Common Editing Mistakes & How to Approach Them

Introduction: Everyone Makes Mistakes

In today’s article, we will dive into the common mistakes voice actors make with their audio, why we make them, where opinions are divided on what to edit, and how to set up your own routine.

If someone out there in the VO world says they’ve never botched a file or made a mistake on an edit, either they are lying to themselves, or they simply have never been in a position to receive honest objective feedback. So the very first thing we can do is to release any unnecessary pressure we may be placing on ourselves to be “perfect” while also striving to be “quick.” You might as well have a wish to have wings and a horn, and to be called “the last unicorn.”

When it comes to making mistakes, I take a certain indirect pride in just how many I have made and lived to tell the tale about. That wasn’t always the case. I used to beat myself up something terrible and feel horrified about my lack of mastery of it.

But then I started seeing some really great minds out there voicing their reflections on what “success” looked like. It was less about talent, luck, and the brains of an immortal being, and more about how quickly they were able to synthesize the lessons made available from their mistakes and failures and to apply that knowledge in their next endeavor. So the pride I take in my mistakes isn’t because I want to make errors and am oh-so-happy when I do, but because I want to learn, grow, and develop a sense of mastery. It isn’t about how “good at it” you are currently. It’s about how open you are to learning and how quickly you are willing to dust yourself off and try again. In other words, your best bets when it comes to approaching developing the skill of editing audio are developing (or keeping) a growth-centered mindset and becoming more resilient.

I have no wish to bore the reader by repeating stories from my own history, but I will remind you that when I started my Voice-Over journey, it was at Funimation Studios. I had a script, the mic, and a TV screen inside the booth, and that was plenty of a challenge. I didn’t even see waveform audio on a computer screen, much less have to start manipulating and editing it, until 3 years into my career. When I landed my first agent in 2005, that all changed, as they asked me to record my auditions from home, and “just send them in.” Say what?!? “Just” w-h-a-t?????

Thus my love-hate-obsession-fascination-addiction to audio tech was born, and let me tell you, it’s been a really cool 19-year journey. No matter how you currently feel about audio editing and the tech side of audio, I hope that you will keep an open mind, and start with a positive attitude (or simply just be open and curious about the idea that you may find something that you will enjoy about it, and that you WILL get better at it, if you practice.)

Fun fact: Curiosity is a much better motivation than will-power will ever be.

So to recap, everyone makes mistakes, and you can rejoice! It means you aren’t a machine. You are fully 100% verified human, and don’t need to “select all the tiles that contain motorcycles.” You can collect your $200 and pass go…and you might even enjoy the process.

Yippee!

But What if I Suck at Tech?

Throughout my career I have had the pleasure and pain of working with actors who tell me “they can’t do tech,” “are clueless and hopeless technophobes,” or “are too old to learn all this new stuff.”

You get to choose.?

If you truly CAN’T do tech or learn anything new, then really, this isn’t the line of work for you. You simply cannot provide voice over for broadcast and multimedia without using tech. That’s reality. Even if you hire a full-time editor, even if you record mostly in person at a studio, you cannot do any of the rest of it without using technology.

In fact, there are very few jobs, or activities that can be done in this day and age without tech, so you are going to be very, very, limited in your occupation, if that is true.

If is such an important word. Instead, if the truth is that in the past you have struggled with tech, you are afraid that this will be too difficult, or that you’ll be very slow to learn, then that’s GREAT. Because here is the wonderful truth, editing audio is artful. Are you able to listen? Are you able to imagine? That’s the part that matters. The rest is clicking buttons and moving a mouse, and I know for a fact that you can do that, because otherwise LinkedIn has risen from the depths of machine city and plopped this article on your head, landing right in front of your eyes… with DARK MAGIC!

If you can open a browser or an email, type, click buttons, and move your mouse, if you can play piano, if you know how long to pull the toilet paper before you tear it off, then you can definitely develop your skills in editing. But it starts with you developing a different attitude and mindset. “I am committed to developing new skills and deepening my knowledge.” That’s all you need to believe, and that’s true, isn’t it? If not, why on earth did you take up this journey?

