I got their demo (Version 2.5 I think) it was ok but I frankly thought the interface was a little cheesy. I like some of their music but would definitely want to be able to download individual tracks. This is now possible but they are sort of quiet about it for some reason. (I thnk they want 29 bucks or so percut but don't quote me)I had ordered Sonic Fire pro 3 and while I was waiting for it to ship; the project I was going to use it for was cancelled. Luckily I was able to cancel my order since it hadn't shipped.
I am a musician --hobby only, and I can probably figure out how to use Acid and have a lot of fun.

I am still confused about the V5 support for Acid loops. Does it mean you can start buying Loops for Acid and use them directly in V5?

If the Smart Sound stuff was integrated into Vegas I would buy it just to have it as another fast way to do soundtracks. I am interested for corporate video and weddings. I like the fact that they have a Sound pallette called Corporate Tech that I would probably use a lot for Corporate Video. When I go to the Loops for Acid site I am overwhelmed with all these eclectic names and not sure what is what. I am not making an idependent film just trying to find some tasteful music to dress up a PowerPoint replacement video.The selection process of the music is the hardest part in my opinion. Getting to the sound you really want without wasting a year of your life listening to samples is the key here. When I look at the Smart Sound product and its lack of integration with Vegas I am more likely to just get a CD of stock music and just drop it into to Vegas.

Ideally I would buy Acid PRo and Sonic Fire PRo and a whole library of music. But you need to do it for a specific project when you are starting out and have small budgets. So it becomes a time consuming process of comparing short samples and trying to decide how to spend your time and money.

Here endeth the ramble

I agree with the idea that having musical pieces of different flavours (smartsound pinciple) would be great, no ideal, no necessary...The real irony I find is that given the backround of Vegas (audio features) and Acid, there are no such musical pieces available from Sony directly...In other words, I feel Sony is missing out somewhat innocently on a potentially big piece of business by not providing set pieces of music (as opposed to loops etc...): its either compose stuff in Acid, or look elsewhere...

So I too feel the need for set pieces (ala smartsound) when I don't have time to get involved in Acid (I have no musical backround BUT have had a great time playing around in Acid - even have some put on acidplanet.com under PaulB (copy 2) if anyone is interested...) I would use set pieces...

There is a thread about a month ago which talked about this very subject, and I seem to remember you CAN actually use smartsounds in Vegas...
So where can I buy some?? or better yet, please Sony sell me some??

I've used smartsound in Pinnacle Studio to great effect, and I still dance back and forth between apps to get smartsound in with my vegas work. I sent Sonic a message via the contact link, and I would definitely buy a plugin to vegas!

This has come up before and I think what was suggested was to frame serve out of Vegas with Satish's free frame server and when you save just save audio only. Import that back into Vegas.

I have the Premiere plug-in and really it is not doing too much other than frame serving out of Premiere to the plug-in...so the same idea would hold true with what Satish offers except - obviously - you are serving out the program itself, not to a plug-in. On the other hand Studio 9 has it built into the interface which is rather nice...not the interface but having Smartsound built in.

There is a thread about a month ago which talked about this very subject, and I seem to remember you CAN actually use smartsounds in Vegas...

You can use audio generated from smartsound in Vegas. Their product allows you to export audio clips in various formats that are compatible with any NLE. Just load the audio into the timeline like you would any other. There is a <very minimal> level of integration with Vegas in that as you are exporting your audio it has a checkbox saying "add audio to Vegas" (or something like that) and it then simply addss that audio file to the currently active and open Vegas project.

The integration needed is to allows us to score the smartsound audio direct with the vegas timeline. Currently if you really want to score the audio to your video you must render your video first and load this into your smartsound project.

> I am still confused about the V5 support for Acid loops. Does it mean you can start buying Loops for Acid and use them directly in V5?

