Workflow suggestions for moving between DP and STP

[sprout]

I'm currently working on audio post for an hour-long documentary, and it's the first time I'm doing the whole thing from soup to nuts, including dialogue, music, effects, and final stereo mix.

My system is modest and I don't have tons of plug-ins, but I do have Final Cut Studio 2 since I also do a variety of video work. Based on some research I've done here and elsewhere I'm thinking that STP might be a good option for noise reduction, click & pop removal etc. on the dialogue.

I've almost completed my first pass on the dialogue in DP, and wonder if anyone here has workflow suggestions, sage advice, or tips on how best to move from DP to STP and back for this type of thing (or reasons it's a bad idea!). I'm planning on doing my final mix in DP since I dig DP's mix features and it's where I'm most comfortable.

Right now I have about 14 tracks of dialogue, split based on the unique issues of each recording location/character.

Any thoughts welcome...

[barreltone]

I'm sure you know, but you can make STP your external editor, and even set up a keyboard shortcut to make the selected soundbite open in STP for editing. Once you're done with processing the soundbite and save the file, you will see the waveform re-draw in the sequence editor.

I've worked with STP as my editor before, and it can work but it has some quirks:

1. When you save a file already opened with STP, the save dialog box will always show up, with STP's default save file type as its own project file (.stap). So if you have hundreds of soundbites to tweak, it becomes pretty annoying to have to do that process every time instead of just cmd-s.

2. It works in kind of a layered way, so you can switch around the order in which processing occurred, and it will re-process. This only works if you save a project file or before you save the file as a wav or aif, though, as it has to "flatten" or make the processing permanent to save the file as those types. So it seems like a nice feature, but really it has the same permanence, since you can't load an STP project file into DP.

I like the way STP finds clicks/pops, but once I tried Izotope RX for restoration, I bought it and left STP behind. The noise reduction and hum removal sound much better to my ears, and it's a pretty good balance between quality and affordability. So I say, get RX if you can, but if you can't, the tools in STP are usable.

Hope this helps!

Matt

[sprout]

Thanks for the tips, Matt, that's really helpful. I started digging around and doing a little STP RTFM last night after reading your post, and hadn't realized that STP had "audio file" projects as well as multitrack projects.

I'll do some experimenting and may be back with some more questions.

Also thanks for the recommendation on izotope RX. It's definitely on my radar for future upgrades, but I'm trying to work with what I've got on this project since it's very low budget.