Take heart, dear friend, I have witnessed so many people who started out blue in the face demanding that they “just couldn’t do tech” who are now actually helping others and answering questions about tech when someone new comes up the elevator after them. It happens all the time. You get to choose, and whatever you believe… you will be right, so why not give yourself the benefit of the doubt?

The Correct File Format & Settings

Once upon a time, after narrating nearly 45 minutes of tutorial audio for a disabilities aid service provider, I exported the file in 8khz 16 bit WAV. The client asked what was wrong with the last batch of files, why they sounded muffled and fuzzy, and of course I had no idea.

Now that I understand file formats, sample rates, and bit depths, you had better believe, I will never forget! From pre- to post-session, you need to make sure your settings are correct. If you are recording with one mic, you need to record in MONO. If you accidentally record in stereo, and the DAW isn’t set up to copy the mic’s signal to both the right and left channel equally, then the audio will only come out of one side of the speakers or listening device.

Whatever level of quality you need the file to be in its final form you must record at that level or higher. Forget getting involved in debates about whether 48/24, 32/Float, or 44.1/16 are “industry standard.” Set up your DAW and interface to be at or above the level you want and need your output to be. When I started I went with 44.1khz/16bit, but after I had enough clients who needed 48/24 and Ulaw outputs, I updated it to the higher settings and haven’t looked back.

It’s easier to set it lower in the export, or for a single session, than it is to always remember to increase the quality when it is needed. Once a file is downgraded or compressed, you cannot upgrade or un-compress it, so give yourself the grace to start with high quality!

When you get to the final export screen, check, and double-check your settings because sometimes updates or prior sessions will leave the settings in a place you don’t intend, and that’s your chance to remedy the issue. Just like you do some form of key, wallet, phone check before you leave for an errand, you can do a quick but essential check on the export.

Pauses: The silence that makes music come to life

While there are occasions in dialogue or scene work, where the art of a “pregnant” pause can really make the scene come to life, the pause is created by the performance and the context of the scene and not the edit.

Likewise without appropriate pauses between thoughts, all humanness and clarity of the message are lost. We can think of pauses as the “art of the sweet spot.”? It is more art than science, which should make your inner artist happy, even as it has to masquerade as an audio engineer.

In commercial work, especially in voice over, where every second of the 6, 15, 30, or 60 seconds is expensive prime real estate, voice actors often find there isn’t room for all the copy, and so pauses are very rare. The pitfall to this type of work is that?

1) The actor fails to pause to breathe during the performance, and the message tends to sound both rushed and breathless.?

2) After booking enough of this type of work, it tends to spill over into the audition editing mind space, which can have comical and negative effects.

Here is an example of what it sounds like before and after all pauses get removed.

Even when approaching very fast copy or long copy that has an arbitrarily assigned short time limit, it is better to understand what can and can’t be done in the edit in regard to a pause’s timing, and how natural it will sound once edited.

Happiness Hack: Understanding audio editing on a deeper level can enhance your performance.

Bonus: Amplitude

While this falls more under the performance umbrella than the editing realm, one thing you can learn to do to help the end result (and the edit that is required to get there) is to pay attention to not only the size of your breath, but also how much amplitude you are using after the breath. We humans tend to naturally begin sentences and thoughts with a higher level of amplitude, because we are coming off a fresh breath (aka inspiration) and naturally start to dip down and trail off as we get to the end of the thought, then refill with air. One of the tell-tale signs that the pauses have been artificially manipulated in the edit is that the amplitude of thoughts start to take on a strange cadence:

If you can really learn solid breath control and rely less on amplitude variance as an acting choice, your time in editing pick-ups will be so much smoother!

How long should I pause?

