Day 3 at #AdobeMAX: Essential Sound Panel, Editing Techniques & the Future of Video
It's always bittersweet to leave #AdobeMax. So many amazing creative people and gadgets -- it's really a Premiere Gal's heaven! I wanted to make the most of my time at MAX and make it as useful and beneficial to you as possible. Before you read on, I thought of some new video tutorials ideas that add on to what we learned at #AdobeMax. You can vote for your favorite tutorial suggestions in my poll here on Twitter or make a tutorial suggestion on my website. If you contribute to my patreon page, a way for you to digitally "tip" me for my free tutorials and advice, your tutorial suggestion will receive priority. You can also receive other fun perks and discounts delivered to your inbox! Share the Patreon page on social media by joining my thunderclap campaign. Now on to a recap of Day 3!
I started off in Jason Levine's class "Audio is Half the Picture: Getting Great Mixes with Premiere Pro & Audition." The most important take away was Jason's overview of the new "Essential Sound" panel in Audition. The panel essentially enables you to repair and enhance your audio with ease! I was blown away by its power. It truly is one step closer to the future of auto-editing as Dave Werner spoke about in his talk "Video in 2026: What the Future Holds for Video Creatives." There will still be the need for us, video editors, to build the story, of course! But if auto-editing could help groom and prep our files to be in the best shape and form at the start it will then save us heaps of time in the long run! The Essential Sound panel in Audition is getting there!
To use the "Essential sound" panel in Audition you need to drag your audio into the the multitrack editor and then select what type of sound you have, is it Dialogue? Music? SFX or Ambience? You then can select from a list of awesome presets to enhance the dialogue. See here:
You don't have to choose a preset, but it is a great starting point for beginners. Once you select a preset it will adjust additional settings in the panel, such as the clarity and the unify loudness settings to best match the preset. There are a total of five tabs within the panel and below I review each one Jason showed us in his session at #AdobeMax.
1. Unify Loudness. The "Unify Loudness" tab in the "Essential Sound" panel will analyze the "loudness" of the clip and if you click "auto-match" it will adjust the gain of the clip to match the perceived loudness of all dialogue tracks you are mixing in Audition at that time. It will do this without destructing the original quality of the audio, you can remove it at any time. Pretty cool, huh? You need to remember that loudness is not just volume, but a "measure of average volume consistency over time." (Essential Sound Panel, Adobe Help).
2. Repair Sound. If there is anything else that needs to be improved, like background noise. You can expand the "Repair Sound" tab to reduce noise, reduce mic rumble, DeHum, or DeEss (reducing the sibalance, "sss" noise from dialogue).
3. Improve Clarity. The "Improve Clarity" tab in the "Essential Sound" panel adds an auto EQ (Equalizer) which will enhance the frequencies best suited for your type of audio and you can adjust the amount of EQ. It makes it very simple! Of course, it's not perfect for every type of audio, so you may need to set your own custom EQ in certain situations. I did not know what "dynamics" meant, but Audition is so smart that when you hover over the word "dynamics" tells you what it is! See here:
4. Creative Tab. This tab is typically used after you apply noise reduction on your audio track. Often times when you remove certain noises from a dialogue track, like a hum in the background, it make will make the track sound fairly lifeless or flat and kind of robotic because part of the environment was removed. Now the creative tab enables you to easily drop in a preset room tone to bring life back to your audio. I believe Jason said you can add in your own room-tone preset to select from. But I will double check! You can see a screenshot of the creative tab below.
5. Volume. And the last tab of the Essential Sound panel is volume. It is pretty straightforward. But essentially it is a way for you to adjust the final playback volume level of your audio so it matches your other tracks.
If you are a video editor that needs an introduction to audio editing I would highly recommend watching Jason's free series on YouTube called Audio 101. You can learn how to record your voice with Adobe Audition CC, How to use Noise Reduction & Restoration Tools in Audition CC. Now these are not short tutorials, each video is about an hour long, mainly because audio editing can be complex and he goes into depth!
