May 2009 Archives

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

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