Blackmagicdesign Blackmagic Video Assist Series, Installation And Operation Manual

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Using the Equalizer to Enhance your Audio
After adjusting the audio levels of your audio clips in your project, you may find that the audio
needs further finessing. In some cases you may find that the dialogue, music and sound effects
are competing for the same frequency on the audio spectrum, making your audio too busy and
unclear. This is where using EQ can help, as it allows you to specify the parts of the audio
spectrum that each track occupies. You can also use an equalizer to help remove unwanted
elements from your audio by isolating and reducing the level on particular frequencies that
contain low rumbles, hums, wind noise and hiss, or simply to improve the overall quality of your
sound so it is more pleasing to listen to.
DaVinci Resolve provides EQ filters that can be applied at a clip level to each individual clip or
at the track level to affect entire tracks. Each audio clip in the timeline has a four band equalizer
in the inspector panel, and each track has a 6 band parametric equalizer in the mixer panel.
The graphical and numeric controls for boosting or attenuating different ranges of frequencies,
and different filter types allow you to define the shape of the EQ curve.
The four band equalizer can be
applied to every clip in the timeline
Outer bands let you make band filter adjustments using hi-shelf, lo-shelf, hi-pass and lo-pass
filters. A pass filter affects all the frequencies above or below a particular frequency, by
removing those frequencies completely from the signal. For example, a high pass filter will
allow the high frequencies to pass through the filter while cutting the low frequencies.
Any frequencies outside the cutoff frequency are cut gradually in a downward sloping curve.
A shelf filter is less aggressive, and is useful when you want to shape the overall top end or low
end of the signal without completely removing those frequencies. The shelf filter boosts or cuts
the target frequency and every frequency either above or below it evenly, depending on
whether you use a high shelf or low shelf.
The middle sets of band controls let you make a wide variety of equalization adjustments, and
can be switched between lo-shelf, bell, notch, and hi-shelf filtering options.
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Bell: Bell filters boost or cut frequencies around a given center point of the bell curve,
and as the name suggests the shape of the curve is like a bell.
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Notch: Notch filters allow you to specifically target a very narrow range of frequencies.
For example, removing a mains hum at 50 or 60Hz.
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Lo-Shelf: Low shelf filters boost or cut the target frequency at the low end, and every
frequency below it
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Hi-Shelf: High shelf filters boost or cut the target frequency at the high end, and every
frequency above it
71 Using DaVinci Resolve