AM   #13
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Here is what I would do.

I used to do something similar with my videos but I abondened it for silence in the spaces.

I would create a whole new track and call it room tone.

Then I would add a piece of audio on it that is just a section of room tone. A few seconds should be fine. Then loop this track seamlessly throughout the project.

Then I would put a compressor on this track that clamps down very hard at infiniti to one and have it be side-chained from your voiceover track.

Then I would clean up the voiceover track using Dynamic Split in addition to doing it manually.

Now, the room tone track will only be playing when the voiceover track is not.

Good luck
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Old 05-25-2016, 10:35 AM   #14
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Kenny Gioia View Post
Here is what I would do.

I used to do something similar with my videos but I abondened it for silence in the spaces.

I would create a whole new track and call it room tone.

Then I would add a piece of audio on it that is just a section of room tone. A few seconds should be fine. Then loop this track seamlessly throughout the project.

Then I would put a compressor on this track that clamps down very hard at infiniti to one and have it be side-chained from your voiceover track.

Then I would clean up the voiceover track using Dynamic Split in addition to doing it manually.

Now, the room tone track will only be playing when the voiceover track is not.

Good luck

This works as a process but for the reason I mentioned before about not wanting to clean up every space between sentences, it's never used in practice. Like I said, in audiobooks you clean up leading into paragraphs and leave every other breath or mouth sound as is unless it takes the listener out of the moment. The goal of the edit is not to take out every breath (or, in the case of fiction, sigh, chuckle or other expressive sound). So you maybe nick out 20% of those. Otherwise the result is unnatural. You get a super clean result but it sounds like the reader never breathes.

Plus, there's no guarantee that the ins and outs of the sentences don't sound gated or just not right so you'd have to audition every one before sending it off to mastering, which there is never time for in editing and the editor isn't being paid to listen through the program. They hit the punched edits by jumping to item edges to check the punch-ins and if ok move right on, if not do a tweak that takes a few seconds and moving on, and they hit whatever the recordist (sometimes it's the same person) dropped a marker on as needing a fix, such as an ugly breath or a plosive, spend only a few seconds on that. And at every edit you do a quick preview to check what you did before jumping to the next but you never listen to more than that. Otherwise an 8 hour audiobook would take two weeks to edit. The mastering folks, as well as apply mastering, are the ones who format for wherever it's going and do the QC, and that's after mastering. The FAQ of any mastering house who does audiobooks will always specify not to use any processing at all on files delivered to them. Flat mic, no compression, straight in, let us do any processing. (Most will say if you have a nice sounding preamp with eq and compression you can use them but very, VERY sparingly. Let them master it.) So if they get a file where the edits/sidechaining is an issue even just once every five minutes, they'll kick it back to you. They may decide to do the same process on a program in mastering, but they do not want the editor to do it.

It isn't a substitute for what the OP is asking about.
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Old 05-25-2016, 11:13 AM   #15
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I had a feeling that my suggestion might be too slow for what the OP was asking.
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Old 05-25-2016, 01:38 PM   #16
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Quote:
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I had a feeling that my suggestion might be too slow for what the OP was asking.
Kenny, it actually is fast : ) It's quick to implement, but the nature of the beast is that since the narration is naked, with no music behind it, things like being cleaned up too sterile or fudging some attacks of first words are pretty jarring. On the one hand, pristine quality requirements have gone out the window since it's all listening in cars or earbuds at the gym or on subways. But when it makes the client go "huh?" before that stage it won't fly : )


But what you suggest got me thinking: one thing you can do in some other DAWs that has a similar element as the sjidechaining is you can dynamically assign voices so that if you have the same voice assigned to multiple tracks the uppermost track will play, and remove a section and the next one down plays. It's handy for a variety of things. This would only work for this function with ambience that is very low and with no motion, since there is no crossfading. But it would avoid the issue of a selection of a different length than the clipboard not filling. You just chop out what you don't want and leave the gap.

