Description: Soundtrack creation software for video people
MSRP: $249.99Free! (Unfortunately, due to economic pressures, Synk Audio is now defunct. However, the software is available for free download on their site.)
Expected Release: Available Now
Review Date: February 15, 2007
Reviewed
By: Jeremy
Hanke
Final
Score:
9.1
Video people are not audio people. This is a fact that everyone has known since the film people and audio people first had to work together with the advent of the talkies in the late twenties and early thirties. With the rise of low budget filmmaking, this issue has become even more important because many ultra low-budget filmmakers have only a single audio person. (And, many times, this audio person is simply someone who’s learned the basics of audio recording, as opposed to a trained sound engineer.) This single audio person is usually the person who records the dialogue of the film and perhaps mixes the dialogue levels in post. The role of an score composer is rarely found in the ranks of low-budget filmmakers, unless the filmmaker happens to be extremely multi-talented him/herself. As such, the director has to find a composer who is willing to compose a soundtrack for his film. While services like our Composers for Indie Films section (which provide lists of composers and musicians willing to work on pure deferment for low-budget films) make this task easier, there is still the likelihood of having to wait for composers who have enough free time to engage a new project.
As such, many microfilmmakers have started looking at soundtrack creation software in order to create either a full soundtrack or an audio sketch of their desires to eventually pass on to a score composer. This has resulted in the flourishing of programs like SonicFire Pro, Cinescore for the PC (which we also reviewed in this issue), and, now, Musicbed DV for the Mac. Each soundtrack creation program looks at a different element of the music creation puzzle, coming up with its own unique blend that its creators thinks will be most useful. To my pleasant surprise, I discovered that Musicbed DV may do the best job at targeting the video people who need it most with truly impressive results. (I’ll explain more on what I mean by that later.)
With that said, we’ll break down the software.
Ease of Use
While there’s a learning curve with any program, the curve on Musicbed is extremely gentle. While it’s not quite as easy to pick up and manipulate as SonicFire Pro, it’s still very easy. (And night and day easier to understand and use effectively than Sony’s Cinescore.)
To begin, you choose a video file to import into the program. In addition to opening normal quicktime and .wmv video files, MDV will open up unconverted Final Cut Pro and Final Cut Express quicktime files, which is a very nice feature that cuts down on conversion requirements. Once you’ve imported the video file you want, you then go to the song browser and browse through the 23 included 'Music Packages'--Synk Audio's term for each individually customizable song. You can sort through the packages with keywords like ‘Drama’ and ‘Climax.’ Each song that’s pulled up includes multiple sections, from the beginning to the ending to the individual internal sections to all the sections together. Once you’ve found the piece and the sections you want, you can choose between as many as 24 different variations of that song, that combine different pitches, tempos, intensities, prominences, and a few other characteristics. Once you’ve chosen which one you like, you can drag and drop the song onto your timeline. From here, you can add key frames to adjust qualities like Volume or the Spaciousness of the sound mix over time. In addition to keyframes, MDV provides markers that you can add to your timeline to further assist in lining up additional music or parts of an individual score. If you decide that the song isn’t long enough, you can drag it to make it longer or shorter and the music adjusts with whatever choice you make.
Once you’ve got everything down the way you like it, just click the ‘Export Mix’ button to export your soundtrack as a variety of different audio files, including stereo, stem, and surround mixes. (Unfortunately, you can't export a full Quicktime with your mix, which is a feature found in both SonicFire Pro and Cinescore that would be a nice addition to MDV 2.)
