New Batch File Generator, updated LACE and CSG

[Jon Marshall Smith]

Hello everyone,

I have posted Batch File Generator, a utilty to streamline SawStudio exports into a variety of formats. Perfect for generating large sampler layouts, or sound design applications, or... any number of other uses. Supported formats include all flavours of Wave (8-32 bits, BWF w/timestamping) and AIFF and MP3/Ogg via LACE.

Read all about it here (http://www.jms-audioware.com/bfg.htm).

I've also updated LACE. All three codecs have been updated to their newest versions. The update is also necessary for BFG to work with LACE... which of course, breaks CSG's LACE interface, leading too.....

An updated CSG! (v1.9b) The only change here is that the current version of LACE continues to function properly.

Read all about this and more at JMS-Audioware (http://www.jms-audioware.com).

The full version of BFG is $50, although if the full functionality is overkill I would expect the 'demo' version will be of use as well. It only exports one file at a time, but all formats are available and many many files can be set up and ready to go. LACE is of course still free... as in beer, anyhow. :D

Time to take a few moments off before diving into that Metronome update!

-Jon Marshall Smith
-stuff for SAW at http://www.jms-audioware.com

[AudioAstronomer]

Oh man. BFG(9k?) is mine very very soon.

This is what ive been whining for for a long time!

[tomasino]

Hey Jon,
any chance of getting a .WMA codec for LACE?

[Veit Kenner]

Hello everyone,

I have posted Batch File Generator, a utilty to streamline SawStudio exports into a variety of formats. Perfect for generating large sampler layouts, or sound design applications, or... any number of other uses. Supported formats include all flavours of Wave (8-32 bits, BWF w/timestamping) and AIFF and MP3/Ogg via LACE.
Hi Jon,

this is very good news, indeed. I'll give it a try and come back :-)

Enjoy.

Veit

[Sebastian Eskildsen]

Great news :D

Just have a question to BFG: I am doing a lot of video/audio
recording in SS, and have often hoped that SS could run Cinemacraft´s
DV-avi to Mpeg2 converter as a plugin, now I was wondering if the BFG
over time could be develope into also handle DV-avi to Mpeg2 convertion
by using a third part plugin or a free convertion algoritm ?

Sebastian

[Tree Leopard]

JMS! Thanks! I played around with the demo today. Here are some things I came across...

- on a couple of instances going wav > aiff I got a "digifart" at the end of the exported clip, where it seemed to be catching automation (in this case a mute at the end of the region in SAW).

- I discovered you have to make sure that the bitrate in the FX Module dialogue matches output file of BFG. If you forget, you get a parsing error while the buildmix process continues (but no result is produced.)

- when you hit cancel you have to wait for the phantom buildmix to finish until you can get back into the menu. Esc during buildmix donna work.

- The demo seems to only work with marked areas - does the full version of BFG read selected regions (in [S] mode) across multiple tracks?

Otherwise I think the BFG is going to be very handy indeed! :) Thanks for the other updates too!

Andre

PS: I love the "Do it" buttton. New York all over. :cool:

[Jon Marshall Smith]

Hi Andre, thanks for playing with the BFG!


I discovered you have to make sure that the bitrate in the FX Module dialogue matches output file of BFG. If you forget, you get a parsing error while the buildmix process continues (but no result is produced.)This is by design; it doesn't need to match the output, it just needs to be 24bit. I didn't want people inadvertantly doing 16 bit builds from SAW and expecting BFG to build the promised 24 bit files. 24 bit files would indeed be built, but if SAW is only passing me 16 bit data, it's all I have to work with -- so the last eight bits would be zeroed out. Seemed more elegant to protect against this by just disallowing 16 bit builds. By providing BFG with a 24 bit stream, BFG can build any and all formats properly. I'll add an explanation of this behavior to the manual, and maybe clarify the warning dialog as well... and make it cancel the process.


when you hit cancel you have to wait for the phantom buildmix to finish until you can get back into the menu. Esc during buildmix donna work.This was originally by design also, but a bit ill-conceived... My thinking was that there may be some other relevant target for the Build-To-Fx, but I suppose that is unlikely. Today's update will cause cancellation to occur.