I haven't tried it for swapping bad ambience for good in years since it's not the best workflow, but I was wondering if Reaper had a way of simulating that track priority behavior. Might be a decent way to edit these in Reaper instead of elsewhere. I've tried doing this with takes but the behavior I was getting wasn't right.
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Old 05-25-2016, 01:40 PM   #17
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JoshDoody View Post
Again, thanks to you both for your time and help.

To make sure I understand planetnine's suggestion:

Edit the whole track for flow/content (ignoring breaths and clicks), then go back and trim out the breaths and clicks between paragraphs without ripple editing so there are intentionally gaps in the track. Tell Reaper to fill those gaps with a looped sample of room tone.

Do I have that right?

It does make sense to me and sounds much easier than what I'm doing, but ours be easier still if I could tell Reaper to insert that room tone automatically when I create one of those gaps in the final pass.

Thanks again!

You could edit and crossfade them in manually, it just seems easier with the expander on duck. What Kenny has explained is what I was trying to say -build up a room tone track, looping or crossfading a section.

He said use a comp on inf:1 ratio, I said use a gate/expander on duck, whichever gives the best control (and can use a coupla ms lookahead) for the most transparent gain pass and shut. You will have to adjust attack and release here, it won't magically be seamless out of the box, for the vox edit ramp you decide on and the level of room in the vox rack.


For future consideration, try Kenny's silence approach. If you have quiet room and a dead room (ie no actual noise and no reflections) you can get away with an expander on your voice channel and you then have silence in-between your phrases. This speeds any breath and smack editing, pacing editing, etc, and you can add tiny amounts of ambience to the finished eddit if you need to give it a sense of space.

You need a quiet room (I'm in the country and I often do this at night) with your LDC in a reflexion filter and a duvet or two on lighting stands behind the narrator. This gives you a different workflow and you can add some "room tone" (ambience setting on low return) to season at the end, or even in your monitoring chain.

Even "budget" stuff like the old Focusrite Voicemaster voice channels do well with this with an included, vox-optimised expander included.




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Old 05-25-2016, 01:41 PM   #18
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Kenny has a great video on a way to remove clips, p-pops, and other similar noises.

http://www.reaper.fm/videos.php#AW5G-60jH34

If you don't want to remove some things such a breath, or just lower certain things like Ss and Ts, I use Take Volume envelopes. I've got all kinds of macros setup for adding points and making adjustments.

Also, if your actually cutting out parts and creating items, you can select them and create regions. There's all kinds of ways to use the regions for editing. For example, you can create macros to deal with the region part of an item, or the parts in between regions. Then you can take that macro and use it to make another macro that will perform the task 10, 20, 30 times.

Heh heh, as we all know, if there's any redundant tasks you need to do, all it takes with Reaper is a little imagination to make it easier and faster.
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Old 05-25-2016, 02:38 PM   #19
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Quote:
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2. I'm "squeezing" a too-long segment into the deleted time selection. I should probably be trimming it to fit. I might be introducing artifacts or something by squeezing.
Unless you've changed some settings or are holding down Alt while dragging the right edge, you're not doing any "stretching" or "squeezing". This literally is just trimming, and should work reasonably well.

Might be a little quicker to just split the noise item at the point you want it to end and then delete the "tail" at the end, but maybe not by much.

I agree that a full-length room tone track (even if it's really a loop, as long as it's relatively long) ducking the voice is probably better. An expander/gate is the wrong tool for a sidechain job like that, though. That'll just have noise coming in with the voice. Maybe if you do something whacky like invert the expanded noise and then mix that with the original noise...

A compressor is more appropriate, but I'd probably just use JS Volume and Parameter Modulation to make it happen.


Edit - Oh, I guess we're talking about an expander/gate "on duck", which apparently does all the fancy stuff to make it work upside down and actually do what we want. That's sure not a standard feature on every expander/gate, so the question becomes WTF expander/gate are we talking about?

Last edited by ashcat_lt; 05-25-2016 at 02:44 PM.
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Old 05-25-2016, 05:50 PM   #20
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I just came back to check in on the thread after editing for a few hours, and it's eerie how similar the solutions proposed are to the one I finally cobbled together.

