Have you ever had to edit a whole bunch of Voiceover Audio only to discover it’s an incredibly tedious process?
In this short video, you’ll learn the 5 steps to edit Voiceover audio faster than anyone else.
Editing audiobooks has been keeping me busy the last few months.
I was sick of spending so much time with ‘start-and-stop’ editing, that I put together this step-by-step system to speed up my workflow and now I wanna share it with you.
Our goal for this process is to trim these clips all at once so we can just listen through each Chapter and delete any mistakes, or false starts.
Step 1: Use Remove Silence from Audio Region: Control + X
Use the following settings for ideal voiceover flow:
Threshold: Use the minimum value possible to get a good amount of cuts. This setting really depends on your source audio.
Lower your threshold to a point where Logic starts making a decent amount of cuts.
This will make sure each sentence or statement is separated into its own audio region.
For this chapter, I set my threshold at -41dB and it created 288 regions.
Next set the Minimum silence to 0.15 sec
This is the minimum amount of time Logic will determine as a pause.
Then, set your Pre Attack to: .08 sec
This is the amount of space that will be left in each audio region before you start speaking.
Finally set the Post Release to 0.1 sec
This is the amount of space that will be left in each audio region after you stop speaking.
I found these settings made for a natural speaking cadence.
If you find the pacing to abrupt, I suggest making the post release a little longer.
But remember that later on, you can always go in and extend little bits of space for longer pauses.
Again, these settings are optimized for audio book dialogue.
The last option on this window is Search Zero Crossing.
It should be checked ON by default. So make sure it is because this setting adjusts your Pre-Attack and Post-Release settings, to move the edges of the newly created regions to the nearest zero crossing.
Simply put, It will automatically snap the region’s start and end point to the nearest and most “quiet” spot in the recording to minimize ugly clips and pops.
Step 2: Select all Audio Regions, then use Shuffle Mode Option + ]
The Key command Option + ] will push all of your selected audio regions together against the right side of your session.
Which I’ll admit isn’t ideal, I’d rather use Option + [ to sandwich everything against the start of the session.
However, for some reason Logic don’t respect audio region boundaries when using this Shuffle Left command.
The audio regions smoosh together and it’s just not useable.
I’ve contacted Apple about this and they were unaware of the issue so hopefully it gets patched in a later update.
For now, use the Shuffle Right command.
Next, you’re going to drag all your audio regions over the left side of the session.
Only one more step before we begin to listen back.
Step 3: Apply Fades to All Selected Regions
To apply Fades to the beginning and end of each clip, you’re going to select all your audio regions
and then go into the Inspector tab on the left side of the screen.
Under the REGIONS tab, Click MORE at the bottom.
Then enter a value of 100 for Fade-in, and for Fade Out.
Again you can adjust this about to taste.
But by now you’ve got your audio all chopped up and ready to go!
Step 4: Listen to your Audio
Next you’re going to listen through the audio and remove any false starts or mistakes in the voiceover.
I’ll include one trick here that really makes this entire process lightning fast.
Right click on your Control bar. (thats the top center of your Logic session.)
From the drop Down menu, select Customize Control Bar and Display
On this checklist, make sure to select Varispeed.
Varispeed will allow you to PLAYBACK audio at much faster rates, just remember to turn it off before exporting your bounce.
Personally I like to set Varispeed anywhere from +50% to +80%, it really makes a world of difference in the speed I can turn over a project!
Step 5: Stay in Drag mode: Shuffle L
This Shuffle mode tip allows for fastest Voiceover workflow.
Shuffle L mode will shuffle all audio regions over to the left as you delete unwanted regions. (Similar to Shuffle Mode in Pro Tools)
Using this Drag mode, as you delete any mistakes in your recording, the next region will snap over to the LEFT to maintain a continuous stream of audio.
This step-by-step system will allow you to edit VoiceOver audio way faster, and hopefully make it less of a tedious process for you.
With this method you don’t need to stop and start every time you need to make a cut.
So I hope you guys did enjoy this post, I hope this process does help to speed up your Voiceover editing.
If it did, make sure to leave a like and consider subscribing to support the channel!
Thank you so much for watching.
I’ll see you in the next one.
