Muffleing sounds

gooberman · Jan 29, 2012

I'm making a video in which an explosion and gun shots will be heard from inside a building. I wont the sounds to be muffled like you would hear from them from inside of a building. Also, at one point in the video my main character will be walking towards the door leading to the outside so the machine gun shots will need to get louder and less muffled. Adjusting the volume I know how to do it's the muffling

I will be using premiere pro and after effects. I would like to do all the sound effects in premiere.

Any suggestions or help would be awesome.

josh-ozirigpro · Jan 29, 2012

gooberman said:
I would like to do all the sound effects in premiere.

Eek!

Why are you set on using Premiere for the sound effects?
You would do much better with something like Reaper (FREEE!!) http://www.reaper.fm/
You don't need to be an expert in audio engineering, but it'll give you a huge amount of control (plus it has a lot of built in effects, INCLUDING a muffled/underwater kind of filter) with access to gates, compressors etc.

Have a look at some tutorials for Reaper - it's so gosh darned simple (but very powerful) you'll kick the next person who suggests using Premiere for audio work :lol:

Then you can import and export the audio out as a track and then place it back into Premiere when you're done.

I just can't see Premiere doing a good enough job on the audio with the tools (or lack thereof).

knightly · Jan 29, 2012

Audacity is also free and has more powerful audio tools than premiere, but often, it's easier for simple jobs to keep it all in the same interface. "High cut" or "Low pass" will do the trick for you.

Alcove Audio · Jan 29, 2012

To answer your question...

Use a low-pass filter to reduce highs - upper frequencies are often attenuated by walls, etc. As the character moves through the door towards the source of the sound you increase the amount of high frequencies allowed through the low pass filter by automating the frequency level. And, of course, the obvious is you will also need to automate the volume as well. You may want to do all of this after the reverb buss.

This, of course, is the simple and inexpensive solution. If you want a more authentic sound you should also be adjusting mid-range frequencies and reverb properties so that they correspond to the acoustic properties of the structure and surrounding area. The expensive solution is to use an IR reverb like AltiVerb which has sounds-inside-heard-from-outside impulse pre-sets.

gooberman · Jan 29, 2012

thanks for all the suggestions. I not only wanted to keep it in the same interface but downloading a new program is not an option. in my current location, all i have is 56k download speeds.

knightly · Jan 30, 2012

Audacity is pretty small.

PaulGriffith · Jan 30, 2012

For a simple/basic mix, Premiere does ok and it works like video editor is used to.

However, if you have Premiere and After Effects you probably have Adobe Audition as well, since it's included in all the bundles (Production Premium, Master Collection, etc) that Premiere and AE are. Audition is a great sound program. I'm sure not the best ever, but it'll give you a lot more control than Premiere.

gooberman · Jan 30, 2012

PaulGriffith said:
For a simple/basic mix, Premiere does ok and it works like video editor is used to.

However, if you have Premiere and After Effects you probably have Adobe Audition as well, since it's included in all the bundles (Production Premium, Master Collection, etc) that Premiere and AE are. Audition is a great sound program. I'm sure not the best ever, but it'll give you a lot more control than Premiere.

i do have audition but im not familiar with it

knightly · Jan 30, 2012

My most recent post in my audio screencasts uses audacity, so you can get a glimpse at it. Perhaps the next episode should focus more heavily on audacity directly as a post production tool.