For every track, I grab like 10-15 seconds of room tone before I start speaking (each chapter of the book is a track, and I have a project for each chapter, so every project is just a single track of me talking).

I decided to copy a few seconds of "good" room tone and create a new track that's nothing but that room tone looping for the duration of the original track (me reading the chapter).

So now I have two tracks:

Track 1: Me reading the chapter
Track 2: Looped room tone sample

I mute Track 2 so it doesn't mess with my editing by making the room tone sound louder. Then I just work from Track 1 to edit. When I have a gap between sentences with something objectionable (clicks or loud breaths), I select the gap as a time selection, then run the following macro:

Item: Unselect all items
Track: Select track 02
Item: Select all items on selected tracks in current time selection
Item: Copy selected area of items
Item: Unselect all items
Track: Select track 01
Set ripple editing off
Item: Select all items on selected tracks in current time selection
Go to start of time selection
Item: Split items at time selection
Time selection: Remove time selection
Item: Remove items
Item: Paste items/tracks

Shorter version: "Go to Track 2 and select the room noise that matches the time selection. Then go to track one and replace the time selection with that copied room noise."

It took some doing (you can see I'm being VERY careful to select/de-select tracks constantly), but this works really well. Now I can just play the audio, hear an offending gap, select it as a time selection, hit my macro key (Q) and it's replaced and cross-faded into the gap.

Other than this, I'm not doing any processing so it's still clean audio I can send off for mastering.

Can anyone think of any reasons why this method is a bad idea? (Let me know because I still have about 4 hours of audio to edit.)

Thanks for all your help!
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Old 05-25-2016, 06:59 PM   #21
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Can anyone think of any reasons why this method is a bad idea? (Let me know because I still have about 4 hours of audio to edit.)
Sounds reasonable to me, except I don't believe you're actually crossfading anything since none of the items end up overlapping. They will have the short fades at the beginning and end of each item (assuming you've got that option enabled), but it's not really a crossfade.
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Old 05-25-2016, 07:18 PM   #22
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ashcat_it I think you may be right. I can't HEAR any difference where I'm splicing, so I assume it's ok. Or I hope so anyway.
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Old 05-25-2016, 07:54 PM   #23
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If it sounds good…

It is good.
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Old 08-24-2016, 06:23 PM   #24
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What I've done is to create an ambient room noise track that is setup through a side chain compressor triggered by anything that drops below my desired noise floor level, Post FX on my VOX FX track. (Not sure why they call it a floor. It's more of a noise ceiling really, isn't it?) It also has the same attack and release settings as the noise gate I have on the VOX FX track. This creates an inverse relationship. Took me a while to wrap my head around how that works, but as the gate is closing on the VOX track, the side chained compressor is attacking at the exact same rate, allowing the noise to come through seamlessly. (I know ACX says not to use noise gates, but with the pre-open, hysteresis, *wet/dry and other features ReaGate offers that many others don't, I've been able to tweak my settings so it's completely unnoticeable—especially with the ambient noise coming in and out at the exact same time.)

This way, when I a cut a piece out, or want to add some space, the noise fills in just perfectly, but is never there adding to the room noise when I'm speaking. I've got it set to -58 (ACX require a max of -60 db ambient noise, but they hate silence!). For cuts, I had to play with the crossfade settings a bit to get it to sound right, but it works really well.

I wish I could give you more specifics, but I noticed that by changing the mic, the levels, or any other little thing, required some tweaking of the gate and side chain settings. Plus, I'm new to being on the backside of the mic, and set this up during an "ah ha!" moment after watching Kenny Gioya's video on using a side chain compressor. I highly recommend his videos.

I know there is also a more elegant way to do this by using the "Inverse" setting on a ReaGate FX on your noise track. I just haven't been able to make it work right, and can't locate the source where I originally found it. I'm sure someone here could chime in and offer some improvements to my method, or make it more clear, as I'm not sure if I'm explaining it in the best way. At least, I'm hoping they will!*

I'm stuck in bed for the next day or so, but if you have any questions, feel free to PM me. I'm a little hesitant to post too much to the public forums, since I'm so new to this myself, but if we can get something repeatable and explainable worked out, we can share it with the community.

