adjusting sound effects?

[kr236rk]

hi,

just put a try-out soundtrack together from 4 or 5 pre-recorded mp3 files - it's great the way you can just select sound files then drag them over to the audio tracks, and loads of empty tracks

but the tracks are small if you want to tweak them - i know you can stretch the width of audio tracks: is this why, to make it easier to manipulate the volume lines?

those little dots which anchor the sound lines - can you click them into being? at the moment i'm having to slide them along the lines like beads on a counting frame, and this is tricky cos everythings so small, the dots are smaller than pin heads! :o

i found by double clicking on sound tracks that this opens up a larger window but the display shows a wave form, not the sound-line and dots - can you get this linear control larger / more detailed please?

many thanks

Ric

[Wheat King]

Yes you can go into properties and view the key frames in there. Select a clip Click on effects. and click on edit effect or you can right click and select show properties, then click on the stopwatch icon to show keyframes.

[kr236rk]

Yes you can go into properties and view the key frames in there. Select a clip Click on effects. and click on edit effect or you can right click and select show properties, then click on the stopwatch icon to show keyframes.

o wow - that sounds promising - made some good progress with the audio files as they were but if i can get in a little closer that will be excellent!

will update / with thanks

R

[Bob]

Jamal's instructions are not for PE3. Since this post is In the PE3 subforum, I'm assuming you have PE3. Select the clip. The properties panel is already showing. Select the property/effect you want to adjust. If keyframes are not being shown in the panel, there will be a button at the top of the properties panel labeled "Show Keyframes". Click it. Keyframes should now show and you can work with them there.

[Wheat King]

Apologies Ric, Did you you get it to work?

[kr236rk]

Jamal's instructions are not for PE3. Since this post is In the PE3 subforum, I'm assuming you have PE3. Select the clip. The properties panel is already showing. Select the property/effect you want to adjust. If keyframes are not being shown in the panel, there will be a button at the top of the properties panel labeled "Show Keyframes". Click it. Keyframes should now show and you can work with them there.

thanks Bob and Jamal,

have completed a 'try out' soundtrack which sounds good (to me at any rate) but i will be tweaking it over the coming days / weeks so i will be able to work with the key framing

btw - i capture/mix everything in Acoustica MixCraft then mix it down to mp3, then import these files to PE3

if there's anything i am unhappy about i open the mp3 in SoundForge and tweak it in there - excellent software - then save it as mp3 again where i can either (re)import to MixCraft as a 'sound' or incorporate it straight into the PE3 project; i sometimes use Nero for grabbing sounds (line in/condenser mic) and everything generally gets pre-amped then filtered in through M-Audio USB FastTrack

R

[kr236rk]

PE3. Select the clip. The properties panel is already showing. Select the property/effect you want to adjust. If keyframes are not being shown in the panel, there will be a button at the top of the properties panel labeled "Show Keyframes". Click it. Keyframes should now show and you can work with them there.

ok

having opened the key frame of an audio clip in properties, how do i add the anchor points [dots] to the audio line please?

thanks

R

[Bob]

keyframe.jpg

In the screen capture above, the stopwatch icon to the right of the volume property is an animation toggle. Click once to allow keyframes to be created. Click again to delete all keyframes and stop keyframing. Once Keyframing is enabled, position the current time indicater (cti) to the position where you want to add a keyframe. Change the value of the clip volume and a keyframe will automatically be added.
You can also add a keyframe by clicking on the middle dot (circled in yellow) -- if a keyframe already exists at that location, clicking will delete that keyframe. The arrows left and right of the add/delete keyframe button are navigation buttons. The left button moves the cti to the previous keyframe, the right button moves to the next. The position of the keyframe may be moved by dragging the keyframe dot to the desired location. If keyframes are close together, the + - slider above can be used to expand the scale.

[kr236rk]

brilliant!

also - selecting 'bezier' for the volume dots turns them into hour glass shapes which then let you drag-control the volume in the digit window at Properties Panel left - can you also manipulate these figures with the keyboard or is it strictly a mouse/drag operation please?

i ask because the mouse can move a lot of volume if you are not careful, it would be handy to have a fine adjustment on the volume select?

many thanks - can't wait to start editing the soundtrack again with these new tools

R

[Bob]

It doesn't need to be a bezier keyframe to drag the keyframe up or down to control the volume. It will do that with any of the keyframe interpolation methods. The advantage of Bezier interpolation is that you can control the shape of the interpolation curve on either or both sides of the keyframe and have smoother transitions.