Yes you can use ACID loops directly in Vegas 5. What Vegas 5 adds is the ability to honor the tempo for the entire song and it will stretch each loop to play at that tempo. (actually Vegas 4 had a tempo but it did not apply that temp to ACIDized loops) What you can’t do is change the tempo during the project (not a big deal since most songs stay at a constant tempo anyway). You also cannot make key changes across tracks like in ACID. You have to manually change the key of each event. Obviously Vegas 5 doesn’t have MIDI playback (or record) support like ACID Pro 4.0 introduced.

So I would encourage you to download some free loops from acidplanet.com and drop them on the Vegas timeline and play around. It helps if you turn on the Preference "Show active take information in events" and then when you use the new Vegas 5 feature to change the pitch of the ACID loop using the plus (+) and minus (-) keys it will show you the key change in the lower left corner of the event (use the shift key with plus+ and minus- to transpose octaves). I think it was a nice compromise and a good addition to Vegas 5 for quickly laying down a backing pad with a guitar or flute or something just to highlight a moment.

~jr

... it has a checkbox saying "add audio to Vegas"

Liam,
I have the latest SF Pro (v3.1.1.0) and I don't see that checkbox. I do see a greyed out checkbox for Adobe Premiere tho'.

I have both V4 and V5 on this system and I had an open project in each when I tried the export.

Hmmm...

pauncz,
There is a version 3.2 of SF Pro now.
Barry

>>>Currently if you really want to score the audio to your video you must render your video first and load this into your smartsound project.<<<

Or, as I mentioned above, you can get Satish's free frame server plug-in and just serve the video out. Keep in mind that most of the time things like dialog editing, sound effect editing, music and overall post audio are done to a locked picture. So really by the time you get to scoring you should already have a locked (rendered) piece so in a way it is a non-issue at that point.

The check box for "add to Vegas" was lost with the move from Sonic Foundry naming to Sony

It would add the audio clip that had been created to the media pool if I rmember rightly so not that great an enhancement

Haven;t tried in in the very latest version may work with V4 but may not recognise V5 as a running app

Paul

> ...very latest version may work with V4

I can confirm that SP Pro 3.2.0.6 does not with Vegas 4.0e.

Thanks for the pointer to v3.2, Barry.

Cheers,
Tom

"So I would encourage you to download some free loops from acidplanet.com and drop them on the Vegas timeline and play around."

Thanks JohnnyRoy, that was exactly the kind of helpful answer I was looking for!

I will play and report back.

Tom

You’re welcome. When you play around, remember to set the Vegas timeline to Measures & Beats. It makes it a lot easier work with loops that way. Also make sure snapping is on or else you’ll get some funky timings when you start splitting loops to change their key. That’s where ACID really shines. It makes all this very easy to use and not mess up.

~jr

"When you play around, remember to set the Vegas timeline to Measures & Beats. It makes it a lot easier work with loops that way. Also make sure snapping is on or else you’ll get some funky timings when you start splitting loops to change their key."

This was what I needed. I had switched to beats and measures but I needed to put snapping on. I chose snap to grid and then setup the grid to measures. Then I made sure everything was in the same key by using the minus key and the plus key on the keyboard.

This looks like it will work! I maybe able to hold off on Sonic Fire Pro until they plugin to Vegas and just buy Acid loops now. COOOOOOOL! My wife hates you by the way!!!!!

Well I have SOnicFire Pro and for what I bought it for it gets the job done. Seem lots of wedding guys use it as well, really depends on your needs, time and budget. For the stuff I'm working on now it's more than adeqaute, if I was doing daram that's be a different story of course.

But here's the thing. I looked at the Acid loops, well the entire projects that are availabel for free downlaod and as I understand it these are copyright, you cannot just record them out of Acid and use them. This issue though was never 100% clarified and mostly for that reason I stayed away from Acid as I have neagtive musical ability and I'd just end up plagarising someone else work.

> My wife hates you by the way!!!!!

Maybe we need to start a Vegas Widows and Orphan’s board for our families to hangout and talk about us. She can join my wife there. ;-)

The other option you might find useful is to turn off “Quantize to frames (Alt-F8)”. For video you want this on so that all cuts are at frame boundaries but for audio you want this off so that you can quantize to samples.

~jr