Animation submission sound

[Cool 461 Person]

The animation submission rules on Autodesk Firstbase say:

"Audio (stereo, mono, none) peak not to exceed -6db or fall under -18db"

I'm using Adobe Premiere to compile the animation and audio; how do you determine whether the audio fits within these limits?

[BuddyB309]

I don't know what db stands for but I know what it means. Its your audio levels

Look on the side in adobe premiere next to your time line. There should be a little green/yellow bar that rises up and down with your audio.

Never Never! Let that smack into the red boxes above. This is called audio clipping, and you can blow the speakers in the stage. As well as your eardrums. What I do is I try to get the bar as close as I can to the red box, but never have them touch it. I do this only if I wan't something loud in my animations like an explosion. But normally your bar should hang around the -6 mark. This is normal audio level. Not to loud and not to quiet. Lower than -30 you wont be able to here it at all.

How do you change these levels? This is done with the audio mixer in adobe premiere. It works just like a sound board. Set all your audio on separate tracks. Like I have here for Appliance Night Out. Then I label each track and set the mode of the track from Read to Write, or Touch. Then I play the movie while moving the slider of the sound board up and down. This raises and lowers the audio level. I can edit the sound as I watch the video in real time.

As you can see there are many layers to audio. Maker sure to keep in mind that when you stack audio ontop of each other, the program will simply add both audio level together. This is important to not because of this, you really can only have one sound be heard by your audience at a time. This will be your dominant sound. Now it can change very quickly. For instance, I have the music blasting in then I quickly drop the levels of the music because I want the audience to hear the roar of the Mazda the Washer and Dryer are riding in. Then I quickly drop the roar of the engine to make way for the washer screaming "Whoo Hoo!!" however the roar of the engine and the music are still heard throughout the clip because they are very sublet in the background when I drop the levels.


Audio is important. Audio can make or break your animation. I've seen really bad animations, but they had amazing audio and my attention was hooked. I've also seen some really amazing animations, but the audio was so horribly bad I couldn't stand to watch it.

[lilwupster]

If you try audacity for your audio, that has a volume slider that will give you output in decibels.

[fireball3004]

dB stands for dcibel, it's a unit of intensity/amplitude. It's often used in audio and electronics. To find out more, check out wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decibel

[BuddyB309]

Originally Posted by fireball3004

dB stands for dcibel, it's a unit of intensity/amplitude. It's often used in audio and electronics. To find out more, check out wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decibel

Bah! I'll stick to my logic. db stands for "dancing baboons" the more dancing baboons you have the louder the sound.