Adobe Soundbooth: Audio
for Video
by Douglas Dixon
Video editors are focused on
video, not surprisingly, and yet we still
realize the importance of audio -- to fill
the senses and set the emotional tone of our
productions. But how should we work with
audio within the video production
environment? You can capture, edit, and
enhance audio clips within video editing
tools like Adobe Premiere Pro (www.adobe.com/products/premiere),
but these really are designed for
assembling, mixing, and enhancing the
components of a production across multiple
tracks, and are not targeted to the job of
preparing the individual clips.
Adobe saw this need for
focused audio editing tools, and acquired
the Cool Edit Pro audio editor from
Syntrillium Software in May 2003, and soon
integrated it into the Adobe Video
Collection suite, renamed as Adobe
Audition (www.adobe.com/products/audition).
But as Audition has evolved and grown as an
amazingly powerful tool for audio editors,
it has expanded beyond the more basic needs
of video editors -- basic cleaning and
enhancing of audio clips. While Adobe has
done a nice job of packing up common
operations as presets in Audition, and
making them relatively easy to use, Audition
is still overkill for the relatively
straightforward needs of those focused on
video.
Adobe now has taken the next step, and
developed a new product, Adobe Soundbooth
(www.adobe.com/products/soundbooth),
which builds on the key features of
Audition, but is targeted for creative
professionals without deep audio expertise.
Soundbooth is all about quick and efficient
preparation of audio tracks -- recording,
editing, and cleaning. Soundbooth has a list
price of $249, compared to $349 for
Audition.
Adobe has including Soundbooth, in the new
Adobe Production Premium bundle, as
part of the new Adobe Creative Suite 3
(www.adobe.com/creativesuite),
CS3 also moves Adobe back to the Macintosh
platform, so Soundbooth is available for
both Windows and Intel-based Macs.
Meanwhile, Audition will live on as a
standalone product for audio professionals
in music, film, video, and radio, but now on
its own independent development cycle.
Adobe has shown an
impressive ability to change, adapt, and
incorporate new elements into its product
line, including Cool Edit / Audition, the
acquisition of Macromedia and resulting
broad support for the Flash format, and with
the more recent acquisition of Serious
Magic. And Adobe has changed the way it
releases its products, pre-announcing its
intention to move back to the Intel-based
Macintosh platform, and using its Adobe
Labs website (labs.adobe.com)
to release preliminary versions of some of
its products as public betas, including
Soundbooth for Windows and Mac, the new
Lightroom software for managing large
volumes of digital photographs, and the
pre-release of Adobe Photoshop CS3..
So let's take a look at the
new Adobe Soundbooth -- It's a clean, yet
powerful, waveform editor, focused on audio
recording, basic editing, cleanup, and
enhancement with effects. In addition, it
includes tools for audio generation, both by
building loops from segments of clips, and
with AutoComposer for automatic creation of
customized scores.
Find
Adobe Soundbooth CS 3 (Windows or
Mac) on Amazon.com
Find
Adobe Creative Suite 3 Production Premium
(Windows or Mac) on Amazon.com
Find
Adobe Creative Suite 3 Master Collection
(Windows or Mac) on Amazon.com
The basic Soundbooth editing
interface uses the new Adobe interface
style, based on a collection of interlocked
panels that adjust as you drag to rearrange
them, or which can be brought out as
separate floating windows. The panels can be
easily rearranged, docked together as tabs,
and saved as workspaces, all to fit your
editing style. (The interface is now common
to the CS3 suite, and, interestingly, the
interlocking panel idea was inherited from
Cool Edit.) There's also the usual History
panel to help you experiment, and easily
undo changes and revert to a previous state.
Soundbooth also shares the
extensive support for media file formats
from Premiere Pro. You can open and work
with audio-only clips, and video clips with
audio (so you can see your edits in sync
with the accompanying video).
As in other Adobe
applications, you start work by using the
Files panel to open files and view their
attributes.
