Sountrack Pro n Final Cut

Was wondering, for those of you who've taken the time to really learn it, whether you find yourself using Sountrack Pro regularly and are enamoured with it? Or whether you learned it but have since found work-arounds or find it too time consuming to bother? How useful do you find it?

The reason I'm asking is because I'm entitled to a weeks worth of training and am trying to decide between a Sountrack Pro course, an HD D.I.T. course or a feature film lighting course.
The last of which would be more a personal indulgence than the others.

i hate it and find it more or less useless. koz and i have pretty much cut it up over in the soundtrack forum...

it does a couple of things quite well (building scores from canned "loops" and noise reduction) but its metering is more or less decorative and totally useless and the various plugins are also innacurate and when processed are NOT as they sounded in previewing.

if you are interested in an affordable waveform editor, i highly suggest peak pro or protools

soundtrack "pro" is definitely NOT PRO

SoundTrack Pro is a very unique application that is probably appreciated more by those who have some audio background. The resynthesis ability to re-key an audio file is spectacular (Like moving a recording in the Key of A to any other without hesitation). The multitrack abilities of STP are somewhat limited and it doesn't serve as a true audio DAW (Digitial Audio Workstation).

It is simply an application that once you learn to use it, it can save you valuable time in creating unique and license free audio for video, as that is what it was created to do well.

You can learn a great deal about STP by using the Apple Pro training Series book that will take you through much of the application ina few sessions over a few days.

I love Soundtrack Pro 2. It's an incredible music creating program for the independent filmmaker with no budget and only FCP as an editing tool.

John explained its technical features. All I can say is that what you create yourself you don't have to worry about royalties and getting sued by a mad composer ... LOL.

But seriously, you can create the exact mood for your movie and maintain your personal vision and artistic integrity.

I use it all the time. I intend to use it -- as John says -- in spectacular ways.

Yeah,
My friend who is a post-prod. audio guy uses Protools but I watched him work for about a half hour and was lost immediately. The interface seems pretty intimidating to me. What I'd like to be able to do better is clean up badly recorded field sound primarily. Secondarily, I'd like to be able to add... ambience to things ala David Lynch (but that's just for side projects). Maybe I'll run the DVD tutorial and see if it'll meet my limited needs before I go devote a valuable week to learning it.

Thanks for the replies.

it'll be fine for what youre wanting to do - as long as youre not married to accurate metering and can get your head around it's haphazard levels during eq and compression activities...

<<<HD D.I.T. course >>>

Digital Interface......something.

<<<I watched him work for about a half hour and was lost immediately.>>>

If he was good at it, you weren't watching him use the tools, you were watching him use the shortcuts to the tools. Even people at the intermediate level wouldn't be able to follow that.

Audio is much more difficult than video. It's just very very different. If you double the video level, it gets twice as bright. If you double the sound level, very little happens. You have to double it *three times* for the sound to get twice as loud. You can "warm up" a picture by adding a little red or orange. Nothing odd about that. Now warm up that sound track.

Ahhhhhh, right.

One of the reasons I wrote them a new chapter over at the STP forum is that I found the tools inconsistent. I was very pleased with one of the tools because it had a good first level interface (See: Fuzzy-Warm), but if you kept digging it had all the heavy engineering adjustments to allow playing it like a pumped up Wurlitzer. I was just getting my hopes up when I hit a tool clearly designed by someone a bit light on audio experience. It didn't work like it was supposed to and the handles were very odd and took too long to use. This is the tool designed by the programmer who was told he *had* to do a sound tool whether he wanted to or not.

He didn't want to.


<<<clean up badly recorded field sound>>>

I'll give you the list of people who *don't* want to do that.
.

Want to see it again?

Nobody knows what they're doing with microphones, so everybody's field sound is dirty. Everybody's hoping to goodness they can clean it up in post.

Maybe. It depends on how bad it is and what the errors are.

You don't need a class to get STP to clean up some problems, you just need Google.

[www.eventdv.net]

Of course, there's an STP forum here, too. Click on "Jump To Forum."


If you can determine that the STP course is in "sweetning," and damage control, do it. I personally would go with the lighting course--especially if it's hands-on. You can't focus a Fresnel on Google.

Koz

<<<HD D.I.T. course >>>

"Digital Interface......something. "

Digital Image Tech. The guy who paints the cameras, sets up the recorders, etc. I mostly want to get to a point where I can thoroughly set-up HD cameras. F900, Varicam, Viper, Red?

"If he was good at it, you weren't watching him use the tools, you were watching him use the shortcuts to the tools. Even people at the intermediate level wouldn't be able to follow that."

Yeah, he was mostly keyboard.

"Audio is much more difficult than video. It's just very very different. If you double the video level, it gets twice as bright. If you double the sound level, very little happens. You have to double it *three times* for the sound to get twice as loud. You can "warm up" a picture by adding a little red or orange. Nothing odd about that. Now warm up that sound track."

Yes, it's an extremely underappreciated set of skills in my sphere. And a week of training would hardly make a dent, but since we don't have anyone who is expert in the field, I want to be able to ATLEAST clean up the trash.

"If you can determine that the STP course is in "sweetning," and damage control, do it. I personally would go with the lighting course--especially if it's hands-on. You can't focus a Fresnel on Google. "

Yes, that would be good but I suspect, like all Apple certified courses, you'll get 50% stuff you don't care about and 50% that apply to what you want. If you have heard of any good ones, let me know. As for the lighting course, I'll probably do that anyway on my own dime.

Thanks.

