New audio features of PTE v6.5

[fh1805]

The new audio features are controlled through the Project Options…Music tab. These brief notes are intended to help you grasp some of the concepts.

You can have multiple tracks. Within each track you can have multiple sound files.

The sound files within each track play one after the other (exactly like having two or more sound files in the Project Options…Music tab of previous versions of PTE).

The tracks play in parallel and can be given a basic mix-down by using the Customize button for each sound file in the track and then setting a volume level for each sound file.

The Offset value can be used to add silence to the front of a sound file in order to move it further along the timeline.

You can apply fade in and/or fade out to any sound file by coding the duration of the fade in the appropriate field.

You can apply a standard cross-fade for all sound files by ensuring that no sound items are selected and then clicking on the Crossfading button and keying in the desired duration of the cross-fade. This will be applied to the start and end of tracks and the tracks affected will be overlapped with each other.

You can have different duration cross-fades by selecting a sound file, clicking on the Customize button, then clicking the Cross-fading radio button and finally keying the desired duration into the Cross-fading field. Note that using this technique you cannot have both an Offset and a Cross-fade on the same sound file.

I hope these few words help you get to grips with the new audio features.

regards,

Peter

[aplman]

The new audio features are controlled through the Project Options…Music tab. These brief notes are intended to help you grasp some of the concepts.

Thank you Peter for the helpful intro to the new audio features.

I can't find this feature:

Option to automatically reduce volume of background music during sound comments of slides

which was included in Igor's earlier post.

Do you know if this is accessible?

Regards

Ken T.

[Igor]

Both options "Reduce volume of background music during sound comments" and "Fade out audio at the end of slideshow" will appear in nearest beta release (one-two weeks).

[fh1805]

Ken (APLman),

There's your answer: straight from the horse's mouth as we say. This is just the first beta release and is not yet complete. If you've not participated in a PTE beta programme before, this is how WnSoft do it. They release code which is usually very stable but might not yet have all the new features included; and might sometimes have old features temporarily disabled.

The addition of the new audio support will have been a major extension of PTE. It has come at a time when WnSoft are also doing major re-writes of the entire product to produce a version of PTE that will run on both Windows and Mac from the same set of source code. It is, therefore, somewhat inevitable that the new audio support is not yet complete nor as polished in its interface as Igor would like.

The key message for us all is: Patience!

regards,

Peter

[aplman]

Both options "Reduce volume of background music during sound comments" and "Fade out audio at the end of slideshow" will appear in nearest beta release (one-two weeks).

Thank you so much, Igor ... Fantastic job! Keep it up!

Ken T.

[jfa]

Thank you so much, Igor ... Fantastic job! Keep it up!

Agreed!! And thanks Peter for your explanation of how the audio function currently work.

[aplman]

Both options "Reduce volume of background music during sound comments" and "Fade out audio at the end of slideshow" will appear in nearest beta release (one-two weeks).

Igor, am I right in thinking that the first of those features has not been implemented yet?

Regards

Ken T

[fh1805]

Ken,

As far as I know they haven't been implemented under those particular labels. But you can use the "envelope" capability to apply any volume level change that you want to any sound item that you want. You just have to do it all manually; there's no magic "one-click-does-it-all" feature.

regards

Peter

[aplman]

Peter, thank you for confirming my suspicion that the oreshadowed feature "Reduce background music volume during sound comments" has not materialised yet.

I am very eager to see it provided, as manual adjustment it a tedious and almost impractical option. We have to be able to add or delete slides, change slide or transition durations, and so on, without disturbing the relationship between slides and comments.

At the moment, in a project that has voice commentary on the majority of slides, I simply set all my background music to a very low volume. I really want to be able to feature the music a little more when there is no voice.

Thanks again ..

Ken T

[fh1805]

Ken,

Whilst accepting that an automatic solution might be appealing for some users, I believe that the manual technique is workable if applied at the right point in the workflow. If you leave the final sound mix until the very last step of the workflow, you will then know precisely where along the timeline you want to try raising the level of the music. It is then a simple and "one time" change to step along the timeline making the final adjustments. From your reply above it sounds to me as though you are trying to do the final sound mix at too early a stage in the development - and therefore getting into excessive "re-work".

