Zplane élastique - I'm impressed!

megabit wrote on 6/20/2010, 7:36 AM

I second that, Bob - now it's so easy for me to make NTSC versions of my DVDs/BDs (originally recorded at 25 fps), by simply slowing down to 24 fps, while preserving the sound pitch (essential with classical music connoisseurs)!

CorTed wrote on 6/20/2010, 7:38 AM

Bob,
I am not familar with this effect. Could you please briefly explain when and how one uses this audio feature?

Thanks,

Ted

Milos Janata wrote on 6/20/2010, 9:39 AM

Its really nice feature, it preserves pitch while we make an audio track slower or faster. In classical music it would be sin to change a pitch.
Elasique is really much better than old algorithms.

Al Min wrote on 6/20/2010, 11:50 AM

Where do we find this effect please? I did a search in VP9 but it didn't show up.

FrigidNDEditing wrote on 6/20/2010, 11:54 AM

it's in audio clips properties, you select it as a method of time stretching / pitch shifting the audio.

Dave

Byron K wrote on 6/20/2010, 12:45 PM

WOW great tip! I really could have used this a couple of weeks ago on a clip of a friend firing his hand guns. I stretched the video to slow down the action, shot at 60fps. The video came out great but the audio sounded so robotic that I just cut it out.

I may have to go back and re edit this w/ audio!

Thanks for sharing!

LarryP wrote on 6/20/2010, 7:31 PM

I find that the "Pro" selection on the Stretch Attributes of the event properties works noticeably better than "Efficient".

Zplane élastique has been especially effective on low music notes from electric basses and organ pedals. Likewise the "Soloist Speech" is amazing on spoken word. Now you too can sound like the ultra fast terms and conditions on automotive radio spots.

Larry

Grazie wrote on 6/20/2010, 11:52 PM

When I read and saw this, just what does Elastique offer over the previous options for this work?

Always willing to learn.

Grazie

farss wrote on 6/21/2010, 12:39 AM

"When I read and saw this, just what does Elastique offer over the previous options for this work?"
According to Zplane's website they use psychoacoustic modelling to (I guess) separate out the formants etc from the other parts of speech and music. For example part of the sound of a note played on a guitar comes from the resonances of the body and the other parts come from the string being played. You sort of need to process those two parts of the sound differently. Same goes for the human voice. As other have said above the old algorithms were good in their day but of late much better techniques have been developed and now we have caught up.

It was Piotr who made me realise how big an issue this is, with some instruments and certain notes the old algorithms could create quite bad outcomes even with a 4% pitch shift when going from PAL to NTSC.

Where I'd used it was pretty simple. I was trying to replace some wrong dialog and the wild recorded replacement was WAY too slow, no way was it going to fit or lip sync. I was able to speed it up 135% and it still sounded perfect and it intercut and synced to vision. I chose the Soloist engine for this. It doesn't sound like such a big deal but the alternative would have been quite expensive as the talent involved now resides overseas.

Bob.

megabit wrote on 6/21/2010, 1:56 AM

I can confirm what Bob says - with élastique, it's possible to maintain perfect pitch and "color" of music while changing speed (within reasonable margins of course, like the 4% slow-down when going from PAL to NTSC).

Piotr

Grazie wrote on 6/21/2010, 9:14 AM

Well, thanks TFL for that, however I can't hear much difference between the 50% Classic and the 50% Elastique, I CAN see the lumpiness of the wave form in SF in the Classic but NOT in the Elastique - Is that it?

And thank you for doing that for me!

Grazie

rdolishny wrote on 6/21/2010, 1:44 PM

I just used this on a professional job going to the CBC in five minutes.

jrazz wrote on 6/21/2010, 6:55 PM

The only thing I don't like about this plugin is that it is not available in the 64 bit version of Vegas! It has come in handy several times in the past.

I was going to use it on my laptop (that I only have Vegas 64 on) and it was no where to be found. Too bad this isn't a 64 bit plugin.

j razz

jrazz wrote on 6/22/2010, 3:43 PM

I'll have to go back and check again, but I was pretty sure it wasn't in my 64 bit install of 9 on my laptop. I know where it is located as I use it on my desktop on ocassion. I will report back as to what I find. Surely you do not need the 32 bit version installed to gain access to it.

j razz

jrazz wrote on 6/22/2010, 3:47 PM

I stand corrected. It is there. Thanks for causing me to go back and look as I would not have done that and just assumed it is not available in 64 bit.

Now, I wonder why I couldn't find it before or if certain audio files it cannot be used? Surely I am not losing it already :)

j razz

RRA wrote on 6/23/2010, 5:09 AM

Hi,

Sometimes I have chance to assist in multilingual sales meetings of my customers. Usually there is about 20 people, two or three parties from different countries, interdisciplinar sales and buyers teams, different imperatives and targets.

In the past I have tried to overcome language obstacle and improve progress using small hardware devices (like BOSS Micro BR which offer time streaching functions for audio). It was not very effective because of low quality streatching (if you slow down file you can hear gaps).

I have decided to use camera on meetings and laptop with Vegas. Feedback from customers is fantastic. Common problem in countries where langage is "soft", is TO HEAR and RECOGNIZE hard phonems. Slow down in high quality mode and witout chipmunk effects is very powerfool tool.

Now customers can both :
- record meetings (as so called "video report")
- process every moment of meeting and check proper understanding.

Usually meetings are organized in blocks (hour, break, hour, break...). When breake starts, crowd of people instead of coffe is running to me and asking to slow down and repeat some part of meeting.

After brake new block starts usually from statement :

"we would like to confirm ..."
"just to be absolutely sure we would like to ask ..."
"we would like to correct our statement..."

Never before I had in my offer product which was so easy to sell.

Best regards,