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Edit Review: Synk Audio Musicbed DV

Mar 1, 2007 12:00 PM, Reviewer: S.D. Katz

Music editing app scores for simplicity.

Synk Audio Musicbed DV is a practical, extremely easy-to-use music editing application for creating musical scores for video projects on the Mac. Notice I did not write movie scoring. Since movies edited with Apple iMovie have made it into Sundance, no doubt Musicbed DV will be used to create the music for an indie feature someday. In the meantime, it will find its primary use in corporate and event video production. This is a genre of software that is becoming increasingly competitive and includes Sony Cinescore for the PC and SmartSound SonicFire Pro for the Mac; we may see still more examples at NAB.

You do not create music with Musicbed DV (MBDV). Instead, you customize music packages made specifically for MBDV. The software comes with more than 20 packages (300-plus tracks) that are created in parts, so there are A, B, C, and a few D themes. The tracks are editable using parameters that range between pairs of musical qualities, such as melodic and percussive. Because they are parametric digital files, the pitch, tempo, and duration of the music tracks can be edited with sliders. Of course, the developers will be offering additional music collections in the future.

Overall, MBDV is aimed at people with little or no musical background who find products such as Apple GarageBand and Adobe Audition overwhelming.

Interface

Musicbed DV makes good use of OS X conventions and screen graphics. The interface is very simple: All the buttons and tools are available in the main window. The layout has four components: A browse window that toggles between the music library and music editing parameters, a video playback window, and a horizontal timeline. Across the top of the main window is an Import Video button (Musicbed imports any supported QuickTime file format), a button to create markers, and a button to export video. Once you import video, the movie appears in a window on the right side of the interface. VCR controls and a timecode window are underneath the video window. To the left of the window is an audio limiter to make sure you don't over modulate.

Once you have imported the video, you'll browse for music in the list of available packages. Hit the Browse/Edit button, and you'll see a window with a scrollable list of musical selections. You can take in pieces of the selection or the entire selection. A drop-down menu offers a choice between Genre and Mood. You can browse by musical type or view the entire library. You can also create custom libraries made up of your favorite packages.

Now that your first music selection is made, you just drop the musical passage in the timeline. You can drag and drop a selection or just double click on the selection. Then you switch to the Edit mode. This brings up all the parameter controls for the music. The parameters are the same for all music and are controlled by sliders, for instance Smooth to Punchy.

To the left of each parameter is a checkbox. If you check Manual, you can edit parameters over time using keyframes. For instance, if you want the music to become more of a background track over the length of five shots of video, you select the parameter Background/Prominent parameter. This brings up the parameter in the timeline. Click on a parameter “line” in the timeline and by touching any point in the timeline, you will not only create a keyframe, but you will be able to drag the musical value up and down (in this case from Background to Prominent) in the timeline. If you select another moment in time and make a value change to the musical parameter, another keyframe will be created and the music will smoothly transition to the new value.

In a sense, this turns you into a conductor — you're not writing music, but you have considerable control over how it's played. Parameters with keyframes work independently of other parameters, so while a music segment might become punchier, it's simultaneously becoming more percussive and less melodic. You can change pitch and the key the music is played in, giving you the opportunity to do a little composing. Entire tracks can be stretched or compressed interactively on the timeline, and the music will fit to fill.

You can set markers to precisely align the video events and music, and the markers keep track of what you are doing if you have lots of keyframe edits on multiple parameters. The entire system plays in realtime, and you can rapidly prototype a score in a very short time, however, you can have only one musical track at one time. In other words, you cannot layer tracks. While this would most likely produce dissonant results melodically, many of the musical packages are more percussive than melodic and layered tracks could open up many creative options.

When you've completed your score, Musicbed DV exports QuickTime stereo, surround sound, and musical stems, so you can bring them into other sound programs or an NLE. There are PDF instructions for using MBDV with Apple Final Cut Pro, and because this is very much a Mac program, that workflow makes perfect sense.

Conclusion

Where do you draw the line between simplicity and too few features? Musicbed DV probes the dividing line and errs on the side of simplicity, which I think is about right for a large segment of users. The main area MBDV has chosen to avoid is editing individual instruments and having layered tracks. The parameters are an attempt to simplify a higher level of editing, but having a melodic or percussive parameter is not the same as having individual control over drums, bass, and rhythm guitar. When stems are exported, however, the instruments can be edited individually in a more sophisticated program.

While the tools and interface are important, a program like this is judged on the quality of the music library. The 20 themes that come with the program are good, but not all of them are complete melodies with a beginning, middle, and end. Several of the packages are more like musical stings and hits.

I certainly did not find that Musicbed DV would meet all my scoring needs. This would be particularly true if you had a great deal of music to do for a single client. Because of the limited size of the library, repetition would soon become obvious. This could be the killer app for many videographers if the music library is expanded regularly with even more sophisticated melodies and orchestration. This is a very good debut for a simple music editing app. Recommended for beginners or intermediate users with limited scoring needs.

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bottomline

Company: Synk Audio
Chicago
www.synkaudiostudios.com

Product: Musicbed DV

Assets: Ease of use

Caveats: Limited music library, can't layer tracks or edit instruments individually.

Demographics: Video shooters with little or no music background and limited scoring needs.

PRICE: $249 (INCLUDES SEASON 1 & 2)

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© 2008 Penton Media, Inc.