Audacity Forum

Hey guys,

I have next to no experience in sound editing. That being said I had an idea for a personal project of mine. I have created animation that I want to add sound effects to. I might as well come right out and be specific.. it's a 3D {word rejected}. What I want to do is take the.. lovin' sounds from homemade real life videos and use em for the 3D video. I can't just paste the entire audio, I need to chop it up and rearrange the different "ooohs" and "aaahs" and blend them together.

I've seen this done before a couple of times but it's sounded pretty bad.. like the sound doesn't blend at all, or there'd be silence, then all of the sudden a poor quality sound plays.. sounding like a tape recorder.

Is it possible to do this and make it sound decent? How difficult would it be for a beginner? I'm willing to invest in a good software and learn.

Any replies would be appreciated. Thanks!

(Also sorry if this question doesn't belong here.. I was googling around and had no idea where I could post this question. Please point me in the right direction to ask elsewhere if possible.)

Fair warning. Nothing kills {word rejected} faster than producing it.

There no reason you can't produce a perfectly serviceable sound track to do whatever you want. Capture may get you before anything else. Somebody is going to have to ADR, Foley, or loop the sounds in post production -- put the sounds in later. There's no place to hide a microphone and few people are going to deal with a boom operator, Sennheiser shotgun, drooping cables, and Wookie sound shield on the set. That's one of the reasons the sound is so bad on many productions. Sound just takes care of itself, right?

Right?

Audacity will cheerfully manage many multiple tracks and you generally run out of computer and screen real estate long before you run out of Audacity -- although I would be in 1.3 rather than 1.2.

There's another number that gets in the way. Post production time is usually ten times the length of the show. Expect your half-hour production to take upwards of five to six hours to edit -- more until you get used to it.

I would so produce an Extra on the DVD called Making-Of. You could include shots of each of the principal actors in street clothing and sipping Starbucks while they "say" their lines into a post production microphone. Remember that restaurant scene in "When Harry Met Sally?"

The whole world remembers that scene.

Koz