August 29, 2011
Last week, Colin Smith presented a demonstration of some common workflows and tasks in Adobe Audition CS5.5.
You can view the recording here.
(Note: If the Adobe Connect session loses audio/video synch, just click the playhead in Adobe Connect, and it will re-synchronize.)
Here’s an overview of what Colin discussed, along with links to more information about the topics.
You can submit a feature request here.
How to give feedback about Audition.
June 29, 2011
What is phase cancellation?
When creating a dialogue comp (short for “composite”), the challenge is to find the clips that express the emotion required by the director, and then work with the audio to fit it within the rest of the production. Location audio often offers technical challenges of its own that can threaten the usefulness of the recording. One of the the must difficult to diagnose and solve—at least, for those new to editing audio for picture—is phase cancellation.
A common symptom of phase problems is that your track sounds hollow or quieter when you combine two or more clips. Sometimes this only requires adjusting the volume of each clip to get the best sound. But other times, a track can sound quieter or hollow even when the individual clips are boosted. If this is the case, it can mean the clips are out of phase with each other. Audition CS5.5 can solve this problem easily.
The phase of an audio signal is its particular positive and negative waveform pattern. In A at the top of the illustration at left, two clips of the same waveform are synchronized (as shown by the red X), and their positive and negative pattern is the same, or in phase. This phrase will sound full. In B, the two clips are not synchronized. They’re not off by much, just half a wavelength, which can happen when a source is recorded with two devices or mics—a very common situation with production audio. The positive and negative pattern is the opposite in each clip or out of phase, possibly cancelling each other out, resulting in a quieter or hollow sound. In C, the clips are still not perfectly in sync, but the phase of the clip in Track 2 has been inverted, restoring the in-phase relationship of the waveforms.
Now let’s take a look at how to solve phase problems using Adobe Audition CS5.5.
Try it: Invert the phase of problematic audio
Three dialogue clips of the same source, but with a volume problem.
- Above is a multitrack session with three tracks, each track contains dialog recorded on a different system: on-camera, a second-system digital recorder, and recording from a clip-on lavalier on the talent. The problem: a hollow sound when mixing the three source files.
- Using the Zoom panel tools and the Resizing tool, zoom in on the first clips in tracks. Solo the three tracks by clicking on the Solo button in each track header (illustration).
- Play the clips; the sound of the actor’s voice is hollow and quiet.
- Select the bottom clip, then we bring up the volume on the clip by dragging the Volume Keyframe up until we get a value of +0.0dB or so (illustration).
- Play the section; the sound is hollower than it was before. Changing the volume did not work in this case, so it’s probably a phase problem.
- Double-click on the bottom clip to open it in the Waveform Edit window.
- Choose Effects > Invert.
- Click on the Multitrack icon to return to the Multitrack Editor and play the section again. The sound should now be full, and you can adjust the mix between the clips until you get what the production requires.
April 18, 2011
What's Dirk Sciarrotta's audio editor of choice? Adobe Audition CS5.5.
Sound editor extraordinaire, Dirk Sciarrotta, told us recently why Adobe Audition CS5.5 is his tool of choice when editing audio for high-profile broadcast and performance clients such as The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Family Feud, The Price is Right, Madonna, and Cirque du Soleil.
According to Sciarrotta, “The multitrack side as well as the edit side of Audition CS5.5 features more bells and whistles than you can imagine, yet the software is very user friendly.”
Additionally says Sciarrotta, “Adobe Audition CS5.5 is it for me. I’ve used Avid Pro Tools and BIAS Peak and Sony Sound Forge – you name it, but Audition CS5.5 is the most powerful, easy-to-use option.”
With 11 nominations and two Daytime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Live and Direct to Tape Sound Mixing, the results of Sciarrotta’s use of Adobe Audition software speak for themselves. To read more about Sciarrotta’s work, click here.
April 14, 2011
Clips, tracks, waveform view—every mode gets an Effects Rack in Audition CS5.5.
The good ol’ Effects Rack. Could there be any better paradigm through which to apply and control effects to the tracks in a session? It’s got that real-world familiarity that simplifies audio recording and editing in the digital realm.
As good as it was before, the Effects Rack gets a significant workflow boost in Audition CS5.5 with the new modeless Effect Rack-that’s a fancy way of saying that no matter what edit mode you’re working in, there will be an Effects Rack available to you.
In the Waveform Editor, you can use the Effects Rack or Effects menu to instantiate, edit, preview, and apply DSP effects. In the Multitrack Editor, you can use the Effects Rack panel to apply DSP effects to individual clips or to entire tracks. On track effects, you can save CPU cycles by engaging the Pre-Render button, which applies effects to the entire track, without locking you out of the effects parameter controls.
There are many new and enhanced DSP effects in Audition CS5.5, including quite a few created by the audio geniuses at iZotope, including the new DeHummer, Surround Reverb, Speech Volume Leveler, and Vocal Enhancer, as well as the upgraded DeEsser, Single Band Compressor, Chorus/Flanger, and Phaser.
Find out more about the new effects workflows in Audition CS5.5. here.
Thousands of SFX are yours license-free with Audition CS5.5.
An install of Audition CS5.5 on your Mac or PC takes up a mere 300MB or so. Yet Audition comes with literally thousands of sound effect files that you can use license-free to create or polish soundtracks. Ambient sound beds, environmental backgrounds, Foley FX, explosions, automobiles, and dozens of other useful categories contain around 10,000 files in stereo 48k WAV format. That’s enough to let you create quite a number of soundtracks without ever repeating your SFX files.
