Inside Sound

We’ve added 5 new royalty-free Soundbooth Score bundles for CS4. Each bundle has 5 customizable scores in the following genres:

Ambient
Environments (2)
Jazz
Rock/Pop

Ambient and Environment Soundbooth Scores are new categories that were added in CS4. Ambient scores are for setting a mood for a particular type of scene in a video, for example. While ambient scores are musical in nature, they don’t have specific time signatures so they’re very flexible. This bundle includes the following scores: Scifi, Drama, Horror, Dreamland, Wonder and Awe.

Environment Soundbooth Scores are sounds from different indoor or outdoor settings that can be used by themselves or with any combination of other scores, sound effects, music, etc. We have two different environment bundles. The first contains scores found in outdoor environments including Ocean, Jungle, Storm, River and City Park. The second bundle contains mostly indoor environments including Night Club, Restaurant, Office, Airport and Stadium. Like all Soundbooth Scores, each has different parameters you can use to customize them for your particular needs. For example, the Storm has options for controlling the amount of thunder and rain so you can create a range of sound from light rain to a strong thunderstorm.

You can preview all of them on Resource Central. From Soundbooth go to Window>Resource Central and then click on “Score Bundles.” Then click on the down arrow to view a description of each and press the “play” button to hear a preview. You can purchase each of the bundles for $49 (US) and download them to your PC or Mac. Then all you have to do is load them into your Soundbooth Scores folder and then you’re ready to start adding them to your multitrack projects. And did I mention they’re royalty-free, so you can use them as often as you like.

Enjoy!
-Lawson

Posted by Lawson Hancock at 3:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I’ve been on the road a bit of late and have fallen behind on my blog posts. I have a list of topic ideas on my office whiteboard as a reminder. So now that I’m off the road for a few weeks look for a bit more activity.

Last month I was at NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) in Las Vegas where I had a chance to talk to many long time Audition customers and partners. Jason Levine packed in the crowds at the Adobe theatre every afternoon showing off the latest capabilities in Audition 3.0.1. I also spoke to a lot of video pros about Soundbooth CS4’s simple noise removal/clean-up tools as well as giving numerous demos of Speech Search. Tradeshows are always exciting and exhausting, but I appreciate the opportunity to get out of the office and talk with broadcasters trying to find the most efficient ways to produce high quality content for distribution on-air and on the web.

Speaking of broadcast customers, last week we were down in Los Angeles visiting with a number of folks using Audition for pre-production. Dirk Sciarrotta let us come behind the scenes at The Ellen Show at their new studio at Warner Brothers. Dirk is the playback mixer for the show (as well as The Family Feud) and he’s a long time Audition user. He uses Audition to assemble voiceovers, sound effects, and background music for the show. All the final audio clips are loaded from Audition into SpotOn, which is the system he uses to playback the clips during the show. Audition is also used to record the musical acts. The day we were there the guest was Jay Leno with music by Ciara. It was great fun for us to be there and to get to watch Dirk and the production sound mixer Terry Fountain in action. You can find out more about their setup in the April issue of Mix Magazine.

The next day we visited Tom Evans over at CBS. Tom is the playback mixer for The Late, Late Show and also does sound work on The Price is Right. Tom gave us a tour of CBS Studio City which included walking across The Price is Right stage to the screams of “the loudest audience in TV” as well as being back stage at The Young and the Restless where we bumped into long time soap star Eric Braeden “Victor” who was looking for snack food between takes. BTW, Audition is used on all of these shows.

Tom also got us backstage at American Idol where we were able to meet one of the icons of live sound engineering Ed Greene during rehearsals for the semi-finals. Afterwards, we watched Tom and The Late, Late Show mix engineer Otto at work recording some comedy sketches for the show and an upcoming musical performance.

I’d also like to hear from anyone else out there that is using Audition for broadcast. Please post a comment describing how you’re using Audition along with any specific feedback you would like to share.

Cheers,
Lawson

Posted by Lawson Hancock at 10:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Audition 3.0 included some new functionality in the CD extraction tools, primarily the ability to query a CDDB compatible database and use the results to automatically structure and name your audio files. This is a huge time saver for ripping CD collections or libraries, but since Audition doesn't rely on any one particular service it can be intimidating to setup. While there are commercial services you can use such as Gracenote, the corporation built upon the original CDDB service, I will show you how to access the open source FreeDB database.

The "Extract Audio from CD" tool can be accessed via the File menu in either Edit View or CD View and opens a dialog with all the parameters needed to accurately rip tracks from your audio CDs. Generally, the default parameters can be used, though you may wish to reduce the CD speed or try different buffer sizes if your audio CD is heavily scratched or damaged and you're experiencing problems.

Once opened, the dialog will analyze and display each audio track on the CD along side it's duration. This "fingerprint" can be sent to a CDDB-compatible database, such as FreeDB or Gracenote, which will return a list of matching albums. If there is only one match, Audition will automatically select that and modify the track names and additional metadata fields.

