Apple MA261Z/A User Manual - Page 660

Organizing Your Tracks As you edit audio into your sequences, it's important to keep your tracks organized. Not only will this make it easier for you to keep your tracks straight when you edit new clips in, it will make your job much easier when it's time to mix your tracks together. For example, put all sync-sound dialogue clips into one group of tracks, background ambiences in another group of tracks, sound effects in another group of tracks, and music in a different group of tracks. You might put one actor's voice on track A1, and another actor's voice on track A2. Narration recorded with the Voice Over tool might go on track A3. Background ambience clips such as wind and rain might go on tracks A4 and A5. Sound effects could go on tracks A6, A7, and A8. Finally, four tracks for overlapping stereo music clips would be dedicated to tracks A9, A10, A11, and A12. If you're working on a project that may be distributed to an international audience, you should also keep your final mix separated into D, M, and E stems (dialogue, music, and effects). This will allow foreign distributors to dub over the voices of your actors without losing the music, ambience, and effects that you've edited into your program. Categories of audio tracks Dialogue Voiceover Music Ambience Sound effects This includes most of the audio that was captured with your video. Whether or not you place each character's lines on a separate dialogue track is between you and your audio editor. Narration should be put on a separate track from dialogue, as it will probably have different EQ settings. Stereo music from any source could use up to four tracks, if you're doing complicated music edits or cross fades. Ambient tracks include background tones, atmospheric sound effects, and possibly room tone. Effects include material from effects libraries as well as effects clips you record yourself. If you've edited in Foley effects, they should occupy a separate set of audio tracks. 660 Part VIII Audio Mixing