What are separated M&Es?
• There are primarily 3 divisions of sound – dialogue (commentary), effects (such as background noises), and music – that are combined to create a final sound mix, which is then added to moving images to create a final, broadcast quality piece of video. • Sounds are assembled together onto tracks. A track will generally contain only one “type” or group of sound – so a track that contains dialogue should only contain dialogue, a track that contains music should only contain music. • Separated M&Es (music and effects) refers to the way in which sound can be saved as separated tracks prior to creating a final sound mix. • Ideally during the video production process, sound will have been saved in its separate tracks in order to enable, as required, the easy translation and/or customisation of the dialogue track, which can then be combined with the original music and effects tracks to create a new final sound mix to accompany the moving images. • However, often only the final sound mix will