In really real reality, the length of the pause is often based on how much air the actor feels they need during the session, and/or how long the producer needs for a transition in post. But for the character, the length of pause needs to be based on how big the thought is. So, the size of he thought dictates how big the breath (inspiration) will be. If you use a stopwatch and time your response gap time to the following questions, you’ll get the idea:

1. What is your name? (very short pause)

2. If you had to rename yourself now, what would it be? (might be a longer pause)

3. If we were wiped out by a rise of the machine type apocalypse and you could only save one person in addition to yourself, who would it be? (probably a much longer pause)

4. What is the meaning of life, in only 3 words? (LONG pause)

Again, if you think of this as the “art of the sweet spot,” instead of a question that has a precise-fraction-of-a-second mathematical solution, you’ll be in good shape.

If all of your thoughts/sentences are simple and follow the same topic, there might not be much pause at all (as long as the amplitude level stays fairly consistent), but as soon as you have to change gears and transition to a new topic, the pause will reflect that naturally.

Finally, when it comes to timing, pause length is one part of the equation, but speaking speed is the other.

If you need to increase the rate of speech, and have it still sound natural, the most direct approach is to increase the stakes and sense of urgency. Maybe the person you are speaking to in your scene, literally only has 60 seconds before they are due in their next meeting, so you need to tell them everything they need to know in that time. “Look, I know you’re pressed for time, so I’ll keep this brief” or “Hey, before you go!” can make wonderful lead-ins or subtext to play, rather than just “talking faster because the director said you had to.”

What do I do about Breath & Mouth Noise?

When we are looking at what to edit, it mostly comes down to taking out mistakes (aka “creative phrasing”), pauses/timing, and then taming breaths and mouth noise.?

Anytime a new voice actor asks “what do you do about breathing sounds?” I chuckle. What follows usually rivals the “is the dress blue or gold, is it ‘gif’ or ‘jif,’ or is it a vase or 2 faces” stubborn contention.?

I don’t really think life, in all of its complexity, has many fast and hard rules; so, I usually say, it depends on where and how the audio will be used. A general rule of thumb is to know whether the breath is part of the performance (as in the character is breathing in the scene) or whether it is the actor simply topping up oxygen.

From there, it really depends on what the client wants. When the clients want raw audio, like on Source Connect sessions, you get to pretty much leave them alone. But for most use cases, the breaths usually need to disappear in a way that doesn’t interrupt the flow of the audio. If you think about eLearning or audiobooks, or other types of content that the listener will be hearing on earbuds or on other devices that basically “put your voice inside their head,” you can see that having a sharp inhale rattling their skull in the middle of class or the story will be an unwanted distraction.?

Commercials also rarely include any actor-supportive breaths, and will only keep breaths that are part of the scene, like a heavy sigh, a sharp inhale reaction and the like.

So a good chunk of the time, editing breath (and mouth noise in general – those pops, clicks, smacks, whistles, and sinus thuds that give you away as a true human) will be part of the edit.

If your noise floor is low enough (somewhere near -70 to -80dB), silence can be an option. However, especially on earbuds, headphones, or phone or computer speakers, it can become distracting to cut in and out of the slight ‘buzz’ of -60 room tone and absolute silence.?

Turning down the amplitude is another popular option. You can even set up a shortcut (or hotkey) to normalize the breath down to a low level that basically matches your room tone and noise floor. You can copy and paste room tone over breaths and/or make the resulting pause shorter or longer as you go.

There are also DAWs where you can run your room tone in a second track under the vocal track, so that as you cut out the space with the breath in the top track, it fills in with the room tone track that sits underneath.

There are some VST plug-in effects that you can “train” to identify and remove breath sounds naturally and automatically that mimic one of the manual processes listed above… But, as we will discuss towards the end of the article, YOU are still responsible for the quality of your audio, and sometimes these automated processes will leave artifacts that sound strange or will confuse lighter sounds (like a soft voiced ‘shh’ or ‘ff’ sound) with breath sounds and will remove more than you bargained for.

So, if you go this route, I’d definitely recommend working with a pro to dial in settings that are as light as possible, keeping it as a separate effect from your main stack, so that you can undo any unwanted damage, and always double-checking the sound before uploading to the client. I have no desire to tell you, you unique being, with your own unique preferences and recording space challenges, what would be “best” for you to do. I long ago erased the words “should” and “best” from my vocabulary, but I will caution you away from deleting breaths.

