I just realized that I've been remiss in not linking to the excellent Video Workshop that we have posted online at the Adobe Design Center. The Video Workshop is a one-stop shop for all of the videos we have on all the CS3 applications (19 applications in all!) Soundbooth has its own section with a some great introductory how-to videos.
I'm clearly lacking in timeliness, but Bruce Williams' podcast series Building the Pod has hit a milestone with its 100th podcast. (Congrats Bruce...and now I see you've already moved on to episode 101). Anyway, what's exciting is this is Bruce's first venture into video podcasts, and he's set up a great episode where he takes a promo and remixes it, explaining what he's doing at every step. If you've ever wanted to just watch someone work to learn their tricks of the trade, this is a great place to watch.
The Adobe Design Center (a place for tutorials and articles on using all the Adobe applications) has just posted a tutorial by Bruce Williams on using 3rd party effects plug-ins in Audition. You might remember that Bruce is the Lynda.com instructor for Audition, and this movie is an extract from that longer Lynda.com training series. This is a great place to start if you're looking for how to use 3rd party effects in Audition or you're interested in the general tone of the Audition material on Lynda.com.
Graeme Hague over at Digital Producer has posted a 1-page summary on using the Noise Reduction filter in Audition 2. Graeme talks both about how to record less noise to begin with as well as how to tackle hiss and hum after it makes its way into your recording.
We've expanded the number of online seminars in the video area in response to strong demand, so we have a bunch of events coming up in the near future. The registration site is the same as before, but now includes web seminars on:
Introduction to Production Premium CS3 Thursday, June 7th, 2007 11:00 A.M. PDT Thursday, August 2nd, 2007 11:00 A.M. PDTDelivering Flash Video - Introduction to Flash Media Server
Thursday, June 14th, 2007 11:00 A.M. PDT
Thursday, August 9th, 2007 11:00 A.M. PDTPhotoshop CS3 Extended Video features
Thursday, June 21st, 2007 11:00 A.M. PDTNew Features in CS3 – Adobe Media Encoder with Device Central
Thursday, June 28th, 2007 11:00 A.M. PDTIntroduction to Premiere Pro for the Mac user
Thursday, July 12th, 2007 11:00 A.M. PDT
Thursday, August 30th, 2007 11:00 A.M. PDTFlash for Video Professionals Part 1 – Introduction/Overview
Thursday, July 19th, 2007 11:00 A.M. PDTAdobe Media Player
Thursday, August 16th, 2007 11:00 A.M. PDTNew Features in After Effects CS3
Thursday, August 23rd, 2007 11:00 A.M. PDT
I wrote up the last post and totally forgot we're also out on tour with our friends over at Matrox. The schedule of the remaining stops is:
Information and registration can be found on the Matrox site.
We have several events coming up that you may be interested in. First, there's the CS3 Creative License Conference, a 2-day event for all types of creatives to see what's new, talk to each other about design and production, and talk to Adobe directly. The full 2-day conference will be held in Los Angeles June 19-20 and New York June 25-26. Conference details are here and you can register here.
In addition to the 2-day conference, we're holding a series of 1-day events in the following cities:
All attendees at both the 1 and 2-day events will also receive a Lynda.com training package and some Photoshop plug-ins.
If you can't make any of the events, or you want to delve into some specific topics, we also have some upcoming eSeminars online. Video professionals can register here for these sessions:
Flash Authoring for Video Pros Tuesday, May 8, 2007 -- 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM US/PacificAudio Production for Video Pros with New Adobe Soundbooth
Thursday, May 10, 2007 -- 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM US/PacificNew Productivity for Mac Users with the New Production Premium
Thursday, May 17, 2007 -- 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM US/PacificIntroduction to CS3 Production Premium
Thursday, May 24, 2007 -- 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM US/Pacific24p Workflows with Adobe Production Premium
Thursday, May 31, 2007 -- 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM US/Pacific
Note the Soundbooth session on May 10th!
