Just got my weekly "deal" e-mail from SmartSound. It featured one of their music DVD's for "half-price," and listed another at that reduced price. What caught my eye was something at the bottom of the page: "SonicFire Pro 5" free with the purchase of one of these music DVDs for $49.99 (normally $99.00). Now, this is the Express Track edition of SonicFire Pro 5, not the full scoring edition, but it's still a great deal. If you have not experienced SonicFire Pro, play the tutorial on it, to get some idea of its power and usefulness in generating music for your video productions.
While I use, and strongly recommend the Scoring Edition, this "free" version is quite nice and that it is being included with the "sale" discs is a surprise to me. They had only offered this when you purchased one of the $99.00 discs. I do not know what incentive will be offered to the registered users of the Express Track Edition, when going to the Scoring Edition, but would guess that it will be an easy upgrade. Since I have the Scoring Edition, I probably will not be offered this deal, so will not know how "sweet" SmarSound makes it. Someone else will have to fill in that info.
Note: SonicFire Pro, unlike the similar QuickTracks for Premiere, is NOT a plug-in. It is a free-standing program, but is very powerful, when coupled with any of the Strata Series SmartSound music DVDs. My hope is that SonicFire Pro 6 WILL be a plug-in for Premiere (Elements and Pro). The QuickTracks plug-in is free for pre PE7 users and is included in PE7.
Web site: http://www.smartsound.com/sonicfire/purchase.html
Now, if they'd just put some of the BackStage music on sale. At $199/disc, I have to just be patient and wait...
Hunt