Advanced Video Production Techniques - Adding Titles

Most professional video programming has some sort of opening sequence that usually includes lots of candid footage mixed with shots of the star(s) and some sort of graphic rendition of the title of the program. You should take the same approach. If your show has a name, let folks know about it! If they download it to their iPod and forget about it until it magically appears on their screen one day when they're browsing through their clips library, you want them to know the name of the program and who you are. So you'll probably want to use titles.

However, the problem is that what looks good (and is legible) on a television screen in general ends up way too small to be read on a small 320×240 screen. Titles at the bottom of the screen (called lower thirds) can be very hard to read if they're not done with large enough fonts. PowerPoint slides are particularly tough, because most people try to pack far too much information into a single slide, which makes it difficult for people to absorb, and the small fonts become very hard to read when reduced. To top it all off, video codecs have a tough time with text, because they don't treat it as being distinct from the video. So when your podcast is encoded, you're going to lose even more quality, as depicted in Figure 10.9.



Figure 1: PowerPoint slides are a good example of why text is tough: (a) Scaled to 320×240 and (b) after encoding at 300 Kbps.

The PowerPoint slide in Figure 1 isn't too bad to start off with; it has only five main points on the slide. By the time the slide is reduced to 320×240, the sub-points are too hard to read, and after the encoding process, even the main points are starting to look a little ragged.

If you're going to use text in your podcast, think big. Try not to have more than three or four points per slide if you're using PowerPoint, and if you're adding titles to your show and/or your guests, make sure to use a font large enough so that it is legible after the encoding process.

Advanced EQ techniques

EQ also can be used as a corrective measure. The techniques described in the preceding sections aimed to improve the overall sonic quality of your audio by focusing on what you wanted to be heard. You also can use EQ to remove extraneous noise that you don't want in the file.

Clearing up noise
If you recorded your audio in a noisy environment, you can use EQ to get rid of some of the worst noise. First, roll off all the low frequencies. You should do this regularly to all frequencies below 60Hz, because they're generally not reproduced by most systems. You can roll off more if you're dealing with serious noise. For example, traffic outside a busy city window will be audible as a steady low rumble, with the occasional siren or horn. If you roll off more of the bottom end, the sound of the traffic will be less audible.

Similarly, you can roll off high frequencies if you have noise problems such as air conditioning or tape hiss. In the preceding example, we boosted all frequencies above 5KHz to give the file some air; clearly, this is not something we'd want to do if we were in a noisy environment. Of course, we could have used the shelf to roll off all high frequencies above 8KHz or so and added a slight lift around 4–5KHz. Very little important voice information is in the range above 10KHz, so if you have noise problems, you can safely roll this off without any damage to the intelligibility of the audio.

Of course, in extreme situations, you can get pretty savage with EQ if necessary. For example, sometimes news reporters outside during a storm sound like they're talking through a telephone line. This is because the audio engineer at the station has rolled off all low frequencies and high frequencies, leaving just the mids.

Pops
Sometimes, a pop sneaks into your audio file, even if you're using a pop screen. If you zoom in to your audio file and look at the offending pop, you'll see that it's a very brief, very loud low frequency burst. You can highlight the offending word (or even syllable) and roll off the offending bass frequencies, as shown in Figure 1.


Figure 1: A pop is visible as a short, loud low-frequency burst, which can be fixed with EQ.

Experiment with different amounts of roll-off at different frequencies. You'll find that if you roll off too much, you get rid of the pop, but the result may sound unnatural. Find a good balance between removing as much of the offending pop as possible, while retaining the natural feel of the original.

Dealing with sibilants
Some people have a problem with sibilants, which are consonants like the letter "s" ("d" and "t" can also be a problem but usually nowhere near as much) that contain a burst of high-frequency information. This is audible as a whistling or, well, an "ess" sound. A little of this is natural, but too much is annoying. Some people actually whistle when they pronounce these consonants, which is an extreme version of the same problem. Because this is usually a very localized problem, it can be dealt with using EQ.

Sibilants usually are most prominent around 5KHz. Just like the preceding example where a word was highlighted and bass frequencies were rolled off to get rid of a pop, you can highlight a word and try to cut the offending frequency. Dealing with sibilants is more troublesome than popping, because our ears are very sensitive to high frequencies, and even if it's only a momentary change, our ears may notice that the sound has changed. Not only that, but if someone has trouble with sibilants, it usually manifests itself throughout the entire interview — and the letter "s" is very popular in the English language. In general, if you want to deal with sibilants, you should use a de-esser. That's a fancy term we audio engineers made up to describe a "frequency dependent, side chain controlled compressor." De-essers are explained in the compression section, which comes next.