I am considering purchasing SonicFire Pro, and would also like to know how well it works with Vegas, and any tips on using it. I am coming from the Pinnacle Studio world, and SmartSound was very easy to work with there. I wish Vegas could use SonicFire as a plug-in.

Hmm.... Reference video, eh?

I use SmartSound on every project, but I do not use SonicFire Pro. Just the QuickTracks program. It's much faster and more flexible and lets me stay in Vegas.

Last I looked at SonicFire, you had to render as a QuickTime video. Seemed kinda quirky to me. I spent the extra money on SonicFire because I thought I needed it. I don't.

I am also coming from Pinnacle Studio where Smartsound was a great "plug-in".

I am just now starting to use SFP for creating audio tracks. It has three methods for generating your music. The Assistant, the Maestro and all manual. Everything is created outside of VV, but that is no problem. I render is draft mode and then in SFP I choose File and Choose Movie...and away you go!!!

There's definitely a learning curve. At least for me.

Galen

I recently fretted over the purchase of SFP given the "reference video" situation, but even more so the fact that this video must be less then 1 gig. I figured that reference video meant just a low res draft and I am sure Vegas could do that. But what really got me was I was paying $300 for a plug-in I used in Studio 8 whose total cost is just $99! (By the way SOFO, go check out how Studio 8 edits the DVD structure linearly right on the timeline, with button control handled like a plug-in, you could migrate DVDA right into Vegas, sweet!) So I watched the demo of Sonic Fire Pro and of their "home" version Movie Maestro for $50. These 2 programs, as well as the Studio 8 plug-in for that matter, are one in the same. There is no difference in the technology they use to make the score. There is only a few minor differences between the two (I didn't get SFP, so if I am wrong, by all means correct me). In SFP, the sounds are 44k, in MM 22K (both are actually on the disk, 44k is locked out unless you bought SFP). When I hear 22k on my stereo system, it sounds great. Maybe the pros who are making feature presentations need 44k, but 22k will do many of you just fine. MM has the home user style interface, where SFP tries to mimick a pro NLE style. But the only real difference is that SFP lets you adjust the volume with an envelope. Other then those 3 things, they are exactly the same. So I thought, wait a minute, Vegas can do envelopes, why not just take a look at your Vegas timeline, determine the length of where you want some music, pop that length into the Movie Maestro, then output your song as a separate file. Move that file onto your timeline and now all of the editing features of a real audio oriented NLE, not the wanna be of SFP, is at your fingertips. One problem with Smartsound scores is they always put an "ending" on the score (I am sure there is a technical term for it, you know, a little batta-bing at the end to close out the song). This can be very bad for real scoring. And bad for menu backgrounds that you want to loop seemlessly. (Hint to Smartsound, how about a "loop" option for seemless loops). But with Vegas, you can edit this ending off.

What I do is make MM create a score almost twice as long as I need. For those of you who are not familiar with the technology, from what I have observed, their "score" is made from a piece of music that is made up of blocks that blend together seemlessly. When the time frame you have provided ends, it simply backs up to the end of the last full block, then adds one of these exits, from a number of choices, based on how much time is left. Some of them end with a sustained note that it can trim a few seconds to match the length you gave it. You can supposedly choose from a number of "styles" of a given tune. But what you are really doing is just choosing at what point in the song to start. If you make a really long song, several minutes, you can hear the tune repeating over and over. Then when you select a different style you are really just picking a different point in the tune at which to enter, which can give it a different feel. Now it may sound like I am knocking the technology but I am not, it is great! I swear by it. But just understand how it does the magic it does and you can use this knowledge to your benefit in Vegas. For example, I make my own seemless menu backgrounds. Just make a long song in MM. Save it, load it onto the time line in Vegas. Listen to it, press the M key when you hear a good start point, then again when you hear a good point to loop back. Now zoom in on your first marker, with quantize to frames off, split the audio track at a quiet point just before the beat (or just after in some cases) using the waveform as your guide, then go to the last marker and split before the beat (or after). Double click your song and turn looping on and play it. You can adjust which beat to go in and out on, and may want to adjust the fade in and out. But you can easily get a song to loop quite nicely. I find "scoring" this way to allow more flexibility and customization. And no messing with rendering a draft or reference video and being confined to the "editing" abilities of another program. So IMO, unless you really, really need 44k music, Movie Maestro songs edited with Vegas is the way to go, especially when you compare $50 to $300!

