Recording for Television and Film?

[Nativeflame]

Hi Guys,

Not sure if this is the place for this question but here goes...

Has anyone any experience with using audio software for
television or multimedia, that is, editing sound tracks,
sound effects, layering in score, incidental music etc.
I've used Nuendo for music recording and its cool,
I was just wondering if it was overkill if we're not recording with
the software only editing pre-recorded sound.

Anyone used Adobe Audition for example?

Thanks,
NFlame

 

[Rokket]

While I'm not quite sure what you're asking, I use my software only to mix my tracks that I record on a digital multitracker. I don't record directly to the software because I personally have too many issues with it. I demo'd Audition, but I didn't like the user interface. There are lots who do use it on here, however.

So, to me, it's not overkill to use the software to mix and not record with it. I like doing it the way I am now. It works for me. YMMV...

 

[Massive Master]

Nuendo was essentially designed as "Cubase for multimedia" in the first place.

 

[MichaelM]

I did some video production last year at uni, using Adobe Premiere. The thing I found most annoying in the course is that they wanted us to do everything, including sound editing in Premiere! It was SO annoying, I'm used to using Cakewalk products, and I found the sound editing capabilities in Premiere very frustrating. I would much rather edit the video in Premiere (you can do some pretty cool stuff if you have the patience) and then import it into Sonar and do the audio.

 

[Nativeflame]

Budget

Thanks guys,

Thats kicked off a number of avenues for investigation.
To elaborate a little more as requested, my thinking is we have
a budget to purchase audio software for our animation studio.
Audition comes as a part of Adobe Video Collection, so we basically
get it free with our other software purchases - but I LIKE nuendo
from previous work on music production. So I'm kind of thinking,
can we get away with using Audition in place on Nuendo? Are
the effects as good, does it run as smooth, is it all the aesthetics
of the intereface (which could be a deciding factor in itself) -
or is there a genuine difference in the processing of (or speed of
processing) the audio. Or is there a third option? All with the
original, TV, video, multi-media premise. Basically we may learn to
live with the clunky interface of Audition if its gonna save us
$6000 on a few copies of Nuendo, but I cant live with a
fundamentally inferior behind the scenes processing.


I agree about Premiere, that must have been almost suicidal!
You mention Sonar?

Cheers,
Nflame

 

[bennychico11]

i'll let the other guys recommend software to you, but I will say that maybe you should look around at local audio studios in your town for the audio work. If your focus for your studio is mainly animation and/or video....you audio may suffer. many times I've gotten clients who come to me because they tried to produce stuff in house because it's cheaper. They buy Pinnacle or a similar video program, have one of their sales/marketing people learn the program, and end up just running into problems. Then they come running to us to fix it.

i'm not saying you don't know what you're doing, but as i bet many people here will tell you, the audio for your animation or whatever can make the difference between a so-so spot to a really kick ass one. and that's what those audio engineers are there for...to make kick ass sounding stuff. if you're willing to spend 6,000 on a few copies of Nuendo, take the money and find a recording studio who will probably do it for you for way less and get you the sound you want

just an idea. good luck either way

 

[MichaelM]

Ha yeah it was pretty frustrating at times. I said Sonar because I'm just used to Cakewalk products. It does allow you to import the video file and have it in the track view along with all the audio files, and you can watch the video from inside Sonar, and hear all the audio editing you are doing. I haven't really played with that feature much, but it is there.

 

[Rokket]

i'll let the other guys recommend software to you, but I will say that maybe you should look around at local audio studios in your town for the audio work. If your focus for your studio is mainly animation and/or video....you audio may suffer. many times I've gotten clients who come to me because they tried to produce stuff in house because it's cheaper. They buy Pinnacle or a similar video program, have one of their sales/marketing people learn the program, and end up just running into problems. Then they come running to us to fix it.

i'm not saying you don't know what you're doing, but as i bet many people here will tell you, the audio for your animation or whatever can make the difference between a so-so spot to a really kick ass one. and that's what those audio engineers are there for...to make kick ass sounding stuff. if you're willing to spend 6,000 on a few copies of Nuendo, take the money and find a recording studio who will probably do it for you for way less and get you the sound you want

just an idea. good luck either way

The video and audio departments are separate from each other, I believe, in the major studios. This would only make sense, since they are two different beasts...

 

[dgatwood]

Hi Guys,

Not sure if this is the place for this question but here goes...

Has anyone any experience with using audio software for
television or multimedia, that is, editing sound tracks,
sound effects, layering in score, incidental music etc.
I've used Nuendo for music recording and its cool,
I was just wondering if it was overkill if we're not recording with
the software only editing pre-recorded sound.

Anyone used Adobe Audition for example?

Never used that particular app, but... yeah, if you're just putting together pre-recorded sound, doing audio editing in an external app is probably serious overkill. Now if you're doing multitrack audio work too (i.e. creating the incidental music), it might make sense.

What I did the last time I did this was basically to dump out a raw copy of the video onto DV and play it there while recording a scratch track of the incidental music into a multitrack audio app. Then, I put each large chunk together there. Once I finished editing, I dumped a mix to an AIFF file, which I then added as a clip into the video editing software (at the time, Radius EditDV).

These days, I'd probably still do it the same way even though OMF and similar can make it possible to share stuff back and forth between audio and video apps. IMHO, keeping a complete separation between things avoids lots of unnecessary hassle that would only bring minimal gain. HOWEVER, this means that your video editing for any bits containing incidental music must be DONE (at least timing-wise) before you start recording incidental music.

Some folks swear by bringing the video into audio editing apps and doing things in sync. There are advantages to that, particularly if you can't make it through a scratch track of the incidentals without stopping, if you plan on editing the video further, or if you're doing something really big with... say a symphony or something....

Just my $0.02.

 

[punkin]

I have SONAR 4 and Adobe Audition 1.5...I keep going back to SONAR...like one of the previous posters, I don't care for the controls and flow of Audition. We don't do as much audio video as we used to but we're still tracking quite a bit for voice overs and narrations. We're working with a community service group to record a small community newspaper for the elderly. I track everything in SONAR.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Native,

Having done editing for both audio and broadcast video, here's how I would reply.

First, don't worry about using your favorite NLE (Non-linear editing) software "just" for editing and not for recording. Who cares? What's important is that you use the tool that works in the format that the job calls for and that you can work with the best. "The right tool for the right job" is what I say.

As far as Audition vs. Muendo, vs. anything else, I personally do like the Audition interface and it's "feel". But I also understand that this is a totally subjective opinion, that others may (and do) prefer ProTools, Nuendo, SAW, Cakewalk, Cubase, Vegas, Gigastudio or any of the other dozen titles of non-linear digital audio editing software that are out there. If Nuendo is for you, then by all means, use it.

Plugins? The only ones worth using are most likely going to be VST or DirectX compatable, so are transportable among the better editors anyway.

A comon factor to consider in dealing with video and/or broadcast projects however, is the importance of synchronization, intrinsic timecode and (sometimes) the ability to create an edit decision list (EDL) file in a common "Rosetta stone" format such as CMX or Sony so your edit work can be imported into and read by the pro editing and assembly machines in the broadcast or mastering center's edit bays.

G.