In this fourth installment of our six-part series of tutorials on
Sony Vegas Pro 11, we're going to talk about the new Mixer layout. If
you're into audio mixing, you're going to find this really cool because
it's going to make your editing experience for audio more like using a
traditional hardware mixer. Let's check it out.
Get On the Bus
Let's
take just a moment and look at the standard two-track Mixer in Sony
Vegas Pro 10, the previous version of Vegas (
Figure 1, below).
You can see we have 44.1 kHz and 16-bit as default sampling rate and
bit depth, respectively. We have a few options we can customize, such as
Audio Properties, down-mix output, and the ability to insert a bus.
Figure
1. The audio Mixer in Sony Vegas Pro 10
Now, let's
look at the somewhat comparable Master Bus in Sony Vegas Pro 11, our
current version, and look at them side by side (
Figure 2, below).
What you see on the left-hand side of Figure 2 is the Mixer in Vegas
10; on the right-hand side here is the version in Vegas 11 that's called
Master Bus. They look very similar, but there are a couple of
differences worth pointing out.
Figure
2. The old Mixer (left) and the new Master Bus (right side by side)
In
Vegas 10 (left), you have the ability to insert a bus and to insert
Assignable FX in this two-track Mixer. Sony has actually removed that
from the Master Bus in Vegas 11. If you want that type of control, it's
probably best to bring up the full Audio Mixer. We'll take a look at
that here in just a moment. Other than that, there is no difference here
between these two. You still have the ability to solo and mute your
stereo channels here in Vegas 11's Master Bus (
Figure 3, below).
Figure
3. Soloing tracks in the Master Bus in Vegas Pro 11
One
difference in the Vegas 11 version is that you can open your Mixing
Console directly from the Master Bus (
Figure 4, below).
You couldn't do that before.
Figure
4. Opening the Mixing Console from the Master Bus in Vegas Pro 11
That
kind of sums of the differences here between the two-track Mixers in
Vegas 10 and Vegas 11. Let's have a look at the actual Mixing Console
itself.
1
1
Using the Mixing Console
Notice that in Vegas 10, the
previous version, that you could bring up the Mixer window or the Mixing
Console window (
Figure 5, below). That's a little bit
confusing.
Figure
5. Opening the Mixer window (or the Mixing Console window) in Vegas Pro
10 from the same View menu (note: composite image)
In
Vegas 11, again, these features are much better differentiated in their
naming: Master Bus and Mixing Console (
Figure 6, below).
And remember that if you're looking at the Master Bus you can open the
Mixing Console right from the Bus.
Figure
6. Opening the Mixer window (or the Mixing Console window) in Vegas Pro
11 from the same View menu (note: composite image)
Figure
7 (below) shows a bit of a different preview of a Vegas
project. This is Vegas 11. There's no video preview. We have just our
workspace here. On the right side in Figure 7 we have a disc in the DVD
drive from VASST called
TrakPak 5: Modern Incidentals—Modern Scoring
cues and Background Images.
1
Building a Soundscape
We're going to set up a little
soundscape here for our major motion picture. Just to give you an idea
of how it is to work with audio in Vegas, these files that we're working
with here are actually royalty-free loops and little instrumental pads
and patches and things that you can use in your productions. You can get
these from a variety of sources. We're using some from VASST for this
demonstration.
Let's start with a rhythm loop. In
Figure 8
(below) I'm grabbing a loop and setting it up in an audio
track in the Vegas timeline.
Figure
8. Adding some loops
It's easy to loop this audio
clip. First, you make a copy of it by pressing Control, then clicking
and dragging it across the timeline. And since it's designed as a loop,
then it should play seamlessly from one clip to the other.
Next
I'll grab a couple of other pieces of media, like some instrumental
cues, as shown in
Figure 9 (below). I really have no
idea how these sound, but the beauty thing about this is it doesn't
really matter at this point. You can see how they'll fit together.
Figure
9. Adding more media to the timeline.
I've also
added the Master Bus (
Figure 10, below), which is how
most people would view their timeline.
Figure
10. Using the Master Bus
What we have here is a
track of rhythm instruments, and then two tracks of kind of instrumental
music. This is the kind of standard master and Mixer view that we're
used to seeing in Vegas when we're working on our video projects. But
it's not the view that most audio engineers are used to looking at when
they're dealing with multitrack mixers. So let's grab our Master Bus and
click the open Mixing Console icon (
Figure 11, below)
and see what that looks like.
Figure
11. Opening the Mixing Console from the Master Bus
If
we give our tracks names (
Figure 12, below)...
Figure
12. Naming the tracks
...we'll see the names that
we've given them in the label on the bottom of each channel in the
Mixing Console (
Figure 13, below).
Figure
13. Named tracks at the bottom of the Mixing Console
Exploring the Mixing Console
Let's take just a moment and
poke around the Mixing Console (
Figure 14, below) for a
little bit.
Figure
14. The Mixing Console
The Audio Properties (
Figure
15, below) and layout are streamlined from previous versions.
Figure
15. Audio Properties in the Mixing Console
All of
our main controls are still across the top, as they have been in
previous versions, in serving busses, Assignable FX, things like that.
You
have a variety of ways that you can look at the levels of audio. You've
got our old friend, the Master Bus, which you can bring right up (
Figure
16, below).
Figure
16. The Master Bus in the Mixing Console
You've
also got VU meters. If you're used to working in any other digital audio
workstation, you likely have a favorite way of viewing your workspace.
And Vegas gives you all the flexibility to look at these levels any way
you choose. Remember, Vegas started life as an audio workstation and it
still has the best audio capabilities of any NLE on the market.
Play
with the levels and experiment. Figure 17 (below) shows what's called
"making everything louder than everything else." You'll notice that
we're peaking in
Figure 17. We're going above zero,
which is always bad in digital audio. You never want to go above zero.
Figure
17. Louder!
So to keep that from happening, I'm
going to add a mastering plug-in called MasterFX (
Figure 18,
below). There are a number of controls you can adjust in this
plug-in, but I pretty much leave this the way it is. And you'll notice
that no matter how we have these levels set, which are just entirely too
high, it won't go above zero. And remember that if you double-click on a
control in Vegas, it takes it back to its default setting, and the
levels in the Mixing Console are no different.
Figure
18. The MasterFX plug-in
So again, you've got
individual channel levels, you've got VU meters, you've got your master
output. You can insert your effects on the individual tracks right from
this view.
So the next time you have an audio-only project or a
project that uses many different audio tracks-typically it would be
multiple tracks of music, a few tracks of dialogue, some sound effects,
maybe even room tone-you might find that you'd benefit greatly from
using the full on Mixing Console view in Vegas Pro. Check it out. I do
think you'll like it. That's all for this tutorial. Thanks for reading,
and we'll see you next time in Vegas.
Сообщения