<<<ATLEAST clean up the trash. >>>

I predict (pressing fingers to forehead) that this isn't going to be covered in an entry level course--in spite of the fact that it's the one thing everybody wants. Noise isn't a class, it's a full-on course. It's necessary to have lab work where you hear all the problems and adjust the tools in real life to see what happens. A lot of people have more than one problem and you really have to crank up your ears--which brings us smartly to the speakers. Want to start a mile-long forum thread?

"What are the best speakers?"

Then duck.

We have a joke that the programmer, Graeme Nattress, should get busy and create a tool to "Make My Audio Professional." Doesn't matter what you started with, it analyses the track, takes out all the bad stuff and puts in all the good. No adjustments, no sliders, no options.

He could retire in fifteen minutes.

Koz

"I predict (pressing fingers to forehead) that this isn't going to be covered in an entry level course--in spite of the fact that it's the one thing everybody wants. Noise isn't a class, it's a full-on course. It's necessary to have lab work where you hear all the problems and adjust the tools in real life to see what happens. A lot of people have more than one problem and you really have to crank up your ears..."

Hey man,
If you're sellin, I'm buyin. No kidding. I'd think there are many people out there who would pay for a course like that.

I agree with Vic (who must be sleeping with one of the Apple developers as the latest vers. of Soundtrack Pro anyone else has is 1.1 the universal binary version.) It's a version 1 app & needs some more work to be user friendly.

It's a fair conjecture that the people assigned to do the programing wanted to be doing something else, as evidenced by Apple's seeming total indifference to the program since its release. However its a great concept that needs some development before its a usable tool for most FCP editors. Hopefully there is a will within Apple to make this happen.

There was a similar knocking of Motion in version 1. The difference being that the developer of Motion actively participated in the user forums to help to ease the frustration. There has been no such assistance for people trying to come to grips with Soundtrack Pro.

Dave

Thanks for correcting me on that :-) I don't know why I've been calling it Soundtrack Pro 2. LOL

Anyway, I think that it's necessary to inject into Soundtrack Pro some of one's own music or sounds, to make it a bit more richer and varied. i wish I knew how to play the keyboards. I like the moods I can set with STP, but I would've liked to have added my own melody...

I think Soundtrack Pro is a necessary tool for editing with FCP and that's why it's part of the suite. The other two courses, well, you can take them too, but STP is more useful for editing.

The most useful aspect of STPro for me was the amount of loops it came with; there's enough sound effects and background ambience in there to fill most of my needs. I just did a short film and found pretty much everything I needed in there -- although I brought them all into FCP to do the multitrack work because it was just more familiar. I use STPro to audition the material and do a little audio cleanup, but that's about it...

JK

_______________________________________
SCQT! Self-contained QuickTime ? pass it on!

<<<The most useful aspect of STPro for me was the amount of loops it came with>>>

Oh it does have things that it does really well. Unfortunately, it's not called Sound Track A Couple Of Things Really Well. It's called Sound Track Pro and there I part company.

<<<a little audio cleanup>>>

Such as........?

Koz

<<<<a little audio cleanup>>>>

Quote
Koz
Such as........?

The 'Reduce Noise' feature works pretty well on certain clips -- i.e. the person was well mic'd but there's a low hum or buzzing that nobody heard. You have to be careful with the settings because they can sound real tinny, otherwise it works as advertised. Very much like Sound Soap.

I take your point though, it needs to have a lot more functionality to live up to it's name...

JK

I met a background noise I couldn't clean up with Soundtrack's reduce noise feature this week. It was onboard a bus. It seemed to have almost no effect on the noise, whereas I have had really good results with it before. I'd love to do a course on STP. I'm sure, like Livetype, there's a lot going on under the covers that the casual user doesn't know how to access.

If you do do the course, can you report back?

"If you do do the course, can you report back?"

Yes I will. But first I have to convince them that the courses out in California are sufficiently more in-depth to merit a trip. Might be a tough sell.

<<<Very much like Sound Soap>>>

Exactly. It's different handles on the same technology. Experience or derive Room Tone and try to subtract it from the dialog.

It is a team of powerful horses. In the right hands, it can do enormous, valuable work. In the wrong hands, it can destroy the neighbor's front yard, chew up the driveway, and damage the leather harness.

Koz

<<<there's a lot going on under the covers that the casual user doesn't know how to access. >>>

Yes, but it's more serious than that. Picture trying to explain to your mom, in detail, how cellphones work. If you're not old enough, your grandmom. It's like there's no conceptual middle ground to base the discussion.

Almost nobody actually hears what's going on around them. We're really good at "tuning out" and that can be a good thing most times. One way to drive a production team nuts is to ask them to find a nice quiet room to record a wild track. They have to start paying attention and find out there aren't any quiet rooms. We've been known to shoot a track in an expensive car because it was the only quiet place in our time zone.

I can get a really good idea ahead of time by knowing what Fourier Transform is looking for. That's the tool that makes these processes possible.

Fourier what???

My almost joke is that if you can make the sound of the interference with your mouth, you'll never get rid of it without damaging the valuable track, or if the interference is changing at all, you're dead. These tools can't track moving interference. That's what I think happened with your bus noise. It was a moving target.

Sorry, can't do that.

I gotta think about this.

Koz

Sure, but I meant, from a user's perspective, like .. in Livetype you can actually change every single parameter of every frame individually, but most people don't realise this. They think you can only apply a standard set of effects to a standard set of fonts.

Not having spent much time in Soundtrack, I feel that there is a 'standard set' thing going on in my mind that probably isn't true.

The bus problem was partly due to moving, you're right. Didn't really matter that much since it was just a travelogue for my Aunt, and in reality I don't think I would come up against audio done that badly very often. One of the great boons of getting to work with good operators.