Of course, now that I have said this, they will probably take the "save to file" feature out of Maestro!

(By the way SOFO, did I mention how Studio 8 handles DVD right on the timeline? You should check it out. I think always seeing DVDs in a heirarchial tree has warped many dvd aurthoring progam designers. DVDs really are laid out in a line, not a tree or file structure. Clip end actions and jumps make so much more sense when viewed on a timeline, you should check it out. Vegas with DVD built into the timeline, button placement and flow called up as a plug-in, you can do it! Studio 8 does that and edits video and make scores for $99. Come on, Vegas could do that and so much more!!!)

I use Sonic Fire Pro 3.0.

Sonic Fire Pro *2.0* had the "reference video" issue because it, SFP, wouldn't open a video file over so many gig; whatever the size was, it was way too small. SFP would crash if you tried.

Sonic Fire Pro 3.0 (seemingly) does not have the XX gig file size limit. I can open a 30 GB AVI file no problem.

So, depending on how you do it, you can have your full render, then open it and work with it in Sonic Fire Pro 3.0.

Yes, I agree, that it would be nice to have SmartSound as a plugin, but the Sonic Fire Pro 3.0 program is very nice. 3.0 has excellent music organization as well as the ability to purchase individual tracks on-line.

The "make loop" feature is currently removed from Sonic Fire Pro 3.0 in order for them to ship the product on time, however, I am told by SmartSound that it will be added back in in an update.

Ac ouple of important points on SFP3 (they may or may not matter depending on what you do)

Maestro is licensed for personal use only SFP3 is royalty free distribution (one can put you in jail or cost a lot of money in legal fees the other will not :-), 48K is also superior by far to 22K

You can edit the sound blocks within SFP3 so you can replace the endings and create you own block sequences, this would allow easy looping if you choose the right end/start blocks.

The original poster has created another thread with the best solution for integrating with Vegas, use the Frameserver from Satish it works very well - that said if Sonic did a true Vegas plug-in for SFP3 this would be the best option IMO.

There are a number of other features for SFP3 over Maestro check out the web site.

Have Fun, PAW

Jeffcrow,

I agree with alot about you said about Music Maestro. It's a great way to get a quick background music track for your video. But there are advantages to bringing the video into Sonic Fire Pro, which you can't do with MM. For creating general background music MM is fine, but being able to see the video and know where certain music highpoints or nulls fall compared to certain scenes of your video is really important. I do filming of dog agility events and often look for music that is paced with the the dog's jumps or turns, etc. Also, in SFP you can work with the individual blocks of music and place them exactly where you want them. Finally, SFP will work with the less expenssive 22k music files.

I'm still learning all this stuff so love to read all the different opinions on this forum!

Also, the Smartsound built into Studio 8 is great as well as the DVE menuing. I still go back to Studio 8 to create my DVD menus after editing in VV.

Galen

In response to several of the previous comments on SonicFire Pro by SmartSound: The 3.0 version has solutions for every one of the problems mentioned, except editing inside VV, if you just look around for them. It is a VERY substantial program. On the other hand, the work around for the only real problem was mentioned.

It is VERY easy to see the length of any clip or group of clips in VV. I work in VV, leave it running, open SFP 3.0, select my music, edit it to the length I need, and then just take it over to VV. No problem. In fact, I believe that there is advantage to this because I like the audio editing of VV better than that in SFP for what little tweaking I may need to do. Volume envelopes in VV, is what I mean. I REALLY like the combination.

On the subject of Movie Music, Music Maestro, and the Pinnacle Studio plug-in, and the other audio-range and otherwise limited, non-"professional" programs. They are an interesting start, but don't offer many of the nicer options which I find work well with VV. In particular, I made the mistake of buying a few 22K limited audio range disks before I realized that I really COULD hear the difference and that I liked the 44K full-range disks better. You have to understand that this really surprised me, as I have some hearing loss (ears shot off in the war sort of thing), but I can still hear enough of a difference to make me take notice.

Now that SmartSound has reduced the price of their 44K full-range disks from $129 to $99, I am no longer considering the 22K disks. And they give discounts for various combos or if you buy several over the course of a year.

All this is not to say that SF Acid, a competing product designed to edit loops, isn't a fantastic product. However, I am not a musician and don't have the skill or time to develop the skill, nor the time to edit and put together the loops. I'll just stick to SonicFire Pro.