A.Z. EDITING ZONE

SOUND EDITING

A sound editor is a creative professional responsible for selecting and assembling sound recordings in preparation for the final sound mixing or mastering of a

television program
motion picture
video game
or any production involving recorded or synthetic sound.

Sound editing developed out of the need to fix the incomplete, undramatic, or technically inferior sound recordings of early talkies, and over the decades has become a respected filmmaking craft, with sound editors implementing the aesthetic goals of motion picture sound design.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recognizes the artistic contribution of exceptional sound editing with the Academy Award for Best Sound Editing.

There are primarily three divisions of sound that are combined to create a final mix, these being

dialogue
effects
music

- Editing effects is likened to creating the sonic world from scratch

- Dialogue editing is likened to taking the existing sonic world and fixing it.

Dialogue editing is more accurately thought of as "production sound editing"
The editor takes the original sound recorded on the set, and using a variety of techniques, makes the dialogue more understandable, as well as smoother, so the listener doesn't hear the transitions from shot to shot (often the background sounds underneath the words change dramatically from take to take).

EQUIPMENT

digital audio workstation, or DAW

A DAW allows sounds, stored as computer files on a host computer, to be placed in timed synchronization with a motion picture, mixed, manipulated, and documented.

The standard DAW system in use by the American film industry, as of 2012, is Avid's Pro Tools, with the majority running on Macs.

Another system in use presently is Yamaha owned Steinberg's cross platform DAW Nuendo running on Macs using operating system Mac OS X but also on Windows XP.