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Edit Review: Sony Cinescore

Oct 1, 2006 12:00 PM, Reviewer: Franklin McMahon

Royalty-free music creation for scoring video.

Sony Media Software has introduced a new soundtrack creation program called Cinescore, which makes it easy to produce music expertly timed to your video productions. There are dashes of Vegas and Acid (Sony's video editing and music creation software, respectively), but the magic comes with the powerful Theme Chooser — which allows you to select a music piece that is almost infinitely tweakable.

Having been using SmartSound Sonicfire Pro 4 for months now (and also having reviewed it — see digitalcontentproducer.com/ dcc/revfeat/smartsound_sonicfire_pro), I was most curious to see how this new kid on the block stacked up against SmartSound's flagship software. But we'll get to that in a bit.

The program

When you first boot Cinescore up, it looks like a very stripped-down version of Vegas. All the familiar sections of Sony's products are there: the timeline, preview window, and explorer for finding files. Although you can use the program solely as an audio tool, the program imports and exports video so you can build your score exactly timed to what is happening on screen. After you load your video, you can select certain sections to work on. If this is a 30-second commercial, chances are you would select the whole piece; or you could load a 15-minute package and choose sections of the video to score.

Click the Generate Music button, and up pops the Theme Chooser. The program comes with 20 themes on an included DVD, and additional themes are available. (Sony recently released Incredible Vistas for cinematic soundscapes and Pass the Ring, which slots in perfectly to wedding production work, listing for $89.95 each.) Themes range from rock to funk to cinematic to polka, and each theme has about 30 variations. Moreover, each variation has multiple options, including starting section, mood type, tempo adjustments, and intensity, making it possible to create thousands of variations based on the included set of 20 songs. Once you decide on a variation you like, you can save all the settings as a preset for later use.

Fine-tuning

The Generated Music screen is where you can fine-tune. (Or not. If you choose OK, you will simply get the theme you created.) Cinescore creates the songs in a series of color-coded blocks that you see within the Generated Music timeline. It's a lot of fun to tap through different variations and try different arrangements. You can change the type of ending type: normal, fadeout, or loop. Set Hints at various parts of your score, and adjust the mood, intensity, tempo, and arrangement. For example, you could make a two-minute song, start off slow, build up in tempo and intensity, and then slowly fade out at the end.

Intensity in the program is based not on loudness but on dramatic elements and instruments. With the intensity slider set at 10 percent, you might get just a drum solo with a bit of guitar; sliding it up to 100 percent would get the whole band kicking in.

Some shortcomings

Cinescore has a few minor quirks. Loading themes and finalizing your song to drop into the timeline (WAV creation) takes several seconds. This does not sound like much, but it would be handy to have everything happen in an instant — especially if you are experimenting with multiple variations. Also, the fact that the program creates a new WAV for every variation can get a bit unwieldy for large projects.

The program does its best to scale the song to your exact requirement; however, it does give preference to including the correct hooks over fitting a track to exact time requirements, so sometimes a piece may be a fraction of a second off.

Personally, I think the program should prioritize exact time requirements over choosing a better song. If I need a 30-second piece, that is what I should get. I would prefer the program to scale it for me rather than require me to use a slider.

The timeline with the video and audio tracks and the Generated Music screens seem like two disconnected programs. I really would love to see this all happening on one screen. Sony's love of big pop-up requestors needs to be improved in many of its programs, but Cinescore, especially, would benefit from having video and scoring tools all on the same page.

The competition

Cinescore stacks up to Sonicfire Pro 4 quite nicely. The two programs do many of the same things, although the setups are quite different. But, feature for feature, there is mucho crossover. For example, the much-heralded Mood Mapping in Sonicfire Pro has a counterpart in Cinescore, but it has fewer variations. I find the Sonicfire version easier to use, and it has more variety and sliders.

One thing that Sonicfire does amazingly well is scaling on the fly — just click and drag it. Cinescore can do the same thing, but it would take a few clicks and — wait for it — the generation of another WAV. Because the programs are so close, I would base my choice on the additional content that's available. On this basis, Sonicfire has a commanding lead with many more discs to buy and more variety; however, Sony's aggressive expansion of similar programs such as Acid Pro, which has tons of loop CDs available, leads me to believe we'll soon see a lot more content that works with Cinescore.

Conclusion

Both Acid and Cinescore are less audio editing programs than they are tools to alter the company's existing royalty-free music CDs. So I suggest getting them both — then you'll have a vast array of music to choose from. Cinescore does not yet let you browse and purchase music from inside the program (as Sonicfire Pro and Acid Pro do), but I think this is bound to happen in a future update.Ignoring the comparisons, Cinescore is an excellent and refined program for a first version. It's perfect for video and audio editors who work in Acid and Vegas now, as the interface is so similar. The software is so powerful and offers so many variations that even the included themes will provide lots of mileage for any content producer. It's a fun and creative program that's highly addictive and highly recommended.

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bottomline

Company: Sony Media Software
Madison, Wis.; (608) 204-7680
www.sonymediasoftware.com

Product: Cinescore

Assets: Powerful theme and variation-based software.

Caveats: Somewhat slow, tends to prioritize sound over duration requirements.

Demographic: Audio and video editors — especially those who are familiar with Acid and Vegas.

PRICE: $199.96 (PACKAGED); $174.95 (DOWNLOAD)

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© 2008 Penton Media, Inc.