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The World’s Top Tips for

Pinnacle Studio Video Editing software

(with some Avid Liquid snippets)












Editing Sound tips

SOUND TIPS

AVI FILES ON THE SOUND TIME-LINES

You may/may not be aware that you can add AVI files (with sound, of course) to the lower two time lines - in order to add the sound tracks from those AVI files. To do this, select the 'Sound Effects' icon, then click on the filing cabinet icon and browse to the directory where the required AVI file can be found. Click open - and the AVI file(s) will be listed as 'sound effects' - simply drag the required file down to one of the sound time-lines, and adjust the length by trimming each end, to select the required part of the track.

HOW TO QUICKLY CLEAR THE SOUND LEVEL EDITS MADE

To remove a single sound level edit point, click on that point, drag it down below the base of its time line box - then 'let go' to twang it back into place. .. Voila! sound edit point gone!  To remove ALL the edit points on the sound line, right click in the sound line area, and select Remove Volume Changes from the menu.

HOW TO TURN A SMARTSOUND TRACK INTO A WAV FILE

In earlier versions of Studio, when a SmartSound track is rendered, a temporary file is created in the TEMP sub directory of the Studio directory.  Once the SmartSound is rendered, MINIMISE (don't exit!) Studio, browse to the TEMP folder. There will be one or more files there with strange numbers: determine (by double clicking to play back) which is the WAV file you want, then COPY it (don't move it) to another location of your choice, and name it appropriately. You have now created a .WAV file of that SmartSound!

 

With later versions of Studio, the rendered SmartSound file is more hidden, less accessible.  

ADDED SOUNDS ARE OUT OF SYNC ON MAKE A MOVIE.   WHAT CAN I DO?

This is usually a Capture problem, more prevalent on the earlier versions of Studio, and usually only on analog captures. If the Captured material is out of sync, you can try re-capturing with a (fairly inexpensive) program called Scenalyzer.  This program captures each scene as a separate AVI file, and all the AVI file scenes can then be brought into Studio for editing.  

Otherwise, the workaround is fairly straightforward (provided the amount out of sync doesn’t increase progressively). After the edit is complete, and immediately before going to Make Tape, move all added sounds along the audio tracks by the appropriate amount.  You must be particularly careful when shifting SmartSound around ... Studio software (or the SmartSound part of it) likes to get clever .. and can re-adjust the sounds.  For a progressive out-of-sync problem, cut the sound track into discrete sections, and line up the most important (lip) sync points - sudden crashes for example.  Where ‘lip-sync’ precision isn’t required, the out-of sync will probably not be noticed.

HOW TO EDIT YOUR OWN MUSIC

'SmartSound' ® and ScoreFitter music is fine, but it can get a bit 'samey' after a while - you feel that you have heard it all and used it all, even if you haven't.   And you particularly want to use 'that bit' from Cavatina, or a few phrases from your favourite classical CD in your latest video masterpiece, but it doesn't quite fit the scene the way you want...

Good news. There are now plenty of inexpensive sound editing programs available, which will allow you to take any piece of music and alter it in a thousand and one different ways ... the most important from the video editing point of view being you can change the length without altering the pitch.

What's more, many of these programs allow you to measure the track in seconds and frames (30 or 25 - depending on your system).

To add a specific length of sound to a video, first determine from your Studio edit the exact length required - down to the last frame.   Then open your Sound Editor program, load in the required wav file (ripped from the CD perhaps), and select the part that you want: it is then a simple matter to contract or expand your selection to the required length - the time scale, remember, can be set to be displayed in minutes:seconds:frames.   Most Sound Editor programs enable tracks to be expanded or contracted by up to about 20%: (anything greater, and the change becomes more noticeable).  You can blend the intro and outro to the music to the main selection you want, to give your piece a proper start and finish.

But remember, recorded music is copyright and protected by Royalties: unless you use Royalty free music, you will be breaking the law if the music you use is played back for anything other than your own personal viewing.  

 

The alternative to Royalty free music (and SmartSound/ScoreFitter music) is to create your own, with a program such as Microsoft’s Music Producer (see next article)

THE FREE ALTERNATIVE FOR ROYALTY FREE MUSIC

Be honest ... you've used SmartSound on a few movies, you're now bored with listening to the same old themes over an over again, and you can't or don't want to pay for a few new SmartSound CDs at around £50 a time. What is the alternative if you want a few minutes of general thematic, royalty-free background music?

Generate your own, with Microsoft Music Producer...

