We have a bit of a running debate in the shop I work at.  My supervisor told me an fellow editor told her he could mix a 30-minute show for broadcast in 2 hours.  I say bogus.  At my fastest its at least a four-hour affair.  Then I got to thinking, is there something I'm missing that might speed up the process?  Here's my workflow...

The shows are 30 minute broadcast, so about 22 minutes of total content.  The mix is done by the editor in Media Composer - YES I know the advantages of going out of house to a ProTools suite but thats not the focus of this discussion, thats something you'll have to convince our company President of changing...

The shows are to be mastered to -10dB.  I've done about 400 of these shows over the years so maybe my methods are a bit out of date.

1. The VO is usually compressed already from the recording facility so I can set the entire VO track to one level and leave it.

2. All of the primary audio is on ch 1+2.  I immediately slap a +8dB Gain Compressor with a -30dB threshold with a ratio of 5:1 effect on all of the primary audio (SOTs).  Render.

3. Then I go through the entire show and watch the meters.  Anything jumping over -10dB I'll isolate it by adding edits (I know, old school, I could rubber-band it, but this old-timer remembers when that wouldn't move from one room to the other) and adjust the level accordingly.

Am I missing something here?  Is there an easier way to do this, some magic effect?  I seem to recall FCP has a Limiter that actually limits the peaks but doesnt touch all else below certain levels...

Weigh in with your similar experiences or advice. Thanks

BK

I think the fastest way would be to use outboard compressor/limiters (and meters), which you already have active during editing. Then you can edit/mix straight into the max, and see and hear the results.

You could setup a seperate partition on your drive and run ProTools on the same setup. You just need a simple PT install and Digitranslator. Nothing beats PT.

And if you have an outboard compressor with an external key (i.e. it is compressing music/fx based on VO/nats fed aux bus) then the ducking can be semi automatic... 

Mixing audio in the avid is a PITA because they don't have audio bussing or track based fx. Or a compressor with a (working) external key. IMHO