No keyboard controls to adjust volume. You have three methods, drag the keyframe up or down in the timeline, manually type a specific value in the volume property field, or place the cursor over the volume field (the cursor will change to indicate you can scrub it) and drag left or right to change the value. If you press the shift key while scrubbing, it will change 10 times faster. Bezier keyframes have handles which you can drag with the mouse to adjust the curve in the timeline. It's too bad that PE3 didn't implement using the mouse wheel to change the volume when the volume parameter is selected.

You can increase the height of an audio track in the timeline by placing the cursor over the dividing line between the audio tracks on the left side and draging with the mouse. That will make it easier to see what you are doing and get finer control.

Later versions of PE have an audio mixer which lets you adjust volume and create keyframes on the fly as you play the clip. But, it generally generates too many keyframes making it harder to go back and clean up. It's generally better to just add the keyframes manually.

[kr236rk]

It doesn't need to be a bezier keyframe to drag the keyframe up or down to control the volume. It will do that with any of the keyframe interpolation methods. The advantage of Bezier interpolation is that you can control the shape of the interpolation curve on either or both sides of the keyframe and have smoother transitions.

cool

No keyboard controls to adjust volume. You have three methods, drag the keyframe up or down in the timeline, manually type a specific value in the volume property field, or place the cursor over the volume field (the cursor will change to indicate you can scrub it) and drag left or right to change the value. If you press the shift key while scrubbing, it will change 10 times faster. Bezier keyframes have handles which you can drag with the mouse to adjust the curve in the timeline. It's too bad that PE3 didn't implement using the mouse wheel to change the volume when the volume parameter is selected.

when you say 'handles' you mean the 'hour glass' shape please?

You can increase the height of an audio track in the timeline by placing the cursor over the dividing line between the audio tracks on the left side and draging with the mouse. That will make it easier to see what you are doing and get finer control.

yes, and then by magnifying the clip you get expanded length as well - the two actions together would give the fine tuning i am seeking

Later versions of PE have an audio mixer which lets you adjust volume and create keyframes on the fly as you play the clip. But, it generally generates too many keyframes making it harder to go back and clean up. It's generally better to just add the keyframes manually.

several of my mp3's are double tracked in MixCraft - i notice the two tracks are revealed as twin graphic displays on the audio PE3 clip?

can you overlap audio tracks in the time line, btw?

many thanks

R

[Bob]

when you say 'handles' you mean the 'hour glass' shape please?

Not quite. When you change the interpolation method to "Bezier", the symbol will become an hourglass in the properties panel. But, the handles show up in the timeline. Here are some screenshots to show what I'm talking about.

bezier.jpg

The far left image is the default linear keyframe, the others are the same location on the timeline but using bezier keyframes. The second image is how it looks when you just apply the Bezier keyframes. Note the blue arrows coming out of the keyframe icons. Those are the handles. When a particular keyframe is selected, you'll have a left and right handle, as shown. When you move the cursor over the blue arrow a hollow circle will appear with the cursor. That's a signal that you can drag the arrow to change the shape of the curve. The third image dragged each arrow slightly horizontally to broaden the top of the curve. You can drag in any direction. In the final image, the right arrow was dragged down at an angle to change the shape of the curve as shown.

can you overlap audio tracks in the time line, btw?

You can place multiple audio tracks just like you can place multiple video tracks. And, yes, the audio tracks can overlap so they play at the same time.

FYI, the two waveforms shown in the track are the left and right stereo channels. Those are generated when you first add the clip and aren't dynamic.

[kr236rk]

many thanks, that is quite amazing - i am chamfing at the bit (or is that foaming at the mouth?) to get back to the audio edit ~ couple of 'live' sound effects to collect then i can do the final sound tracking

and i won't lose the monitor this time!

will update



Ric

[kr236rk]

hi,

final (short) edit is here although the whole project is about 15 minutes in length

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rglo4za0EHQ

was very impressed with PE3's audio editing which allowed me to juggle some tricky transitions

one of the reasons i use PE3 is because i experiment with single frame animation and home-transfer my films to dv and Granite Bay Deflicker filter can really help out now and then - i don't think GB filters work with later Adobe softwares or indeed at all on Vista, which is a shame, so i will stop with PE3 for the time being

for web uploads i simply convert the PE3 avi to H264 in Roxio Creator which is the best web codec i have discovered to date.

many thanks

R

[Bill Hunt]

Upthread a bit, there was a reference to editing an MP3 in Soundforge and then saving it as an MP3. If one cares about the quality of the Audio, if you have a highly compressed source, MP3, and you edit that, do not recompress to MP3 again. This is like opening a JPEG and then saving it as a JPEG. You will like the results much better if you Save you Audio as a PCM/WAV file at the proper bit-rate and sample-rate as your deliver scheme, say 48KHz 16-bit for DVD.

Hunt