Editing Audio with Video,
Audition and Soundbooth, Adobe
Audition 3, Waveform
Editing, Spectral Editing,
We
live in a video age -- we watch
video, shoot video, edit video, and
post videos online. Yet if you're
working on a video production,
professional or just for fun, you
know that audio is a key element of
the mix. Music is an important part
of our lives, especially with the
popularity of MP3 players. And in
watching video, the audio quality is
even more important than the video
-- we happily watch really low-res
YouTube videos with blocky
compression artifacts, but can't
stand it when the audio breaks up
and cuts in and out.
Even more, when editing a video
production, the audio is a key
element of establishing mood (with
background music and sound effects),
and in pulling us in to the action
(with clear dialog and crisp sound).
And
this is true even if you're just
making a quick home movie. Adding a
soundtrack under the titles and on
the DVD menu makes your production
much more enjoyable. Or a little
more work to add some background
audio will go a long way, with fun
sound effects or musical emphasis.
You may not be a Hollywood movie
maker, but your audiences are used
to that level of production, and
adding audio highlights and emphasis
can go a long way to making even
your amateur productions more
interesting.
You
can edit and enhance audio within
your video editing software (like
Adobe Premiere Pro or Adobe
Premiere Elements for
consumers), but for more
sophisticated cleaning and
filtering, and to mix soundtracks,
you need to move to a dedicated
audio tool like Adobe Soundbooth
or Adobe Audition. Adobe has
recently upgraded Audition to
version 3, so we'll walk through it
here to show the range of
capabilities you can use to create
and enhance your audio.
While the focus here is on the Adobe
suites of professional and consumer
software, Sony Creative Software
has a similar product line, with
Sony Vegas Pro, Sound Forge
and ACID Pro for professional
editing, and entry-level Home
Studio versions of these
applications for consumers (www.sonycreativesoftware.com).
The
first place to get started with
enhancing your audio is in your
video editing tool. Even consumer
tools like Adobe Premiere
Elements allow you to assemble
audio clips, add fade transitions,
change timing (speed up or slow
down), and apply audio filters and
effects such as delay, noise
removal, pitch shift, and reverb (www.adobe.com/products/premiereel).
Beyond enhancing a single track, you
also can add multiple overlay audio
tracks in your video editor (e.g.,
narration and soundtrack), and mix
the volume across all the tracks.
You even can unlink the audio from a
video clip in order to process it
separately, for example if it is out
of sync.
All
this is great if you have clean
audio with your video to begin with,
and you have a library of music and
sound effects ready to mix into your
production. But if the audio tracks
need more work -- for example to
remove a background rumble or
someone with a persistent cough --
or if you need to create additional
soundtrack or background music, then
it's time to move on to a dedicated
audio tool.
Adobe Audition
is a high-end audio editing tool,
designed as a all-in-one toolset for
professional audio production -- to
record audio, mix multiple tracks,
edit and enhance individual clips,
and master the final production (www.adobe.com/products/audition).
That can sound a bit intimidating to
people who are not audio pros,
although Audition is rather
straightforward to use with the
familiar Adobe interface, and has
nice presets for its filters and
effects that help you get started as
you work on a problem track.
A
little history: Audition was
originally released as part of the
Adobe Video Collection suite in May
2004, after Adobe acquired the
former Cool Edit Pro
application from Syntrillium
Software in May 2003. However, as
Audition evolved as a tool for audio
professionals it outgrew the needs
of the video and creative
professionals that were the focus of
the Adobe Creative Suite 3 (www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite).
As a result, Adobe replaced Audition
in the CS3 suite (released in
mid-2007), with a new audio tool,
Adobe Soundbooth CS3, which
provided task-based tools for
everyday audio editing and cleanup,
sound design, and music creation (www.adobe.com/products/soundbooth).
Meanwhile, Adobe Audition continued
as an independent application, and
the new Adobe Audition 3 was
released at the end of 2007 as
Adobe's flagship stand-alone tool
for professional audio production.
To
distinguish the two applications:
-
Adobe Soundbooth is part of
the Adobe Creative Suite 3 family.
It provides a subset of Audition's
features, designed for the needs
of video editors and creative
professionals who are not audio
professionals.
Soundbooth is not a multi-track
mixing tool -- It is focused on
single-clip editing, with
task-based tools for audio
cleaning. It also includes the
AutoComposer for
automatically generating scores in
selected styles to match existing
clips. Soundbooth is available both
for Windows and Intel-based Macs.