When mixing music and voice into soundtracks using Audacity I have always set the voice to the level that I want it at, and then adjusted the music to be about -20dB lower (not quite so aggressive if the music is, itself, a naturally quiet piece). Then, if I have some longer runs of images with no voice-over, I raise the music to about -6dB. I don't take the music all the way back to full volume as this seems too overwhelming after it has been so subdued against the voice.

regards

Peter

[aplman]

Peter ... Thank you for your thoughtful reply.

It is instructive to see how experienced users adapt their work process to the software provided. However, as an experienced programmer, I tend to look for situations where a one-off effort in software development can save many time-consuming and/or tediously repetitive steps across hundreds of users or thousands of projects.

An option to turn the music down when the narrator starts talking seemed to me to be just such a situation.

Apparently, Igor had already accepted that it's a good idea. I am hoping to ensure that the promised facility is not about to be lost in the next round of changes.

Thanks again, your posts are always good reading.

Ken T.

[fh1805]

Ken,

My reservation about a fully-automated solution is based on several years of experience mixing soundtracks that combine music, voice and sounds. There is, in my opinion, no single value that could be used for the difference in sound levels. If you re-read my previous post you will note that I said "...about -20dB..." and "...about -6dB...". I find that each situation has to be handled on its own merits. Even within a single piece of music, especially classical music, there can be a very wide range of sound levels. A difference of -20dB between voice and music in the early part of the piece could be just right, but elsewhere in the piece only -12dB might be needed and in another place, perhaps -23dB is needed.

Sound mixing is rarely a "one size fits all" job.

regards,

Peter

[aplman]

Peter ... I appreciate your advice, based on much experience - thank you.

In my own case, much as I love classical music, I am happy to use as background pieces with relatively level volume ... Andean flutes in my current project (after spending all of September in Peru). So finding the appropriate volume reduction for a project would be easy enough. The background volume adjustment during voice commentary passages should of course be a Project Option, not a "one Size Fits All" figure chosen by Wnsoft.

I should have started this discussion in the "Ideas for Next Version" forum. Thank you for getting involved here.

Ken T.

[fh1805]

Ken,

The point I was trying to make with my "one size fits all" comment was that, even if we have the feature as you suggest, a single value of our choice is, in my opinion, unlikely to meet all the needs within each sequence that we build. Finer control will be required. Therefore the solution has to be very flexible. Therefore it will be time-consuming to apply.

regards,

Peter

[Guest Yachtsman1]

To emphasize what Peter is saying, I have an orchestral recording of Nimrod which is a favourite among AVr's, If I set the sound to one average level you wouldn't hear the first 30 seconds, & the last 30 seconds would blow your head off. Sound levels have to be fine tuned. I don't use PTE's sound adjustment feature I use Audacity which is simplicity itself once you are familiar with the programme, and enables me to use my artistic take.

Yachtsman1.

[aplman]

Oh, dear! I don't imagine Mr Elgar would like to hear Nimrod mentioned in the context of "Background Music"! Not a piece deserving of voice commentary over the top!

Seriously, though, I have a new idea, an improvement, I believe, on my original suggestion. I will put it in the "Ideas for Next Version".

Ken T.

[Barry Beckham]

This is a issue that I havet generally dealt with by making sure I have my hand near the volume control of my speaker system. It seems that it doesn't matter how you try and balance everything up with regard sound volume, different halls will screw that up.

Go into one of those large hollow sounding halls and Eric is right, the low volume parts of the music can hardly be heard and then the build up to the loud parts, melts the deaf aids of all those in the front row.

I havn't found a perfect solution to it and I just gradually adjust the volume while the show is playing and as long as you do it gradually, you can apply sound balance no matter what hall your in or how many people are there deadening the sound.

Thats why I hate demos where sound is laid on, it is never as good as I can provide myself