Richard Herd
Forum Replies Created
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[Scott Witthaus] “would be more efficient for me to send it out “
CMD-8 in X is very powerful indeed. But the stuff I’m posting about is already in PP.cs6 and was well used in Sound Track Pro. It’s not like these features are outside the skill set of the picture editor.
Just in case anyone with any power is paying attention to this pleb, I’ll say it again: Roles Inspector where the roles are treated as inputs into a mixer. 😉
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[Franz Bieberkopf] “Some have said in this forum that PIOP are a poorly implemented feature”
The details of the critique, if memory serves (always a bit dubious), were that workflows were started and maintained on on-going projects, then the implementation of PIOPs broke the previous workflow. So moving forward accessing old projects required an additional keystroke or two.
In spirit, you’re right on the dot, bolting on features to established workflows will definitely create unforeseen real-world problems.
Having said that. Risk/reward of (the imaginary software I’m calling) Roles Inspector would be a nice benefit.
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[Jeremy Garchow] “the Legend of FCS3”
Here is the multiband compressor, in Legend.
And here is Audition’s.
Just sayin’. X gotta compete.
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[Franz Bieberkopf] “frankly skeptical that Apple will even bother with it.”
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[Franz Bieberkopf] “we’re talking about pretend software again aren’t we?”
I recall being very skeptical about About apple implementing PIOPs. I recall thinking it’s just pretend, and they won’t bother with it.
So I’m compelled to jump in at a certain place. Roles Inspector where roles are inputs is an easy solve for Apple.
Above I listed the pretend software Role Inspector grid, which included a fader, for those who likey.
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[Walter Soyka] “how would you mix 11 simultaneous sources at the same time”
I know you asked Franz (and it was probably rhetorical); however,…
This happens all the time with a single engineer. It’s at the heart of the difference between a live mix and DAW.
Easy example, a live band that has a lead singer, three backup singers, kick drum, snare, toms, high hat overheads, guitar, bass, piano-low, piano-mid, piano-hi…maybe some horns. This can go on and on. To complicate things, a live mix also has a house mix and a monitor mix–often many monitor mixes. Very frequently, the monitor mix (aka stage mix) is literally an engineer working his or her magic, just barely hiding in the wings. (Anyway, the DSP is quite interesting also.)
In my scenario for X, each mic input is the same as a Role.
I would also want the drum inputs to be subbed to a Drums Role, same with backup singers subbed to a Backup Singers Role and some other subs, etc.
Here’s a gain staging solve example:
In a particular song, it’s really important for the kick and bass to pound through the mix more than anything else, even the vocals. No problem. Since they are defined as Roles, they can be sent to Submix 1, and everything else sent to Sub2 (or whatever secret sauce a particular engineer makes), so that the compression on sub2 is sidechained to sub1. In this way, anytime the bass and drum hit in sub1, the compression algorithm kicks and sub2 is ducked–in very very precise ways, measured in milliseconds, 1000 keyframes per second. For the audience, the experience would be heavy beats and low end, and in the right composition, people will dance.
A similar issue happens in film and broadcast, where there are SFX, Foley, Score, dialogue. Gain staging is that creative solve that aims at story and emotion of a mix. Because cinema audio is not actually live, the waveforms in the editing side of the daw behave as inputs. But, like in a musical composition, once the ins and outs are set (vis-a-vis, the musicians know which measure to begin and end on), the waveform timecode is essentially moot, and in X is set via the (P)IOPs. It’s also important that DAWs editing timebase can be in many forms, video frames, film frames, feet-on-film, beats, measures and time signature.
A bit more, here. In a cinema scene where a guy walks into a bar and orders a drink, there might be dozens of audio cues; his footsteps for example as he walks across the room. The gain staging, here, is what would the editor call that bit of Foley, so that it busses/sends to the Role he or she would want to treat in a way that best conveys the mood and story? Here’s where, above I can’t remember who mentioned, there could be some great opportunity to overlap between roles and keywords, where the keywords are “footsteps” but the Role is “Foley.” Suppose the story calls for the footsteps to be prominent, well, the editor might not want to revise the gain staging and role select the room ambience as as ROOM (all of the various elements) and then the Footsteps as their own Role, so the compression emphasizes the Footsteps.
in sum, Roles are a sweet way to contemplate and solve gain staging. Of course, anyone could give every audio element its own Role name and keep the old way of how tracks organize media. 😉
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[Jeremy Garchow] “You don’t get off that easy, mister”
Sooo wrong, man. I get off easy.
[Jeremy Garchow] “‘s FCPX and everything must be perfect”
In no way do I think it should be perfect, and by “perfect” I mean “a fully featured DAW, aka ProTools,” yet the audio in X needs to compete with Premiere CS6, with effects loops and bussing. And that’s about it. Granted, there are some very cool techniques with Compounding. Repating myself: Hoping for a Roles Inspector where Roles are inputs. We do not need no stinking tracks. Here’s more: we do not need no stinking keyframes!
[Jeremy Garchow] “Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 didn’t allow mixing with the mixer during an evolving edit since the keyframes weren’t clip based but track and absolute time based? “
Answer: No.
I have not keyframed audio since Sound Track Pro. Why? The compression was easy to get to.
[Jeremy Garchow] “the ASCII audio filters with exactly zero real time feedback or measurement”
Funny. Just Thursday last week, I opened up an old project (7.0.3) from a different editor and the audio was all wonky, so I figured, Hey I’ll just use the FCP Legend filter. What a mess! I did not use it…render? really? That’s so 2009.
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Alas, the screen cap is CS6 audio.
You can’t sidechain, not that I can find, if anyone knows how in the App, please post. I send to Audition for that. Pretty clever mixes are easy enough using subs and a bit of gainstage planning,
I feel like this is the competition for Apple. They have to compete with this ability.
Granted there are some clever mixes possible using Compounds and the dynamics effects in X are rippin’ cool!
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[Jeremy Garchow] “I’m sure that there are engineers that use faders (duh) but also there are engineers that don’t, or don’t as much.”
If I were at a engineer’s mixing/mastering session and he was on the faders, I would have very specific questions about dynamics. And if the answers were wrong, I’d leave.
Simple off-the-shelf compressors are measured in milliseconds. That’s 1,000 keyframes per second. Engineers and techs talk about serial and parallel loops, gain staging, and dynamics. All that mastered into a stereo pair mp3 for earbuds. It’s an amazing creative skill they have.
But really…do we need that kind of audio detail in a video NLE?
A little more mixology and that’s probably enough.
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That’s good to know.
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Cool!
I’ve already sent it about a dozen times 🙂
