@Mark-Gervasoni Thanks for the response. I am no musician, so the multi-track function for bands is of little use to me.

However, if you have a documentary with a lot of sound effects, interviews and music scores, you may have a complex project en par with recording a band. Same with audio documentaries that have voice-over, interviews, music, sound effects and so on.

DaVinci Resolve Fairlight seemed a good option, but at the time I used it, the audio footage knocked out of sync with video when adjusting, which should never happen unless the user specifies. You also cannot see the video footage (just the video window, not the audio/video files) while working on audio, just the audio waveforms, which makes me nervous.

When arranging audio with visuals for soundtrack work or audio documentaries, there seems to be a lack of interoperability across Magix products like on the Adobe Suite. Tighter integration would make for a stronger case for getting Samplitude.

Vegas can work well enough as a sound track tool and audio content, but when you get in the realm of adding music to voice-over/dialogue and sound effects, it feels like a powerful DAW with granular control might be useful. Then I would like to use something like Samplitude to get that fine-tuned control and I believe it is called "summing" to bring all elements together cohesively.

I could bring just interview segments into the project: track one lav mics with subject, track two, shotgun mics on subject, track three, sound effects, track four background music/film score while the video plays. All audio would be arranged in the NLE and Samplitude would be used to get 'deep-and-dirty'. A DAW like Harrison Mixbus would have track level effects, which is not what I want. Each interviewee, each actor, each voice over must have their own audio segment treated. It is madness to apply a track-level de-esser for example across all dialog. So that 'Object Editor' in Samplitude might be useful to adjust parameters for each dialog bit, sound effect and piece of music. Does Vegas have an 'Object Editor' for audio?

Reaper seems a great candidate for the task, but would it be as effective as Samplitude with the Object Editor. Am not sure if Reaper even has one.

Do not use it myself but you might try putting the path to Samplitude into the field for Vegas preferences, audio, Preferred Audio Editor. Seems to work if the app is an exe in a folder under "C:\Program Files". If the app cannot edit audio in a video file, I use "Open Copy in Audio Editor" when I right-click on the audio track in Vegas... then Vegas makes a wav copy of the audio clip before sending it to the external app and swaps that copy back into Vegas as a take after you save the edit and exit the external app.

Should work if Samplitude can be invoked from the Windows Explorer by right-clicking on a wav file and choosing it via "Open With". Does not work with Sonar, for instance, because that app expects a file opened that way to be a Cakewalk project file and not a wav file. Does work with Sound Forge and Reaper, however.

Interesting topic @Former user

I cannot comment on Samplitude but I often use DAW for sound design, in my case it's Cubase. I import the video, do all the audio work and then export the stems (dialogue, music, sound fx).

I do not export the video from DAW. Just use the video as a guide. Then I bring the processed audio stems to Vegas and continue there.

Can you get a Samplitude trial and see how it works for you?

@Former user

Hi,

I saw your post as well on the Sound Forge forum and the other one on this forum.

Big topic.

Forums:

As you saw, there is a section on the Magix.info forum for Samplitude but it is not used much, in favour of the dedictated Samplitude/Sequoia forum. And, you saw that you have to have the product to be able to join. If you wish, you can compose a message and I'll post it on the Newcomer part so that you can follow it. The other parts of the forum are not visible to non-members.

Krazet has a multitude of tutorials about Samplitude on YouTube.

Samplitude as External Editor in Vegas:

As has been indicated, you can name Samplitude as an external audio editor for Vegas as you can for Sound Forge. You can open an audio file from Vegas into the Wave Editor part of Samplitude, not the DAW part. If you have Suite, then you can use the Cleaning & Restoration Suite. Note that audio with video in Vegas has to be mixed down to an audio file before being opened in Samplitude.

Samplitude for scoring video:

Samplitude has very extensive features to do this. However, Samplitude has limited capacity to import video. Do not use 4K, use HD or full HD,

There are 3 ways to set it up.

1. EDL - from Vegas to Samplitude. However, you need a rendering of the video part to do this properly. Samplitude likes 1 video file only. The important thing is that you get all of the audio bits and pieces in the right places in Samplitude to do further editing, cleanup, mixing and mastering.

2. Master/Slave and Slave/Master using LoopBe1 and MTC - Samplitude and Vegas can also be put in Master/Slave (and vice versa) using LoopBe1 for scoring, overdubbing, and editing both the video (in Vegas) and the scoring (in Samplitude).

Read through this post.

You need at least two monitors and a powerful computer to do this smoothly. You also need two sound cards as Vegas would use one for its audio playback, Samplitude uses the other one. Of course, if you're doing narration, you would be using an external audio card anyways, so you should be covered.

