Adobe Audition vs Cubase vs Sountrack Pro vs Pro Tools for 2.0 and 5.1 sound for film

[Clint Nitkiewiz Hernandez]

Just wondering what you guys think would be best to use for a no budget film, where I dont have the opportunity to take my film to an audio house and spend thousands to do it right, where I must buy a software, and learn how to do it at home, for a feature film.

My goal is theatrical distribution, my room is calibrated with 5.1 sky speakers into a firebox. Just need some software, for either a pc or mac, mac is preferred though.

Which program is the best out of the ones mentioned and any plugins that would be essential to creating

2.0 mix
5.1 surround mix
M&E Track - I will just get rid of the dialogue tracks in FCP, and do my panning in cubase perhaps,


Check out the surround encoder in Adobe Audition, looks a log like what the waves surround plugin can do,
http://www.adobe.com/products/audition/

Also my goal is theatrical distribution.

 

[Alex H.]

Are you sure that there's no way at all to get a trained audio post professional to do this? Ask around... you might be surprised to find some one who knows their stuff and is willing to donate the time, or to go on deferred payment (they don't get paid until you make money from the film). And with the Internet, you can look outside your area. All you need are an FTP site and and FTP client to move the files back and forth.

Learning to do your own audio post on the fly is not advisable, especially for a feature that you hope to distribute. If you don't know audio post, you can do more harm than good. This goes double for surround mixing.

And as has been pointed out many times in these forums (even in certain members' signatures... and there's an awfully good reason for this), bad audio can destroy even the best pictures.

Now, if you really, really, really want to take the risk, I'd suggest:

Cubase, 'cause it comes with 5.1 built in and can run on almost ANY hardware interface (ProTools requires ProTools hardware to operate). It also, out of the box, is equipped to import OMFs and work with SMPTE Time Code. And the plug-ins that come with Cubase are not that bad at all. You'll also find that, though ProTools has a following, many of the big studios in LA are using Cubase's big brother, Nuendo, and you'll see some forward compatibility there.

As I said, Cubase's plug-ins are pretty good. I even use them instead of some of my Waves plug-ins, depending on what I'm doing. But there are two Waves native bundles I'd add: Native Power Pack and the Musician's II Bundle. These will give you enough EQ, compression, and limiting options to get you through any project. And Waves' TrueVerb is pretty nifty.

ProTools LE is a good program, and I have a ProTools Digi 002 suite here. But they've shot themselves in the foot with Leopard, as they only recently released a beta for Leopard compatibility. They wait too long after OS updates to fix compatibility issues. Plus, to get OMF and Time Code capabilities, there's another $1200 for the DV ToolKit 2. Very few of the Digi-Rack plug-ins that come with PT are worth using. The compressors and EQ chew the signal up, and the reverb is pretty chintzy. Plug-in packs from Waves and others are an absolute must with ProTools. Add in the Waves surround plug-in, and you're investing the money that you could easily spend on a decent post job form some one else.

And the full version of Cubase's software is less than half the cost of a ProTools LE 003 rack system. I'm actually running Cubase LE (no OMF or surround) on my MacBook for remote music production because I couldn't move PT to a Leopard system. Yeah, I might get PT on here eventually, but I'm actually enjoying Cubase right now. I still use ProTools for my audio post work, 'cause that's what most of the post houses here in Knoxville expect. But there are times I like Cubase better.

 

[Noiz2]

OK, I hate commenting on posts like this because the thinking is just plain wrong. If you don't have someone who knows what they are doing do your audio post you're goal is not theatrical distribution. It's a little like saying I have a VW bug and I want to know what to buy so I can compete in the Indy 500. The answer is "a different car".

That said... PT is out. You can with some work do surround but it's a bunch of work and your not a sound guy so skip it.
I would not go with any MIDI sequencer turned DAW unless your doing primarily scoring, so that eliminates Cubase, Logic et all. Not saying they don't work just would not be my choice.
Your using FCP and the simpelest solution for you is to use Sound Track Pro. It works fine and is VERY integrated with FCP and uses close to the same work flow so it should be easy to learn.

Now I would guess that your system is not calibrated, at least not in the way a sound person would use the term. Films are miced in a calibrated room so it is critical that your system be calibrated. You can't do that till you have the DAW up and running and get some Dolby pink noise.

M&E is not nec. just deleting your dialog tracks. You need to do a full Foley pass and you may need to remove some stuff that's in FX.