Subject:Need advice about Acid 3.0...

Posted by: chiachuck

Date:7/23/2002 7:21:42 AM

Hi, First off, I am planning on shooting a low budget movie. The movie is going to be your typical bad acting/bad voice-over kung-fu flick, hehe. Now, even though the whole thing may be "poorly done", I still want it to have a professional feel. Because of this, I want to make a complete soundtrack for dubbing over the video footage. (Mood music, sound effects, voice-overs, etc.) Therefore, I need the ability to create simple music tracks to set the "mood" of what's going on, then lay over that the voice-acting, sound-effects (punches, walking noices, sword swishes, etc.) I'm sure there are different ways of doing this, but keep in mind that I am not using $50k in recording/dubbing equipment. Rather, I am hoping to be able to create one complete audio piece that I can simply lay over the film footage [which is standard VHS camcorder BTW, hey, I SAID it was low budget ;)]

With all this in mind, am I going to be able to pull this off with Acid MUSIC 3.0? or am I going to need Acid PRO 3.0? It goes without saying that the music aspects will be created easily with Acid MUSIC, but I will also need the ability to record,paste, and edit (to a small extent) voices and sound effects. (Which raises the question, are there sound effect sample cds available for use with Acid Music? That would save me money and time trying to record those punches on a side of beef, LOL)

Thank you in advance, any and all advice would be GREATLY appreciated..

Chuck

p.s. In case you are wondering, I am not using digital camera equipment, so I understand I am going about this in a "roundabout" way. I am simply trying to save some money by finding a slightly more time consuming way to complete this project.

Subject:RE: Need advice about Acid 3.0...

Reply by: GP40

Date:7/23/2002 9:36:16 AM

Hmmm, low budget and video editing. Not a good combo. I don't have much experiance with Acid Music but Pro will be a move in the right direction. Personally I think Vegas would be the route to take but when your interested in doing a project like this on the cheap this won't be an option. Good luck to you and share the movie with us when your done.

Subject:RE: Need advice about Acid 3.0...

Reply by: Chienworks

Date:7/23/2002 12:20:01 PM

ACID is good for creating music. It's not great for editing sound tracks. The biggest problem you'll probably run into is that you can only have one sound clip per track. So if you want to add a dozen pieces of music and 50 different sound effects, you'll end up with over 60 tracks and that can get cumbersome (not impossible, but not easy either). At least you can repeat the same sound over and over again within the same track.

ACID does however use standard sound clips ... WAV, MP3, WMA, etc. Basically, if you can play it in media player, you can add it to your ACID project. There are many sites that let you download free or inexpensive sound clips and all of these should work well. If you have sound effects CDs, you can rip the effects directy to your hard drive as WAV files.

If you're going to be using mostly canned music rather than creating your own from loops, and your emphasis is more on editing audio and video together, you might want to look at VideoFactory. It allows extensive video editing (ACID only allows one video track and one video clip, no editing at all), with two video tracks for overlays and unlimited video clips. It has only three audio tracks, but you may place unlimited audio clips in each track. VideoFactory is about the same price as ACID Music, and if someday you want to move over to Vegas there is a substantial upgrade discount.

Subject:RE: Need advice about Acid 3.0...

Reply by: SHTUNOT

Date:7/23/2002 9:49:37 PM

ACID is good for creating music. It's not great for editing sound tracks---When has anyone ever had more than 8-9 stereo tracks going on at the same time? If not maybe 2-4 mono tracks. Section out the areas to be scored and place markers for each piece...then use these markers for quick jump points for mixing purposes.

You did say low budget right?

I'm not sure what features were excluded in acid music. Go to the comparison page and see what each has and make a choice as to which best suites your needs. I would go acid pro 3 because version 4 is right around the corner. If you look around to different sites for a sales discounts...www.zzounds.com www.sharbor.com www.bestbuy.com etc...you can find some great deals on 3. I THINK if you buy now;when Version 4 comes out that you get the upgrade for free...because of the fact that version 3 was on its last legs before being pulled. Call and ask them to find out first.
The other reason why I'm pushing Acid instead of vegas is because I have a GUT feeling that ACID Pro 4 will play a greater role in the audio side of things in conjunction with Vegas Video. So since you JUST want to score for your film I think that Acid Pro would be your best bet.

And when you get more of a budget I can safely say that we ALL RECOMMEND VEGAS VIDEO 3 for your video needs ;) .Later.