CompuServe Thread

John – I'm rather new to video, but have been doing audio for the past 20 years or so. I just discovered a tool that has made my life a whole lot easier. It's called Software Audio Workshop (SAW) from Innovative Quality Software. This is a digital audio editor that works with standard sound cards in a PC compatible. It works best with the Turtle Beach cards or the CardD+ from DAL. You can lurk over on their forum by using the GO SAWSUPPORT command and selecting Innovative Quality Software. I'm using SAW with a Turtle Beach Multisound and a zippy IDE drive. With a fast drive, you can get up to 4 stereo tracks mixing down in real time. (i.e., NO AUDIO "RENDERING") I can do 3 stereo tracks with my IDE drive. You have to understand this is with NO OTHER HARDWARE OTHER THAN THE STEREO SOUNDCARD. It's truly an amazing hack. It's faster than all heck because it's written in 32bit assembly language for Windows. I just did about a 1/2 hour of voice overs on a project that I had recorded to a PCM encoder (sort of a DAT forerunner). There were lots of bad takes, but it didn't matter because I spooled the lot onto my hard drive via SAW and just pasted the whole thing together. I then spooled it back onto the audio tracks on a video tape – perfectly. I don't work for the company, I'm just a wild enthusist. Prior to this I had been editing audio for my computer multi-media projects using Wave for Windows (from Turtle Beach), and I could have given my clients so much more, had I had this program. You can download a fully functional (except for 'save', I think) demo from the SAW forum. This is just as good as the Fast DP/R (for audio) if you can't afford to go DP/R yet. Check it out. db.out

John, can we maybe sometime have a 3D modelling Topic of the Week? <grin> This wouldn't have anything to do with my recent resurgence of interest in 3d modellers (oh, no… 😉

I would also be interested in audio recorders for video in the field, especially DAT, or even Mini-disc or DCC. Not that I'm doing research for an article for Videomaker. oh no!

John I've been doing simple cartoon animations using CorelMOVE and doing multitrack digital audio using TurtleBeach's QUAD studio. QUAD works pretty well with simple voice/background music/sound effects layering and by adding and subtracting frames I can get a good working synch to the 'Toon. Then I bring both elements into Adobe Premiere and line them up on the timelines and add fadeins, transitions etc. The whole thing gets output to an AVI using RLE or Video One compression. In my experience, Quad is not yet stable enough to do long (over 2-3 mins) multuitrack projects, particularly if you do a lot of bouncing and engage their automatic mixing recall. It also doesn't work as advertised in the area of synching to Midi playback. Most of these issues have been aknowledged by TB and a 1.1 release is due within a few months. I would advise anyone interested to wait on the sidelines until 1.1 shows up and the check in with the TB forum (MIDI vendor A) and see how users react to the fixes. For the kind of simple multitracking I do and probably for business presentations it's servicable now. I also use Wave for windows to do sound effects and to compile numerous sounds or voices onto one track. you can combine them and add specific silences between easily. Although Adobe Premiere 4.0 can assemble up to 99 audio tracks, I have found that compression goes more smoothly if you edit your tracks down to one or two ahead of time. Best Al

John, Having had toooo! many opportunities to work with linear audio/video editing, my experience has been that it is easier to lay down the audio tracks first,then "insert" the video. If the master has hi-fi audio(and you want to keep it), then the audio could be laid down on the linear tracks,allowing the original sound to be used. There are so many variations, they will make you an old man–Quickly! As far as syncing the audio to video where you've got audio recorded, say on a seperate tape, some type of sound (ala the old clap-board) is /can be used to sync up the audio/video. Sorry to be long winded, but I could talk for hours on this subject and still feel like I was an idiot. Have had some successes, though. Recently purchased an Akai DR4 Hard Disk Recorder to lay down my soundtracks. Awesome piece of equipment. Maybe we can discuss this again. John

For audio on a Mac, we recently obtained DECK II 2.1 (now 2.2 and I'm waiting for it!). This is a hard disk system, which supports both the Digidesign hardware (audio Media, sound tools and ProTools) as well as the build in 16 bit audio of AV Macs and PowerMacs. On an 840 AV you get 8 tracks of 16bit 44.1 audio without any additional hardware. On PowerMac 8100 said to be more like 12-14 tracks. Very nice interface, nice editor. Not much yet in effects, because digidesign won't license them. (long history here– the Deck manufacturer OSC wrote the original ProTools editing software.) OSC says that in very near future the system will support Premiere audio effect plugins–EQ, reverb, compression etc. For Protools users–(not the current PTIII) an 8 and 16 track tool (additional software) will allow the 4 track PT card to become an 8 or 16 track nonlinear HD system. I'm just working with the system so I can't go into too many details yet. (plus with 2.2 coming some of the things I learn will change.) My two cents worth Reg Harris

Also:: is there a standard place for the Topic of the Week? Maybe a folder of its own? I just stumbled across it this week.