It's me playing the Dowland Lute piece "My Lord Willoughby's Welcome Home," in my dorm room at UKC.
My problems started when I tried to simply add some nice reverb to a flat sounding audio that I got from my macbook's internal microphone. I opened the video in Garageband and found no reverb options available. I switched to Logic and found no video editing was possible. Finally I re-recorded the track on wire-tap using the soundcard as audio source and reverbed the track the easy way with a module in Amadeus II. Then I re-imported both the audio and video into garageband and found that it would not export as a video, but would instead send the whole steaming pile uncompressed into itunes. I was left with a .mov file that could be re-opened in imovie, at which point, after a full 45 minutes of back and fourth, I found an option for compressing the video for web publishing. Compressing a 350 mb one minute file into a 2 mg video seriously, seriously degraded the quality of the image but preserved the sound.
Is there a better way of doing this? Can all this moving around of huge files and converting across every platform I have be minimized? Doesn't the all knowing apple predict that perhaps we would enjoy useful options with our video editing programs? Why? Why???
Anyway enjoy the video. I recommend it. Posted by BandoCommando (Member # 7746) on :
Nicely done Orincoro!
Can't help with the Mac stuff, beyond expressing commiseration that many of these very essential tasks cannot be found except in expensive, professional-level applications.
Speaking of expensive apps, I can't wait for my copy of Sibelius 5 to arrive......
Posted by Troubadour (Member # 83) on :
Er - iMovie has reverb.
Also, compression. The other half of its name is 'lossy'. You're throwing away data to reduce the size. Hence, a degradation of quality.
Compressing video is something of a black art. You've got to know what you're doing or it'll look like crap.
If you want a tool that makes life a little easier, especially when it comes to compression for the web, try VisualHub.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
Is that a mac application?
I do study electronic music and know quite a bit about losing data through audio compression, but the applications I used didn't provide many options as to quality preservation. I recorded the original track in aiff, converted to 192kb mp3, then I'm sure the end result turned out to be 64k in the compressed video. (Which produces that lovely mid frequency gable sound caused by high frequencies being misinterpreted as wave contours at lower frequencies. You just have to love digital compression).
I have seen no options on imovie for audio that were useful. If there is reverb, is there also a graphic filter? I seriously doubt it, and the end result would be a nicely reverbed sampling of the noise my computer generates in my room. No, I need a way to use my pro applications along with the quickie i-life garbage to make my life as easy as possible, but to also avoid McMusic Making.
Posted by NotMe (Member # 10470) on :
Hmmm... I fired up GarageBand 3. If you've got a "real instrument" track, all you need to do to add reverb is select the track, click the arrow next to "Details" in the lower right corner, and check the "Reverb" option. Once that's applied to the track, you can export it and the effects will be included in the final product.
Also, in iMovie 6, adding video and audio effects can be done from the "Editing" tab.
I hope you and your mac can warm up to each other.
Posted by Troubadour (Member # 83) on :
Yep. VisualHub is a mac app.
Yep, iMovie has a basic graphic eq.
If you really want to avoid mcmovie making, then you need to plump for actual pro applications.
Logic for audio, Final Cut for video, Compressor for, well, compression. Tho VH still makes it easy to achieve compression for the web.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
I movie has an eq but not a graphic filter. graphic eq doesn't allow for sample capture and selective editing of the frequency profile. (With a good sound editor you could sample a pesky frequency profile and then edit that out of your sound. This is particularly good for going back and eliminating equipment noise like buzz from a poorly grounded sound board. Some studios use them as an alternative to, you know, fixing their equipment). Nother words it's just too clunky for what I'd prefer to be doing. Of course, my university set up with Cool Edit Pro and Cubase sx3 is a pipe dream for me at this point.
I do already use logic and find it inferior in some ways to cubase, particularly in the sound editing department and in the arrangement tools. I'm sure some of my dislike is born out of unfamiliarity, so we'll see. Overall cubase is just a super program for finding your way around, and logic is a little harder to deal with if you aren't quite sure what tools you have or want to use. Logic just doesn't have as many tools as Cubase does when it comes to fine editing- they just aren't there.
Anything beats garageband of course.
At this point I can't afford final cut and doubt if I had it I would have time to learn how to use it. I would like to see about a better compression program than I can find in the ilife suite. Why don't they just throw in double pass encoding- it wouldn't hurt and could certainly help!
Posted by Troubadour (Member # 83) on :
Logic has its own peculiarities. I always had the feeling it was designed for electronic musicians, rather than engineers.
Of course ProTools is the bees knees if you can afford the hardware to make it worthwhile, but I also prefer Cubase. It could have something to do with having worked for the Australian distributor when VST first came out. I was the second or third user in the country and helped squash one of the earliest bugs in VST.
Perhaps Final Cut express would suit? I haven't used it myself.
They save double pass for their pro stuff.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
Yes, the preoccupation with midi tools and tie-ins makes me think the same thing. My electronic comp. style is closer to sound engineering than electronica. I don't use midi, and I have only just started to use Max msp to generate sound. Generally my compositions rely on sound editing and careful selection and arrangement of sounds. Logic is not terribly good at this aspect of electronic composition and cubase really is much better.
Posted by Steev (Member # 6805) on :
That is some exquisite playing!
Sorry I can't help with the Mac. I do all my work on a PC.
Posted by Troubadour (Member # 83) on :
Although it's also targeted towards electronic musicians, you should have a crack at Reason as well. It has some awesome tools for regular musos as well. I used to use it a lot for non-electronic-music development.
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