By: Erik Vlietinck
Mon, October 15, 2007 - 9:12:01

http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/soundtrackpro/
Score:

I remember when Apple released the first version of Soundtrack Pro I was thrilled. I am not a sound engineer, but I have a sort of love affair with sound editing, music scores, and what have you got. And Soundtrack Pro was to enable much of the high-end features that I had read Avid being capable of delivering until then. When I finally got my hands on a review copy, it was nothing short of a revelation. Soundtrack Pro was one of the coolest sound editing applications that I had ever seen.

Usually, novelty wears off. However, Soundtrack Pro kept its appeal whenever I opened the program to see what a specific sound file looked like. I read what some of the world’s most famous movie directors could accomplish with Soundtrack Pro, and I kept studying the application. And today, I am reviewing Soundtrack Pro 2.0.1, Apple’s newest version of this powerful sound editor. Soundtrack Pro 2 has many capabilities that must make working with it more powerful without adding to the complexity, once again.

Soundtrack Pro 2 integrates fully with Final Cut Pro 6, with Motion 3 and also with Apple’s newest music score software, Logic Studio. With Soundtrack Pro, you can add sound to your videos, or mix sound with the video’s. You can create audiofiles, and create podcasts, with or without images and video footage. Surround sound is supported, as well as multitrack editing in a grand way. Multiple takes are as easy as simple takes, tape-style scrubbing has been added, better support for control surfaces, and OMF and AAF support too. And some of Logic Pro 7’s most spectacular and awe-inspiring effects have been thrown in for good measure.

I always compare Apple’s products in my mind with toys. Final Cut Studio looks like a toy for a video or movie director. I bet people who have to edit videos with Final Cut Pro never go home with the feeling they have actually been working hard --even if they spent hours and hours staring at a computer screen. The reason why they probably don’t is Apple’s talent to turn every tool into a grown man’s (and woman’s, I bet) toy. You simply don’t feel like working when you’re editing sound with Soundtrack Pro too. The whole interface has a feel that can only be described as natural. On the surface it all looks like it’s child’s play, but when you start digging, you won’t reach the bottom any time soon.

Professional Sound Editing for Video Editors

While Soundtrack Pro 1 was almost shy with regards to its professional status. Soundtrack Pro 2 isn’t. It’s powerful in your face. That is clear from the very start, when you Send a file from within Final Cut Pro to Soundtrack Pro. In Soundtrack Pro, you will immediately get your video footage in a tabbed window. By default, that window is rather small, but grabbing the tab at its neck and dragging it to another monitor screen is an immediate remedy. You can make that window as big as you want.

You can then start editing and mixing. In many workflows, you won’t be going it alone. The video or movie editor will be adding and removing clips, editing durations, etc. So, with Soundtrack Pro 1, you could start over again, and adapt to the new video cut by hand. With Soundtrack Pro 2, when you’re finished editing, you can simply launch the Conform feature. That will compare the two versions of the sound edit --the one in Final Cut Pro which was worked on while you were sweating, and the one you edited in Soundtrack Pro yourself-- and automatically conform the versions so your edit fits the footage like a glove.

Even if you don’t use Conform, your edits will automatically apply in Final Cut Pro, or you can open a new copy of your sequence. I tried this several times, and I could never make this work as it is supposed to. That’s odd because the same type of feature exists for Color edits, and there I can make it work. I’m probably doing something wrong or overlooking the obvious, but I can’t deny this one has me puzzled. Nevertheless, you can always use Conform if everything else fails.

True Cross-media Publishing with Support for Podcasting

An integrated waveform editor enables you to edit and process a clip’s backing file directly in the File Editor tab and hear the changes in a multitrack project. This is great for modifying audio without losing context. Another great new tool is the Spectrum View HUD. The spectrum view shows you the audio as a frequency histogram instead of the traditional waveform line every other editor shows you. In Spectrum View you can edit the audio in more ways than in waveform view.

Lift and Stamp tools like in Aperture allow you to copy properties from one clip to another. A multitake editor lets you mix parts of different takes. I tested this feature and could easily record a clip over another one, then move the second one slightly out of sync and apply a transition effect. 24 channels in a single audio file can be edited, although I learned that you will have to be in Project view to and not Audio view to see all the channels and use them.

Record to multiple tracks in the Timeline is supported as well. On a Quad Core, I could record to 6 channels without any effort at all. I didn’t try more, as I don’t think it would have made much sense. The organisational tools in Soundtrack Pro have been improved vastly as well. It all looks and behaves more like Aperture or DVD Studio Pro than it does like the previous version of Soundtrack Pro. In terms of ease-of-management, that’s a big step forward, because once you get the hang of the other applications, you’ll also quickly find your way around in Soundtrack Pro --and it just makes sense.

Podcasting is easy with Soundtrack Pro as well. You can send a Final Cut Pro video to Soundtrack Pro, open the podcast track from the View menu, and you can slice your video into chapters with alongside it the sound recording you made. At the end of the process, you can save the whole project as a podcast ready for publication on iTunes. Images --used often as visual chapter markers-- can be dragged to the video track from the Finder, Aperture, or from iPhoto.