How to build a template for sound design in Pro-Tools Part 2

Hey, this is Tom Effinger from Audio Post Pro. This is part two of a series on how to build a basic template for working in audio post production. If you haven't seen part one, you probably want to see that one first before you get into this one. In part one, we built a basic template using audio tracks, aux tracks, and bussing to send the audio to the appropriate places. Now in part two, I'm going to put some plug-ins in the template to help to shape the audio. Okay, let's get going. Hey guys, we're giving away a pair of reference quality headphones. The same ones we often use in the studio. All you have to do to enter is sign up using the link in the description. Alright, let's start at the top with the dialogue track. So for dialogue, the first thing I like on there is an EQ. So let's go to EQ, EQ 3, 7 band. Now I'm only using plug-ins that are standard with Pro Tools. So let's pull this one up. Now in dialogue, it's important that you don't have too much low end on the dialogue. So we want to set up a high pass filter. So we enable high pass filter. We want the octave to be 24 and the frequency we want to be 80 hertz. This is a good general roll-off for dialogue. It basically keeps low end rumble, bumps, things like that playing too big a role in the dialogue. So we like this 80 hertz roll-off on the low end. The next thing I like on the dialogue track is a basic compressor. So we'll go plug-in, dynamics. And again, using a standard Pro Tools plug-in, we'll go to Pro Compressor. This default setting is good for what we need. But I found I do need to change the threshold to make it a little more sensitive. So let's go here and set this for minus 16 dB instead of minus 20. So basically we have an EQ giving a low end roll-off. And then we have a compressor offering some light compression. Now when we want light compression, we really only want the reduction to be around minus 3 to minus 6 dB. So you don't want the compressor to be hitting the audio any harder than that. You can adjust the threshold if you need to to make it less sensitive if you find that you're hitting the dialogue harder than around minus 3 in reduction. You generally don't need too much on effects, at least to start. But on the effects track, let's put an EQ. Again we'll use the EQ 3 7 band. But I'm just going to leave it flat, meaning it has no EQ setting. It's just going to be there in case we need it at a later time. We can do the very same thing with stereo effects. Go to EQ and put on EQ 3 7 band. And we're going to leave it flat again. And we'll do the same thing for music. EQ, EQ 3 7 band. Once again, it'll be flat. We might find out later that the music is a little bass heavy or a little too bright. We may want to make an adjustment. But for now, we just want to have the plug-in there in case we need it at a later time. And there's a very good chance that we might not need it at all for music. So that sets up the audio tracks with a few basic plug-ins. Now all the dialogue, all the dialogue tracks are going to be feeding this dialogue aux. So what we'll do, by the way, is we will click on dialogue and we'll say track duplicate to make as many dialogue tracks as we're going to need for the project. So once I see what's come in from the video edit, I can gauge how many tracks I need and I can create the number of duplicates required. For now, I'm going to say cancel. And the same thing goes for effects and stereo effects. We take our template track and we duplicate out 6, 8, 10, 12, 16, whatever it takes in order to cover all the sounds that we're going to be putting there from the video edit. So on the dialogue aux, this is an opportunity to process all the dialogue coming through this one aux track. So the first thing I like to have on here is a de-esser. So once again, multi-channel plug-in, dynamics, and we will choose the Pro Tools standard de-esser. Frequency is the important thing here, frequency and threshold. Frequency is, of course, the frequency range that it's going to be working at. I find a good place to start is with male S and then threshold, for starters, let's set it at minus 30. The next thing I like to put on the dialogue aux is a multi-band compressor. Multi-channel plug-in, dynamics. Once again, choosing the Pro Tools option, Pro, multi-band, dynamics. The default setting is mostly good. The one thing I've noticed I need to change to get this to be a little more sensitive is to set the threshold for all of the four bands to minus 20. So why I like having a multi-band compressor on the dialogue bus is you often have some harsh consonant sounds that live either in this treble range or in this high mid range. What the multi-band compressor will do is just dip those things that break the threshold and quietly soften the things that are sticking out in terms of hot frequencies. So it can be very helpful, again, to create a more smooth and pleasant sounding dialogue mix. On the effects aux, for the most part we don't need to do anything like global EQ, but it is nice to have a limiter because all the effects could create hot peaks and those peaks could peak both the effects aux and it could peak the final mix. So let's put a limiter on here, multi-channel plug-in, dynamics, pro limiter. And all we really need to set in the pro limiter is the threshold minus 2 and ceiling minus 2. So what this is doing is it's making sure that anything that comes through the effects aux will not go above minus 2 dB true peak. This is a good basic limiter and one of the nice features is it has an LUFS meter section right here. That's going to come in useful. We can put that same limiter on a music track and one of the ways we can do that is to click on it, hold option and drag it down. Now that same limiter with that minus 2 dB setting is on our music aux. Okay, now on to the mix out aux. So the result of all of these three subgroup masters is feeding the mix out aux and now we have an opportunity to put some processing on here. The main thing again is a limiter, multi-channel plug-in, dynamics, and we'll use the pro limiter and once again we'll set it for minus 2. Minus 2 is a very standard setting because a lot of distributors require that no audio peak hotter than minus 2 dB. So that's why we use minus 2 in the threshold and ceiling settings. Now the nice part about having this limiter on the mix out aux is that now we can see the LUFS reading of our total mix. Oftentimes in my template I have a different metering plug-in. So I'll have a limiter and then I'll have a separate metering plug-in. But it's kind of nice that in this case using just Pro Tools standard plug-ins that we can have both the limiter with an LUFS reading right here in the same place. Now most programs require minus 24 as the loudness reading. That is the standard for DTV, digital television. For web we generally want to see an LUFS or LKFS reading, by the way they're the same thing, of minus 18. So this is where we can see what our final mix is going to be in terms of loudness. Very useful. The last track in our template is the mix stem track. Really this track is just here so that after we've bounced out our mix we can import it back into the session and we can look at the waveform and listen to the final mix file to make sure that everything is okay. We don't need this track to have any plug-ins on it at all. And I always want to have this track muted until I need to listen to it. If you don't have it muted and you bring the mix back in on this track you would be listening to both the tracks that created the mix and the mix at the same time, essentially doubling it up. So we always leave the mix stem track muted and once we bring the file back in and we want to listen to it I then go to solo and after I'm done listening it goes back to mute. And that wraps up putting plug-ins in our basic template. There's definitely more than one way to do it. Everyone has a little bit of a different way, but this is a good way to start and start to understand how a template works. Okay, that concludes part two of the series on how to build a basic template in Pro Tools. I hope you found this helpful. We're just getting things started so please like, comment, and subscribe for more videos coming from AudioPost Pro.