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MillimeterThe Sampler — November 23, 2005
Nov 23, 2005 10:51 AM
SmartSound Partners With Avid Liquid
As we noted in our Sampler feature about SmartSound (Northridge, Calif.) several months ago, one reason the royalty-free music provider has grown so quickly the last few years is that is has successfully partnered with a number of different companies to get its software directly into the hands of the producers, engineers, and editors mostly likely to use its product. Certainly one of the most fruitful of those partnerships has been with Tewksbury, Mass.-based Avid Technology, maker of industry-standard video editing and media storage systems, among other things. The latest wrinkle in that relationship is the embedding of SmartSound technology into Avid Liquid's nonlinear editing hardware and software (originally developed by Pinnacle Systems).
According to Kevin Klingler, CEO of SmartSound, "Users of Pinnacle Liquid Edition had frequently asked us for a way to intregrate our technology into their workflow. Avid Liquid does this. Creating high-quality music for a film's audio soundtrack in Avid Liquid is quick and simple through the use of SmartSound's technology."
Richard Manfredi, SmartSound's public relations director, explained the basics of their highly flexible technology this way, when we spoke in the spring. "Our entire music library is encoded with information [that] allows our software to read any track and actually tell that track to fit into a specific length," he says. "Say you need 42 seconds of soundtrack for a project, and you want it to come from a piece of music on one of our discs that's three minutes long. Our technology tools break each track into what we call SmartBlocks and each block is a two-, three-second part of the song; maybe a few measures. Those blocks are encoded with information that not only tells the software how long each of those blocks are, but also which blocks will make musical sense to other blocks within the piece.
"So, going back to our example, if you tell it, 'I need 42 seconds of orchestral music and I need it to have a musical beginning and a musical ending,' the software will say, in effect, 'Okay, we know these are good musical beginning blocks and these are the ones that are good ending blocks,' and it will also give you as many options as possible for reconstructing the blocks along the timeline to get it to that 42 seconds. It will suggest an option, but you can also scroll through other variations in a pulldown box, and each time you do, you'll see three to seven variations; different ways to reconstruct it. Or, if you prefer, you can actually go through a track block by block and construct it yourself, if that's what you want to do. The software will still give you hints about what blocks fit with other blocks, but you can ignore them and do what you want, or bring in blocks from other songs even. It's very easy to use."
And using that technology in conjunction with Avid Liquid makes the job that much faster and easier. Avid Product Manager James Thill says, "SmartSound provides our users with a unique music scoring solution that quickly and intuitively provides professional-quality results for filmmakers and editors of all levels."
Opus 1 Brings the DMA Online
In another exciting development for a Sampler feature alumnus (Dec. 22, 2004), Opus 1 Music Library, whose proprietary DMA (Digital Music Assistant) palm-sized external hard-drive music search and delivery system has drawn raves from the company's many clients, has just unleashed an online version of that exceptional tool, which is certain to expand its already sizable base of users.
Whereas before you needed the DMA to access the 40,000-plus musical cues that are contained in Opus 1's library (itself an amalgamation of numerous music libraries from around the world, as well as its own extensive collection), now it is accessible to everyone. Of course, you still have to register and pay to get a track, but it can all be done now with mouse clicks—from auditioning the broadcast-quality cue, to delivery to your computer. Opus 1 VP Mitch Rabin says, "It's our virtual sales and licensing staff."
Opus 1 has been gaining in market share since it's inception in 1988 and now boasts a client list that includes major cable and broadcast networks, television and film production companies and many others.
For more information, go to opus1musiclibrary.com.
Forget Oranges: This Florida Product Is Digital Juice
The first day I called over to Digital Juice, located in Ocala, Fla., a hurricane was bearing down on the state from the Gulf of Mexico and it was unclear if its path of devastation would sweep across Marion County in the north-central part of the state. In the end, Ocala was whipped by high winds and torrential downpours, but that's par for the course in Florida in the early autumn, and business at Digital Juice proceeded apace. Of course, if the folks at Digital Juice were resourceful, they might have pointed a microphone out the window of their offices to capture some of the hurricane for their next SFX collection.
The aptly named company, headed by founder and CEO David Hebel and president Viv Beason, offers a broad variety of digital audio and video products. And what started out as regional powerhouse now has national reach, thanks to its presence on the Internet, where its informative and helpful website features valuable tips on creative product usage, examples of how clients have used Digital Juice's services, and more.
Part of the company's strength derives from the synergy of its offerings. On the visual side, products include the three VideoTraxx libraries of nearly 10,000 stock footage clips on multiple DVDs, covering dozens of topic areas including (just on the most recent edition, Volume 3) American history, flowers and plants, couples, sunrise and sunset, Old West, space, and many more—stock clips have certainly come a long way! The 28-volume Jump Backs series offers a slew of mostly computer-animated or altered video 15- and 30-second backgrounds adaptable to all sorts of different productions and presentations. (Additionally, nine volumes of Jump Backs are available in HD.) Then there is the popular Editor's Toolkit series, which combines short, topical background animations along with appropriate overlays, wipes, lower thirds, and various other effects. Among the nine Toolkits are ones devoted specially to wedding videos, sports, Christmas, and corporate video.
On the audio end, Digital Juice has three main products. Its newest is its SFX Library, which includes some 10,000 sounds produced in crystal-clear 24-bit, 96kHz resolution. The SFX Library has four broad classes: General FX (footsteps, conversations and crowds, doors, sports sounds, etc.); Human FX (3,000 clips of professionally voiced phrases covering a host of different topic areas, "often eliminating the need to hire professional voice talent and log studio time," according to the website); Noise FX (synthesized and electronically altered natural sounds perfect for any number of audio/video applications); and Musical FX (backgrounds, soundscapes, short hooks and melodies, etc.).
The BackTraxx Music Libraries consist of 28 CDs filled to the brim with full-length, 15-, 30- and 60-second versions of more than 1,000 royalty-free music selections covering a huge variety of musical genres, including jazz, "island flavor," contemporary rock, "late night lounge," "hi-tech," sports, weddings, urban—basically, almost any category that might arise in the course of a production.
Introduced last year was StackTraxx, which combines a plethora of music library selections of different lengths with an added twist: The company's proprietary Juicer 2 software allows the multimedia producer to split a musical cue into different layers, allowing one or more elements of the selection to be emphasized and thus enabling an increased level of both flexibility and customization. By combining different parts in creative ways, it's practically like having the studio musicians at your beck and call: "More piano, please. Let's bring that bass line up. Let's drop the strings here but add them later." As writer Jeffrey P. Fischer notes in a review in Digital Producer magazine, StrackTraxx can also be used effectively with other production tools, including Sony's loop-based software, Acid.
Of course, what Digital Juice is banking on is that by covering the whole waterfront, so to speak, it can become your one-stop shop for audio, video, and even print production needs. The company's steady growth the past few years and expansion into new areas clearly shows that it is slowly but surely accomplishing that ambitious goal.
Continue the discussion on “Crosstalk” the Millimeter Forum.