Like  many others, for movies that are only for home viewing I usually use a suitable classical or popular CD track for background music. But if you make movies to sell to other people or for public viewing, that could get you into hot water unless you pay the performing rights royalties. In any event, there are times when you want just a few bars of music, to set a mood, or as a background for titles, and picking a musical phrase from an existing CD track can be time consuming. What you want is a piece of quick wall-to-wall music that's free. The sort of thing SmartSound does ... but with more scope.

About a year ago, I found lurking on my PC a program called Microsoft Music Producer. I vaguely remember loading it from somewhere some time previously, but had never explored it until then. When I put it through its paces, I was bowled over. It's a very simple program to use, and it does exactly what it says - produces music without any musical knowledge whatsoever. The program - and its predecessors -  is discussed in more detail later, but to show you its capabilities, I used Music Producer to create some music for you to listen to. I set the music length to 15 seconds and the key to 'C', and then created the 18 selections below with no more effort than clicking on the required style, 'personality' and 'band'.  For two of the samples - Newage and Newagechoir - I used the same 'composition' but just changed the 'Band'. Then, to show that the music generated is different every time you 'compose' it - I then set the program to generate a different 'Newage' style piece - NewageV2. There are even more choices at your fingertips, as discussed later, to get exactly the right piece for your movie. But first, click on any (all!) of  these 15-second midi-file 'phrases' to hear what the program is capable of, and you'll see what I mean (Note: as these are just midi files, the playback quality will depend entirely on the wave table/synthesizer quality of your sound card. On some cheap sound cards, midi files sound worse than awful!) ...

18 EXAMPLE SOUNDS FROM THE TRULY INFINITE RANGE OF POSSIBILITIES

WHAT IS THE FULL POTENTIAL?

If I tell you that ...

  • There are 110 different music styles (NOW EVEN MORE if you download the new 'styles' from Tom Smith's site - see the link below)
  • Up to 26 or so different 'personalities' (music moods), depending on the chosen style
  • Up to a dozen or so different bands, orchestras and instrument groups, depending on the style
  • A selection of 9 different 'shapes' for the generated music (more about that later)
  • You can choose to have an intro and/or an 'ending' to the piece (all the above examples have no intro, but do have an ending)
  • You can choose the key and tempo (or leave the chosen defaults for your style selection)
  • You can position band instruments to be louder or quieter, and for left/right stereo prominence
  • You can create a piece to any length in tenths of a second
  • Whatever your choice of the above, every time you click on 'Compose' ... a different piece of music is created

 

... you will appreciate that there is absolutely no limit to the royalty free background music available at your fingertips. You just make your selections and keep 'composing' (clicking a button) until the piece created is to your liking. Then you save it (else it will be lost forever!).

The files are saved in Music Producer's own format or as Midi files. Or - and here's the clever bit -  if you set your Sound Card's 'Record' program running (or Cool Edit - even better) then play back the midi creation from Music Producer ... you can record it direct, ready for working on a bit more (echo or reverb, maybe) before saving it as a pcm wav file ... ready for inclusion into your Studio project. To do this, you will probably have to get the correct settings on the Volume controls (choose 'Synthesizer' or 'Mixed Inputs' as the source for the recording, in the Microsoft Volume controls - right click on the loudspeaker icon on the taskbar). (See also 'Converting Midi files to Wav files')

Now, I have to be honest - sometimes you hit real cruddy pieces. But what the heck - click 'Compose' again until you get what you want.  And I have only one complaint ... I love Hawaiian music, and that isn't amongst the styles, or the 'Bands'. Oh well. You can't win them all.

WHAT THE PROGRAM LOOKS LIKE

Here's a screen dump of Music Producer in action previewing a Style:

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On the panel mid right you can see the instruments used in the chosen band. Drag them around the rectangle to increase their relative volume and stereo positioning. The display above the rectangle shows the instruments and their recording level. The Shape selection determines how the instruments will be introduced during the composition period - 'Rising', for example, means the instruments are gradually introduced throughout the piece. The examples above created for your delectation are all based on a 'Song' shape - with the instruments introduced and used variably throughout the piece, as in a song. There are 9 shapes in all.  When you select a 'Style' (from the 110 available) default values are used for the 'Personality', Tempo and 'Band' - and often, these are pretty good choices. You can preview the music (click on the PREVIEW button above the Style selector) - and while it is playing, change the 'Personality', 'Band', Key and Tempo, and move the instruments around,  until you get the sort of sound you want. Then, set the music length, decide whether you want an intro phrase, an ending phrase, and choose a 'Shape' for the way the instruments are 'used' during the piece, click 'Compose' ... and immediately listen to the result. Don't like it? Click Compose again - and keep clicking it until you like what you hear - then save it, otherwise it is gone forever. Well, nearly - you can get close to it again with a number of tries.

As you can see, it's dead easy to create music to give those scenes a sound lift.

