Better Sound for Video: Compression In-depth

28 Comments

1. That is one awesome VST.

2. Hi Curtis. This is a question rather than a criticism… Your techniques seem to be destructive and permanent which leaves little room for correction in the future. Do you ever perform the same techniques in a non-destructive way, i.e. as an effects rack in the Multitrack viewport in Audition?

3. Hi Curtis, helpful video..But i think you could have chosen a better threshold value and compression ratio using the native tube compressor..Jason Levine covers this really well in his Audio 101 series..

4. Very good information as always. Keep up the good work. Thanks.

5. In Audition CS6 you can zoom in and out of the dB-scale on the righthand side by "scrolling" using the mousewheel hovering over the scale. Is that still possible in Audition CC? Comes in handy to see how much clipping you have.

6. Thanks so helpful.

7. I love Limiter No.6 it’s my go to!!! It has 5 modules: RMS compressor, peak limiter, high-frequency limiter, clipper, true peak limiter Super cool for FREE!! https://vladgsound.wordpress.com/plugins/limiter6/

8. I’d like to thank you for your tuts. Always helpful and interesting. May I ask, how would you approach compression when dealing with an interview with a male interviewer and a female interviewee, where the male voice is louder, almost double the amplitude of the female? Thanks again.

9. Hi Curtis, thanks for the great tutorials. Could you please guide me how to handle the breaths?

10. +Christopher C. D. Wells Yes, Ozone 6 (standard) has the same dynamics plugin as advanced (with soft knee, envelope control law, etc). They sort of hid the comparison page: https://www.izotope.com/en/products/mixing-mastering/ozone/comparison/

11. also i have access to nearly every plugin but i didnt find a compressor that works so well for dialogue where my main goal is do bring down the peaks for normalization and a little bit equalization

12. Nice video Curtis, you can get soft knee compression with the build in Dynamics processor when you tick the box that say spline curves.

13. Dear Curtis,

    Thank you for your series, I found it very useful and educating and really appreciate your efforts. I have a question if you would be so kind to answer. With my small audio/video experience, I was asked to help in selection of recording equipment for a lecturer, who wants to record his lectures on his own. He talks in various settings for relatively large audiences (up to 300 people) using sound amplification and holding room microphone in his hand.  From experience, he found that it is too difficult to arrange quality recording through the rooms’ audio systems, according to him there are too many uncertainties in this venue. So, it seems a solution can be an additional lavalier mic on his lapel and a field recorder in his pocket, especially taking in account that he has one (Zoom H1).  Having in mind this setting (large to medium rooms with sound amplification, which creates potential danger for appearance of echo in recordings through the second microphone) what would be the best choice for the microphone type here? I mean omnidirectional mono, stereo, whatever. He feels pretty comfortable with his  Zoom H1 recorder  and basically needs a good addition of small, preferably budget mic for this setting. From one of your videos I know that you suggested Giant Squid mic with Zoom H1 as a good combo. Any advice will be appreciated. 

    Thank you, 
    Sergei

14. hi curtis, is the tube modeled compressor in audition still the one from izotope, or are the stock compressors not of a very good quality? i like the tube modeled one the most, because of its straight forward and easy to use interface. oliver j hughes said the stock ones are not the best quality though. many thanks for your reply curtis, your advises and help are very much appreciated

15. Tq

16. Thanks for your teaching

17. Another free compressor i like is MCompressor by Melda Production. Its included in a free effects bundle, there are some other useful plugins in the bundle. A paid compressor i like as well is the Fabfilter Pro C, I really like the visual graphs in the Pro C.

18. Amazing tutorial, I would really love to see what else you do after compression though, maybe call it audio finishing?

19. Very interesting. Thanks

20. Thanks a lot, easy to understand.

21. I have watched quite a few compression tutorials and this is one of the best so far. Thank you!

22. Hey Curtis, I’ve seen in some of your videos that the Match Volume recommendation to -19 LUFS for mono and -16 LUFS for Stereo.

    Sorry if this is a lame question, but considering a video for YouTube/Vimeo and having a MONO file playing on both sides, that would fall as -19 or -16 LUFS?

23. If I understand correctly, the Ozone compresser you pulled up in the beginning is a fancy multiband compressor? For those using Reaper, ReaXComp does the same thing and is included for free :). It does not look as fancy though. It is RMS window based, but the control law cannot be changed the envelope or peak. There is a program-dependent release option, which I believe is similar to the adaptive release, in that it tunes the attack and release depending on the signal.

    Again, another nice tutorial :)!

24. Great video. Can I use this for an audio production class?

25. I will most certainly trying that soon. Here is my question. If you happen to have a budget around 200-300 USD which shotgun mic would you buy. Second question is about lavaliers; can you suggest me a brand which can record 2 people voice, wireless lavalier around 100 usd?

    Cheers!

26. Is there any way to streamline the workflow of this? Perhaps have it done directly on a portable audio recorder?

    I’m just thinking for the videos we make, this would be really great, but compressing each little bit of dialogue on its own would be really tedious and time consuming.

    Not sure if you know of any good techniques for that.

27. Thank you for this video! I was wondering if you could answer this. When i upload music to youtube, it sounds okay, but if i upload to facebook, it sounds terrible. what can i do to make it sound better?

28. Great tutorial. Thanks Curtis very much. I’ve also saw you have Nectar installed as well. Would you recommend to work with Nectar directly instead of Ozone first using similar settings for the compressor. I have not seen in Nectar de knee control but there are interesting additional alternatives such as the De-esser function and also breath control.