Clipping, and Limiting Audio 1 (Back to the Basics series)
Ever seen your audio meters go into the red? Marked those unsightly peaks in your audio? Heard the raging distortion that happens when somebody shouts into a mic?
Remember that the computer uses a limited number of values to describe
how intense each sample is. We'll call this the threshold of the
computer's sensitivity - anything above (or below) the computer's range
of values is just going to have to get rounded off to the threshold.
This is called clipping. In old-fashioned analog audio, the threshold isn't quite so strict: a little clipping can sound OK, and a lot of clipping can make a cool sound. But in digital audio, clipping sounds horrible, and is bad for your speakers too. And there's not much that irritates a client more than blowing out their speakers.
Luckily, the Final Cut suite (along with most other modern software) is pretty good at mitigating the distortion caused by unintentional clipping - but you have to ask nicely.
Next time - Avoiding clipping while you're shooting
This is called clipping. In old-fashioned analog audio, the threshold isn't quite so strict: a little clipping can sound OK, and a lot of clipping can make a cool sound. But in digital audio, clipping sounds horrible, and is bad for your speakers too. And there's not much that irritates a client more than blowing out their speakers.
Luckily, the Final Cut suite (along with most other modern software) is pretty good at mitigating the distortion caused by unintentional clipping - but you have to ask nicely.
Next time - Avoiding clipping while you're shooting
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