To configure a database server, click the "Configure..." button at the bottom center of the dialog. In the box labeled "HTTP Titles Database" enter "freedb.freedb.org" or the address supplied by your CDDB compatible provider if you are using an alternative service. You may also enter your email address, or whatever address you prefer to use for filling out these fields. Click OK, then click on the "Get Titles" button. Audition will contact the server, download the data, and apply it to your tracks. When you click OK to start the extraction process, the files will automatically be named according to the downloaded data and their basic metadata fields supplied with the appropriate information.

You can take additional control by applying a Filename Template if you prefer your filenames in a particular format. Back in the Configure... dialog you'll see two fields - "Parse Song Titles" and "Filename Template" along with a list of template variables below. By entering a combination of these variables with any additional characters or text, Audition can maintain a consistent naming convention for your recordings.

The Filename Template defaults to "%s" which simply inserts the "Song Title" as the filename. For example 1931's "Minnie The Moocher" by Cab Calloway saved as a WAV file would be named "Minnie the Moocher.wav". By adjusting the variables, for example: "%t - %s by %a (%y) ", the resulting file would be saved as "1 - Minnie the Moocher by Cab Calloway (1931).wav". Each variable is replaced by the actual content string supplied by the database.

While it's not particularly common, sometimes the database results contain more information than expected, such as extraneous artist or track information in the song title. By adjusting the variables in the "Parse Song Title" field, you can declare which elements of the database results you wish to be applied when the "%s" variable is used in the Filename Template. For instance, the person who uploaded the CD information to FreeDB may have included the track number in the song title such as "1. Minnie the Moocher". Using the variables here, we can tell Audition what parts of that string to use as the "Song Title". In this case, I want to separate the track number from the title, so I could change the Parse Song Title field to: "%t. %s". This will tell the tool that any reference to "%s" in the Filename Template should only use the field that matches "%s" in the "Parse Song Title" field. Again, this is a pretty rare occurrence and it's unlikely you'll need to use this parameter that often.

The "Track" dialog will update to display the current naming conventions as you make configuration changes. Once satisfied, click the OK button and let the extraction begin!

Durin Gleaves

Posted by Lawson Hancock at 5:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The 2.0.1 update to Soundbooth CS4 was just released. Soundbooth 2.0.1 addresses quality issues in the initial CS4 release. I’ve listed the key fixes below.

To get the update you can go to Help>Update in Soundbooth CS4 which will run the Adobe updater. You can also download the patch directly at one of the follow links:
http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/product.jsp?product=131&platform=Windows
http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/product.jsp?product=131&platform=Macintosh

Fixes in Soundbooth 2.0.1 include:

• Improved stability and performance when playing and exporting video

• Resolved a problem where in some cases Adobe Flash® would not refresh the audio after ASND files were edited and resaved from Soundbooth

• Corrected a problem where clips with fade-outs would be silent after saving ASND documents

• Restored the ability to save to compressed WAV formats on Windows®

• Restored the ability to save 6-channel audio files as 6-channel WAV or AIF files
• Improved performance and reliability of Resource Central
• Improved reliability when previewing a captured noise profile
• Increased stability when performing actions like zooming, scrubbing and switching between assets during playback
• Resolved a problem where exporting video as MPEG-4 created video files that imported at the wrong length
• Resolved an issue where Soundbooth would crash when exporting a mixdown to audio-only video formats

Lawson

Posted by Lawson Hancock at 5:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

In previous posts we’ve covered the time saving features for correcting volume level problems. I wanted to mention a couple of additional time-savers in Soundbooth CS4 that will also boost your audio editing productivity.

MP3 Preview
So what’s the right compression setting to use when saving an MP3 file? While there is much debate about this on audio forums, the real answer is “ it depends. “ In general it’s a trade-off between the compression settings (throwing away extra bits) vs. the file-size. However, because there really is no right answer to what sounds best it’s often a matter of trial and error to find the compression settings that work for the specific type of audio you are saving to MP3.

In Soundbooth CS4 we’ve added an MP3 preview option to make it easy to try different compression settings before actually saving the file. This eliminates the need to save multiple MP3s and listen to each of them individually to see what works best for a particular piece of audio.

When you select MP3 as the file type at “Save” time you will be presented with a dialog that allows you to select different compression settings from 16Kbps to 320Kbps. You will also see an estimated file-size displayed at the bottom of the dialog. You can then press the play button on the right to “preview” what your audio will sound like using the selected compression settings. Once you find the one that sounds right you can press "Save" to create the .mp3 file.

Beat Detection
One of Soundbooth’s tasks available in the task panel is “Create Loop.” This is a simple workflow that allows you to specify in and out points in a particular audio file and then save that section as loop for use in different projects (e.g., adding a series of music loops to a video or Flash project).

But how to do you know where the beats are located by looking at the waveform? The answer is “you don’t.” That’s why we’ve added the option to “View>Beats.” With this enabled you will see an orange line that indicates where each beat is located in the waveform. This makes it easy to find the beats when you are creating a loop. You can also use the “View>Snapping>Snap to Beats” option to line-up your in/out selections on the timeline exactly to the beat.

Rock On!
Lawson

Posted by Lawson Hancock at 3:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)