Subject:Removing pauses between words

Posted by: farss

Date:7/26/2004 11:31:31 PM

Rather than using the normal playback speedup techniques I'm wondering is it possble to shorten the duration of a track of narration by reducing the 'silence' between words and are the results acceptable.
I've done this manually on some very short segments but this time I'm looking at hours of material that needs to run about 10% faster so some automated way of doing it would be necesary.
I'm really not expecting anyone to give me a blow by blow 'how to' here. If it can be done just a few pointers would be appreciated. Conversely if this idea is so out there please feel free to tell me to get back on my bike.

Subject:RE: Removing pauses between words

Reply by: billm

Date:7/27/2004 6:54:39 AM

How about time stretch in the process menu, you can shorten or lenthen the whole file.

Subject:RE: Removing pauses between words

Reply by: Rednroll

Date:7/27/2004 6:56:13 AM

I've done quite a bit of Advertisement work where they try to fit 10lbs of sh*t into a 5 lb bag without it feeling like the voice talent is reading at 100 MPH. Using this technique will definately work and is the preferred method of shortening a read up over time compression. I've also used this technique on longer narration documentaries and it works there as well. What you are describing is called "debreathing". This is almost always done in this type of work. Not just for the time compression aspect, but more for the reason that nobody wants to hear you take a big gasp for breath, while listening to what you have to say. The producers I work with are usually annoyed when they hear the breath sound.

I don't know of an automated process. Auto Regions would be your best bet in Sound Forge, but I haven't had much success with this tool. The best way to do this, is to use Vegas. You play back the read, anytime you hear a breath you hit stop then the "s" key to do a split right before the breath. Then hold the "Alt" key plus left mouse button and do a "slip edit" on the event to the right and you slip the breath out of the read. This works perfectly in Vegas along with auto crossfade on, it's the way I was doing it on a Neve Audiophile prior to using Vegas, and was the I suggested in the past as a feature suggestion in Vegas. It's the main reason I use Vegas over everything else out there. That one feature of slip editing makes my life very productive. Once you've started using the slip edit feature in Vegas, you'll then want to move onto holding the "Cntrl+Alt" keys together and move the split edit point to make the transistion sound more natural.

Once you get good at this technique you can usually playback at 2X or even more preferably use the scrub feature in Vegas and find the gaps and breaths much quicker speeding up the whole edit process.

Subject:RE: Removing pauses between words

Reply by: RiRo

Date:7/27/2004 9:14:25 AM

Autotrim/crop.

It has a setting that takes every last sliver out... this often sounds unnatural. Lengthen the fade time to increase the size of the gaps left between words. I find that for dry speaking files, about .6 seconds works and sounds natural. For many speakers, especially if they speak for more than half an hour or so, it can cut their speech time in half.

RiRo

Subject:RE: Removing pauses between words

Reply by: farss

Date:7/27/2004 9:29:25 PM

Guys,
thank you so much!
As it happens the client decided to add another CD to the set, it's not their work, only something they've bought the rights to and as it's a rather prominent actress doing the narration they'd probably have to go back through the whole approval process again.

However thanks so much for all the information. Once I've finished this set of CDs I'm going to try the techniques suggested, just to improve my SF skills. I bought it mainly for NR2 and apart from that haven't had the time to really get to know it, I find the UI close enough to Vegas and yet subtly different which I find difficult to keep switching the old grey matter between.

I'm certain a few hours 'debreathing' will hone my skills no end.

Again, thanks everyone.

Bob.

Subject:RE: Removing pauses between words

Reply by: Rednroll

Date:7/28/2004 8:15:54 AM

Sound Forge is completely different than Vegas in editing. Although the suggested autotrim/crop might work, there's a high probability that it won't work, and may make it feel unnatural. You can't just freely slide events around back and forth and create automatic crossfades like you can in Vegas. So sure maybe the autotrim will remove unwanted silence, but what if it removes too much of the silence and it doesn't feel natural? Well in Vegas this is a simple correction by just sliding the event to the right with ripple mode turned on. None of that sliding of events in Sound Forge business, You're off to doing cut and pasted style editing. So all that time you just saved with that auto-trim feature gets eaten up by simple edits. Experiment around a little and get familiar with Sound Forge, it has it's uses, but editing voice overs is not one of them, when you also have Vegas at your disposal.