This leads us to why I made the earlier comment that I believe Musicbed DV has targeted video people most successfully in comparison to the other two programs. Even though Musicbed lacks the ‘Moods’ feature of SonicFire Pro 4 or the ‘Hints’ feature of Cinescore, it actually makes keyframing audio variations extremely easy through its eight keyframeable control levels. As I alluded to in the Depth of Options section, this allows you to finesse transitions that take you from pure synth to pure organic or to go from smooth melody to a punchy beat. What makes this a performance issue is how well it does these things. As I mentioned before, SonicFire Pro 4 transitions between two Moods by turning the volume up on instruments from the new mood and turning down the instruments of the previous mood in a somewhat artificial manner. Musicbed DV, on the other hand, adds new instruments and removes instruments just like an actual orchestra throughout the transition. For example, if you choose to go from 100% organic to 100% synthetic, strings and other organic instruments will conclude playing and new synthetic instruments will get added to the mix until it’s entirely synthetic. The difference is subtle, but noticeable and more polished sounding.
Not only is the composition polished sounding, but the endings are also polished sounding. On average, the endings run a tad short for the selection you’ve chosen, but have no problem with extending themselves when you drag the ending a bit farther down the timeline. This allows you to get a strong, professional sounding ending at exactly the point you want, which is a big difference between it and Cinescore, which has serious issues with clean endings.
Another great thing about the performance of this package, which further separates it from Sony’s Cinescore, is that it doesn’t have to render new .wav files every time you change something about your created music mix. This means that you only save the file you’re working on and the soundtrack you choose to export, without having to worry about 8 million new uncompressed audio files being generated to bog down your computer’s hard drive.
It also doesn’t have to load new tracks that you want to preview, the way Cinescore does. It gets around this issue in a similar way SonicFire Pro 4 does, by pre-loading all your music into a special fast-search cache the first time you boot up the program with new music. While this is one of those processes that you’ll want to go and get coffee during, it doesn’t have to be done again until you acquire more music and it makes on-the-fly music adjustment real-time fast. Plus, because everything’s preloaded, you can actually make adjustments to any of the keyframeable elements and hear the changes in near real time. (It’s near real time because changes do take a second to refresh before the changes are audible.)
Now, despite all the great things in this package, there is one detractor from it’s overall performance and an additional suggestion for the future. Their doesn’t appear to be any way to automatically go from one key frame to the next key frame, which makes editing a little more time consuming than it needs to be in certain circumstances. A ‘Next/Previous Keyframe’ button would be a welcome addition to MDV 2.
The additional suggestion I would make for MDV 2 is the ability to pre-select how long a piece of music is from the ‘Browser’ menu before dragging it on to the timeline added. This would make things simpler for folks who have exact times they want elements of the soundtrack to go until or for the creation of rough soundtracks that don’t currently have video associated with them.
Value
While it is about $50 more expensive than SonicFire Pro or Cinescore, I feel that the increased options and greater ease of use for video people makes this a very good value. Still, with the currently small library of music packages, a cost drop to $199 wouldn’t be a bad move and would further increase the likelihood of people trying out the software.
Final Comments
Quite honestly, I was very impressed by this software package and by it’s rich sound. It’s creative take on adjustability births an almost limitless freedom of design which is quite impressive. When they have a larger library of music, I see Musicbed DV being a huge contender on the Mac. If they would only release a PC version as well, it could do battle with Cinescore quite nicely. (Plus, it would really help out cross-platformers like us!)
I would recommend that any Mac-using filmmaker should at least download the demo of this software and try it out, because it really is a quite impressive bang for the buck. (Additionally, if you wish to buy it, Synk Audio is extending a special 20% discount currently for Microfilmmaker Magazine readers, which you can gain access to in our Savings & Discounts sections.)
Ease
of Use
9.0
Depth
of Options
8.5
Performance
9.5
Value
9.4
Overall
Score
9.1
The
director of two feature length films and half a dozen short films,
Jeremy Hanke
founded Microfilmmaker Magazine to help all no-budget filmmakers make
better films. His first book on low-budget special effects techniques, GreenScreen Made Easy, (which he co-wrote with Michele Yamazaki) was released by MWP to very favorable reviews. He's curently working on the sci-fi film franchise, World of Depleted through Depleted: Day 419 and the feature film, Depleted.
