Soundbooth -- is it worth it?

[Chris Russell]

I am looking at buying a new computer system and getting into the digital video era (for example, my daughter plays competitive soccer and Iwant to start recording her games and generating highlight clips). I am looking at the Dell systems and notice that the DellXPS system come with Adobe Elements Studio which includes Soundbooth in addition to PE and Photoshop Elements. What exactly does Soundbooth do and is it something that would enhance my video?

Thanks and love the website!

Chris

[Wheat King]

Soundbooth has some cool features the most noteable for me are the spectral view of a wave form that allows you to select and eliminate a sound you want to take out. It's supposed to be very good at building a score for a movie.

[Chuck Engels]

One of the nice features, besides creating original music from a number of different genres, is you can add a video clip and create music the length of the clip automatically. It is a great program, I wish there was more time to learn all of the features.

There are instructions on creating the music templates, not easily done however, so you can create your own. You can even take existing music and manipulate it if you know how. Just wish there was more time in the day.

[Chris Russell]

Thanks for the replies. What sound capabilities does PE4 have? In other words if I want to add an existing song as music will it let me? You also mention that Soundbooth fits music to lenght of video. Dos PE not do this? In other words if I have 5 minute song clip and 3 minute video can I shorten the song clip to fit the video in PE4? Will PE 4 allow multiple audio tracks?

Chris

[VernonRobinson]

Thanks for the replies. What sound capabilities does PE4 have? In other words if I want to add an existing song as music will it let me? You also mention that Soundbooth fits music to lenght of video. Dos PE not do this? In other words if I have 5 minute song clip and 3 minute video can I shorten the song clip to fit the video in PE4? Will PE 4 allow multiple audio tracks?

Chris

PE will allow you to add virtually unlimited audio tracks. You can also shorten a song, or put the same song on a track multiple times. I am not familiar with Soundbooth, but PE will allow you to put video on a track and delete the audio or delete the video and leave the audio. It can do rudimentary things like that without issue. Elements also has "presets that allow you to affect balance, bass, delay, high pass filter, low pass filter, reverb, and volume. There are other presets, but I hope you are getting the idea.

Adobe allows a free trial of Premiere Elements on their website. Give it a spin and see what you think.

Regards,
-Vernon

[Dave C]

Soundbooth doesn't have multiple audio tracks, so you can't compose a score across multiple tracks like you can in Elements. In Elements (or Pro or AE) you have multiple tracks which allows you to "stack" sounds and play them at the same time. If you were composing a storm for instance you could put the wind on one track, the rain, on the second, and a thunder crash on another, and play them at the same time. With only one track in sound booth you can't do that. I have soundbooth, but would rather use Elements for composing. (IMHO)
..... Dave

[RJ Johnston]

Then try Adobe Audition 2.0 if Premiere Elements doesn't meet your needs.

[Dave C]

I think audition 3 is out now.

[RJ Johnston]

I'm still on Auditon 1.5. Not sure what 2.0 or 3.0 would add.

[John 'twosheds' McDonald]

Here are a couple of short tutorials that give some insight into Soundbooth:-

http://www.wrigleyvideo.com/videotutori ... dbooth.htm

[Chuck Engels]

Soundbooth lets you compose a audio track (soundtrack) the length of a specific video clip.
This is good for keeping the same theme of music throughout an entire movie.

Here are some nice short clips about the features
http://www.adobe.com/products/soundbooth/features/

There are mulitpile tracks in Soundbooth also, how else would you mix audio?
There is only one video track allowed.
This is not ProTools by any means but it is a very nice audio program at a reasonable price that has great potential.

[Dave C]

If you can tell me how to get multiple audio tracks in sound booth I would be extremely grateful. I've watched every tutorial I can find and searched the Adobe soundbooth forum with no luck.

[Dave C]

Hi,
I checked the Adobe site you posted Chuck, on the " compare with Audition page http://www.adobe.com/products/soundbooth/compare/ it lists Soundbooth as "single asset editing" and Audition as Low-latency multitrack mixing". If I can multitrack in Soundbooth that would save me the cost of buying Audition, is it possible?
.....Dave

[Chuck Engels]

Hi Dave,
I don't have Soundbooth on my laptop and that is what I use at work all day.
After looking around the internet it seems as though there is no way to add more than one track but I find that very hard to believe.

I have not spent much time in Soundbooth yet, created a couple of scores and looked at the document for creating music files, but don't have much experience with it yet.
It is very hard to believe that I paid $300 for a Audio Editor that only has one track for audio

[Dave C]

I also find it hard to believe Chuck . Soundbooth came with my CS3 package, but it would be nice if Adobe allowed an upgrade to Audition (from Soundbooth) without having to pay full price for that program as well.
.........Dave