-
Adobe Audition is a
stand-alone full audio toolset
for professional audio production.
It's designed to take audio
professionals through the full
workflow of recording, mixing,
editing, and mastering audio. It
includes waveform editing of
single clips, multi-track mixing,
looping, MIDI, with
extensive effects and tools
for audio restoration and
enhancement. Audition is available
only for Windows.
Soundbooth: Wave editing & effects
For
creating music, Audition does not
have the AutoComposer automatic
score generation feature in
Soundbooth (like SmartSound
Sonicfire,
www.smartsound.com). Instead it
has extensive capabilities for
creating loop-based music, and for
mixing recorded audio with loops and
now MIDI music.
For
more on Adobe Creative Suite 3
- See
Adobe Creative Suite 3: Summary for
an overview of the CS3 applications,
suites, and pricing
- See
Adobe CS3 Production Suite: Summary
for more on the CS3 video and audio
tools
For
previous versions of Adobe
Audition
- See
Adobe Production Studio: First Look
for Audition 2.0
- See
Audio Tools for Video Editors on
Audition 1.0
For Soundbooth CS3
- See
Adobe Soundbooth:
Audio for Video
Find
Adobe Audition 3 on
Amazon.com
Adobe Audition 3
is not a huge re-write or re-design
of the product. Instead, it picks up
a couple of the enhancements in
Soundbooth, and provides a broad
range of significant enhancements
across the application, both to
individual features, and in enhanced
performance and more efficient
workflow.
Audition: Multitrack mixing
In
particular, Audition 3 provides
faster editing with direct
on-clip drag-and-drop editing as in
Soundbooth. The amazing Frequency
space / Spectral editing view also
now supports the Photoshop-like
spectral editing Effects
Paintbrush and Spot Healing Brush.
It
adds new effects including
Convolution Reverb, Analog Delay,
Mastering tool, and Tube-modeled
Compressor, along with iZotope
time stretching. Plus there's
improved noise reduction and phase
correction tools.
In
addition, Audition now includes
MIDI recording and mixing, with
a piano roll editor for MIDI tracks,
using industry-standard VSTi virtual
instruments.
Audition 3 is available for Windows
XP and Vista for $349, or for a $99
upgrade from all past versions of
Adobe Audition and Adobe Production
Studio.
Audition starts up by default in the
Multitask View, the
multi-track mixing mode where you
can arrange many layers of tracks
with recorded clips, loops, and now
MIDI music. But Audition is also a
full-fledged editor for individual
tracks -- you can record new clips
(and even multiple inputs, with live
monitoring), import clip files, or
double-click on a track to switch to
the Edit View to work on individual
waveforms.
Multitrack view
In
the Waveform edit mode you
can play though the clip, zoom in
(even to see and edit the individual
samples), and quickly cut and paste
sections.
Waveform editing
Audition 3 also adds several
convenience features for faster
editing. The direct waveform
editing tools appear as floating
on-clip controls, so you can adjust
the volume for the selected portion
of a waveform and add fades with
on-clip click-and-drag handles.
Similarly, the clever Top/Tail
view zooms into the beginning
and the end of a loop or clip to
help you quickly add precise fades,
while keeping the whole file in view
in the scrolling center region.
Beyond straightforward editing,
Audition includes more than 50
audio effects, including
analysis and restoration tools to
correct and enhance difficult clips.
It also supports third-party VST and
DirectX plug-ins. You can apply the
effects individually, using presets
and previews to check the results,
or use the Mastering Rack to apply
and preview multiple effects
simultaneously.
For
example, you can restore recordings
from old vinyl records, remove
hisses and hums, and fix clipped
audio and phase problems. Other cool
features include pitch correction to
correct off-pitch performances, and
vocal/instrumental extraction to
create a cappella or karaoke-ready
tracks.
Audition 3 has new audio healing
and selection tools to edit or
remove specific sounds or certain
frequencies, Adaptive Noise
Reduction to find and remove
unwanted noise that changes over
time, and Automatic Phase Correction
to align the channels of a stereo
waveform. There's also a new suite
of analog-modeled filter and
distortion guitar effects, to use
with guitars or other instruments.
Plus, Audition 3 includes iZotope
time stretching to speed up or
slow down a clip, altering tempo
without changing the pitch, or
changing pitch without tempo
distortion.