3. Use rendered video in Samplitude - import the rendered video/audio into Samplitude on tracks 1 and 2. Create, mix and master. Do not use 4K for video, use HD or full HD, Samplitude has no capability to export video. Export to an audio file, wave or AAC, and import back into the video editor. Remember to use 48kHz. Mute all other audio in the video editor.

If you read through the details about Samplitude on the Magix.com site, you'll see some of the important capabilities of Samplitude. It's best to obtain the manual and read through it.

For your case, one important feature is the Takes Manager which helps you get the best parts of multiple takes into the final result. Example, I had a short song of 30 seconds, 25 takes for the vocals, and used parts of 3 of them.

For anyone creating background music and sound effects, the Suite version comes with many VST instruments, but the most important is Independence - 70GB of instruments samples.

For those familiar with Music Maker, Samplitude has a similar Loops Manager and shares the loops from Music Maker. This is a fantastic resource for creating background music of pretty much any duration that you want. Truly an under-rated feature. Vegas users should take a look at Music Maker (free) to create their own music from loops, rather than trying to use finished songs. Often, one needs just a beat line - drums and maybe a bass or a cymbal crash.

John CB

Soundforge Pro, as the name betrayed, is an audiobject editor; an audiobject can be mono- stereo- or even multi-channel but it's single track anyhow.

DAWs - digital audio (creating) workstation - are completely closed ecology for themself, they can be rewired to each other as "co-equipment".
Most DAWs have a videopreview window, thus, most of them can create desired BGM, cinematic FX, themesong...

VEGAS needs an audio editor, because it treats that audio as an object (and manipulates things that others cannot). If the audio is an event or what you do call, VEGAS can edit it like any DAW, thus no need to connect to.

A DAW also needs mostly an audiobject editor.

I use another DAW for mixing against video. I render my video reference to DV Standard Def. This puts the least load on any software and renders very quickly in Vegas. You can still see all details necessary to sync/mix audio.

Dito @DMT3, and the audio track keeps all section markers.

😁😁 I finally found the initial logo of soundforge:

Just tried the trial version of Samplitude ProX6 as the external Vegas 19 audio editor and it works much like my really old 32-bit version of Sony Sound Forge... cannot edit the audio part of a mov or mp4 directly but works choosing Open Copy. Reaper works either way.

@Former user

Samplitude as an Object Editor:

Samplitude (Pro X3 Suite) as a DAW with video window:

I imported an EDL created using Magix Video Pro X. Note that VPX created an avi file. It was a choice upon creating the EDL file.

Same but rendered from VPX to full HD MP4 and imported into Samplitude with V/A on separate tracks. Note that the track number is 1 for both Video and Audio. The image was better with MP4 than with AVI.

The best is using Magix proprietary format, mxv, from Video Pro X. Not available with Vegas.

John CB

It depends on what DAW you are comfortable with. Pros and cons to all. I have personally gotten good results with Vegas Pro, Reaper and PloTools for music and documentary audio post. I have tried a few others like Audition, the free Audacty, ect.. Most have the same basic functions, some are better for music tracking sessions and MIDI, some are just plain faster/easier to operate. Try as many DAWs as you can until you find the one that works for you. There is no magic bullet and results depends on the skills (and experienced ears) of the operator.
Some, like Protools, use a different plug-in formats, so if you go with that, add new plug-ins to your budget..
FWIW, My major audio complaint with Vegas Pro is the glitching when making plug-n adjustments (on later versions) and the lack of side-chaining, (which I have requested since the initial Vegas beta from Sonic Foundry) not to mention the current lack of VST-3 support.

Here is what is included in the Upgrade to Samplitude Pro X6 Suite - includes upgrade to X7 Suite:

Just SpectraLayers Pro 8 will set you back 450$ (120$ upgrade).

John CB

Personally I don't consider audio for typical YouTube video that critical and generally do all the mixing in Vegas. For vocalists I'm really fond of, like my wife, I might patch in some nice hardware compressors and reverbs hung onto side channels. Which Vegas has supported just fine for years. But if I'm doing something with more than a half dozen audio tracks whose stereo mix will target both video and a mastered cd, or high-res pcm audio tracks on bluray or hd-video disk, I go with an audio editor that employs double-precision 64-bit internal storage and processing. I don't have a dangerous analog summing mixer myself but the purists say it's even better.

Generally I record audio like that pcm 88.2k for audio cd targets. Or at 96k for blueray/hd which is mixed down that way too. I get the best results on stuff like that with Sonar Platinum but Reaper would be suitable too. If a mastering house wants the stems, perhaps for atmos, giving them 24-bit 48k pcm out of Vegas is fine.

