technical questions about equipment and software used by voice talent who record at home - moderated by Beau Weaver
My favorite audio editing tool for Voiceover
Guys,
As I have mentioned frequently, I am a long time hater of Pro Tools. If you are recording multiple channels of music, routing through plug ins and locked to picture, it sure is the right tool. But for recording and editing voiceover tracks, it is a needlessly complex and cumbersome resource hog. And those are it's good points.
I cannot count the calls I have taken from folks who are new to home recording, literally in tears, trying to figure out how to save a simple recording as an mp3 file with Pro Tools. And don't even get me started on how any OS update from Apple usually renders Pro Tools inoperable. And a year to support Leopard? Give me a break. But I digress.
I have done extensive testing of virtually all the audio editors for Mac OSX, including, Logic, Soundtrack Pro, Peak, Adobe Sound Booth, Sound Studio 3, Wave Editor, Amadeus Pro, etc. On the PC platform, I was a long time fan of Sony Sound Forge, but they do not have any plans to port the app to Mac. Peak has it's fans, but it crashes regularly, and support is spotty. I was liking Sound Studio 3 a lot, but there were some bugs, and omissions and the developer did not respond to support requests at all. All of the above programs have their strengths and weaknesses, but for the way I like to work, they were just not quite right.
Anyway, I have been working with a software developer to perfect a suite little app that I just love, and I want to pass it along to you. For my money, the best tool for recording and editing voiceover is: TwistedWave. http://twistedwave.com And, the price is 49 Dollars!*
It loads in about one second. No changing cursors into different tools. It works like a word processor. It saves directly as mp3 files, and will convert between almost all important audio file types. It exports the selected portion of the waveforme as a new file, of any type you specify. Navigation is a dream. You can zoom horizontally in the waveform and zoom in all with the tiny trackball in the Apple Mighty Mouse. It will record the highest resolution audio, sample rate and bit depth your sound card supports. It works with any digital interface that uses Apple Core Audio. For the advanced user, keyboard shortcuts are customizable, and you can create and save customized effects stacks of AU plugins.
I have worked closely with the guy who created the program to make some ease of use tweaks and fine tuning. He has responded to every one of my requests the same day. I think if you spend a little time playing with it, you may fall in love too.
You can download from this link, and try for a 30 day evaluation period for free. A major 1.5 update has just been posted, with additional improvement in development.
I have been using this as my daily editor for some time now and it is a huge time saver. If you are also a musician, or music producer, then Pro Tools is obviously. If all you need to do is record voiceover sessions, quick edit and cleanup and ship off via ftp, then give Twisted Wave a try, and never look back.
Full Disclosure: I am a paid user, and receive no compensation for this recommendation, other than gratitude for a tool so ideally suited for the task at hand.
Beau Weaver
As I have mentioned frequently, I am a long time hater of Pro Tools. If you are recording multiple channels of music, routing through plug ins and locked to picture, it sure is the right tool. But for recording and editing voiceover tracks, it is a needlessly complex and cumbersome resource hog. And those are it's good points.
I cannot count the calls I have taken from folks who are new to home recording, literally in tears, trying to figure out how to save a simple recording as an mp3 file with Pro Tools. And don't even get me started on how any OS update from Apple usually renders Pro Tools inoperable. And a year to support Leopard? Give me a break. But I digress.
I have done extensive testing of virtually all the audio editors for Mac OSX, including, Logic, Soundtrack Pro, Peak, Adobe Sound Booth, Sound Studio 3, Wave Editor, Amadeus Pro, etc. On the PC platform, I was a long time fan of Sony Sound Forge, but they do not have any plans to port the app to Mac. Peak has it's fans, but it crashes regularly, and support is spotty. I was liking Sound Studio 3 a lot, but there were some bugs, and omissions and the developer did not respond to support requests at all. All of the above programs have their strengths and weaknesses, but for the way I like to work, they were just not quite right.
Anyway, I have been working with a software developer to perfect a suite little app that I just love, and I want to pass it along to you. For my money, the best tool for recording and editing voiceover is: TwistedWave. http://twistedwave.com And, the price is 49 Dollars!*
It loads in about one second. No changing cursors into different tools. It works like a word processor. It saves directly as mp3 files, and will convert between almost all important audio file types. It exports the selected portion of the waveforme as a new file, of any type you specify. Navigation is a dream. You can zoom horizontally in the waveform and zoom in all with the tiny trackball in the Apple Mighty Mouse. It will record the highest resolution audio, sample rate and bit depth your sound card supports. It works with any digital interface that uses Apple Core Audio. For the advanced user, keyboard shortcuts are customizable, and you can create and save customized effects stacks of AU plugins.
I have worked closely with the guy who created the program to make some ease of use tweaks and fine tuning. He has responded to every one of my requests the same day. I think if you spend a little time playing with it, you may fall in love too.
You can download from this link, and try for a 30 day evaluation period for free. A major 1.5 update has just been posted, with additional improvement in development.
I have been using this as my daily editor for some time now and it is a huge time saver. If you are also a musician, or music producer, then Pro Tools is obviously. If all you need to do is record voiceover sessions, quick edit and cleanup and ship off via ftp, then give Twisted Wave a try, and never look back.
Full Disclosure: I am a paid user, and receive no compensation for this recommendation, other than gratitude for a tool so ideally suited for the task at hand.
Beau Weaver
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Comments
Thank you both for your help, I think we've got it now.
~Janice
http://help.adobe.com/en_US/Audition/3.0/help.html?content=WS58a04a...
Is a link that says Adobe Audition will convert a .wav file to ccit.
--Jay
Follow this link... http://www.audiolib.com/converter/format.html
and look under U-LAW and see if that helps!
--Jay
http://www.file-extensions.org/al-file-extension
Mike
Thanks for providing this valuable resource for those of us working alone with no one to check with "down-the-hall" anymore for technical questions. I function primarily as "talent not technical" and hope you can help. : )
I have a a new on-hold client requesting a file format I have never heard of.
See e-mail below:
"The recordings sounds great, but we use Speakeasy and when we tried to use the recordings in the .wav format we were getting an error. We called them and they told us that the recording needs to be in "cc itt" format. They also said that most importantly it needs to be 8KHz and 8 bit mono in size in order to use it."
I originally recorded the audio at 441 16 bit mono in Adobe Audition, and cc itt is not an optional file format that I can find there or have ever heard of.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!!!
Thanks,
~Janice
Is there something I could get besides Mbox2? I took my training with Such a Voice and they used the equipment that i have, which of course is why I have that particular setup. Suggestions, please.
Rosanne. as for switching from wav to mp3. Digi sells the mp3 converter for 15 bucks. Thats the best option. I would never dare argue/counter/speak against the man Mr. Weaver but since you happen to already be on pro tools, stick with it. Get the converter and remember 2 things
1. Since you are on PC twisted is out. BUT you can get audacity. You can get a free lame mp3 encoder from their site. works great.
OR
2. since, and I hope, you stuck with pro tools just keep all your audio saved and running from a separate hard drive. Digi wants your audio to be far away from the "C" drive which holds the actual program. If anyone wants help with pro tools I am always here. (not that you should ever use it...right Beau?)
Rodney...on your own.
Kathleen. There is a great cheap option for a tlm103 knockoff. its by superlux. basically it is literally a chinese rip off but for an audition setup its great. http://www.superlux.us/recording.html
one of the first 2 on the page would be fine. also that blue icycle thing I mention before is what I would use to interface with your machine. Then you can record right into twisted wave or garage band or whatever you use. (pro tools?) probably not.
any questions...I can try to help.
ryan
Thoughts?
Thanks!
Kathleen
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