We also have an eSeminar series for web pros coming up so there's something for everyone:
Hoops&YoYo Creator – Timothy Stout – Case Study › Tuesday, May 8, 2007 -- 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM US/PacificWhat's New in Creative Suite 3 Web Premium ›
Tuesday, May 15, 2007 -- 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM US/PacificWhat’s New in Flash CS3 Professional ›
Tuesday, May 22, 2007 -- 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM US/PacificCharacter Animation with Flash CS3 Professional
Tuesday, May 29, 2007 -- 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM US/Pacific
Over at EventDV.net, Louisa Winters has posted a great walkthrough tutorial showing how to create some music for your projects using the loops and looping features in Audition 2.0. If you're a videographer who is looking for a quick leg-up on using that part of Audition, it's a great read.
Also, looking at what Louisa had written led me to this how-to on Audition's noise reduction capabilities.
Blair Trosper, an Audition user and radio pro (his day job is as an Imaging Director) has started a new podcast covering Audition. In his first episode he interviews me about the history of Audition back to the Cool Edit days, so if that sounds interesting you should check it out. He promises video tutorials to come--I'm looking forward to seeing what he comes up with!
The demo team is putting on an Adobe Production Studio seminar in Montreal on Feb 22nd. If you're in the area, this is a great opportunity to see the whole thing used by some experts to see what it can do. Register here if you're interested--seating is limited.
I saw this article on Digital Pro Sound a few weeks ago and I've been meaning to blog about it ever since. Harlan Hogan describes how to create a "porta-booth" to help reduce some of the "boomy-ness" that's typical of recording in random offices and hotel rooms. The basic idea is to create a little box with foam that you can place your microphone in that reduces the echoes it picks up.
Harlan goes on and recommends some specific materials that allow for a "on the go" box that's collapsable and reports good results. Has anyone tried this technique? It certainly seems like it could be a good middle ground for quick voice tracks when a better studio isn't possible. I might have to build one myself that I can keep in my office!
Adobe has a series of free online seminars coming up later in January and February. The topics are:
A colleague here at Adobe let me know about a podcast some of you might be interested in over at HanselMinutes.com. Normally HanselMinutes is weekly podcast devoted to technology and development (read: programming code), but this week they did a special episode titled Pro Audio Basics. Its really focused on how they make a great sounding podcast, but goes through a lot of the things they do to get a good sound, from making sure the room is quiet, to using balanced cables to keep noise out, to using editing software to edit and prep the final delivery. It sounds like a great summary for folks looking for some tips on making their podcasts or other at-home recordings sound better.
I just received a tip about a free Audition plug-in that adds AAC import and export support! I haven't tried it myself, but the tipster let me know that it seemed to work well for him. It's up on rarewares.org. Just scroll down to the AAC Encoders section.
As always, let us know about cool uses, plugins, or anything else interesting about Audition at coolaud(At)adobe(dot)com.
In a comment on an older post, a reader mentioned that he couldn’t find the Total Training tutorials online after purchasing the download version of Audition. After some research, it turned out that they had been moved when the Adobe Design Studio web site was reorganized a while back but the links were not updated to go directly to them. That meant they were effectively buried among all the other tutorials.
Anyway, if you have the downloaded version of Audition and have been looking for the Total Training videos you can find them at the Design Center right here.
My esteemed colleague Bob Donlon has posted an outstanding tutorial on video compression over at the Adobe Design Center. If you ever feel baffled by the array of options open to you when doing video compression (I know I do) or just want an overview of the whole compression process, this is a great post to read.
I just saw that Craig Anderton over at EQ Magazine has put together a nice tutorial on creating sweeps and other test tones using Audition. It's perfect for all you gearheads out there wanting some tones to run your hardware through it's paces.
Our own Dennis Radeke hooked up with Frank Moldstad over at digital media net to give Frank a few more tips and tricks for using Frequency Space Editing in Audition 2. (Frank wrote the article I linked to a couple weeks ago where he removed some noise from an acoustic guitar recording). This new tutorial covers using Amplify, Repair Transient, and the Noise Reduction filter in concert with the lasso tool for various restoration needs.
The new tutorial can be found here.
