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View Full Version : Re: SoftEdge - Another thanks to Bob L.!



Mountain Media
07-10-2004, 04:47 AM
I'm just finishing edit on a 20 selection mixed (mostly classical) choral CD. About 80% is acapella, and the director chose to record in 'phrases'. Recording was in a live performance venue, that has about 3.3 to 3.6 sec. ring-out. Therefore, the ending of a phrase was wet and, in many cases because of director's choice of 'takes', had to be matched with a 'dry' beginning of the following phrase. That, and with quite a few page-turns, furniture clicks, etc. there were anywhere from 10 to almost 30 'edits' in each selection. SoftEdge saved the day! Especially with the wet-to-dry edits! Get the tempo right, and there will probably be a slight click and a wet-to-dry 'hole' in the edit. SoftEdge it, with the wet tail fading under the dry, and GONE are the 'holes' as well as the clicks -- magic! Obviously, the technique is as old as edit blocks and razor-blades, but the time saved is AMAZING! Thanks, again, Bob!

TotalSonic
07-10-2004, 06:50 AM
John -
I 100% agree with you. Soft Edge is a godsend to me - it's probably saved me at least a month of my life in editing time by now after using it the past few years. Basically - "impossible" splices are now very possible - and in fact most of the time a total no-brainer to do - hit the "X" key and the magic happens. To me this function is worth the price of admission alone.

Best regards,
Steve Berson

AudioAstronomer
07-10-2004, 09:29 AM
Absolutely! Being an edit hound that I am (my favorite part of the process ;) ) Ive always been very familiar with other daws... and in anything else the fade/crossfade was nearly useless.... so you just learned to deal with it. Not with SAW! The bloody thing works like magic I tell ya. You just put softedge on something and it magically works almost everytime. It's just massively cool.

Bob L
07-10-2004, 10:41 AM
The softedge is one of my favorite technologies in the SAWStudio engine... and definitely one of the most hassled peices of code behind the scenes. :)

It is a perfect match for exactly the type of dialog or vocal editing issues described in your choir example.

I'm glad its helping to make the editing process easier and better sounding for you.

Bob L

Oz Nimbus
07-10-2004, 11:38 AM
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Soft Edge cut my edit time from 1-2 hours per song, on average, to 10-15 minutes. What a great feature.

-0z-

Sebastian Eskildsen
07-10-2004, 04:11 PM
I agree with all of you, but I do miss the other
crossfade curves from the old saw family once in a while.

I also hope that the "X" one day will work on selected tracks like
the ohter editing funktions.

Sebastian :)

Carlos Mills
07-10-2004, 06:04 PM
I agree with all of you, but I do miss the other
crossfade curves from the old saw family once in a while.

I also hope that the "X" one day will work on selected tracks like
the ohter editing funktions.

Sebastian :)

Hi Sebastian,

Glad to see you here! I think what you are trying to do already exists... Are you aware that you can select regions and add start and end softedges in every selected region?

Best regards,

Carlos

Yura
07-10-2004, 06:17 PM
Hi Sebastian,

Glad to see you here! I think what you are trying to do already exists... Are you aware that you can select regions and add start and end softedges in every selected region?

Carlos

No, he talks about theirs curves.

Carlos Mills
07-10-2004, 06:40 PM
No, he talks about theirs curves.

Hi Yura,

Yes, I know: no curves. But I was talking about this:


I also hope that the "X" one day will work on selected tracks like
the ohter editing funktions.

I think should have quoted my observation better... :)

Bob L
07-10-2004, 07:53 PM
Yes, simply go to Select Mode... select all regions of interest and then popup one of the selected region properties menu (Alt-Right-Click) and set a softedge on both sides.

All seleceted entries will be done at once... and that could be thousands of entries. :)

I have thought about varying curve choices... but softedge is applied live on the fly as the data is streamed... this is a completely different ballgame than the old SAW which wrote in crossfades as automation entries... the code for the softedge is extremely complex.

Bob L

Sebastian Eskildsen
07-11-2004, 06:43 AM
Hi

First, I am not into starting a how to do fight.

The way I work after I got SSl in 2001, is to keep my sessions
as oppen, for as long time as possible.
This mean I don´t mixdown a session and then begin to move
around and find takes like I did in the sawpro days.

This also mean that I have to push "S" and then move the mouse
over the regions I whant to aplay a crossfade, and then "left-right" click
and choose the "softege begin" and "type" in a crossfade time.

This is a good way if I was sure that all my edits just needed the same
crossfade length, and if all splices where perfect.

So the only thing I am asking, is if it is possible to make the "X" key work
on selected tracks.
To me it will be perfect if it only will work if the splices has the same time
position on the selected tracks.

Sebastian :)

Bob L
07-11-2004, 07:53 AM
Well, I will look into the idea and see if it works out.

Bob L

TotalSonic
07-11-2004, 09:08 AM
I could also use the "soft edge applied to selected tracks" as an option also. I think if as many commands as possible followed the "select tracks" paradigm it'd probably make it easier for newbies to figure out also.

Problem is that we can type in these multitudes of requests for "minor" changes a lot faster than I'm sure they can be coded!

Still - thanks for your efforts in all of this.

Best regards,
Steve Berson

Bob L
07-11-2004, 09:29 AM
The X key on selected tracks is now in 3.8.... worked out nicely... unless the side effects won't show themselves until after its released. :)

3.8 coming soon....

Bob L

Oz Nimbus
07-11-2004, 09:31 AM
3.8 coming soon....

