Using Accessories to Improve the Audio from Built-in Camcorder Mics - How to achieve professional sound with consumer camcorders

Automated Soundtrack Tools - Check out the latest from SonicPro and from Sony. All about SmartSound Sonicfire Pro 4 and Sony Media Software Cinescore  Both of these soundtrack creation tools now allow you better customize your soundtrack by actually adjusting the mix and mood of the various soundtrack elements, providing a whole new level of control over the emotional feel of the piece in sync with the visuals. more

Smart Sound Video Maestro - 

SmartSound Movie Maestro is an inexpensive ($49) all in one package that makes it amazingly easy to create music sound tracks for your home and special event videos and movies. You can easily create alternate versions of soundtracks - you can easily trim or stretch a soundtrack to fit the exact length of your show. review

Also check SmartSound's professional products for audio editing and sound track creation.

  Blaze Media Pro ($50) is  a powerful, all-in-one multimedia software application supporting playback of all popular media formats, audio and video playlist, audio and video conversions, video construction and decompiling, audio editing and recording, audio and data CD recording, video processing (average, brightness, contrast, gamma, edge enhance, sharpen, soften, resizing, resample, dither, add border), video capture, media management, and much more!

The conversion features are easy to use, yet very powerful. Both audio and video formats can be converted. Supported conversions include CD to WAV, CD to MP3, CD to WMA, CD to OGG, WAV to MP3, MP3 to WAV, WAV/MP3 to WMA, WMA to WAV/MP3, WAV/MP3 to OGG, OGG to WAV/MP3, WAV/MP3 to CD, WAV/MP3 Compression, and two-way conversions among MPEG, AVI, Multi-Page TIFF, and FLIC. The audio content of video files can also be extracted and saved to the WAV format. The CD Converter module provides a CDDB auto-save feature, which enables track title, artist, and album information to be dynamically downloaded from the Internet CD Database and used when converting CD tracks to WAV, MP3, WMA, or OGG. This feature is fully configurable to use as much or little of the information desired in any preferred order. Of course, this feature can also be disabled for those who do not wish to be connected to the Internet while converting CD tracks.

The full-featured audio editor's capabilities include Amplify, Null Amplitude, Insert/Delete Silence, Insert Noise, Insert Pulse, Insert Sinus, Fade In/Out, Invert, Normalize, Reverse, Delay, Flanger, Vibrato, Stretch, Mix. Mix from File, Paste from File, Paste from Clipboard, Copy to Clipboard, Delete Selection, Save Selection, Zoom, Convert, Undo, Redo, Cut, Copy, Paste, Crop, Filters (Band Pass, Low Pass, High Pass, Low Shelf, High Shelf), Input/Output Volume Control, Audio Information Read/Write, and much more. Furthermore, the audio editor can be used for audio file recording from any available source (such as cassette; record player; phone line; TV tuner audio; CD player; line-In; auxiliary; microphone; wave-out; and wave-out mix) as well

Books about Audio

Sound for Digital Video  - This is a wonderful book for those who are getting started in audio for video, as well as for the professional who needs to take the next step up to improve their audio production techniques. In many ways, capturing and managing audio for video is a lot more difficult than video.

Unfortunately, the distinguishing feature of many low-budget films and TV shows is often the poor sound quality. If you are a filmmaker shooting DV on a limited budget, you can learn from Tomlinson Holman, a film sound production pioneer. The book covers everything you need to know in order to make your films sound fully professional productions. Holman offers suggestions that you can apply to your own project from preproduction through postproduction and provides tips and solutions on production, editing, and mixing. more

Producing Great Sound for Digital Video educates beginning and experienced filmmakers on the intricacies of creating an outstanding soundtrack, from preproduction planning through the final mix. more

Principles of Digital Audio and Video explains the underlying principles and practical applications of digital A/V, and shows where the technology is likely to take us into the next century. It provides the fundamentals for learning how to screen and select A/V system components, and how to choose the best design approaches for a particular system. This is a well organized reference which enables a clear understanding of many new and emerging issues relating to analog-digital conversion, video cameras, digital transmission and processing, compression, recording and storage, postproduction, and much more. more