Hello, I’m hoping I an get some guidance from some experienced users.
I am ready to start assembling a safety guidance soundtrack that will sell as both a compact disc and digital download.
This will be a stereo track made up of nearly 60-70 sections of sound/dialog each separated by 15 to 45 seconds of complete silence.
My question is, what method would you use for an effectient work flow? How would you bring in each section of sound/dialog?
How would you place each one on the time line one after another? What would be the best Import/place in the timeline process?
Since there are up to 70 sound segments I had wondered how some of you might manage your work flow.
And I will be using a few of the effects on various ways for each sound segment.
I think I would like to get the sound segments all on the timeline in the order they should be in with the correct lengths of
silence between them, then go and apply the limiting and/or EQ so that I can compare levels of each segment and keep them fairly
balanced. I figured if they are all there at once, it will be easier to A/B each one to make real time audible level and EQ balances.
Also, each segment is on a separate CD in WAV format. I will need to import each sound segment individually.
Alot of work ahead! Thats why I want to find an efficient flow to how I assemble the stereo soundtrack.
Thanks so much! I looking forward to developing a good method of importing and assembling this soundtrack!
Maybe more fun than you think. Audacity doesn’t have Append-Import, so there is no “A Timeline.” you will be creating multiple timelines. You can import all your tracks and then use Tracks > Align Tracks > End To End (attached).
Those will all play one after the other and Export that way, but have the advantage of giving you perfect access to each one individually for equalization and level setting. The example is mono, but it works in stereo (two blue waves per track).
I’m thinking about the best way to add the silent stretches between the clips. The brute force method is select each clip starting with number two with the Time Shift Tool (two sideways black arrows) and push each one to the right XX seconds. XX being the desired delay. But that’s a onsy-twosy operation. You’ll have your retirement party when you deliver to the client.
From how you describe it, each stereo track pair will show up one on top of each other, then I can shuffle each one in front of the other to the time position where I want it to be. I’ve seen that done in a few youtube demo’s so, i recognize visually what you are describing.
Can you “zoom” vertically as well as horizontally? Of course, I’m ready to jump in and will be experimenting with all of this but, its nice to have some heads up on how experienced users would go about it. I can’t imagine being able to see 60 stereo pairs stacked up ontop of each other at once so, I’m sure theres another way to see what you need to see.
Does Audacity give you a way to supply metadata that would show up on the players screen? Not sure yet if that will displayed yet but, in case it does - I’ll figure that our later. It will be great just to be able to lay out the soundtrack and add some EQ and limiting to each segment as needed. I can keep it simple and still get the result I’m looking for. That W1 limiter does wonders for having some dynamics options. I did download it into the effects list in Audacity. Really gives a track some size. I’ve experimented on one or two of the sound segments. (I actually call them, “Sonic Events”. )
Thanks again, I really do appreciate the guidance here, I’ve been mixing and recording for many years but, not so much in the digital realm, just my AW16g and VS880EX.