When I first started, not knowing any better, only knowing that the delete key worked just the same in Cool Edits (the precursor to Adobe Audition) as it did in Microsoft Word, I deleted all my breaths because it was the easiest thing to do. It also was the fastest way to ruin what was otherwise a competent and serviceable audition. Oops.

Without the pause for breath and inspiration, the audio loses its light and life.

Other Pausing Problems

In addition to the pauses that happen in between thoughts, sentences, and paragraphs, there is (and this is especially important for auditions and telephone/OTT work) the beginning and end of the file to consider.

With some work, you may actually be given instruction that the end-user needs 30 seconds of room tone (natural silence of your booth) at the beginning or end of the file, or that the producer is going to mix in a fade out of music that needs to be a certain length.

However, for 90% of our work, we have to handle these pauses on our own. From years of reviewing files in coaching and mock audition workshops, I can share with you the 2 extreme issues that happen with these pauses:

1. You end up cutting it so close that playback actually cuts off your first syllable.

Begins “—en Goode, Two Takes.” Ends “...and I thought to myself, ‘damn my –”

2. You end up leaving so long a pause that the person listening thinks something is wrong (either with their player or with your file)

Begins “...............[Robert, did you press play? Why can’t I hear anything? Can we turn up the volume?] … Lauren Goode, Two Takes”?

Ends “...and I thought to myself, ‘damn my luck!’............[Robert, we can skip ahead, that’s the end of the scene.”

Casting directors, producers, and agents are all very busy people, and you want to be known as someone who is solving their problems, not adding to them by creating extra work or confusion. In “the art of the sweet spot,” we want to give just a beat of air before or after a slate and at the end. Let them be able to hear everything they need or want to hear, but don’t leave them wanting less!

Over & Under-Processing Audio

Finally, a topic that comes up for everyone repeatedly throughout their career, especially as you work diagnostically to take your game to the next level: how much or how little to process your audio. It really depends on how close the quality of your raw audio is to broadcast quality, and on where the audio will be going once it leaves your hands.

Like everything else in life, the clichés ‘everything in moderation’, ‘a little goes a long way’, and find the ‘middle way’ are all absolutely spot on when it comes to audio processing.

There are some die hard proponents (purists, if you will) of leaving the audio as it is, raw and unprocessed. I’ve pressed a few of these folks and found that this is really all they know because they work predominantly with clients who are using a studio or production house that likes to do their own editing and mastering. If that’s what your own career looks like, then this is the right strategy for you.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are people who basically add so many effects, and so much processing to their audio that they effectively squash the humanness out of it.

They saw a YouTube video or read an article about hard limiting and started slashing away at the dynamic range of the audio, thus making it perfectly uniform, overly hot, and missing some of the frequencies that make up the signature sounds of their voice.

The folks at either extreme of this spectrum are in for a very rude awakening the minute they join a platform or work for a client who has a Quality Control (QC) department or team that reviews the audio ahead of the director or client.

Noise floor issues, any amount of echo or weird frequency spikes (including boxiness and VST Plugins), the overall RMS level (how loud the sound is perceived), mouth noises, sibilance, and how finished it is, all of this will get kicked back to you for fixing.

I do process my audio, including auditions, in a way that polishes it. I have worked with professional engineers to get the settings dialed in, and I continue to tweak those settings as my environment and needs change. There are certain weaknesses to my room, an urban home studio, that are more cost-effective to fix in post, but also minor enough that I can still run Source Connect sessions and send in audio raw. For me, THAT’s the sweet spot. If the audio quality is close enough to broadcast quality that my studio partners are happy with it, then I’ve invested enough in my equipment and in treating my space. If it sounds polished enough for clients who don’t have access to a producer to do the final mix, to feel confident to drag and drop it into their video, then I have also done enough editing.

We’ve covered the specifics of what these kinds of processing are (and what “broadcast quality” means) in a PRIOR edition, but what you want to aim for (in whatever unique way you do it) is “the lightest touch possible.” Definitely hire someone to help with this side of things.?