The demo seems to only work with marked areas - does the full version of BFG read selected regions (in [S] mode) across multiple tracks?Once again, by design! :) A plugin doesn't really have any way of knowing what regions are selected, so the marked area is really the only way I can do it. Although my favorite way to control what files are to be built is to manually select them in the BFG's window prior to invoking 'BuildMix to Fx'.


- on a couple of instances going wav > aiff I got a "digifart" at the end of the exported clip, where it seemed to be catching automation (in this case a mute at the end of the region in SAW).By design, AIFF files are supposed to have 'digifarts' at the end. No, just kidding, this one looks like a bug... I'm tracking it down, I'm suspecting it may be related to 'Auto FX Bypass' being engaged and confusing the plugin. I haven't yet succeeded in duplicating said farts but I'm sure I will before too long.


Otherwise I think the BFG is going to be very handy indeed! :) Thanks for the other updates too!Thanks, I hope so! It meshes really well with the way I personally work; I've been wanting it forever. Finally had some time to write some code, and just in time for a couple of big recording projects.

-Jon Marshall Smith
-stuff for SAW at http://www.jms-audioware.com

[Jon Marshall Smith]

Great news :D

Just have a question to BFG: I am doing a lot of video/audio
recording in SS, and have often hoped that SS could run Cinemacraft´s
DV-avi to Mpeg2 converter as a plugin, now I was wondering if the BFG
over time could be develope into also handle DV-avi to Mpeg2 convertion
by using a third part plugin or a free convertion algoritm ?

SebastianHi Sebastian,

Sorry, that's not too likely.. the SawStudio PlugIn API deals strictly with audio... SS's video functions are completely invisible. Besides, video is a scary scary world for me :)

I _have_ found that BFG greatly eases the audio end of DVD construction, however.. I blow over all the audio from each segment, sonically match them, sweeten them, and then use BFG to re-export the whole processed lot as 16 bit PCMs. Easy to tweak them all or some of them later and rebuild without sync worries and such.

I just did a DVD for my band, and the audio sweetening worked wonders.... several of our sources had music from our records, but in mono... I was able to quickly replace the mono tracks with the original stereo while keeping everything in sync; and then of course level matching everything from a variety of sources. We also had some handheld camcorder footage of live shows, and I was able to mix in a board recording of the same show underneath the camera's recording for a pretty effective no-budget result. I DO love the digital world!

-Jon Marshall Smith
-stuff for SAW at http://www.jms-audioware.com

[Sebastian Eskildsen]

BFG is a nice plugin, anyway :D

Sebastian

[Tree Leopard]

Thanks for the clarifications.




By design, AIFF files are supposed to have 'digifarts' at the end. No, just kidding, this one looks like a bug... I'm tracking it down, I'm suspecting it may be related to 'Auto FX Bypass' being engaged and confusing the plugin. I haven't yet succeeded in duplicating said farts but I'm sure I will before too long.
I managed to replicate the "digifarts" with the BFG as well as the Voxengo Recorder. But there is no consistency in this - but when they happen its always at the end or near the end of an exported clip. It might be a zero cross issue... or even CPU funny business ... I'll try some more scenarios.

I might have been wrong about "mute" in Automation - seems no difference either way.

I was thinking maybe it was the Sonoris Leveler or SIR which from time to time glitch on my system (all the same, excellent freebies). I've never had a problem in buildmix itself and thats after a good number of bounces and mixdowns in the last few weeks. Clean results, everytime.

Yo!

Andre

[TotalSonic]

Jon -
Thanks so much for yet again another great addition to SAW!

