Assignment 1 Submission
““...and there I was, in the final hour.””
So, the big day finally arrived. I submitted my assignment by 10:21pm, making use of the online submission process to buy myself a few more precious hours to mix in the D-Control 5.1 studio.
Objective complete!
Those final few hours in the D-Control made all the difference...I hope!
Stemming Down
I used a Pro Tools HD iLok to make my final stems without having to delete tracks from my already maxed-out track count.
Final Export and Delivery
To complete my cinematic audio redesign, I bounced out the audio from my master mix session as a stereo audio file, and then added it into a new Pro Tools session containing the video file. This way, I was able to massively reduce the strain on my computer's CPU during the audio and video bounce process as all the main audio processing had been taken care of in the first audio-only bounce. Then, I bounced the audio and video to a QuickTime file, which I subsequently loaded up in MPEG Streamclip to convert the video codec from Avid DNxHD to H.264.
Limiting Issues
As I had to do the final audio bounce on my laptop (in order to make use of the some specific Kilohearts plug-ins), I couldn't use of Avid's Pro Limiter to do my final audio bounce. As an alternative, I used the Maxim plug-in on the Master output with the ceiling value set to -2.0dB.
On previous projects, I've usually set the Maxim ceiling value much higher (e.g. -0.3dB/-0.4dB), but after learning about inter-sample peaks, I decided to give myself more room for error and set it to -2.0dB as Maxim is not a true-peak limiter.
Listening back however (and looking at the final waveform) the sound in he really loud sections of the trailer gets chopped off when it hits the limiter. Ideally, I would have set the ceiling higher to prevent the 'squashing' effect, but I thought it would be a lesser evil than having big transient spikes going through a higher ceiling that could potentially clip the digital 0dB ceiling.
LUFS Issues
Final LUFS reading I took in the D-Control 5.1 studio. I subsequently dropped global clip gain by aprox 3-4dB after taking this reading, so hopefully my submitted video falls within the EB -23dB acceptable range.
DEM Stem Problems
It was my intention to include separate DEM stems alongside the main bounce as part and parcel of a professional delivery package. However, despite setting up and assigning the necessary buses and routing in Pro Tools, I ran out of time to get this done to a satisfactory level that I was happy with submitting. The main problem was simply an issue of volume - the stems were being routed properly, but they were far too loud and massively clipping during the printing process. In hindsight, I probably should have just stuck a hard limiter on each individual stem to stop them going into the red, but as this was just before the deadline I was in a bit of a panic, so I decided to focus on just getting the essentials done for the submission.
For future projects however, I'll definitely start thinking about stemming earlier on the process, as it would have streamlined my overall mixing process a great deal, and would possibly have bought me more time to mix to a higher standard in the final few weeks of the project.
During the final mix, I set up dedicated individual stems for DEM and VO stems, but I ran out of time to get these done to a standard I was happy submitting before the looking deadline. Next time!
