Pro Audio: Sony Creative Software News: September 2007

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Pro Audio:  Introducing Vegas Pro 8
The Vegas Pro 8 collection is coming soon! A significant upgrade from version 7, Vegas Pro 8 software provides precise control over DV, HDV, and XDCAM projects through powerful tools for professional video, audio, and DVD creation.

Vegas Pro 8 new features include:

• ProType titling technology
• Multicamera workflow tools
• Sony AVCHD read and write support
• 32-bit floating point video processing for greater color depth
• Digital signage-style video editing
• And much more…

The Vegas Pro 8 collection will be shown at IBC 2007 in Amsterdam beginning today and will be available for purchase from Sony Creative Software as well as retailers worldwide September 10, 2007. Learn More

New! Two Cinescore Theme Packs
Just announced at IBC 2007 today in Amsterdam, Hyperculture: New Media Soundtracks and Urban 24/7: City Soundscapes are two new Theme Packs that add a total of 20 distinctive new Themes to the Cinescore music production system, thus delivering thousands of new options for generating unique, royalty-free music.

Urban 24/7: City Soundmaps delivers the audio experience of a major metropolitan cityscape directly into your studio. Cue audiences to react to inner city scenes with royalty-free music maps that are as rich in character as the locations they represent. From block party action to intimate nightclub atmospheres, Urban 24/7 reflects the true diversity of the public and private spaces we use to conduct modern life.

Reflecting the range of the category with the diversity of its content, Hyperculture is the ideal Theme Pack for documenting the New Media experience, blending genres in proportions controlled directly by the end user. Open one of the ten Themes on Hyperculture and create perfectly integrated music by working intuitively with an intriguing set of easy to understand controls. Jazz and symphonic backdrops, rock, pop, hip-hop, electronica, world music and expansive cinematic forms only begin to document the variety found within the Hyperculture Theme Pack. With Hyperculture, producers can easily merge authentic sounds from the global village in ways that resonate with the true spirit of any project.

Buy now only US $89.95 each

Assembling and creating a CD in ACID
by Craig Anderton

These songs are about to be burned to CD. The Track markers indicate the start of each track; the marker for Track 3 starts at the beginning of a crossfade between Track 2’s end and Track 3’s start. Note that in the Clip Properties window, the ACID type is One-Shot.

When I want to create a Red Book audio CD, I usually reach for Sony CD Architect software—it’s simple and fast. But ACID software incorporates similar technology so you can assemble and burn CDs within the program. Although you can use this capability to burn a single project to CD, you can also assemble an entire album of tunes.

Choosing the songs

All songs must have 16-bit resolution with a sample rate of 44.1kHz, so convert if needed. Then, drag each song into its own track. If the Beatmapper wizard appears, click on No (unless you want the songs to be beat-mapped so that they’re all at the same tempo). To verify the songs are at their original tempos, check the Properties for each one and make sure the ACID Type says “One-Shot.”

Arranging and spacing

To have the time ruler at the bottom of the track view display hours:minutes:seconds, go View > Time Ruler > Audio CD Time. Also make sure that “Show Time Ruler” is checked. This makes it easy to see the CD’s elapsed time.

Although the standard space between songs for CDs is 2 seconds, sometimes more space lets an album “breathe” more between cuts. Drag the songs on their tracks to create the correct sequence and desired time between cuts; do crossfades by fading out one track as another fades in.

To set a precise time between songs, set the end of one song at the same time as the start of the next one. Place the cursor where they join, and go Insert > Time. Enter a value in minutes / seconds / milliseconds in the box that appears. Continued

Craig Anderton (on Gibson digital Les Paul guitar) is currently performing with Public Enemy’s Brian Hardgroove (drums) in the power hard rock duo EV2. And yes, he’s having a great time doing it.

Tech tip: creating exciting text elements with the new ProType Titler in Vegas Pro 8
by Gary Rebholz

For everyone who has ever wished for more powerful titling tools in Vegas software, Vegas Pro 8 software features the brand new ProType Titler. This powerful new title generator gives you the tools you need to present compelling and endlessly creative titles to your viewers. In this article, we’ll take a basic look at the ProType Titler and teach you how to get started so that you can begin using the tool immediately. Although we’ll save the detailed discussion of the entire tool set that we can’t go into here for another time, we will take a quick look at some of those features so that you can get a taste for them.

The ProType Titler is integrated inside Vegas Pro 8 software as a media generator. To find it, click the Media Generators tab in the window docking area. If the tab does not appear in the window docking area, choose View | Media Generators to open the window.

In the list on the left of the Media Generators window you see all of the standard generators such as Solid Color, Noise Texture, Color Gradient, and so on. Vegas Pro 8 software features a new item in the list: ProType Titler. Select ProType Titler from the list on the left.

As usual, the area on the right shows you thumbnails of presets that you can add to your project to get you started. I prefer to start with a blank ProType Titler event and go from there. To do this, drag the Empty preset and drop it into the timeline. This adds a new event to your timeline and simultaneously opens the ProType Titler window. Continued

Gary Rebholz is the training manager for Sony Creative Software. Gary produces the popular Seminar Series training packages for Vegas, ACID Pro, and Sound Forge software. He is also co-author of the book Digital Video and Audio Production. Gary has conducted countless hands-on classes in the Sony Creative Software training center, as well as at tradeshows such as the National Association of Broadcasters show.

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