All these SFX files are available for download through Adobe Resource Central within Audition CS5.5. All the SFX files are high-quality, 48k WAV files, so you can use them for the foundation of your sound design work, too. Using the amazing sound-bending DSP effects in Audition CS5.5 such as Stretch and Pitch, Distortion, Echo, and many more, you can transform a simple footstep into a menacing underscore or a sci-fi science experiment. Audition CS5.5 gives you the fuel for your soundtrack imagination!
Click on the image at left to read the entire list of SFX categories available. Each category can contain many hundreds of useful sound effects, from environmental ambiance tracks and background sound beds to Foley effects and sci-fi effects.
April 13, 2011
Worried about session files created with previous versions of Audition or Cool Edit Pro? Think those timeless tracks have been relegated to the digital dustbin of software history?
Relax! You’ll be able to open all those files within Audition CS5.5 by using a fantastic third-party utility called Ses2Sesx. Created by the awesome folks at AATranslator, Ses2Sesx will take any binary format session file from Cool Edit Pro 1.2 all the way up to Audition 3 and save it in .SESX format for Audition CS5.5.
Learn more about the Ses2Sesx converter utility here.
If you have Audition 3 and want your sessions to come across to Audition CS5.5, there is basic session export using XML session format in Audition 3, which Audition CS5.5 can open and convert to the new .SESX XML format. But for more comprehensive file conversion, check out Ses2Sesx.
Anxious whether your favorite AU3 features will be available in AUCS5.5 on Windows? Don’t worry! You can find a feature comparison here. You can (and should!) keep Audition 3 installed and running even after you install Audition CS5.5, so you can ensure you’ll have the features you’re used to as well as the increased power of Audition CS5.5.
With OMF interchange support, Audition CS5.5 can exchange files with Final Cut Pro and other NLEs.
Audition CS5.5 lets you export sessions in OMF Interchange format, as well as import OMF-formatted files. In plain English, this means that you can use the industry-leading audio sweetening, restoration, and cleanup tools in Audition CS5.5 in a video or audio editing workflow that includes any of the most widely-used video nonlinear editor programs (NLEs) or digital audio workstation applications (DAWs). Since many of our pro users tell us they often use Audition in shops that use third-party NLEs and DAWs, this will make one of the realities of pro video editing much simpler.
Still thinking WTF? Get clear on OMF here. Then find out more about how Audition exports and imports OMF files here.
Audition CS5.5 also supports the XML format, which is an open-source protocol that includes enough information about the elements contained in a particular file that the file can be imported into applications that would ordinarily not be able to read the data in a proprietary file format.
Eh? Simply put, it’s a way of allowing NLEs and DAWs (just to name two types of apps) to share files they ordinarily wouldn’t be able to. Since Audition CS5.5 auto-saves its XML, it’s also a great way for Audition to protect your audio in the event of a system crash: Audition would simply re-create your session from the auto-saved XML data, saving your valuable time.
Here’s more about XML than you ever wanted to know.
The new Track Panner works with mono and stereo tracks, and allows precise 5.1 placement.
If you’re equipped to do surround editing, Audition CS5.5 is the audio tool for you. With native support for 5.1 surround sessions and multichannel audio files, Audition makes it easy to create new surround sessions, or put the finishing touches on existing 5.1 projects, and save to a full 5.1 surround master. True 5.1 metering and effects are available on surround tracks and sessions in all modes, including the Multitrack Editor, Waveform Editor, and in the Mixer. Audition also saves and opens multichannel WAV and MP3 files.
You can freely mix new and existing mono, stereo, and multichannel tracks in the same session, assigning each track to any surround channels that you wish. Audition provides a comprehensive array of mixdown and file format options, so you can deliver audio that conforms to the requirements of the most popular stereo and multichannel formats.
Operating as a floating panel, the enhanced Track Panner lets you dial in the precise location of a mono track or the exact spread of a stereo track within the surround sound space. Track Panner icons on each track header give you quick visual feedback on the location of each track while you’re mixing.
With multichannel file support, Audition lets you edit self-contained multichannel files, processing each channel individually. A new Surround Reverb effect makes it easy to put the sounds of a multichannel file in the same ambient sound space, or give each channel its own unique sound. Audition lets you save multichannel files and mixes in a variety of multichannel output formats.
Get the 411 on the 5.1 power of Audition here.
April 12, 2011
From removing occasional clicks to fixing disastrous digital distortion, and from trimming silence to removing hiss embedded in a waveform—even making unusable dialogue usable again—Adobe Audition CS5.5 provides audio sweetening and restoration tools that are indispensable for professional video and audio work.
The new DeHummer lets you eliminate all types of hum while leaving dialogue and SFX untouched.
The new Diagnostics panel provides several effects—some new, some enhanced—and with a simple scan-and-repair process they give you vastly improved audio for video. The new DeHummer removes hum throughout an audio file immediately, but it goes way beyond just giving you a choice between 60-cycle and 50-cycle hum. With an intuitive interface, it lets you dial in the precise frequency of a hum problem as you listen, as well as tune in and remove its harmonics. You can leave the sounds you want undisturbed, which means more intelligible dialogue, and soundtracks with more impact.
Other indispensable effects include the DeClipper, DeClicker, DeEsser, Adaptive and Process Noise Reduction, and the new Speech Volume Matching effect, the latter of which lets you equalize the volume of different voice talent recorded in the same audio file, in spite of varying distance from the microphone.
For fixing audio problems fast, Audition is even more powerful than ever before. Find out more about the audio sweetening and restoration features in Audition CS5.5 here. Learn more about how the new modeless, shared effects controls work in Audition here.
