Apple Soundtrack Pro 2 New Features User Manual

New Features in Soundtrack Pro 2

This is an overview of the new features in Soundtrack Pro 2. For more information on these features and their use, see the

Surround Sound

Soundtrack Pro provides a flexible and elegant toolset for creating and editing audio projects in 5.1 surround. Soundtrack Pro offers an easy-to-use approach to surround panning, mixing, and automation, including unparalleled flexibility with surround files and the ability to easily switch between stereo and surround mixes. Soundtrack Pro also includes a huge library of surround clips for sound effects and music beds, as well as advanced surround reverb and dynamics effects such as Space Designer, which includes new impulse responses for creating accurate representations of actual spaces in full surround.

Multitrack Editing Enhancements

Soundtrack Pro 2 adds powerful editing improvements, including the following:

An integrated waveform editor—for editing and processing a clip’s backing file directly in the File Editor tab and hearing the changes in the multitrack project— streamlines your audio post-production workflow. You can view and modify a clip’s audio file in the File Editor tab without losing the context of your multitrack Timeline. Simply select a clip in the Timeline and it appears in the File Editor tab below. The playheads in the Timeline and the File Editor tab are synchronized so you can play the audio file within the context of your whole multitrack project. Any changes you make to the audio file are updated in the Timeline immediately.

The Sound Palette and Lift and Stamp tools are timesaving tools for applying work you have done on one clip to one or more other clips. Use the Lift tool to copy properties from selected clips and create a processing template in the Sound Palette that can be applied to other clips. Use the Stamp tool to apply those properties to the other clips. Match a clip’s sound characteristics using the Match EQ plug-in.

Soundtrack Pro 2 User Manual

Use the Fade Selector HUD to quickly apply and adjust fades and crossfades.

The Multipoint Video HUD provides frame-accurate context when you are positioning audio clips and making selections in a video-based project. The window intelligently tracks the video frames and locations of a clip’s start and end points and the movements of the pointer as you work in the Timeline and the File Editor.

The Timecode HUD is a resizable floating window that displays the current project timecode.

You now have the ability to lock, unlock, enable, disable, and color-label clips and tracks in the Timeline.

Soundtrack Pro 2 includes a completely redesigned Timeslice tool for time selections across the Timeline and within individual clips.

A new Tracks tab allows for easily viewing, selecting, and grouping tracks, busses, and submixes.

Soundtrack Pro 2 offers improved methods for clip selection and moving clips numerically in the Timeline, as well as spotting clips to the playhead and spotting clips to the Timeline (using native timecode).

Numerous other multitrack editing enhancements include Final Cut Pro–style J-K-L transport controls, spotting clips from various media tabs to the Timeline, new grouping features, Blade tool improvements, region markers, and a mode for selecting and moving envelope points with clips.

Conform

The Conform feature in Soundtrack Pro 2 removes one of the biggest hurdles faced by sound editors, which is dealing with picture changes. In the past, when a picture editor moved, added, or deleted clips, or changed edit durations, the sound editor had to manually conform the sound mix (with its volume, pan, and effects settings) to the new picture edit. This process was time-consuming and it was easy to make mistakes. Worse, manually conforming the mix distracted a sound editor from the most important job at hand: completing the mix.

The Soundtrack Pro Conform feature can quickly compare and conform two versions of the same sequence: the new picture edit (from Final Cut Pro) and the sound mix (from Soundtrack Pro). In this way, Soundtrack Pro 2 takes the drudgery and potential mistakes out of the common conforming process.

Automatic Mixdown Return to Final Cut Pro

In Soundtrack Pro 2, when you create a Soundtrack Pro multitrack project from within Final Cut Pro, all of the sequence clip information is stored in the multitrack project. When you export a mixdown of the multitrack project in Soundtrack Pro, you can choose to open a new copy of the Final Cut Pro sequence that looks just like the original sequence but has additional audio tracks that contain your mixdown.

Multitake Editor

Use the new Multitake Editor to create composite takes of multitake recordings (such as in automatic dialogue replacement, or ADR). This tool allows you to easily mix and match parts of different takes. Once you have finished editing a multitake clip, you can collapse it into a single clip on the multitrack Timeline.

Frequency Selection Tool and Spectrum View HUD

Use the Frequency Selection tool in the Frequency Spectrum view to make selections of frequency ranges as well as copy, paste, delete, and adjust the amplitude of frequency selections. The new Spectrum View HUD provides extensive controls for the Frequency Spectrum view.