Then double-click to select
a file for editing, and the audio waveform
is displayed in the Editor panel.
Moving within the clip to edit the waveform
has been made even easier with the
Navigation bar along the top. This
always displays the full length of the audio
waveform, with an outlined blue box that
shows the potion of the waveform currently
displayed in the Editor panel. You then can
just drag the blue box to scroll within the
full clip, or drag the edges of the box to
shrink or expand the region within the clip
in order to zoom in and out in the display.
Wave editing and effects
The Tools panel along
the top of the Soundbooth window includes
basic editing tools and a playback meter.
And the bottom of the Editor panel has the
timecode control (click to type or
drag to change), playback transport
controls, and quick editing controls
(fade, volume, and boost / hard limit).
The fundamental idea of the
interface is that Soundbooth is focused on
direct and visual on-clip editing, in many
cases with controls that overlay the
waveform display. Just drag to select a
section of the clip, and then use cut and
paste to extract portions. Drag the Trim
handle overlay from the sides to trim
the beginning or end. Drag the Fade
handle from the top left and right edges
to fade in/out, while moving the mouse up
and down to change the shape of the fade
curve. Drag over the value in the floating
dB meter to adjust the volume level.
Once you have completed the
basic editing to prepare the clip, move on
to the Task pane to perform common
(but sophisticated) tasks to clean up audio
clips. This lists useful audio editing
tasks, and then expands to display
adjustable parameters as you apply them to
the selected portion of the clip.
- The Clean Up Audio
task has presets for cleaning background
Noise, background Rumble, and transient
Clicks and Pops. Each provides a few
controls with sliders you can adjust and
experiment with -- while the audio selection
is playing -- plus a bypass button to
compare to the original. Then click OK to
apply the operation to the clip's waveform.
- The Change Pitch and
Timing task allows you to independently
adjust the length of the clip and the pitch
of the sound -- you can stretch or shrink
the length without affecting pitch (no more
chipmunk voices), or to change the pitch of
the sound without altering the length of the
piece.
- The most amazing task,
Remove a Sound, is based on the Spectral
Frequency view from Audition. Instead of
viewing your audio as a simple waveform with
all the sounds integrated into a single
curve, Soundbooth displays the entire
frequency spectrum, so you can see the
frequency components, from low amplitude
(bright blue) to high (bright yellow). While
sudden clicks and pops are obvious as spikes
in a waveform display, the frequency view
allows you to see the individual components
that are mixed together in the audio, not
only different types of instruments, but
also unwanted intrusions such as a cough or
a ringing bell. (Soundbooth actually allows
you to view the waveform, the spectral
frequency, or both, as you edit.)
Spectral Frequency view: Frequency
space editing
Now here's the magic: If you
can see the sound, then you can select it;
and if you can select it, then you can edit
and remove it. Soundbooth (and Audition)
actually turn audio clean-up into the same
kind of visual editing that you are used to
with Photoshop. First use a selection tool
to highlight the offending audio -- draw a
rectangle with the marquee, or even choose
an arbitrary region with the lasso. Then
tone down the offending sound by reducing
its volume, or, even better, use Auto Heal
to have Soundbooth analyze the adjacent
frequencies and actually remove the selected
noise, much like Photoshop's Healing Brush.
It's real magic for rescuing clips that are
marred with brief unwanted noises.
Beyond cleaning up clips,
Soundbooth also provides a selection of
enhancement effects to sweeten and enhance
your clips. The more than 15 audio filters
include EQ and compression to punch up the
sound, a vocal enhancer, and effects such as
delay, chorus, and reverb.
While editing and clean-up
operations work directly on the audio
waveform, the effects are non-destructive,
so you can experiment and preview with
multiple effects. Use the Effects panel
to select and apply a filter, and hear the
result playing in real time, even as you
adjust the parameters. Stack up multiple
effects in the Effects Rack -- up to 5
filters at a time, adjust the settings
dynamically, and bypass individual effects
to listen with and without each effect.
