Product Review: Page (4) of 5 - 07/01/05

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Apple's Soundtrack Pro A powerful new application standing at the crossroads of audio and video

Effects
When it's time for spit and polish, Soundtrack Pro's effects lineup rivals that of any audio editor. That's not too surprising when you consider the source of many of these effects: Logic Pro Audio. They've been carefully selected to provide a good blend of video-oriented tools and multipurpose audio tools. Two great tools for video editors are the Denoiser and DeEsser effects, although more audio-oriented users will appreciate them, too.

Space Designer

The Space Designer convolution reverb is an outstanding impulse response reverb, which can load and modify acoustic signatures captured from noteworthy acoustic spaces. Space Designer can modify existing impulse response characteristics such as dynamics, timbre, and length, for a literally unlimited variety of reverb types. Impulse responses of many spaces are widely available for free download on the internet. It's also possible to create impulse responses with Space Designer. Another noteworthy effect from Logic Pro Audio is Match EQ, which is able to capture the EQ curve of any sound source played through it and apply that curve to any other audio file.

Other Soundtrack Pro effects include: Low and High Pass Filters, Compressor, Limiter, Ringshifter, Platinum Verb, Pitchshifter, Vocal Transformer, Stereo Spread, Distortion and Fat EQ.

Waveform editor
Like the Project window, the Waveform editor is a clean and uncluttered environment. The selected audio waveform dominates two-thirds of the window, making it easy to get deep inside it, down to individual samples. Double-clicking on any audio clip in Soundtrack Pro brings it up in the Waveform editor. A dialog box offers you the choice of editing a copy of the file non-destructively or editing the original, which will be overwritten when you save. Only one audio clip can be displayed at a time, mono or stereo.

Waveform editor

There are good tools for common functions such as trimming, cropping, splitting, nudging and copy/paste, plus a few innovative functions, such as the Next/Previous arrows at the top of the Waveform editing interface. These let you jump between the next and previous areas defined by markers you've placed in the file. This is a great way to line up different sections for editing, analysis, or applying different actions to each section (effects, for instance).

Double-clicking anywhere between two markers jumps to that section. In a large file with numerous markers, this functionality saves significant time. Selecting any area of a file is done by dragging the mouse from the cursor position to the desired end position. This also works for sections of individual Left or Right channels in a stereo file.

But the Waveform editor's Analysis tools are among Soundtrack Pro's most useful features for video editors. Accessible from a button at the top left of the Waveform editor, the Analysis function presents six types of problems to search for: Clicks/Pops, Power Line Hum, DC Offset, Phase, Clipped Signal and Silence.

Analysis shows clicks and pops and clips.

Analyzing a file for these problems is simple: Click a box next to the issues you want to check, and press the Analyze button. All of the buttons can be selected, or just one or two. A progress bar appears as the analysis is performed, and then a report on each problem found is displayed. It tells the status of the problem, what it is, where it starts, how long it lasts, and whether it's in the left channel, the right channel or both. Pressing the Fix button repairs the selected issues -- again, this operation can be carried out problem-by-problem, or all at once.  

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