Dedicated Sound Editing Apps

If after looking at your editing software, you decide that you need more audio editing power, then you’ll want to consider a dedicated audio editing application. There are several reasons why you might need more sound editing power.

Many editing apps only let you make cuts between individual frames, so if you need to make very precise edits, such as an edit at an interval that’s smaller than a single frame, or 1/30th of a second, you’ll need to move your audio out of your NLE and into a dedicated sound editing app.

As with picture editing, audio editing can be a very tactile process. Feeling where a cut should fall, or “riding” a level or EQ adjustment, are processes where you often want a fine level of hands-on control. If you prefer such controls to a mouse-driven audio editing interface, then you should consider moving your audio to an application that provides better on-screen controls (see Figure 15.7), or even hardware consoles that can be attached to your computer.

Figure 15.7

Apple SoundTrack Pro comes bundled with Final Cut Studio and provides robust audio editing controls.

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Dedicated audio editors provide a number of other powerful features, such as the ability to define and label regions in an audio track. Regions allow you to label what each part of an audio waveform is, making it easier to spot locations for additional edits.

To select a digital audio application, you’ll want to consider many of the same questions introduced earlier. In addition, look for the following:

nHow does the app play back video? Many audio editing programs let you open a QuickTime movie for playback.

nDoes the app support the timecode you are using? Although timecode is not essential for performing outboard edits on small pieces of your audio, you’ll need it if you want to edit all your sound on a different software app or system (see the section “Moving Your Audio”). Many sound applications use timecode to synchronize their audio timeline to a QuickTime movie during the sound editing process.

nSupport for your editing app? Many sound editing apps work hand in hand with a picture editing app: Apple Final Cut Pro and SoundTrack Pro, Avid Media Composer and ProTools, Adobe Premiere Pro and Soundbooth. If you’re counting on exporting audio from your video editing app in the OMF format, make sure your sound editing app supports the same version of OMF. (For more about OMFs, see the section “Moving Your Audio.”)

nAre you editing in real-time? For easier editing, you’ll want an application that can apply effects in real-time. When making subtle EQ changes, for example, it’s preferable to have your audio editor continuously loop and play the sound so that you can hear changes as you make adjustments. Many applications can perform simple stereo effects in real-time. For other effects, and for real-time processing of additional tracks, you’ll need a system with special hardware.

nDo you have room for more hardware? If you opt for a system with special hardware, make sure that you have enough slots in your computer to support more expansion cards.

nDo you need surround sound capabilities? Some sound editing packages make it easy to create a five-channel surround sound mix that takes full advantage of the HD format. If you need surround sound, make sure that your software can handle it.

Obviously, if you’re not going to be performing your audio edits yourself, then software might not be a concern. If you will be hiring a professional audio house to create your final audio edit, or if your sound editor has her own audio hardware, then you will simply need to find out how to deliver your audio. You should also plan to deliver copies of all of your original audio material. That is, all of your video files if you shot sync sound, and all of your original audio files if you shot double-system sound. There’s no telling what your sound editor might need in the way of audio. Whether it’s re-recording a sound, or building an entirely new sound from other material on your tapes, to do her job well, your sound editor will need all of your source material.

Just as there are many video editing applications on the market, there are also many sound editing applications. If you only need basic audio editing capabilities, though, you can stick with the tools in your editing application. However, if you need a more robust toolset, applications like Avid ProTools and Apple SoundTrack Pro, are of the caliber used by professional sound designers, dialogue editors, and mixers. All of them can handle synchronized playback

of audio and video, support various types of timecode, import and export OMFs, real-time playback, and offer additional capabilities and performance through added hardware and software plug-ins.

Moving Your Audio

If you’re going to edit your audio outside of your editing application, you’ll need to move your audio—even if you’re just moving it from one app to another on the same computer—and moving audio can be tricky.

Exporting an OMF file is often the easiest way to move sounds around. OMF files let you save the tracks you laid out in your editing software’s timeline and can include audio levels settings, dissolves, and the audio media itself. However, OMF files come in a couple of different flavors: OMFs that only contain the timeline information, OMFs that contain the timeline and the level settings, OMFs that contain all of the aforementioned, and so on. Unfortunately, not all editing and sound editing apps are compatible with all the different types of OMFs, so be sure to check your software manufacturer’s specs and do a little testing to be certain everything works right. Generally, once you export an OMF file from your editing software, you’ll need to convert it to a project file that’s compatible with ProTools or whatever sound app you’re using.

If you need to perform a quick fix on a short, isolated piece of sound, then you can simply export your audio from your editing software in whatever format your sound app requires (AIFF, .WAV, SDII, and so on). Be sure to export at full quality so that the sound editor has a high-quality sound signal with which to work. In addition, no matter how you manipulate the piece of audio, you must take care to maintain the frame rate (usually 29.97fps, 24fps, or 23.978fps) and the audio sampling rate (usually 48kHz). This ensures that you’ll be able to import the new treated audio back into your editing project without losing sync.

If you want to re-edit all of the sound in your entire project, the easiest way to take it out is by using OMF, but you can also output split audio tracks to any standard digital audio file format (WAV, AIFF, etc.). Assuming you have a locked cut of your picture, you’ll have several tracks of sound that you edited along with the picture. By outputting each track to a separate file, and then importing each track separately in your sound editing app, you’ll be able to start polishing the sound with a decent rough cut of the sound already in place. You’ll need to make sure that the length of each track matches exactly the length of your final locked sequence in your editing project. Alternately, you can use sync marks, or 2-pops that match the countdown of your locked picture. 2-pops are a single frame of 60Hz audio reference tone cut into the countdown at the same frame that the two-second counter appears on-screen. Careful measures such as these to maintain sync are absolute necessities for this type of work—losing sync for an entire project is one of the worst things that can happen in post!

High-end sound editing apps such as ProTools work in tandem with a QuickTime video capture of the locked picture cut, so you’ll also need to export a viewing copy of your locked picture sequence with a countdown, including a sync mark if applicable. When you’re done editing the sound, you can reunite the polished audio in your video editing project. (You can find more about final mixes and audio outputs in Chapter 18.) As mentioned earlier, it’s crucial that you maintain the same frame rate and audio sampling ratio that you used in your video editing project if you want your project to stay in sync.