Dialogue Contour

ADV

Overview

Dialogue Contour allows for the manipulation of the pitch envelope of a dialogue selection. Dialogue Contour features pitch correction processing that is tailored to speech. It is useful for adjusting the inflection of words that may not flow or fit with the rest of the dialogue in the clip.

Displays

Dialogue Contour features a waveform panel and a spectrogram panel that each display information about the current selection in the active file tab. These panels will dynamically update when the selection is changed. If no selection is made in the active file tab, no information will be displayed in the spectrogram or waveform panels.

Waveform Display

The single waveform drawn in this panel represents a sum of all enabled channels in the current selection. The waveform drawing is normalized to allow for consistent vertical resolution when working with selections of varying amplitude.

Spectrogram Display

The spectrogram drawn in this panel represents a sum of all enabled channels in the current selection.

Playhead Indicators

The solid white vertical line and dotted yellow vertical line overlaid on the waveform and spectrogram panels indicate the current playhead position (white) and the playhead anchor position (yellow).

Current Playhead Position

The solid white vertical line overlaid on the waveform and spectrogram panels indicates the current playhead position. This indicator line updates to follow the current playhead position during playback. The playhead position indicator will only appear in the module window when it is within the bounds of the current selection.

Playhead Anchor

The dotted yellow vertical line overlaid on the waveform and spectrogram panels indicates the playhead anchor position in the main editor window. If the playhead anchor position is outside of the current selection bounds, the indicator will not be displayed in the module window.

Contour Curve Display

The blue line overlaid on the spectrogram panel represents the pitch contour curve. Nodes can be added to this curve and adjusted to make changes to pitch over the course of the active selection.

Contour Curve Axes

The contour curve allows for adjustments along two axes: Pitch and Time.

• PITCH: The vertical y-axis of the contour curve represents pitch in semitones.
  • The Pitch axis ranges from -6 (bottom) to +6 (top) semitones.
  • The center of the Pitch axis equates to 0 semitones.
• TIME: The horizontal x-axis represents time.
  • The time format used here is determined by the time format display selection in the transport section of the main editor window.
  • The range of the time ruler matches the length of the current selection.

Contour Curve Readout

When the cursor is positioned over the spectrogram panel, a text readout will appear in the upper left hand corner of the panel. This readout displays information about the processing that will be applied when the contour curve is rendered.

The readout displays the following information about the cursor position, from left to right:

1. TIME: Current time position of the cursor within the spectrogram panel.
2. PITCH SHIFT (%): Percentage of pitch shift that will be applied at the cursor’s current time position.
3. PITCH SHIFT (Semitones): Amount of pitch shift that will be applied at the cursor’s current time position.

Contour Curve Editing

The following section describes the methods and controls available for editing the contour curve.

Add Nodes

Click in the spectrogram panel to add a new node to the contour curve.

Semitone Adjustments

Click and drag a node up or down to adjust its semitone value.

Time Adjustments

Click and drag a node left or right to move it earlier or later in time.

Remove Nodes

Individual nodes can be deleted from the curve using the following methods:

• Click and drag a node past the top or bottom edge of the contour curve display to quickly remove it from the curve.
• Control-click (Mac) or ctrl-click (Windows) on a node to remove it from the curve.

Reset Individual Nodes

Double-click on a node to reset it to default (0 semitones).

Reset Curve

Removes all custom nodes from the curve, resetting it to default. Two nodes are present in the default curve, one at the start and one at the end of the current selection. The default nodes are set to 0 semitones (no pitch adjustment).

Smoothing

Adjusts the amount of smoothing applied between nodes on the contour curve. Smoothing is a global control and is applied to all nodes on the curve.

• Lower smoothing values: Applies little to no smoothing between nodes on the curve. Allows for stricter transitions between nodes.
  

  

• Higher smoothing values: Applies more smoothing between nodes on the curve, resulting in a gradual, rounded slope between points on the curve. Allows for more gradual transitions between nodes.
  

  

Controls

The following section describes the controls available for refining formant scaling and applying a global pitch offset to the entire selection.

Formant Scaling

Adjusts the amount of formant shift applied when adjusting pitch, the formant shift is scaled relative to the pitch shift. This control can be helpful for maintaining or correcting the timbre and quality of the dialogue after processing. In some situations, the formants may sound unnaturally high or low after processing. Formant scaling can be used to correct for these unnatural sounding results.

Pitch Offset

Applies a global semitone offset value to the current selection. This value is added to or subtracted from the processing applied by the contour curve. Adjusting the Pitch Offset amount will not update the contour curve display.

Alternative Modules

For more generalized, non-dialogue specific pitch envelope editing, try using the Variable Pitch module. The Variable Pitch module features the ability to shift pitch over the course of a selection with or without preserving timing and is suitable for use on a wide range of input material.