The next class I attended was by Jarle Leirpoll called "Get Home in Time for Dinner! Advanced Timesaving Workflows in Premiere Pro." Clever name, good man and an entertaining trainer. He took us through heaps of shortcuts he uses to make his editing process smooth and more fun. I think my favorite line from his talk was, "When you don't know what to do, just right click on an item." And it's true. I don't know how many times I've done this, but it's been a lot! Funny guy! There were so many tips, but I'll just go over a few.
One of my favorites was the ability to turn on thumbnails in the Premiere Pro project panel. This will give you a preview of what the clip looks like within the Project panel so you don't have to open up each clip in the Source Monitor to preview it. Time saver!
To add to this, Jarle showed us how to make a basic storyboard within a bin in the Project panel. Pretty innovative! I love how he thinks about how to use the existing tools in Premiere Pro in new & fun ways. To build a fast visual rough cut or a storyboard, you can reorder the clips and then drag them into your timeline and they will appear in that order. You can see an example of what the storyboard could look like in this tweet:
Jarle also taught us a few awesome keyboard shortcuts. Here is one of my favorites:
Jarle also showed us how to perform a basic sky replacement using the Premiere Pro Titler tool. Who would have known? Essentially you draw a rectangle in the titler tool, change the color fill to be a gradient, place the title rectangle overtop the footage in the timeline and then under "Opacity" in the effects tab you can change the blend mode of the rectangle to achieve your desired sky look. There was a video tutorial request for this so I'll be able to show you how to do it in more detail in my video tutorial on YouTube. Hold tight!
In the meantime, Jarle covers all sorts of tricks you can learn in his book, "The Cool Stuff in Premiere Pro." I've heard it is one the best Premiere Pro guides out there. You can get 30% off using the code: MAX. Buy it here.
I then moved on to learn about some of Christine Steele's documentary editing techniques. Christine uses Premiere Pro as the hub and center of her production workflow, but she uses After Effects, Photoshop and Illustrator as secondary programs to support her production. One of the best tips she gave was about how she leveraged the power of the additional Creative Cloud apps to create promo materials and storyboards to get funding for her documentary, Take Me Home Huey. Since Take Me Home Huey had multiple editors in various locations she was able to pass the Premiere Pro project through the Creative Cloud. Since she works with markers to identify, locate, annotate and organize sections of her film in the Premiere Pro timeline, she taught us how to enable the Premiere Pro markers to save with the Premiere Pro project file and not with the clips. Here is the huge time-saving tip:
I had the chance to meet with Christine and Jeff Greenberg following their sessions to ask them about their favorite Premiere Pro tips. I won't tell you everything they had to offer as it will be in a video coming out next week. Stay tuned!
Left to Right. Premiere Gal and Christine Steele, Premiere Pro Trainer & Documentary Filmmaker at Steele Pictures. Her favorite tool in Premiere Pro is optical flow time-remapping.
After this session I went downstairs to check out the Mettle Virtual Reality booth and this is where I was able to wear my first ever 360 headset! I'm excited to get the Mettle Plugin and show you all how to do 360 text on your 360 videos in Premiere Pro.
I ended my #AdobeMAX experience on a positive look towards the future of video with Dave Werner, a designer on Character Animator. He gave us loads of practical advice, such as what to look out for in the next few years. Here is a list which is taken directly from his slides of his presentation. Thanks, Dave for sharing this with us!
Video Quality
- Keep an eye on what Netflix, Xbox and Playstation do with HDR.
- Don't sweat 4k, 6k, 8k stuff as much, most people can't tell the difference.
- Watch when HDR enabled TVs get under $500 for mainstream adoption.
Automatic Editing in Video
- Check out automatic editing solutions like Adobe Premiere Clip, Google Photos concept movies, Facebook slideshows etc. These are going to improve!
Livestreaming & Interaction in Video
- Watch Live Super Deluxe (LSD) on Facebook.
- Experiment with live streaming and how you can interact with the audience.
- Look out for wearable camera tech and always-on cameras so you can take a photo at any moment without having to take out your phone camera.
That's all I have for now! Until next time. Cheers! :)
Premiere Gal received a complimentary ticket to attend and cover #AdobeMax. If you have any questions contact me! Follow me on Twitter , Facebook, Instagram and subscribe to Premiere Gal's YouTube Channel. If you find my content useful, help support my effort through a small tip on my Patreon page.