Editing waveforms is fun, and
somewhat intuitive, but it gets
messy when there are multiple
sources mixed up together in the
single waveform -- multiple
instruments and vocals, much less
background noise from the venue, or
hum from the air conditioners, or
other unfortunate glitches like
somebody coughing in the audience or
the ring of a cell phone. When you
have a real-world recording, or a
mixed production, you can no longer
isolate a particular element or
sample to edit -- Or can you?
This is the beauty of Audition's
amazing Spectral Frequency
Display view, which allows you
to analyze your clips by
visualizing the frequency over time
(or pan or phase), so you can
distinguish voices, instruments, and
transients. Even better, if you can
see it, you can edit it -- you
actually can apply your familiar
Photoshop editing experience to
working on audio.
Spectral frequency view
Use
the new lasso tool to make
free-form selections in frequency
space to isolate specific sounds,
then use the new Effects
Paintbrush to apply effects to
the selection, or apply the new
Spot Healing Brush to smooth
over a region and automatically
repair clicks, pops, and other
noises. You can even import and
export the Spectral Bitmap to
actually edit audio in Adobe
Photoshop.
Multitrack Mixing & MIDI
Once you've cleaned up your
individual audio clips, you can use
Audition's Multitrack View to
combine them into the final mix.
Audition also supports loop-based
soundtrack creation, so you can
arrange, extend, and mix loops that
automatically match the global
session tempo and key. The product
includes a library of some 5,000
uncompressed, 32-bit, royalty-free
loops, plus 20 royalty-free music
beds, at 15- and 30-second lengths.
Mixing Loops
As
in the waveform view, Audition 3
includes helpful interface
enhancements for faster editing,
including mixing by dragging clips,
ripple delete, and grouping to trim
and delete, split, add fades across
multiple tracks. There's also a new
batch feature to apply specific
formats, locations, and filename
templates to a group of files.
The
big addition in Audition is MIDI
editing, with the MIDI piano
roll editor and support for
industry-standard VSTi virtual
instruments. You can control and
read from attached MIDI devices
including synthesizers and
keyboards, and edit note, velocity,
and controller values in the piano
roll editor.
MIDI piano roll editor
While Audition is not designed as a
full-up MIDI sequencer, it provides
enough support to now record, edit,
and mix MIDI into your productions.
MIDI mixing
As
you can see, there's a lot to
Audition. Audio professionals can
dive in and harness the power, but
Audition also can be useful for less
audio-centric video editors who need
to work more deeply with their
audio. For example, while Soundbooth
provides nice task-based tools for
audio cleanup, Audition offers a
broader range of more powerful
tools, with both quick-to-use
presets and extensive custom
parameters. And if you need custom
royalty-free soundtracks for your
production, while Soundbooth's
AutoComposer automatic score
generation tool is a quick solution,
Audition gives you much more
creative freedom to mix loop-based
tracks, for example with drum
emphasis to sync to an imported
video clip.
Audition 3 also includes support for
surround sound, more than
20 file formats, high-quality
sample rate conversions (for CD,
video, and DVD), and extensive
mastering tools for the final
mixdown. Plus, Adobe has enhanced
the performance of Audition 3,
especially to take advantage of new
multi-core processors, so the
optimized mixing engine supports
more tracks and effects and
increased complexity on the same
machine.
Audition is designed as a complete
toolset for professional audio
production -- to record, mix, edit,
and master -- but it also is
accessible to video editing types
who want to dig deeper and be more
creative with their audio. And, it's
tightly integrated with the Adobe
CS3 suite to fit well into existing
workflows. The upgrade to version 3
adds both useful new capabilities
and more intuitive editing controls.
Use it to clean up old tape and
vinyl tracks, sweeten live
recordings and voice-overs, design
your own music mixes ... and much
more.
You
can try out Adobe Audition (and
Soundbooth) by downloading free
trial versions from the Adobe
website.
See also:
Summary: Adobe Audition 3 -
Audition vs. Soundbooth, New
Features, Features Summary
Adobe Audition 3
www.adobe.com/products/audition
Adobe Soundbooth CS3
www.adobe.com/products/soundbooth
Adobe Creative Suite
3
www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite
Adobe Premiere Pro
www.adobe.com/products/premiere
Adobe Premiere
Elements
www.adobe.com/products/premiereel
Sony Creative
Software
www.sonycreativesoftware.com
SmartSound Sonicfire
www.smartsound.com
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