Best regards,
Steve Berson

[Mountain Media]

Jon, not about BFG or LACE, but just the same ----

I gotta say how MUCH I depend on CSG for making life easier. I do, primarily, live concert recordings. In such, most directors' want their CD's to 'flow', with ambience present, when you listen to the CD front-to-back. However, they also want track IDs for indexing when that is the way one wants to listen. CSG makes it SO easy to set the IDs, test them, move to get appropriate 'air' from ID to start of selection, etc, etc, etc.

Additionally, once a CUE and (in my case, usually) a full WAV of the CD are created, I can archive these separately, and for additional burns, I just have to pull them and go!!

Saves MUCH time and frustration versus building separate waves, sequencing in a burn program, verifying there are appropriate (or no) between-track gaps selected, THEN burn!

Thanks for all your work!! :)

[Naturally Digital]

I'm trying the demo and getting a warning message when I try to buildmix to FX...

I'm trying it with the Radio Ad demo and I'm trying to create 16bit PCM mono files.

Am I doing something wrong?

[Bob L]

My guess is that you may be patching it into the final res patch point... it sounds like you would need to patch it into the Pre or Pst patch point... all yellow patch points pass 24 bit data... the final res point passes the final res of 24, 20, or 16 bit data.

Bob L

[Naturally Digital]

My guess is that you may be patching it into the final res patch point... it sounds like you would need to patch it into the Pre or Pst patch point... all yellow patch points pass 24 bit data... the final res point passes the final res of 24, 20, or 16 bit data.Thanks Bob. No, I tried it in pre and post on both an input track and an output track. :confused:

[Bob L]

Ok, then I'm not sure about the error, Jon will have to chime in here.

Bob L

[UpTilDawn]

Saves MUCH time and frustration versus building separate waves, sequencing in a burn program, verifying there are appropriate (or no) between-track gaps selected, THEN burn!

Not to mention that if you save the cd build file in Nero (not sure about others), then move it at some point, Nero won't open the session for a re-burn because it's not in the same folder you stored it in.

Thanks Jon for all the updates!

Good luck on the upcoming projects, too.

DanT

[Cary B. Cornett]

Finally had some time to write some code, and just in time for a couple of big recording projects.


<Jumping up and down with hand raised>

Is there any chance you could revisit the idea of making the send/return plug usable for sidechain compression within ONE channel, rather than requiring return to different channel? We have "conversed" about this a couple of times, but I got the impression you were swamped with other stuff at the time...

[bcorkery]

Is there a way to burn with CSG and not render each of the tracks first? It's my understaning that they are mixed before the burn process.

TIA,
Bill

[Dave Labrecque]

Is there a way to burn with CSG and not render each of the tracks first? It's my understaning that they are mixed before the burn process.

TIA,
Bill

Bill,

CSG doesn't burn. It only generates the files and cue sheet for the burn. It can generate just a cue sheet, if you want.

[Naturally Digital]

<Jumping up and down with hand raised>

Is there any chance you could revisit the idea of making the send/return plug usable for sidechain compression within ONE channel, rather than requiring return to different channel? We have "conversed" about this a couple of times, but I got the impression you were swamped with other stuff at the time...FWIW, I would really like that too!

[Carlos Mills]

Hi Jon,

Very good to see you around! Thanks for this new goodies... :)

Take care,

Carlos

[Naturally Digital]

<Jumping up and down with hand raised>

Is there any chance you could revisit the idea of making the send/return plug usable for sidechain compression within ONE channel, rather than requiring return to different channel? We have "conversed" about this a couple of times, but I got the impression you were swamped with other stuff at the time...Just a mention of the new Unipressor from Kjaerhus...

I haven't tried it yet but it seems to offer a parallel compression mode. From the blurb on the site:

"The compressed signal can be mixed with the uncompressed one, and that can be used to create upward compression. "

http://www.kjaerhusaudio.com/gup-1.php