Audio editing going from Mac Pro to Not amazing PC?

M

MeAgain

Carbonite Member
As many (or all of you) know, I'm editing a short student film and just started on sound editing recently. I have my sound design all mapped out, it's just been slow and tedious editing and there's zero chance of me finishing more than 25% of the sound before tommorow (when it's due).

So, my teacher is fine with me handing in only part of the film, but my dilemma comes in me taking the time over the summer to finish this right. I don't have a Mac or anything powerful at home, though my friend has a macbook pro (with FCP studio) and while this isn't the perfect setting to finish sound editing on, it's all I have to get a decent DVD mix for festival submissions.

However- I'm worried how slow this might be and how much he'll be available- he's actually going on a 2-week trip soon and in the mean time I'd like to do as much of the sound editing at home as possible- not even mixing, just throwing the sound together and trimming it so that when I bring it onto his macbook, things go quicker.

All I currently have at home (since my laptop died) is a PC that's a few years old with Audacity on it. Is there anyway I could use a .mov of my film and just finish the audio editing in Audacity, bring it over to audacity on his mac book to do whatever poor man's mixing we can? Is this feasable, or really silly and convoluted? If I can't do something similiar my next best bet is simply waiting until he comes back and jumping back into FCP.
 
Pretty sure audacity can't handle video. I'm assuming you'd like to avoid spending money on this, so you might want to try reaper. It's not exactly ideal for post work, but it has been getting better. There's some info on using reaper for post here.
 
JordanBlock said:
Pretty sure audacity can't handle video. I'm assuming you'd like to avoid spending money on this, so you might want to try reaper. It's not exactly ideal for post work, but it has been getting better. There's some info on using reaper for post here.
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I didn't see mention of a video monitor function in Reaper, so for me, being a 'visual' person, a tool to manipulate 'audio' for a movie, that doesn't include at least a simple video monitor, seems, awkward to say the least.

It would seem that one of the Sony Vegas packages may be 'cheap' enough for a student, yet have enough audio editing capability to allow for easy syncing up to the video.

In terms of 'free', I've been meaning to hook up Audour with Blender, but since I have tools like Sound Trak (FC Express 3 version) or CS4 Soundbooth, or even Premiere/FC Express, I've found that for my 'visual' needs these seem to do fine.

Admittedly these do not have easy subframe cutting, or a lot of filters (because I'm cheap and don't buy the plugins...), but at least getting sounds and voices lined up, other than a timecode set of notes, or the like, it seems a no-visual audio editor for movies, well, would be more hassle than it was worth.

I perhaps should clarify... for taking an individual sound clip, whether a sound FX element, or dialog, and 'cleaning', enhancing, sweeting, etc. there is no need for the 'visual'. But when one is going to put it all together, that's were the no-visuals seem to be a major impediment... at least for me...
 
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Reaper's video monitor is brought up in the 'view' menu. It's not like reaper is really ready for prime time yet for post use, but it's getting better very quickly and would almost certainly get the job done.

Vegas would be a better option if the cash is available.
 
Reaper is a great program for audio, cheap, and very low in resource use. It is an ideal program for someone on a budget who is capable of handling something that is more complex than audacity.

It will play back video, and for what you are talking about, that should be all you need.

If you are going to need each sound effect separate to give to someone later on, you can rename the files in reaper very easily, and just rename them with the timecode number and description. That makes it very easy to bring them into another system later and line up with very little effort.
 
Well what I'm looking to do is start, not finish. In other words, the more cleaning and fixing, and even lining up and constructing I can do prior to my editing sessions will save a tremendous amount of the guy's time.


So, maybe clean up the clips and then use Reaper to line everything up? It would be great if I could use something that would allow to import everything intact right into FCP, but I assume that's what STP if for, so.
 
j1clark@ucsd.edu said:
Where was that feature mentioned, as I didn't see it on the pages I looked at on the site?
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They hardly make any reference to it, I think it's mentioned somewhere on the about page, and there's usually a 'video' section in the release notes for each version on the download page. You'd really have to search for it to find it.

It is covered (again, barely) in the user guide, but no one that hasn't downloaded the app would read that, so I'll toss it here for future searchers:

REAPER can be used to edit the soundtrack of your video files, such as .AVI, .MPG and .WMV files. These files are imported using the Insert, Media File command. In addition, you can use the Track, Insert Track from Template command to import data from a .EDL file. Use the View, Show Video Window command, Ctrl Shift V, to show the Video Window. Use the Options command within this window if you wish to resize it. You cannot perform any video editing within Reaper, but you can work on the soundtrack. You can edit the existing soundtrack, and/or add create new tracks and media items to be mixed with it. In the illustration below, Track 1 contains the original soundtrack; Track 2 contains a voice over that has been added in REAPER.
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Most of useful info on Reaper for post is found in their forums and the wiki I linked earlier.
 
JordanBlock said:
They hardly make any reference to it, I think it's mentioned somewhere on the about page, and there's usually a 'video' section in the release notes for each version on the download page. You'd really have to search for it to find it.

It is covered (again, barely) in the user guide, but no one that hasn't downloaded the app would read that, so I'll toss it here for future searchers:

Most of useful info on Reaper for post is found in their forums and the wiki I linked earlier.
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Ok, you should get your sales compensation... I'll at least download and do the trial period...
 
j1clark@ucsd.edu said:
Ok, you should get your sales compensation... I'll at least download and do the trial period...
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Lol, I wish.

I generally am only using reaper for some field recording right now, I've only experimented a little with using it for post.

There's definitely a long way for it to go before it could be a viable alternative to ProTools for professional post work, but I think it's worth keeping an eye on and trying out from time to time as it improves.

