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
Listed below are 0 links to blogs that reference this entry: Clipping, and Limiting Audio 1 (Back to the Basics series).
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.geniusdv.com/weblog/mt-tb.cgi/891