Enhanced Multichannel Support

With Soundtrack Pro 2, you can edit up to 24 channels in a single audio file and record and play back up to six channels in a single audio file in the multitrack Timeline. Soundtrack Pro 2 supports the following types of multichannel files: AIFF, WAVE, Broadcast Wave, QuickTime, CAF, and single folder or multi-mono file AIFF.

Multitrack Recording

With Soundtrack Pro 2, you can record across multiple tracks in the Timeline. (This is limited only by your hardware setup.)

Bin Enhancements

The new, improved Bin tab provides a hierarchical display of information about all open projects including duration, timecode, sample rate, Timeline information, takes, file size, file path, copyright, and so on. You can add clips to the Bin for easy access and drag them from the Bin tab to the Timeline. The Bin also features a handy search function to help you locate items in any open project.

Tape-Style Scrubbing

The Soundtrack Pro Scrub tool provides detailed scrubbing that realistically emulates the “rock-the-reels” scrubbing on analog tape decks. Scrubbing an audio file lets you hear the audio at the playhead position as you drag the playhead, so you can quickly find a particular sound or event in a long audio file.

OMF and AAF Support

Open Media Framework (OMF) and Advanced Authoring Format (AAF) are industrystandard project interchange formats that Soundtrack Pro can use to import editing decisions from other video and audio editing applications. You can also export a multitrack project from Soundtrack Pro as an AAF file.

Podcasting

With Soundtrack Pro 2, audio creators can quickly and easily produce extremely high-quality audio and video podcasts directly from their Soundtrack Pro projects. Soundtrack Pro provides podcasters with the complete production package for recording, editing, mixing, and compression. And with the podcasting workflow built right in to Soundtrack Pro, even motion picture post-production personnel can easily create iPod-ready or web-ready versions of their sound-for-picture mix or edit.

Music and Sound Effects Clip Library

Soundtrack Pro 2 provides over 1000 sound effects (SFX), music beds, transitions, and more, enabling you to further add professional polish to your sound work. These professionally produced and recorded elements make it easy to get started fast and keep the quality high.

Advanced Effects Plug-ins and Impulse Response Files

Soundtrack Pro 2 includes high-quality stereo and surround effects plug-ins and impulse response files from the Logic Pro effects library that you can use in your projects.

Soundtrack Pro 2 introduces many new special surround effects, including Surround Compressor, Delay Designer, Space Designer, and Multichannel Gain.

Impulse response files are audio files that contain the reverberant qualities of unique spaces from around the world, including stadiums and cathedrals. You can use the Space Designer convolution reverb plug-in to add and modify impulse responses in your sound editing projects.

Enhanced Export Options

Soundtrack Pro 2 has a variety of sophisticated export options.

You can export all, or selected, tracks, busses, or submixes to either stereo or multichannel audio files or to groups of mono files.

You can export a project to a mono, stereo, or multichannel audio file.

Export file formats include the following standard audio file types: AIFF, WAVE, NeXT, Sound Designer II, MP3, AAC/Podcast, and Dolby Digital Professional (AC-3).

You can also export a project to numerous other audio and video formats using Compressor, the Final Cut Studio transcoding application, directly out of Soundtrack Pro.

The Soundtrack Pro Export dialog includes a variety of post-export actions that can automatically open the exported files in a Final Cut Pro sequence or in File Editor project view, or export a mix to iTunes, Motion, Logic, or Waveburner. You can also add your own custom AppleScript documents to the Export dialog.

You can streamline your workflow by creating custom export presets with any combination of exported items, file types, bit depths, sample rates, and post-export actions.

You can also export your project using AAF, an industry-standard project interchange format.

Copyright © 2007 Apple Inc. All rights reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, AppleScript, Final Cut, Final Cut Pro, Final Cut Studio, iPod, iTunes, Logic, QuickTime, and Soundtrack are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. NeXT is a trademark of NeXT Software, Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. Dolby Laboratories: Manufactured under license from Dolby Laboratories. “Dolby,” “Pro Logic,” and the double-D symbol are trademarks of Dolby Laboratories. Confidential Unpublished Works, © 1992–1997 Dolby Laboratories, Inc. All rights reserved. Other company and product names mentioned herein are trademarks of their respective companies.