iZotope’s RX audio repair and enhancement toolkit can generate savings for TV and film editors in excess of 30% per episode, according to Max Hoskins, an industry-leading dialogue editor.
Hoskins supervised all of the dialogue and ADR (automated dialogue replacement) on the international blockbuster TV series, Da Vinci’s Demons. A master of TV and film audio post production, Hoskins’ past credits include the BBC’s The C Word, St. Trinian’s, and The Beach, amongst others.
“With an incredibly demanding schedule where I had just two weeks per episode to complete all dialogue editing and ADR recording, RX saved the day,” explained Hoskins. “ADR is a very costly and time-consuming process, but RX saves so much of that time and cost. You can go directly into the audio tracks and repair most problems immediately without re-recording dialogue.”
He believes that iZotope’s RX 4 platform sets a new standard in audio repair technology for both film and broadcast TV workflows. “I’ve edited and supervised many major film and TV productions for over 30 years and really have never encountered anything like the revolution that RX has brought along.”
RX’s processing power combined with its intuitive interface make the post process more efficient, enabling the editor to focus on creative aspects of the editing process. “Editors are brilliant at editing but they are not software engineers. As an editor, I really appreciate the simplicity of RX. You don’t need to study an instruction manual, you just start using it. It is that intuitive.”
Hoskins is one of the first European editors to adopt RX 4, the latest version of an Emmy Award-winning audio repair toolkit developed by Massachusetts-based iZotope to address the specific needs of TV and film editors. “Clicks and footsteps in the middle of dialogue is a sad fact of the job, but I find that in 90% of the cases I work on, RX will camouflage and take away these dialogue imperfections with complete efficiency,” he added.
He sees a number of fresh features and facilities in RX 4, which will enable audio editors, especially in film and TV environments, to take on even more complex audio repair scenarios like ambience matching, EQ matching, and levelling their audio. “In ADR, you always need some kind of ambience. Whoever developed RX 4’s Ambience Match feature deserves a gold medal,” Hoskins states. RX 4’s Ambience Match allows an editor to match the ambience of one clip of audio to another, as well as create ambience beneath different clips of audio, eliminating the time-consuming need to create loops by hand.
RX can correct many weaknesses of digital production
Hoskins believes that the evolution of digital production techniques has been hugely beneficial in terms of moving image quality, but not so much with regard to the quality of audio. Boom mics in many cases are being replaced by inferior kit mics on set, which causes problems later on in post production.
“RX is fantastic in the way that it irons out all of the mic problems, clicks, and pops which we have come to associate with digital production,” he explains. “I believe that audio has suffered as technology moved on, but now RX can alleviate most of these issues. Its Denoiser module can be incredibly effective. You almost don’t have time to think about it,” he said. RX 4 includes many other audio repair and enhancement tools handy for fixing poorly recorded audio as well as enhancing it, including Declip, Decrackle, Dereverb, Hum Removal, Spectral Repair, and more.
“RX can save thousands of pounds in production cost and huge amounts of time. Not having to re-record dialogue is a luxury. Instead we have a simple workflow in place; you identify a problem, call up RX on your workstation, and fix it. It really is that simple.”
To learn more about iZotope’s RX 4, visit www.izotope.com/rx.
