Subject:Editing in Acid Pro 7

Posted by: arto

Date:11/13/2015 8:52:57 AM

I've been using Acid Pro 7 to multi-track record choral/orchestra. What I've been doing is recording a whole "session" at once which results in many songs being recorded to one file which might be 1+ hours long.

I need to edit & save each song as a separate file which is then rendered to a 2-channel stereo .WAV file where I use Sony Sound Forge to assemble all the songs in their proper order, fade in/out, normalization, etc.

How do I edit and save each song as a separate file where I can perform the mixing with Acid. I need to edit the individual songs in Acid because it takes to long to render the whole Acid file to 2-channel WAV for 20+ songs (meaning I must have 20+ Acid files, all the same size of the complete recording). I've been doing the editing in Sound Forge because I'm familiar with it (I used to record directly to 2-channel stereo, mixing in real-time).

I have a short time window of 2-3 days to deliver 100+ CDs. Having to render 20+ full-length Acid files to 2-channel before I edit each song from the whole recording (there may be multiple takes of each song) is taking way too much time.

Subject:RE: Editing in Acid Pro 7

Reply by: Geoff_Wood

Date:11/16/2015 4:05:49 PM

Sound Forge sounds an unnecessary intermediate step to do this !

Instead maybe make each 'song' (CD track) a separate Acid project.

1 - SAVE your original project somewhere to remain untouched.
2 - Make a 'working' copy to work with.
3 - Load the working copy, select everything (CTRL-A) and SPLIT all events at the end of the first track.
4 - Highlight and delete all audio after the split and Save As the project as 'Track 1'.
5 - Reload the working copy of the complete project .
6 - SPLIT off the second track area and delete the rest - Save As 'Track 2'
7 - Repeat until you have separate projects for each track.
8 - In Acid mix, fade, level, etc each track separately and render each track to stereo .
9 - Assemble all tracks in CD Architect (best), or Sound Forge, or Acid, to make your production master.

Let us know how this works for you !

geoff

Subject:RE: Editing in Acid Pro 7

Reply by: mike_in_ky

Date:11/16/2015 10:29:33 PM

Take a look at this thread and see if it adds anything to the conversation.
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/showmessage.asp?forumid=1&messageid=932211

Subject:RE: Editing in Acid Pro 7

Reply by: arto

Date:12/1/2015 8:31:06 AM

Thnx Geoff.

That sort of works. The only problem is as I go along, proceeding from Track 1 to Track 2, 3, 4, etc the file gets longer and longer because I still have the preceding tracks.

For instance, if I Crtl A, and split at the end of "Track 1", then delete the rest, then reload and do the same thing for "Track 2", Track 1 is now present with Track 2.

How do I delete the preceding Track 1 part from Track 2 and so on? I can't seem to highlight (select) the music preceding Track 2 because Crtl A selects everything.

Also, when I delete the preceding Track there's a lot of "time" (empty space) preceding the remaining track. What do I do with this? How do I get the succeeding tracks all back to zero?

Subject:RE: Editing in Acid Pro 7

Reply by: arto

Date:12/1/2015 9:28:46 AM

And a another issue:

After I rendered the "track" (song/project) to a wav file I noticed that the piano track was left on the Acid file and all the other instrument & vocal tracks were gone. The "original" file now also looks the same as the working copy that was split, deleted unwanted parts, and only the piano track remaining.

I really don't understand why this has to be so complicated with new words/commands and additional steps to do what I've been doing for decades in either analog or digital. This is extremely frustrating, especially when technical support is almost non-existent, or extremely slow response time at best.

Subject:RE: Editing in Acid Pro 7

Reply by: arto

Date:12/1/2015 9:49:48 AM

I should add that while I may have as many as eight tracks per song, not all of the songs use all of the tracks.

There are two tracks for the main pickup mics, a mic for the piano, another for vocal soloist, another for violins, etc. Each track is recorded mono. Later I mix the left & right channels from the main mics, some songs the piano mic is muted, others the vocal soloist may be muted, or I have to adjust loudness on piano, etc. So, all songs (projects) are not the same "mix" but have to be assembled into one whole stereo recording.

Subject:RE: Editing in Acid Pro 7

Reply by: arto

Date:12/1/2015 9:57:50 AM

Thnx Mike. That sort of helps except I'm recording with Acid Pro, multi-track as opposed to starting with a stereo wav file. And all of the tracks (songs) do not have the same mix. A vocal soloist mic might be required for for only 2 or 3 songs. On the other songs that mic will be muted. I'll record the vocal soloist off to the side, away from the chorale and orchestra to better isolate them, and then adjust volume, panning, etc when I'm back in the studio to do the mixing, editing and mastering, rendering to 2-channel stereo wav file.

Subject:RE: Editing in Acid Pro 7

Reply by: Geoff_Wood

Date:12/1/2015 8:51:21 PM

CTRL-Click each track header and DEL to get rid of the old tracks.

Then CTRL-A to select All, and drag all event hard to the left.

Simply the usual Windows way of doing things !

geoff

Subject:RE: Editing in Acid Pro 7

Reply by: Geoff_Wood

Date:12/1/2015 8:59:54 PM

Yes, this is quite standard. Cannot understand why this is a problem if previous steps are done to prune out the superfluous material per track.

When each of the tracks is finished and rendered, then you start with a blank new project and take the rendered stereo mix of each of the tracks and assemble them into the final 'album'. Maybe then doing some final overall mastering.

You can put all the renders sequentially onto one stereo track in Acid and apply whatever process to the whole track (maybe with envelopes), or use Event FX to put different FX on each render.

Or stagger each render onto individual stereo tracks and apply different processing to each on the 'Track FX' chain.

geoff

Subject:RE: Editing in Acid Pro 7

Reply by: arto

Date:12/3/2015 8:51:37 AM

Great. Thnx Geoff. That worked.

Just to be clear, it's not quite just like standard Windows commands. I would think I could just "window" a group of tracks for selection. Instead everything must be selected individually (CTRL hold, click/select) and or use "cut & paste" in the usual way but it seems that is not the case.

But now that I understand what the Split command is and how to use it all is good.

Subject:RE: Editing in Acid Pro 7

Reply by: arto

Date:12/3/2015 8:58:24 AM

And now one final question.

On the very first project that I used Acid, I called it "Test_church1". Now Test_church1 always shows up as a "title" on all my tracks when I render them to 2-channel stereo wav files. When I bring these wav files into Sound Forge for file album assembly and mastering, the Sound Forge wav file always shows the file name as Test_church1 even though the actual wav file is names something else (like Wintersong 2015)).

How do I get rid of/disable this Test_church1 thing?

Subject:RE: Editing in Acid Pro 7

Reply by: mike_in_ky

Date:12/3/2015 10:11:06 AM

In Acid with a project loaded, click "File" then "Properties". That's where you will find the answer to your question.

Subject:RE: Editing in Acid Pro 7

Reply by: arto

Date:12/3/2015 11:02:08 AM

Thnx Mike. Yes. Just kind of figured that out.

Subject:RE: Editing in Acid Pro 7

Reply by: Geoff_Wood

Date:12/3/2015 2:26:43 PM

Normal Windows selection paradigm - CTRL-Click to select multiple individual items, SHIFT-Click to select a contiguous range of items. Track headers or time-line events.

Couldn't be more straightforward to my way of thinking... unless you are accustomed to another application with some odd unique way of selecting things.

geoff