Video copilot SFX package?

HBlack

HBlack

Underage Member
I was thinking of picking up the video copilot Designer SFX package (link). Does anyone have any experience with it? Listening to the preview it sounds pretty good, but I was wondering if there was anything better for the price. I really can't spend more than the cost of the package ($100), and even that's pushing it. I'm looking for the whooses, low ambient rumbles, and the various epic and unsettling noises so commonly heard in trailers and movies that seem to be so hard to find free.

So any comments on Designer Sound Effects, or any recommendations for similar programs?
 
I bought the whole series of dvds from videocopilot and am really happy with them all . I think the sfx package will have want you are looking for although its not all encompassing.
 
I also bought all the video copilot set (excluding the newest one). it has everything you stated so its probably a good choice.
 
The SFX package is awesome. I'm especially impressed by the extensive whoosh sound collections which are great for trailers and things like that. It's funny because I needed those sounds and was about to shell out for a much more expensive collection when Andrew Kramer came out with the product.
 
Just ordered it, waiting for download information. Should be good.

I assume the downloadable 16bit files will be good enough for my purposes as I'm not a professional, correct?
 
The collection has a lot of nice gems, but a lot of it is generally useless as well. For some reason Mr. Kramer thought synthetic organ music would be a good idea for a lot of the ambience tracks, which surprised me. I only found 4 or 5 good ambients. The impacts are decent... again only found 6 or 7 that I really would use. The wooshes and swishes are much more useable.

The sounds I wouldn't use can be combined with other sounds to make cooler sounds, which is something I appreciate, and is the main reason I still love to use the package. Enjoy it!

btw: Here's a quick clip I made in AE to test out the sound package and a couple techniques i pulled out of his tutorials.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8vgTgpQ5CQ
 
The Digital Juice Libraries are sort of the same deal, some very useful some total crap (Dinosaur roars etc) and some that might work with something else. They were over your limit so I didn't mention them. You do get an ungodly amount of stuff to weed through though. ... what a strange looking word pair...
Anyway, yes 16 bit 44.1 or 48 is fine. That is what most of the commercial libraries are at (44.1/16 = CD).

For whooshes I also recommend recording your own. Swing some stuff around in front of a mic then cut them into single whooshes. Slowing them down also often has a good effect.
 
I know a guy that cuts trailers and he told me that your standard "whoosh" sound sells for about $7500 bucks... just for one sound...
 
Tom Marshall said:
I know a guy that cuts trailers and he told me that your standard "whoosh" sound sells for about $7500 bucks... just for one sound...
Click to expand...

Wow. Why would anyone possibly pay that? I mean I can understand they have a huge budget, but that seems extremely exorbitant. How does that $7500 whoosh differ from one from videocopilot that comes out to about $0.20?
 
Tom Marshall said:
I know a guy that cuts trailers and he told me that your standard "whoosh" sound sells for about $7500 bucks... just for one sound...
Click to expand...

Sorry he's pulling your leg. Having worked on a number of "big budget" features and supplied sounds for post that is not the case. Unless maybe you add up all the man hours for editors and mixers then that whoosh might end up costing you that much but nobody sat down and paid $xx for the whoosh. An editor and room run around $4K/ week and a mix stage is $450 - $800/ hour plus some wages (mixers and support are usually included with the hourly, but you also have editors and assistants around that aren't). And of course sushi lunches add up... You average custom sound from someone's library is like maybe $80 or so. A designer makes somewhere in the $250 - $400/ hr range. Plus as I've said before those BIG sounds aren't by and large "designed" as much as edited. You want that big whoosh that ends in that huge hit, ever so popular.
Start out with your basic whoosh (bamboo swung past a mic) slow it down so you get that BIG deep sound.
Take the original on track two and "verifi"(a speedup/down Protools plugin) and have it start from zero and hit full speed right at the middle of the whoosh. Now move that down so it starts before the peal of track one. A little mixing and you have a whoosh that is big and has an accelerating finish.
Track three get a nice big metal slam (like the one you recorded of a sledge hammer coming down on an old transmission) and place it so the whoosh ramps right up into the hit.

Trim tracks 1&2 so they go away on the hit.
Track four, copy track three and pitch it down 5 semitones or so.
Track five get another big slam with a huge reverb, maybe those recording in the water tower, big - hard and rings out forever. Pitch it down so it fits. Place that where it sounds right, supporting track 3&4.
Track 6 get a nice highish whoosh maybe one of the ones you didn't use on track one and pitch it up. Or maybe record a new one with a fencing foil. Put it just before the hit. You will have to tune the placement. You don't want to hear it just sense the swish of air as the big whatever slams down.
Track 7 mix the above down to this track and put a sub harmonic synthesizer on it.

You can add a lot more like a little metal scream in the hit, an ascending tone up to the whoosh, a groan that builds to the hit, etc. but that is your basic BIG whoosh.
 
Hey Noiz2, nice detailed post there. :)

By the $7500 price tag, I'm willing to be a lot of money that it's all going towards royalties as it's not a royalty free sound effect.
 
I know a lot of designers and editors and folks who provide sound FX and nobody that I know of ever has gotten royalties on sounds. Unlike music residuals and royalties are not part of the picture.

But as I said if you broke out what it takes to end up with the "sound" it might be close to his number. Say for instance total budget divided by seconds in the trailer times the length of the whoosh. We did something similar (out of idle curiosity) on Titanic. Our estimate was around $1,012 per frame. My wife worked for a museum at the time and I gave her her departments annual budget in frames from some discarded trims. it was only a couple of feet 8~0. Less than the distance from the two pop to the start of picture, very sobering. A whoosh can last a few seconds so you could say that a whoosh in that film cost upward of $48,000. But it's also a bit misleading.
 
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