Ducking/damping

TonyK wrote on 10/10/2016, 2:08 PM

I am using MEP 2016 Plus. I have a sequence where a cannon fires, but the sound is reducing the volume of the rather quiet music track underneath for several seconds after the boom. How do I stop this from happening? I eventually found what I believe to be the appropriate box under 'reduce volume', but this doesn't appear to do much apart from draw annoying horizontal lines all over my tracks which then won't go away without reloading my project!

Comments

johnebaker wrote on 10/10/2016, 4:14 PM

. . . . apart from draw annoying horizontal lines all over my tracks . . .

Do you mean like this

This is the volume curve and is the means by which you adjust the volume after the boom.

. . . . but the sound is reducing the volume of the rather quiet music track underneath for several seconds after the boom. . . .

The curve on the sound object, where the boom occurs, should look something like the one shown above.

To adjust the volume, zoom in if necessary, and move the mouse cursor over the small green squares on the line - when you have the correct point the mouse pointer will change and you can click and drag the squares up/down and left/right to adjust the volume or time as you wish.

You can turn off the display of the volume curve if you wish, however it is better to leave them showing as a reminder of what has been applied to the audio - if you do not have them showing and go back to the same projects months later to make changes you may wonder why the volume is not responding to any changes.

HTH

John EB

Scenestealer wrote on 10/12/2016, 5:12 AM

"Reduce Volume" activates the automatic track damping which automatically lowers the volume in the track below by a selectable amount -3, -6, -9db, when there is significant audio in the track above. It is designed to be used in conjunction with recording a voiceover in the program, which can automatically lower background sound or music tracks for the duration of the speech. These lines or "Track Curves" unfortunately are not locked to anything else in the timeline which means you can not do any subsequent inserting or removing of clips prior to the ducking event in the lower track.

It is slightly different to the "Volume Curve" in John's example in that it lays those lines you mentioned along the whole track and not just on a selected object (clip) however the adjustment of the fade in and out points is as described. The Volume Curve is added manually with a right click and stays with the clip if it is moved.

By the way, you can turn the display of the Track Curves on and off by Alt+K or unticking Track damping with a Rt click on any part of the Audio track. Your damping will remain or you can reset the whole track curve to Odb.

johnebaker wrote on 10/12/2016, 6:32 AM

Here is a short video about using the Reduce volume option in MEP 2016.

Click the Youtube button in the player to open a better resolution video

HTH

John EB

TonyK wrote on 10/12/2016, 11:13 AM

Thanks everyone - it's great to have all this knowledge on tap! But in fact it was my error. What I hadn't taken into account were the sound settings on my PC! A little digging revealed that a loudness equalisation was set to 'on'. Resetting that to 'off' and all is well - but my word, is that cannon boom loud now! Thanks again averyone!