Don’t talk to me about how “expensive” it is to do so.

Talk to me about the VALUE. That’s a mindset shift we all have to make when we run our own business. Trying to save costs in place of focusing on value is one way to implode.

I’ve found that having an effects rack set-up for my audio has the fringe benefit of really helping with matching sound and quality when it comes to re-writes or pick-ups that happen down the road.

The major benefit of having these processes set up to be automated is that it can save you time in editing. If Izotopes Mouth De-Click (on an appropriate and light setting) takes care of 98 clicks in my audition and I only need to clean up 4 or 5, then my audition will be ready for uploading much faster than if I was manually editing all 100+.

At a minimum, you need to make sure that when you are auditioning, your audio is normalized and ranging at a similar level to the other auditions. If the casting director is cruising along and suddenly hits a file that sounds like a whisper…or even worse…BLOWS THEIR HEAD OFF WITH OVER-COMPRESSION!!!!! That is not the impression you were after, I am guessing.

Some people argue that you HAVE TO NORMALIZE TO -1bB!!! Others to -0.1!!!! And others to -3dB!!!! But audio and a person’s speaking voice (and their dynamic range) are different and nuanced. One person may find that -3dB is the sweet spot as long as they run some light compression, others can skip compression altogether if they just normalize to -1dB. Instead of wasting precious and valuable energy wondering who is right and who is wrong on the “best way” to normalize audio, learn about it!

This brings me back to mistakes.

We all make them, and within the embarrassment and horror of how they feel, they hold a gift. What you learn from fixing a mistake will stay with you for the long term, whereas tidbits, tricks, and tips that you casually pick up will be in and out of your head faster than you can blink. (And that post-it note you jotted it down on will disappear into the ether before you find you need it again!)

In Conclusion: Embrace the Art of the Sweet Spot

When you are in the edit, you are like a sculptor or painter who is deciding where to focus the listener’s attention. The story (and your voice contributing to its telling) is always the star. So, we are simply looking to elevate those elements and minimize anything that gets in the way.

The cool part about editing is that this is your one chance to see it all (and more importantly hear it all) l come together. You may not get feedback or get to see the final product, but you can listen, learn, and mark your progress as it comes. That’s certainly worth the price of admission! There are extremes: no pause to extended-weirdly-long ones; completely raw to over-processed audio; and being too cheap to understand value to overspending on too much too quickly. It’s our job to find the sweet spot in the middle. Everything we do, we do with a purpose, and we each find our own unique way to fulfill that purpose. Some of these methods will serve us well, and we’ll continue using them, some will trip us up and we will learn better ways.

In the end, it really isn’t about how ‘good’ you are, it’s about how willing and committed you are to keep learning and growing. Talent is overrated.

I encourage you to get curious, get in there and get your hands wet (but not literally, as that will ruin your keyboard), and start making choices!

Thanks for reading! Please let me know if you have questions, and/or if you have a topic you'd like to hear about. I really do love helping actors and business professionals understand our whackadoodle industry as best as can be done! ?

~Lauren Goode

www.goodevoice.com

Lauren Goode is a freelance actor and voice talent, based in Chicago, who provides voice-over work for broadcast and digital media. Lauren's voice has been featured on television, radio, online streaming commercials, video games, park tours, cartoons—including the Cartoon Network— and has narrated numerous online video tutorials, phone systems, and eLearning modules. She is a collaborative artist who enjoys working with clients to find the right angle to tell and sell the story.

While she can claim HP, Walmart, Re/Max, Salesforce, Cigna, United HealthCare, Genpact, Calvin Klein, Microsoft, Animal Planet, Full Metal Alchemist, and Assassin's Creed as a few of her "big name" social credentials, she just really loves meeting people where they are and helping them get to wherever they want to go.

She describes her very fun and weirdly-awesome life as part acting, part fitness adventuring, part goofy-yet-empowering mentorship, and pure performance. #LiveOnPurpose #VOorBust