Thanks for the responses here.

In most cases for most projects, Vegas Pro with Sound Forge Pro as an external audio editor will do the job just fine. In fact, I would not want to use any other external audio editor with Vegas except SFP. Samplitude (or any other multitrack DAW) would come in for those special projects where the overall audio mix is more critical.

Someone mentioned that Vegas only exports mixed-down audio. In that case, I think it possible, once you have edited your video and arranged most of your sounds, you can mute all tracks, but unmute one and export one track at a time your tracks into a DAW.

@john-brown Thanks for sharing what video formats work best with Samplitude. It seems that one would export a DAW mixdown into a Vegas (or any NLE) for that final video result.

@john-brown My question to the Samplitude forum is simple, "Does anyone here use Samplitude to score film/video and/or sound design? Can they relate their experience to using Samplitude for such a task?"

At one point I used Lightworks on Linux for video editing but audio needed a bit more work as the program did not support audio plugins. I exported the video, with just dialog, and imported the whole video into Reaper (also works on Linux) where I added sound effects and film score while also adjusting dialog. I was amazed at the way it handled and the fact I could repack the whole video and export into a professional video format of choice.

For school, I had to use Adobe CC and observed that if you worked on a video in Premiere Pro and made a cut to a piece of audio in audition, the result immediately reflected in PP. I don't think that kind of linking is part of Magix's master plan.

That said, I have done better audio work with Magix products for a slew of reasons too long to get into.

Vegas has a Script that will export each audio track.

@DMT3 Thanks, is there a link or something for more details?

Just look under tools>scripting>render audio tracks

@Former user

Hi,

I did a search for scoring in the Samplitude forum. Most were all over the place, from a couple of users that actually do the audio for video in Samplitude, to those that were unable to import a video, to using VSTi's that worked or didn't work, and so on.

The best was a question posed by the guru Kraznet and the best user was samplitude@braidwood.net followed by svam:

2014

Hi there,

I had a guy on my YouTube channel asking whether there were any examples of Samplitude/Sequoia users doing film/scoring. If any of you have examples I could link him to I would be grateful.

Regards

Kraznet

REPLY FROM samplitude@braidwood.net

All of my features were mixed in Samplitude. All the dialog editing and sound effects and Foley were Samplitude. About half of these movies I did the score, so the score was in Samplitude, but the other movies had scores delivered by outside composers and they've used pretty much everything.

http://blog.pandoramachine.com/

KRAZNET

Thats great thanks  Which of these were done in Samp?

• Prometheus Trap
• Android Insurrection
• Earthkiller
• Day 2
• Clonehunter
• Alien Uprising
• Angry Planet
• Millennium Crisis
• Pandora Machine
• Apostasy
• Hamlet

Thanks

Kraznet

REPLY FROM samplitude@braidwood.net

All those movies were mixed in Samplitude. Even Hamlet, which was done back in 1995 (chasing timecode!), although some editing happened in Pyramix (I think?) and ProTools on those pictures. The score, however, was all Samplitude.

The only ones not actually scored exclusively in Samplitude would be Millennium Crisis, Clonehunter, and uh... I think that's it.

All dialog, music, and effects editing on all pictures was in Samplitude.

REPLY FROM svam

The soundtracks of the following movies were completely arranged in Samplitude 6.0 (incl. all voices, atmos, sounds, restaurations, effects, etc.).

...the short movies "Zahme Vögel", "Haut" and "Bekennerschreiben" (all accessible in full length): http://www.carstenungerfilm.de/html/filme.html

...the full movie "Teenaged": http://www.teenaged.de/ (Link is no good)

...many industrial films for expositions and product videos

The object-oriented way of operation is really *very* helpful for the sounddesign of a movie. You just can have, say, 10 additional general purpose tracks where you arrange fx audio snippets in order to design sounds. You have the full flexibility of applying tons of object-effects and modifications even to a <1sec-audio-object in order to let it sound as you like. Since these object-effects are only rendered for this short duration they don't affect the overall performance. In particular it is very useful that hall-effects are continued after the object's end if the fade-out has zero-length.

I have posted a question for you on the Samplitude Forum. Please check to make sure that I got it right.

John CB

@john-brown Thanks for the detailed responses. It is as I suspected, that Samplitude is likely a really good tool for the job and worth making the investment for those really big, complex projects.

Samplitude 7 will be coming out soon, so I will look into the trial version when it is out.

As for @brmichael, kindly refer her/him to the message I received twice (screenshot below) when trying to register. I will not keep trying.