Frank Moldstad has another tutorial up on Digital Media Net, this time covering how he used the Frequency Space Editing tools in 2.0 to remove some squeaks and fret noise from a guitar recording. It’s another nice how-to with a good number of screen shots, so if you’re interested in some tips on how to tackle removing this sort of thing from your recordings you should check it out. It’s posted right here.
This weekend I was flipping through the latest TapeOp on the plane home from AES (which I totally forgot to mention I was attending) and I saw an interesting item in the Gear Reviews section towards the back. Roger McGuinn, former frontman for The Byrds and long-time Audition and Cool Edit user, has a new DVD out called “Guide to Home Recording on a Computer.” Since Roger is an Audition user the whole thing uses Audition as his example platform, although I gather the discussion is on fundamentals so the software itself takes a back seat. For $19.95 it’s pretty inexpensive for training done by a rock legend in any case. There’s more information at www.homespuntapes.com.
Broadcast Newsroom, the broadcast news portal portion of Digital Media Net, has published a short walkthrough on automation lanes in Audition 2.0. The author Frank Moldstad walks through what’s new, how to set up your lanes, and the kinds of parameters you can use.
One of the smaller but very handy features we added in Audition 2 was the ability to mix down your multitrack sessions and send them directly to the CD view for burning. That means you can do things like space out your CD tracks exactly as you'll want them to be heard, complete with crossfades and spacing, using all the tools the multitrack view puts at your disposal. Click through for the how-to.
Here’s a free treat that I was tipped off to: Lynda.com has a trial that you can use to get 24 hours of access to the training on the site. Just go here and fill out all the information to get your free 24-hour trial and see if you think the training is worth subscribing to after you've gotten a taste. Lynda.com recently added several hours of training on Audition 2 and has training on dozens of other applications.
For those of you who aren’t yet running Audition 2 in your studios, informit.com has posted a sample chapter from the Audition 1.5 Visual Quickstart Guide from Peachpit Press. The chapter is titled Recording Sound with Adobe Audition, and covers setting up your hardware devices, recording, and how to extract audio from CD.
My little analytics applet indicates that at least a few of you are visiting from Japan so I thought I'd mention that I just got a copy of a DVD that's the first 3rd party training DVD I know of produced in Japan. It looks like it's in affiliation with Sound Designer magazine, but it's also listed as only 55 minutes, which may be too short to get into depth. Still, it could be a great overview--I'd be curious to hear anyone's opinions if you've seen it. The back lists an email address of info@musicmaster.jp for those who are interested
Here's a picture of the case so you can learn more if you'd like:
Click here for a zoomed in shot of the information on the back of the case.
A press release just crossed my desk today (dated August 10th so I guess I'm a few days out of the loop) announcing that computer training site Lynda.com has added 6 hours of training on Audition 2. The training is hosted by Bruce Williams, who I've blogged about before--he's the creator of the Build the Pod series of podcasts on Audition.
For those of you who aren't familiar, Lynda.com structures paying for training a bit differently than most people are used to. Instead of buying individual training series, you can pay per-month or per-year for access to all the training they provide, and then access your subscription online. It's a really appealing method for a lot of folks, especially if they have training on more than one application you want to learn. If you want to sample first, several of the Audition movies are available free of charge.
Between August 8th and August 16th Adobe will be doing a short 4-city Production Studio seminar tour. We’ll be hitting:
Each day has a morning and afternoon session that have the same content so you can choose what works best for your schedule. More information is available here, or if you know you want to register you can sign up here. All attendees will receive a coupon worth $200 off the Production Studio or $100 off the upgrade, and while the seminars are free they do tend to fill up, so it’s best to sign up early if you’re interested.
The timing is coincidental to my previous post, but the Adobe Design Center has posted 3 chapters from the Audition 2 Classroom in a Book. They include the first two chapters (the Quick Tour and Audition Basics) and one of the latter chapters (Premiere Pro integration). The Design Center also posted the sample files that go along with the chapters so you can work through the lessons on your own.