WHERE CAN YOU BUY MICROSOFT MUSIC PRODUCER?

Good news, and bad news. First, the bad news.... Microsoft don't sell it any more, don't support it any more. So you can't buy it.   Now the good news ... It's available for download as a 'beta' version (which I believe, with the patches etc, is the same as the short-period release version) from Tom Smith's site. At the end of this article you'll find  a link to this site, where the program has been made available (along with some other music creation programs you may be interested in). But note - as this is the beta version, you must download all the 'parts' and follow all the instructions given implicitly otherwise it will not run properly (apart from anything else, the date stamp expired it yonks ago). I

There are other alternatives -  forerunners of the Music Producer program - called Music Maestro and SuperJam which are also available - free (see below). I had Music Producer on one computer, and wanted to put it on my video editing machine, for obvious reasons. But I'd lost the CD it came on. Cry? I should say so. I spoke to Jeff Caunter (Sparky) about the program - which I had searched for in a perfunctory way on the 'Net. But he did more - he found the story behind this program, and better still,  the website where, only recently, it has been made available as a beta.  He tells the story on his website  (Sound Links section), and it is also told on Tom Smith's site, but basically, Microsoft bought out the company that produced the forerunner to Music Producer,  Blue Ribbon Soundworks, created a beta version of Music Producer,  introduced the full version (V1.0), for a very short period, then killed it off for 'better things - which may well be better, but are far more complicated to use

ALSO TRY THE ALTERNATIVE FORERUNNERS TO MUSIC PRODUCER - FREE

As mentioned earlier, Jeff Caunter located two programs, Music Maestro and SuperJam,  that are very similar to Music Producer. Although they only produce music to a preset number of bars, rather than to a defined length, they have one or two features not found in Music Producer which enthusiasts may find desirable. Music Maestro for example,  has an additional advantage in that, instead of just creating music at random, it also allows you to select 'notes' on an in-built piano display or - wait for it - to hum into a microphone to create the underlying theme for the created music! That's a nice touch for wannabe song-writers. Music Maestro offers three lengths - short, medium and long - which determine the number of bars in the final composition. SuperJam is a more sophisticated offering. You can create pieces and then edit them in something like Cool Edit of course. Of the two, Music Maestro is possibly closest in use to Music Producer with many of its features, but slightly fewer 'Styles'. The Style files used by Maestro and Producer look the same - but they're not, and are not interchangeable. That's a minor shame, because each has styles that the other doesn't.

WHERE TO GET THE PROGRAMS

All  these programs - and descriptions of them - are available free  from one of Tom Smith's sites,

Have a good look round this fascinating site before downloading ... and make sure you read the instructions for downloading and running Music Producer.

NOW, ALSO AVAILABLE FROM Tom's site - a better set of 'styles' PLUS over 60 new styles - kindly made available by TODOR FAY - the original creator of all of these music programs and architect of the Microsoft DirectMusic Producer programs. The new styles will work with both Music Producer and DirectMusic Producer, but not SuperJam or Music Maestro.

CONVERTING MIDI FILES TO WAV FILES

If you use a midi file generator program - for example, the Music Producer detailed elsewhere on this page - you'll need to convert the midi files into wav files (PCM format), for use with Studio software.

Here are four methods. The last two overcome the one-minute handicap of using Window's own Sound Recorder, and were provided by Graham Ellis.

DIRECT RECORDING

This method involves simply running your PCs 'recorder' program whilst playing back the required midi file. However, this doesn't work with all Sound cards.

First, make sure the Midi file you want to play back is readily available (or, if recording direct from Music Producer, the required piece of music is ready to play.

  • Open the Sound Card's recorder program.
  • Open the MS Volume Controls, by right clicking on the 'loudspeaker' icon at the bottom right of the Task Bar and selecting 'Open Volume Controls' (or similar).
  • In the Volume Controls Dialog box, click Options, and click on Properties
  • Select the Recording radio button, and make sure the Mixed Output and Synthesizer (if you have it) boxes (at least) are selected. Deselecting the 'Microphone' box will prevent ambient sounds from being recorded. Click OK to close this dialog box.
  • On the Recording Control dialog box, make sure the Mixed Output box is selected (or Synthesizer, if that is the choice).
  • On the Sound Recorder program, start the recording process (don't worry about a 'blank' start - you can trim it off later with a sound edit program, or in Studio itself).
  • Start the Midi file playback.
  • When the midi file has finished, switch the recorder off, and playback the music to see if its ok for level etc.

