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Sonic Fire Pro
I was wondering if any of you FCP editors use Sonic Fire Pro by SmartSound. The demo I saw at the Digital Cafe party was great…then, I sat through another demo on the exhibit floor. I’m really impressed with what it can do, and I’m looking to possibly replace our current DeWolfe library with this. Are any of ya’ll using Sonic Fire Pro? What are your thoughts on it? Anybody else here have thier interest piqued by the demo at the ProMax event?
Marc Rolph
Producer/Director
Mississippi State University“If you chase two rabbits, both will get away.”
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12 Replies
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Marc,
Its a very nice app, but limited by the available music in their collection and the cost of buying their collections.
If a particular peice of their music does happen to work for you, then undoubtedly it can make tailoring that tune easy as pie. But, their model depends on your buying volumes of their stuff, much of which you’d never wnat or need.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Post-production Supervisor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles -
I recently had a chance to get very familiar with several of the Strata Series disks from SmartSound, and to use them in the SonicFire Pro 4.
What I find most interesting, from an “I’m an editor, not an audio mixer” standpoint, is the flexibility there is in just one of their tracks.
For example, there are 10 tracks on one of the disks I have. Each one of those tracks not only has on average 6 different variations that dramatically change the way the music sounds, but then there are the “moods”, as they call them, that adds a dozen different ways the piece can sound/feel. Each variation has it’s own moods. So you’re looking at…well, a lot of math to determine how many different ways just one track can sound.
The flexibility of being able to make the track the exact length I need it to be is huge in my book. The ease in how you can take a piece of music that may have high energy for an open or a graphic break, and drop it down under a talking head by changing the variation or the mood is worth the price of admission right there. How may of us have struggled to get a musical transition at just the right spot?
Also, you don’t have to purchase all the music. You don’t even need to buy entire disks. The Maestro feature lets you preview music you haven’t even purchased yet via the internet within SonicFire Pro. You can just buy the tracks you need, as you need them, but have access to their entire library so you can test-drive many tracks as you make your musical decisions.
For flexibility, nothing beats a real composer scoring your video. In my humble opinion, the combination of SonicFire Pro and the Strata Series is the next best thing, especially if you don’t have a huge budget for mixing.
debe
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I’ve had it for a few months, but only used it a few times. It’s excellent, especially if you ever do corporate/industrial work. I think it’s an overall steal for what you get. I customized one of their preset packages for a little extra fee and ended up with five discs of solid, ridiculously flexible music.
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Thanks,
Yeah, it seems like buying one song gets you more than that one song. That looping music technology is amazing. It will be used for a lot of different purposes…and I think the versatility of it will be very valuable.
Marc Rolph
Producer/Director
Mississippi State University“If you chase two rabbits, both will get away.”
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Budget is certainly a concern. We’re paying an annual licensing fee for our music library now…and, it would be nice to not have to do that. Sure, it’s a big investment up front, but then it’s your forever.
Thanks for the reply. I’m really leaning toward going with this.
Marc Rolph
Producer/Director
Mississippi State University“If you chase two rabbits, both will get away.”
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More for less? Who wouldn’t like that?
Marc Rolph
Producer/Director
Mississippi State University“If you chase two rabbits, both will get away.”
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Marc,
We’ve been using SmartSound/Sonic Fire Pro almost since their inception. We have all of the CD’s and are extremely happy with it. Our client’s and rival companies are always amazed by it. I don’t know what we would do without it. Below is a link to a video that I just finished for a friend of mine’s restaurant. His restaurant features “Blues music” via Muzak so he wanted a blues track on his video. Sonic Fire came thru flawlessly. Check it out.
https://swflscenics.com/randy/rfmr.mov
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That was a great video. You did a good job of music editing. I’m certainly thinking this will be a good purchase for me. Thanks.
Marc Rolph
Producer/Director
Mississippi State University“If you chase two rabbits, both will get away.”
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Marc,
You’re quite welcome. And thanks for the compliment.
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I’ve been using SonicFire since 2.0 and *love* it! As has been said, when working on a deadline, having the ability to customize the length of a track is a huge timesaver. I remember the days of trying to cut CD tracks to length and sometimes spending hours trying to get it right. With SF I can have a track done in 5 minutes! Highly recommended!
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