Bob L



:eek: :eek: :eek:

Sebastian Eskildsen
07-11-2004, 09:37 AM
Hi Bob

Thanks for looking into this, :D

Has the softege been real time since the beath of SS ?...
this is new info for me, infact I demoed SSl for a engeneer
some month back, and he wouldn´t believe me when I told
him that the crossfade funktion was offline, well, now I can tell
that he was right. :o

Does this mean if I do a crossfade on all 36 stereo tracks in SSL,
it actually plays 72 stereo tracks in the crossfade. :eek:

Sebastian

Mountain Media
07-11-2004, 11:45 AM
Wow, Bob --

Didn't know that what I started just as a 'thanks', would end up being a new release of SS!! Thanks for being willing to listen -- :)

AudioAstronomer
07-11-2004, 11:48 AM
The X key on selected tracks is now in 3.8.... worked out nicely... unless the side effects won't show themselves until after its released. :)

3.8 coming soon....

Bob L


AHAHA!

*giggles like a school girl*

It's like christmas happening in july :)

Bob L
07-11-2004, 12:26 PM
Sebastian,



Has the softedge been real time since the birth of SS ?
It has always been that way... I fought hard for that code. :)

I did not like the idea that crossfades had to be written in the back as crossfade regions every time sessions are opened, as happens in many other apps.

All the softedges happen in realtime as the session is played... which makes editing easy and fast and allows my edls the ability to open quickly, unlike many other apps.

And yes... the softedge code has gotten me in trouble many times with the complexities involved in vari-pitch, samplerate conversion, region memory caching, trimming sessions, exporting regions... and on and on.

I'm still chasing down softedge issues after 3 years of development. :)

Bob L

Craig Allen
07-11-2004, 05:17 PM
I have a suggestion concerning softedges, Bob.

I've worked on projects where there would be a long softedge somewhere in it - a difficult crossfade for whatever reason that required 500ms or so. Then I would continue to work on and edit this project, and when finished, I would want to put softedges on all regions that didn't yet have one by going into select mode, selecting all regions (ctrl-A) and then alt-right clicking and adding a 5ms softedge. But doing that overwrites the 500ms softedge I set up earlier. Would there be a way to only add softedges to regions that do not have softedges already? Maybe two options when alt-right clicking - one that overwrites and one that doesn't?

Pedro Itriago
07-11-2004, 06:15 PM
Bob:

Since everyone is asking something about applying "things" (softedge, effects, automations, etc.) to several regions at a time with an specific "range", here's a way I thought it would help you do that (and forgive my intrussion).

You could add either to the region list and/or graphically selecting the regions in the multitrack an option to "mark" them with a simple flag, then the user could select between "apply to marked" or "apply to unmarked", that could be a way to achieve what many people are asking here & in other threads
.


I have a suggestion concerning softedges, Bob.

I've worked on projects where there would be a long softedge somewhere in it - a difficult crossfade for whatever reason that required 500ms or so. Then I would continue to work on and edit this project, and when finished, I would want to put softedges on all regions that didn't yet have one by going into select mode, selecting all regions (ctrl-A) and then alt-right clicking and adding a 5ms softedge. But doing that overwrites the 500ms softedge I set up earlier. Would there be a way to only add softedges to regions that do not have softedges already? Maybe two options when alt-right clicking - one that overwrites and one that doesn't?

Bob L
07-12-2004, 02:08 AM
Marking regions with a flag is a concept that already exists... its called Select Mode... you select the regions you want to do things to. :)

The idea of applying softedges to all regions without softedges is interesting... but it gets kind of nuts to try to nail down all the possibilities that people would want from there... well all these, but not these... etc...

Really, the Selecet Mode is the way to go... select some at a time and skip over the special ones that already have softedges... its probably a lot easier for you to do, than for me to figure out all the code possibilities and interface keystrokes and mouse moves to execute those possibilities.

Do the softedge application in a few separate moves... its really not all that time consuming.

Bob L

Craig Allen
07-12-2004, 06:48 PM
The idea of applying softedges to all regions without softedges is interesting... but it gets kind of nuts to try to nail down all the possibilities that people would want from there... well all these, but not these... etc...

I would think there would only be two possibilities - to overwrite or not to.



Really, the Selecet Mode is the way to go... select some at a time and skip over the special ones that already have softedges... its probably a lot easier for you to do, than for me to figure out all the code possibilities and interface keystrokes and mouse moves to execute those possibilities.

Do the softedge application in a few separate moves... its really not all that time consuming.

Time is not really the issue here. The problem I've had in the past is that I'll forget that I've added a special softedge somewhere (I might remember one but not another) and will overwrite it by accident, then have to recreate the crossfade not remembering exactly what the values were.

It's not a big deal, I just thought I'd mention it while we were on the subject of softedges. Overall, it's been one of the nicest features added to the SAW line and almost worth the price alone for me.

Carlos Mills
07-13-2004, 04:17 AM
Time is not really the issue here. The problem I've had in the past is that I'll forget that I've added a special softedge somewhere (I might remember one but not another) and will overwrite it by accident, then have to recreate the crossfade not remembering exactly what the values were.

Hi Buck,

Do you have your softedge view turned on? :rolleyes:

Best regards

Craig Allen
07-13-2004, 04:50 AM
Yes.

Bob L
07-13-2004, 08:56 AM
My way of working this would be to go down each track and look across the regions as I'm selecting them... select each track by clicking the first region, and pressing the End key... take a moment to look for any existing softedges that I may want to keep and then simply Shift-Right-Click that entry to un-slecet it... do this till all track entries are selected... then apply the global softedge.

Your idea has merit..., but for now... this will get the job done.

Bob L