 

REMEMBER THAT THE SOUND OF A MIDI FILE DEPENDS ON THE 'wave table' STUFF ON YOUR SOUND CARD AND, POSSIBLY, DIRECTX GM SOUNDS/Music Font (if installed). THE BETTER THEY ARE, THE BETTER YOUR MIDI MUSIC WILL SOUND ... A POOR SOUND CARD WILL PRODUCE MIDI MUSIC THAT SOUNDS LIKE A BLEND OF 'ARTIFICIAL' TONES RATHER THAN, SAY, VIOLINS, PIANOS, GUITARS ETC.

USING WINAMP (V2.73)

Using Winamp (available as a freeware download from various sites - try ZDNET.COM for example) - has been suggested and explained by several people on the Pinnacle Webboard, whose explanations have been combined and reproduced here. My thanks to those who have provided this method...

  • Create the midi file you want to convert (ok. So that's obvious!)
  • Open Winamp
  • Right click on title bar area of Winamp
  • Select Options, then click on Preferences
  • Under the heading Plug-ins, click on Input
  • In the Input plug-ins window on the right, click on "Winamp2 MIDI plug-in v2.51 (x86) [IN_MIDI.DLL]"
  • Click on the Configure button at the bottom.
  • Click on the Output tab of the dialog that appears (bet you didn't realise there was this much to Winamp!)wp9a4c4b23.gif
  • Click the check box next to "sample data (for VIS) from;" so there is a tick in it
  • In the selection box beneath, you will have some options. Try (test out) your Sound Card option first by selecting it and continuing with these instructions, and listening to the result. If you have the Microsoft Sound Mapper (comes with DirectX 8 I believe), test that out too: then select the one that gives the best results.
  • Over on the left side of the dialog, near the bottom, click the box next to "write wav file to" to put a tick in it, then click on the button below it to browse to the destination folder where you want the wav files to go. You can save yourself time and effort by saving to (new) folder in the Studio 'Sound Effects' folder - I create a folder called 'My music there, and save to that. It makes it easy to find the files from within Studio.
  • Click the OK button, close the Preferences  window, and Winamp is configured to save wav files of the midi files it plays
  • Now simply load the MIDI file into Winamp, and play it -  a wav file will also created to your selected destination file. (Remember that, until you change this set-up, any Midi file you play will also be converted to a wav file)
  • Play the newly created wav file. If it sounds too loud or too quiet, adjust the volume on the Winamp player and try again.
    If the wav file is silent, in Winamp go to     Options, Preferences, Input, Configure again and click on the Output tab. Select a different source in the "source" window select another and try again,  until it works. You can also try a different selection from the 'sample data...from' window, to select the best conversion.

 

Once you get it working you can leave it configured.  Every time you play a MIDI file with Winamp a wave file will be created. The Mp3 files are not changed.

USING WINDOWS OWN SOUND RECORDER

This tip comes from Graham Ellis - he has worked out two methods for overcoming that awful one minute recording default displayed by the built in Windows recorder...

METHOD 1

Start Windows Sound Recorder., then

  • Load up an existing .wav file of known length ( a LONG one)
  • Save a copy to another location to use as a 'master', and call it 'blank wave' or something.
  • Overwrite that with your new .wav recording (from a CD say). THE TRACK MUST NOT BE LONGER THAN YOUR BLANK .WAV FILE OR YOU'LL LOSE THE END
  • Save under a new file name to preserve your 'BLANK' file for future use if you wish. or "create" a new blank (master) .wav file:

 

METHOD 2

Start Windows Sound Recorder. Then

  • Press the red record button and let it record for 1 minute.
  • Press the record button again (WITHOUT pressing anything else!). You will see the recording time change to 120 seconds.
  • Keep doing this until you have a long enough blank master file and save to H/D as 'blank wave' or something.
  • Follow from 3) from METHOD 1

 

SMARTSOUND ROYALTY INFORMATION

This information has been provided by the SmartSound people themselves - so you can take it as gospel.

SmartSound music can be used royalty-free for any use (including broadcast) as long as it's part of a larger production (that is, you aren't selling a music CD made from our music). This includes web broadcasting. The only restriction relating to broadcast is, if you are asked by the broadcast station to file a CUE sheet, you need to. It doesn't cost anything additional, it just sees to it that the composer and publisher get some royalties from the station.

 

This is not the case with all royalty-free music; some companies have broadcast restrictions or require additional payment if you use their music for broadcast. Check with the company supplying the music to find out their rules.

 

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NOTE:  With Studio 11, SmartSound is no longer supplied with the software, but is still available to those who upgrade from Studio 10 (or earlier).  A new midi-based sound creation feature - ScoreFitter - is supplied instead.   ScoreFitter behaves in a similar manner to SmartSound, in that it can be tailored to fit time lengths precisely.  

 

Thus, those who upgrade their Studio to Version 11 will get both SmartSound and ScoreFitter!

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