When you are finished, apply
the effects to the selected portion of the
clip and render the resulting waveform.
Beyond recording and editing
clips, Soundbooth provides two additional
mechanisms for generating new music: loops
and automated score creation.
The Create Loop task
lets you turn a selection into a seamless
loop. First select and preview the segment,
trimming the ends as desired. Soundbooth
then can apply smoothing to make the loop
point seamless. The resulting loops can be
saved for use in DVD menus, or as building
blocks in a mixing tool like Audition.
In addition, the Create
Score With AutoComposer task is an
automatic score generation tool similar to
SmartSound Sonicfire (www.smartsound.com/sonicfire),
used to create professional-sounding
royalty-free music beds. First open an
AutoComposer score, and adjust the duration
to match your clip -- the overall piece is
adjusted to fit, as the intro, main piece,
and ending are rearranged to maintain a
coherent score. Then customize the sound,
changing the volume, intensity, and melody.
To fine-tune even more, you can even set
keyframes in the timeline to control these
attributes to better match the flow in your
video.
AutoComposer with keyframes
Adobe provides a library of
compatible AutoComposer scores, segmented
into segments that can be re-configured and
adjusted to fit your needs, and expects to
open up score creation for others to create
libraries as well. You also can access the
Adobe site online for additional scores and
sound effects.
The tight integration with
the Adobe suite allows you to edit clips in
Soundbooth directly from Premiere, and have
changes updated automatically within the
Premiere project. Similarly, you can import
and export markers within the clip, both to
other applications and as XML files. You can
define names for markers along with a
description, as well as add name/value pairs
that you can use to trigger animations in
Flash based on audio cues.
After all, Adobe's focus is
more and more on providing an integrated
suite of applications for the creative
workflow. Under the Creative Suite family,
Adobe offers tools to communicate in print,
on the web, with video, and on mobile
devices. These work together with common
interfaces and direct editing of assets
between projects, plus are joined with
additional integration through Adobe Bridge
and Dynamic Link.
Adobe Soundbooth is a
natural extension for the video Production
Premium -- including Premiere Pro for video
editing, After Effects for motion graphics
and visual effects, DVD production with
Encore, and now Soundbooth for audio
editing.
While Adobe Audition is an
amazingly capable tool for professional
audio editors -- spanning audio recording,
editing, mixing, looping, and mastering --
it really is overkill for the needs of video
editors. Soundbooth focuses on the key tasks
in preparing audio clips for use in video
productions -- recording, editing, cleaning,
and enhancing -- bringing the magic of
Audition's advanced technology into specific
tasks, and allowing you to experiment
dynamically with adjustable parameters. As a
bonus, Soundbooth also provides looping
tools and the AutoComposer for customizing
royalty-free soundtracks.
Soundbooth can result in a
faster workflow and better-sounding audio
for your video productions, from cleaner
recorded sound to enhanced sound effects to
nicer background soundtracks.
|
|
Adobe Soundbooth
is a natural extension for the video
Adobe Creative Suite 3 Production
Premium -- including Premiere
Pro for video editing, After Effects
for motion graphics and visual
effects, DVD production with Encore,
and now Soundbooth for audio
editing. |
Adobe Soundbooth
www.adobe.com/products/soundbooth
Adobe Audition
www.adobe.com/products/audition
Adobe Creative Suite
www.adobe.com/creativesuite
Adobe Premiere Pro
www.adobe.com/products/premiere
Adobe Labs
labs.adobe.com
SmartSound Sonicfire
www.smartsound.com/sonicfire
Originally published in
Camcorder & Computer Video magazine, 23,
3, June 2007.
Manifest Technology®
Copyright 1999-2007,
Douglas Dixon, All Rights Reserved
Manifest Technology is a registered
trademark of Douglas Dixon