There's a 'post production feature requests' sticky their feature request forums that links to a bunch of things they're currently working on. Hopefully that thread is easier to find than their mentions of video support!
 
So I downloaded a demo of Reaper and I'm messing around with the video, and it won't import .mov files. I'm also worried about staying in sync I exported a video for reference at the same frame rate and best quality from FCP, but I'm worried about editing it, then having the sync off when I re-import the finished sound file back into FCP.


I'm going to run some tests first with my editor on his Mac when he gets back next week, but in the meantime I guess my real question is- can I export from Reaper and then import that file into FCP and continue editing it? It looks like you can only export as .RPP and .EDL, but is there some way to convert these files to something FCP can read and edit itself?
 
Basically no. But that isn't a Reaper problem it's true for all the DAW's. The work flow is to send your tracks via OMF or some other exchange format. Work on the tracks in your DAW of choice. And then output your mixed "printmaster" and bring that in as a stereo file into your NLE and snap it to the start of the time line. Incase the acronyms were confusing DAW = Digital Audio Workstation, ie an audio editing program, and NLE = NonLinear Editor, ie a picture editing program.

Even moving DAW to DAW requires some sort of exchange format file. So generally stick with one application. Reaper is cross platform and should be able to hand sessions between platforms? The last time I looked at it it didn't support video (or at least I couldn't find the feature) and that was a deal breaker for post. And yes you DO need to be able to play the video in sync while working. If you end up working on the Mac then I would recommend you do a SEND TO SOUNDTRACK PRO and work on it in STP. It's not the greatest DAW out there but it's miles better than working in FCP.

Also an important note. Quick Time is not a codec it's a wrapper for media files. So a MOV could be anything. You need to output your video in a specific codec (like h.264 or DV or AVI). Also you may need to change the extension for Windows. FCP will probably slap a .mov on everything and Windows probably wants to see a codec related extension like .avi etc.
 
Noiz2 said:
Reaper is cross platform and should be able to hand sessions between platforms? The last time I looked at it it didn't support video (or at least I couldn't find the feature) and that was a deal breaker for post. And yes you DO need to be able to play the video in sync while working.
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I loaded up the demo on a Mac, and it does have a video window option, that is sync'd up to the audio timeline.

Unfortunately The Anniversary, and The Job, have conspired to disallow me any time to look at it further.
 
I wasn't questioning that it had video now, I was explaining why I didn't explore it further. I was hoping to use it on the laptop as a sort of second PT for traveling light. But then Reaper didn't seem to support video and Digi came out with the PT Mini so...
 
OK, well, it seems my not-amazing PC can handle reaper just fine. I understand (vaguely) the workflow of editing the sound in a sound editor then bringing it into FCP (or Vegas or whatever), my problem is I'm pretty paranoid about things getting muddled up since I'm inexperienced. Granted, I've been working in FCP for sound so far and have about 4 or 5 minutes done, so I assume working in Reaper will be smoother...I understand it isn't pro level yet, but I imagine editing sound in it must be better than FCP?

I'll run some tests with my editor first. Any good recommendations on a program for converting my .mov file to a .avi or .wnv format?
 
other solution is to pass it to someone else who has the right software to do it...

But I don't know that's the goal?
 
Well if you have the right codec installed you can go directly out of FCP. If not then go get MPEG Streamclip. It's free and will do lots O conversions. You still may have to install codecs to get to AVI and WMV. "Flip for Mac" is one source, though to write I think you need to pay. Another is PERIAN it's free and does AVI.
 
MeAgain said:
OK, well, it seems my not-amazing PC can handle reaper just fine. I understand (vaguely) the workflow of editing the sound in a sound editor then bringing it into FCP (or Vegas or whatever), my problem is I'm pretty paranoid about things getting muddled up since I'm inexperienced. Granted, I've been working in FCP for sound so far and have about 4 or 5 minutes done, so I assume working in Reaper will be smoother...I understand it isn't pro level yet, but I imagine editing sound in it must be better than FCP?

I'll run some tests with my editor first. Any good recommendations on a program for converting my .mov file to a .avi or .wnv format?
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If you have Quicktime Pro for the Windows box, you should be able to use that to transform/format audio to and from the Mac.

I think Quicktime 7 is still available for Windows. The price for QT Pro is 29.99.

(QT 10 on Snow Leopard seems to not have a 'pro' option, but I've not really looked to see if they now include all the 'pro' features of earlier versions of QT... Pro here doesn't really mean a whole lot, but did allow for transcoding, simple clip editing, and the like.)

As a note, I don't see any reason to use wmv at all... AVI should be general enough to transfer back and forth between Windows and Mac. That said, you may have to do an audio render in FCP, but still that should not really be problematic...
 
Sorry, I was probably a bit confusing- I only have a PC at home right now and my editor is the one with the Macbook, and he's gone til next week, so I'm trying to get a head start on the editing without him. I'll check out some of the programs mentioned.


Another related question for seasoned audio editors- is it best to spend time editing each sound effect down first, then importing that into reaper? The way I was doing it in FCP was simply going into the sound file and setting markers. When I double click a sound file in reaper, it says there is no external sound editor set or connected or whatever, I don't know if it's worth seeing if I connect it to audacity to edit the clips down in real time or if I should just muddle through the list of sounds (which are properly named and numbered, thank god) ahead of time and edit them down to what I need. I guess I'm asking for a newbie workflow recommendation at this point!
 
You should be able to trim inside of Reaper. If not then it's not much of a DAW, so I'm sure you can but I don't use it so?
 
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