I've got an extra copy of the Adobe Audition 2 Classroom in a Book and I thought it'd be cool to just give it to one of you fine readers out there. To keep this simple (and fair) just add a comment to this post with a short note about why you'd like the CIB and make sure that your email address is correct in your post. I'll pick one commenter at random at the end of this week (let's say, Friday at noon my time) and if you're picked I'll email you for your address. Note that I'll pay the postage to mail it, but if you're outside the US you'll be responsible for your own local taxes, etc, etc, if any apply.
EDIT: OK, thanks for the comments. I'll "draw" a name at random using Excel's handy random number generator, and the lucky person will get an email from me tonight!
Frank Moldstad over at Digital Media Net has just posted a quick walkthrough of docking windows in Audition 2 for anyone who's curious about how the new panels work.
Jacob Rosenberg, the author of the Premiere Pro 2.0 Studio Techniques, just let me know that if you go to Peachpit Press’ website and buy his book using the special code EE-TIPS-MAR1 you will get 35% off the cover price AND free shipping. It’s a limited time offer, and I don’t know how long it will last. It’d be great for any Premiere Pro users out there (or for someone who wants to become a Premiere Pro user).
A user tipped me off to a seminar that’s going to be put on in Minneapolis in July for radio editors. The morning session includes production tips in Audition and Pro Tools, and the afternoon session is about producing effective imaging. I don’t know anything about the folks that are putting the show on, but it sounds like a good opportunity if you’re in the area! There are more details here.
On of our engineers spotted the new Focal Easy Guide to Adobe Audition 2.0 in the wild. It's another that I haven't seen yet, but its emphasis on step-by-step guides seems like it would be very handy and Focal's previous books have been well received. I checked around and it seems like it's available at the usual suspects, plus Focal Press books generally end up in most bookstores that have a good technical section.
Some of you may have already noticed, but we've posted a PDF on the main Audition page about why Audition is great for podcasting. It's not a how-to, but it goes over some of the main reasons some top-tier podcasters like using Audition for what they do.
When I first mentioned podcasting I got a lot of questions about why I (and others) thought that Audition was great for the task. A while back I started to try to write out a post to summarize, but then I decided I should talk to some podcasters, and then some folks inside Adobe started asking questions, and one thing lead to another and I had this huge list I wanted to post that wasn't the clearest since it came from what was at that point a 4-page post. It’s in interesting sidenote, but I think I hit a variation of “information paralysis” where overwhelming data leads to NO action and I just sat on it for a while. Luckily, there’s a lot of talented people here who I could enlist the help of to help with the content and make it readable (since writing/layout aren't my strongest skills) and this condensed 2-page PDF is the result. I hope it's helpful.
Besides the comment spam this morning I also saw that informIT.com has a sample chapter of the Adobe Audition 2 Classroom in a Book posted on their site. It’s the next-best thing to finding the book on a shelf and scanning through it to see if it’s something that would be useful to you, and not everyone has that option.
Most Audition users already know about the Spectral Frequency Display and use it to analyze and repair recordings regularly. But here's a trick that most people didn't know about. Did you know that you can record while using the Spectral Display? Dan, one of our QA guys, was the first to point out to me how useful that can be, and since then I've talked to a bunch of people about how they this during live recordings to analyze their gear and spot problems in the recording early. In fact, at NAB I spoke to one of our customers who regularly uses two copies of Audition: one on a desktop to do the actual multitrack recording, and another on a laptop monitoring his master mixer output to the house. Not only does he monitor the master out during the show, but beforehand he solos each channel on his board and looks at the output in Spectral Display to see how everything is going to work out.
To do this yourself, just set up a recording as normal in the Edit View by creating a new file and then select View->Spectral Frequency Display to set your display. Next, go to Window->Spectral Controls so you can set your display settings. I like recording in the logarithmic display since it lets me see the low frequencies better. My laptop can handle 2048 bands and still maintain smooth scrolling, but you can select whichever works best on your system.
