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MillimeterFree Tools for Audio Editing
Apr 1, 2001 12:00 PM, Steve Cunningham
EVEN IF YOU SPEND MOST OF YOUR professional life producing and editing video content, there will come a time when you or one of your staff will need to perform some surgical audio editing. Many streaming professionals use the simple audio-editing tools available to them in their NLE program to make minor changes in a soundtrack. While these are adequate for this purpose, it is often the case that a simple cut, paste, and level adjustment will not be sufficient. For example, you may need to reduce or eliminate background noise without altering the sound of the voiceover; apply a good-sounding compressor to level the volume peaks of your soundtrack without squashing the whole track; judiciously apply reverb or delay to make a music bed seem larger and more spacious than the original recording; remove just a small syllable, which unfortunately doesn't occur on a video frame boundary, from a sentence. At this point, nothing beats a dedicated software audio editor for cleaning up, reorganizing, and enhancing audio tracks.
Fortunately, there are a host of audio editors available at little or no cost. Most of them come equipped with at least a few audio special effects, either built in directly or offered as software plug-ins that work within the host program. Without exception, these dedicated audio editors are all more competent than the audio editing functions of most NLEs, which shouldn't come as a surprise.
Pro Tools FREE Pro Tools from Digidesign, a division of Avid, is the 800-pound gorilla of software audio editors. Pro Tools has become the defacto standard for audio post in theatrical films and television work, and Digidesign shows no signs of slowing as it recently released a new version of its pro software with full 5.1 surround capabilities. Media giants like Liberty Media, a multinational company that now has significant holdings in the Los Angeles post-production community, have standardized Pro Tools to ensure compatibility between their facilities and to lower employee training costs. Unfortunately, a full-blown professional Pro Tools TDM rig can cost over $25,000, putting it out of reach for smaller video production companies. Last December, however, Digidesign released Pro Tools FREE, a limited version of their industry-standard audio-editing software solution. The software is not only free, but Pro Tools FREE does not require any of Digidesign's proprietary and expensive hardware, so video editors have no excuse not to use a competent audio editor when needed.
Pro Tools FREE is limited to a total of eight audio tracks (as well as 48 MIDI tracks), and there is no provision for locking to SMPTE time code. However, the software can play a Quicktime movie of your video in a separate window within Pro Tools FREE, and, for short video segments, the lack of time-code lockup is manageable. Moreover, edited session files from Pro Tools FREE are compatible with other professional versions of Pro Tools, so you can always take your tracks to a post facility for conforming, if necessary. In any event, you should be able to export your audio tracks, edit them in Pro Tools FREE, and import them back into you project with no ill effects.
Pro Tools FREE runs on both Macintosh and PC computers, using either the Mac's native Sound Manager or standard Windows sound drivers in conjunction with any of several sound cards for the PC. The software comes with five plug-ins, including EQ, compression and limiting, and delays. You can buy additional plug-in effects from third-party vendors to further extend the capabilities of the software.
While the computer requirements for Pro Tools FREE are less stringent than are the requirements for most video NLEs, they're not inconsequential. You'll still need a PowerMac G3 or G4, running at 300MHz or better; or a Pentium III, running Windows 98 or Windows ME at 500MHz or more. You'll also need a minimum of 128MB of RAM and a large, fast hard drive for storing the audio.
If you are already using a video NLE program, then your computer likely meets those requirements. For instance, assuming you have space available, you can probably use the same hard drive you normally use for captured video. Digital audio uses a little over 5.5MB of disk space per minute at 16 bits and a 48KHz sampling rate, and you'll need at least twice that much to store temporary edit files.
Pro Tools FREE is stable and an obvious choice for editors working on the Mac platform and will introduce you to the wonders of software audio editing at no cost. The Windows version of Pro Tools FREE, however, is not quite as stable as the Mac version and is somewhat tricky to set up due to the wide variety of PC hardware and Windows configurations in use. It is definitely worth a bit of time and effort to get Pro Tools FREE up and running on your PC. Let's face it, we would all like to use the same software that was used to create the surround audio for The Matrix, wouldn't we?
