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Filed under: Audio •Business •

Sour Notes

A friend pointed me to an article in the New York Times, about new software that claims to change the pitch of just one string in a guitar chord. This isn’t a trivial task, since plucked strings don’t have just one frequency. There are harmonics extending up the band, mixing with harmonics of other notes. Anything that wants to adjust a single string has to sort them all out, first.

So I’m skeptical.

A classy trick: This doesn’t mean you can’t appear to be adjusting separate notes in a complex chord. Check this demo on my website for an example. It’s actually a postproduction hack using ordinary pitch-change software, the kind that comes with just about every audio app. See if you can figure out how I did it. (If you can guess, send me e-mail. I’ll acknowledge correct answers here. Don’t post your answer below, or else other people won’t be able to play.)

There are other tricks I’ll reveal in future blog entries. But the point of today’s is that those hot new audio tools always seem aimed at the music marketplace… not at film or video sound. For example, there are excellent plug-ins that can automatically correct out-of-tune singers (whether they should is a different question), or completely change the character of a singing voice. These tools fall short, though, when you want to use them on spoken dialog. The challenges - particularly in pitch tracking - are very different. Few companies are willins to spend the development money to solve them.

To paraphrase somebody else, it’s the market economy, stupid. There are more people making music than making movies.

This doesn’t mean you can’t find good tools. But a little strategy is in order:

Know your history

Since sound-for-picture technology doesn’t move super fast, some older solutions can still be valid. (After all, Hollywood sound workflow and job descriptions haven’t changed much in fifty years.) Consider buying used hardware-based processors instead of the latest plug-ins. If you’re lucky, you can hit that sweet spot of 1990s technology - younger than the classic analog music gear, but not cutting edge - and save some money. These tools might be a little harder to use, but they sound fine. And they’ll hold their value better than this year’s software.

You don’t have to jump on the latest-spec bandwagon either. High sample rates or bit depths are nice, but you can tell just as good a story with 16 bits at 48 kHz. Most of the films we regard as classics didn’t even reach 10 bit, 32 kHz quality by the time they got to theaters.

That’s not an excuse for sloppy work, of course. But if your choice is making a film or buying the latest gadget, make the darned film.

Don’t believe the ads.

A lot of audio software gets advertised as useful for film and video post, mostly because of wishful thinking by product managers. We really do have some unique challenges here. When you read a magazine article about how Movie X used Software Y, remember they probably got the software for free. And might not have used it the way the article describes. Trade show demos can be even worse. I know what I’m talking about here, and you can laugh at my experiences in this article.

Do believe your ears.

This means, of course, that you need a good monitoring environment (decent speakers and controlled acoustics). That can cost money, but not as much as the dealers or consultants would have you believe… one of the most useful materials for making a room sound better, Owens Corning #703 Fiberglass, costs less than two bucks per square foot.

It also means you have to take the time to really listen while you’re working. This seems the hardest thing for video editors to get used to. Stop staring at the screen - look away, if necessary - and pay attention to the quality of sound, and to the rhythm of its cutting. It’ll make you a better editor.

If you’re going to be a pro, sometimes you have to ante up.

The other side of that music-market reality is that good audio post software often doesn’t sell very many copies. So the manufacturers have to charge more per unit to stay in business.

For instance, I spent close to $1000 for audio asset management software, SoundMiner (they also have cheaper versions). It really offers only a couple of features you won’t find in Apple’s free iTunes… but those features are vital. It lets me search the more than 25,000 sound effects in my collection by title or description, automatically check synonyms (“car”, “automobile”, and “sportscar” and “limo” can all refer to the same sound), audition the sound, modify and crop it, and then drop it into my timeline - in sync and on the proper audio track - with one keystroke. Mind you, this isn’t my editing application or a special processor; it’s just a specialized database. But SoundMiner is fast, flexible, adaptable… and lets me turn out a better product with less work.

A specialized tool like SoundMiner can cost money, but for me it was money well spent.

I can’t imagine any $1000 music plug-in being that useful to me.

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