Then let it roll by hitting the record button. Here you can see what it looks like when I whistle a sweeping tone:
Not exactly Mozart, but it gets the point across. :)
While you're recording you can also run your Frequency and Phase Analysis windows for the total data load. You could use the Mastering and Analysis workspace and just change it to the Frequency Display as outlined above.
I was interviewed a couple weeks ago by the ever-sharp 2 Smart Chix on the ever-popular topic of podcasting and Audition. The mp3 of the podcast is posted on their blog.
Bob, one of my "partners in crime" for the Asia-Pacific Adobe video seminar tour, has posted a short how-to on using Audition for looping in Flash and video work. It's probably a bit basic for Audition experts, but it is a nice introduction on the basics of how looping works in Audition and would be a great reference for new users.
I came into my office after lunch today to find a copy of the brand-new Classroom in a Book for Audition 2.0 sitting on my chair. It's so hot off the presses I could swear I could feel the heat radiating from it when I picked it up.
For those of you who aren't familiar, the Classroom in a Book series is an Adobe-produced set of training materials that aims to provide a methodical teaching method for learning applications (as opposed to the manuals, which are much more specific how-to and reference oriented.) Chapters even end with review questions and answers for that "I'm back in school" feeling. If only school had always been this fun, huh?
I haven't read it yet, but the CRiaB for version 1.5 got great reviews from a bunch of customers and I know that our QA team scanned through this one during its review process so I think it'll be another great resource for anyone wanting to learn how to use Audition. A list of the chapter titles gives a good idea of what to expect:
It looks like there's a confirmed release date of April 19th, and you'll be able to pick it up directly from the Adobe Press or from your favorite book seller.
Frank Moldstad from Digital Media Net has written a article on how to use the new Spectral Display Controls in Audition 2. In short, they give full control over which colors are used to represent the audio in the Spectral Frequency Display which allows you to tweak the colors to bring out contrast and see individual sounds more accurately for editing with the marquee or lasso tools. But Frank goes into a bit more detail!
I just got a message that Digital Music Doctor has produced a 2 hour training video on Adobe Audition 2.0. I haven't seen this video (or any of the others that Digital Music Doctor has produced) but the subject list makes it look like it might be very interesting to folks looking to get up to speed on the new version. There's a short preview available on the website that gives you a peak at the production values and methodology in the video, and it looks like it's only $34.95 to order the whole thing.
If anyone has tried it out let us know what you think!
There are probably 1,000 shortcuts and speedy ways to do things in Audition that long-time users take for granted but that new users don’t know about. One thing that came up while I was on the Asia-Pacific seminar tour was all the ways that you can quickly zoom into different parts of your waveform or session in Audition. I did a quick right-click-drag on a ruler in the course of demoing Frequency Space Editing, and the person I was watching the demo stopped me to ask what had just happened. So, here’s some tips for quick navigation.
DigitalProSound.com has published a tutorial on using the Edit in Adobe Audition functionality in Premiere Pro. As the reviewer says, it practically takes longer to describe the function that to use it, but the basic idea is that you can select any audio clip in the Premiere Pro or After Effects Timeline, right click, and select Edit in Adobe Audition. The clip is automatically sent to Audition where any edits can be made, and when you save the file from Audition it's automatically updated in the Premiere Pro or After Effects timeline. The cool bit is that the audio clip doesn't need to exist as its own file--it works even if the audio is part of a video stream captured from tape, which means you can save about 6 steps in getting the file edited. It's perfect for using Audition to clean up production audio.
I'm hoping for some more interesting posts in the next couple days, but in the mean time here are a couple more quick tips for 2.0:
It seems that airplane rides are great times to compose blog posts. Now if only I could post from the air! Anyway, first thanks for all of the kind opening comments. I'll think about an expanded biography for me and how best to introduce some of the members of the team.
I wanted to comment a few things in the screenshots that seem to have raised some eyebrows some folks who haven't gotten their hands on the product yet:
Our own Adobe forums moderator for Audition, ozpeter, has done a great job of cataloguing and organizing some tips, tricks, and other guidance for folks looking for information about the new version. Check it out--they are in a series of posts in their own category on the user-to-user forums.