You can download Pro Tools FREE from Digidesign's site (www.digidesign.com). You'll also find technical support and online user discussion forums, both of which will answer any questions you may have. For those who work on the Mac platform there are other free or low-cost editors available for the Mac, but with the release of Pro Tools FREE there is little reason to look elsewhere. If you are put off at the mention of Pro Tools having some troubles on Windows, there are good alternatives available for the Wintel platform.
Cool Edit 2000 Syntrillium Software's Cool Edit 2000 is a stereo audio editor with a shareware price tag of $69. Cool Edit 2000 includes a lot of features for that princely sum, such as 20 built-in effects, for example reverb and echo, equalization and filtering, and even time-compression and time-expansion. The latter can be a lifesaver, as it stretches or shrinks the length of a sound without affecting its sound quality or pitch.
While Cool Edit 2000's default format is WAV, it can handle nearly any digital audio format, including the AIFF format, meaning you should have no trouble editing your soundtrack and then re-importing it into an Avid or Media 100 system.
Cool Edit 2000 has many audio editing features, including cut, copy, paste, delete, trim, and more. It also includes some interesting and useful twists, including five internal clipboards for storing bits to be used elsewhere, much like the trim bin function of an NLE. It can also use the Windows clipboard. While Cool Edit 2000 is a stereo editor, the company offers a $49 plug-in called Studio that adds a four-channel mixer. This allows Cool Edit 2000 to mix and play back four tracks at once, for a grand total of $118.
The program's system requirements are modest, able to run on a Pentium II or III processor, and requiring a mere 16MB of free RAM (although more RAM improves its performance). The program also runs on Windows 95/98, ME, NT, and 2000 and supports Microsoft's DirectX, so you can use any DirectX plug-in. All installed DirectX plug-ins appear in the Transform menu, the same as the built-in effects. There are hundreds of DirectX plug-ins available from other manufacturers, and Syntrillium includes a DirectX Tremolo plug-in to get you started.
Syntrillium also has an extensive website (www.syntrillium.com) with support for the product. A section called Cool School features tutorials that are designed to be downloaded and viewed within Cool Edit 2000. Cool School represents some of the best online help available anywhere. You can check out Cool Edit 2000 at the Syntrillium website www.syntrillium.com.
Plug-ins Add Functions One of the best reasons to use a software audio editor is that you can add features to the software by adding plug-ins. Almost any sort of audio effect or processor - reverbs and compressors to EQ and flangers - is available as a file that goes in a folder labeled Plug-ins. Best of all, many plug-ins are available on the Internet for free or for a small shareware fee.
Most audio editing software includes a number of plug-ins as standard equipment. You can easily add to this collection, provided you pay attention to the plug-in format required by your audio editing program. For Pro Tools FREE, look for plug-ins in either AudioSuite (AS) format or in RealTime AudioSuite (RTAS) format. Be advised that AS and RTAS plug-ins are nearly all commercial products, but some carry modest prices. Go to the product section of Digidesign's website and look at the product section at (www.digidesign.com/products/products.cfm) for a list of third-party plug-ins for Pro Tools FREE. If you're using an editor that supports Microsoft's DirectX format on the PC, your choice of inexpensive plug-ins is much wider. For starters, visit the oddly-named DaveCentral website (www.davecentral.com/audplug.html). There you'll find over 40 links to free or inexpensive audio plug-ins, including many in the DirectX format.
Virtual Studio Technology (VST) is another popular plug-in format for both Mac and Wintel platforms. According to VST's developer, Steinberg Media Technologies AG, there are over 300 VST plug-ins available for Mac and PC workstations. VST plug-ins currently run on Power Macintosh, Windows 95/98, and NT 4.0. You can get more information on VST at Steinberg's website (www.steinberg.net/), where you can also check out nearly two dozen of Steinberg's commercial plug-in offerings. For free or shareware VST-format plug-ins, go to the plug-in section of the Cubase FAQ at (www.CubaseFAQ.com/links/plugin.htm). This page has dozens of links to both free and commercial VST plug-ins for Mac and PC.
The definitive audio shareware website is Shareware Music Machine (www.hitsquad.com/smm/). This site features links to hundreds of free or inexpensive audio editors and plug-ins for PC and Mac platforms, as well as dozens of demo versions of commercial editors.
By spending a little time surfing the Web and just a little money, you can equip your production room with a powerful set of audio editing tools that will allow you to handle any audio issue that arises.