I understand this is a completely different approach to the problem for which you were asking advice, but I think it's an alternative that may help you, and many other audiobook producers, in many other areas and may be a better long run solution for you.
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Last edited by Xaos; 08-24-2016 at 06:29 PM. Reason: Posting added a bunch of asterisks
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Old 08-26-2016, 09:38 AM   #25
Dynsdale
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Originally Posted by Xaos View Post

I'm stuck in bed for the next day or so, but if you have any questions, feel free to PM me. I'm a little hesitant to post too much to the public forums, since I'm so new to this myself, but if we can get something repeatable and explainable worked out, we can share it with the community.
Don't hesitate to post your solutions publicly, even if they are not perfect. Many good solutions and "aha-moments" have been created from less than perfect initial suggestions. You never know which forum "lurker" might come up with a perfect fix.
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Old 11-13-2016, 04:49 AM   #26
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Originally Posted by Dynsdale View Post
Don't hesitate to post your solutions publicly, even if they are not perfect. Many good solutions and "aha-moments" have been created from less than perfect initial suggestions. You never know which forum "lurker" might come up with a perfect fix.
Thanks for the advice/encouragement. I'm learning my way through this in a very strange order, so I've tackled some pretty advanced stuff, but still find myself with some real noobie questions. I always check the manual and search the threads, but if I don't find the answer, I usually just poke around until I get it. I think it might be better for the community here if I just post the question. I'm sure if I'm having the issue, someone else is, too. It would be good to spare them and me the time of struggling through when there are so many helpful people here. Thanks again!
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Old 11-19-2021, 08:15 AM   #27
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Hi Guys,

I think I've cracked it. I've been audio editing for a while now and I've been wanting to figure this out for aaages, but none of my workarounds worked.


Solution:

1. Get your project set up like this:-
Track 1: Audio/dialogue to edit.
Track 2: Room Tone looped cleanly to length of above track.

2. Dynamic split dialogue track (Select Item-->Item Processing-->Dynamic Split Items) (also turn off ripple editing)

These settings work quite well:-
- Untick "at transients", tick the other two options.
- Min slice length 20ms, Min silence length 693ms (for inter sentence breaths to go, but 245ms if you want to remove mid sentence breaths too)
- Threshold -43dB, Hysterisis -6dB
- Untick Set Timebase to Beats
- Tick "remove silent areas" (Leading pad 17ms, trailing pad 54ms)


3. After splitting items, back in the main view enable global auto crossfades by clicking on the crossfade icon in the top left toolbar. Right click this and slect "trim content behind media items when editing"

4. Edit away, keeping gaps of nothing between each chunk (You may occasionally get a clipped end of word here and there, but get your settings right and you will only have a handful (Or select all, and drag out the end of all the clips by a tiny bit before starting)

5. Once you've finished your edit, select all the chunks of track 1 and drag them down together onto the solid roomtone of track 2 and ouila!
You should have roomtone slotted between all gaps with tiny crossfades.

6. After doing this - if there are no crossfades - the audio chunks should be selected and not the silence, so zoom into to either edge of one of the chunks and drag out a tiny crossfade so it does this to all.

7. Drag this whole thing back to track one where your processing is and you're all set!

The only issue is that the spaces at the very beginning and end of your dialogue track won't get filled with room tone sometimes, you'll have to check this manually before export. But other than that, I'd say it works!

Happy Editing,
Mokgar
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Old 12-04-2021, 08:26 PM   #28
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JoshDoody View Post
I just came back to check in on the thread after editing for a few hours, and it's eerie how similar the solutions proposed are to the one I finally cobbled together
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS! I'm new to Repear, migrating from Adobe Audition CS6 as a voice actor first, DAW user second: most of my experience is from "what does this button do?".

I know this was posted a while back, so I'm curious if there might be any reason to upgrade this macro with razor editing, though I can't think of one at the moment.

But I also wonder, as I do basic editing for other narrators and often times have to insert corrections, if there is a way to adapt this to copy new audio onto an original file.

In any case, thank you again!
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