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In his February review for Blast magazine, John Guilfoil details the benefits of ACID Pro 7 software, calling it "just plain delicious" for musicians Click here for full review
Filmmaker and author Heath McKnight says, "If you're serious about music creation, take a good look at ACID Pro 7." Read the full review on Digital Media Net. 
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 New! Evolver electronica loop library Eclectic eccentrics 3kStatic have joined forces with a host of guest musicians, including Kevin Max (DC Talk), David Manion (Kansas), and Robert Bond (Liberty Horses), to bring you a sample library that references electronic music's storied past, yet gives profound glimpses into its limitless future. Evolver: Distinctive Electronica contains 10 finely tuned construction kits that break down styles from progressive house and minimalist IDM to funky breaks and sexy, sun-drenched house. Want even more digital firepower? Bonus folders full of sharp one-shots, processed rhythms, and roaming pads provide you with all the sonic accouterments you need to create an e-music masterpiece from the ground up. What's more, Evolver also features a companion audio CD with song versions of each royalty-free construction kit, all written by progressive veterans 3kStatic. Check out a Q&A with 3kStatic's Dean Capone at ACID France  Sony Open in Hawaii Escape sweepstakes winner  Jason Richert, grand prize winner of our Sony Open in Hawaii Escape sweepstakes, with his fiancée Becky Widdifield. Jason won a trip for two to Hawaii including tickets to the Sony Open in Hawaii golf tournament and the Pro-Am awards dinner featuring a live performance by Gloria Estefan. Jason Richert ordered Vegas Movie Studio Platinum software to edit his high-definition skydiving footage. Because he purchased his software during our Sony Open in Hawaii Escape sweepstakes period (August 7-December 1, 2008), he earned an automatic entry into the sweepstakes when he registered his software. Jason never expected to win. In fact, when he got the call notifying him of his prize, he didn't believe it was real. It took a few minutes after he hung up the phone before everything started to sink in. He excitedly told his fiancée Becky that their January plans would now include an all-expense paid trip to Hawaii. "We had an amazing trip! Sony and everyone involved with the Sony Open treated us like royalty and it made for a very special trip. Vegas Movie Studio Platinum is a great product that I have been recommending to all my friends who do video editing, and that was before I won a trip to Hawaii! Rest assured that I will continue to be a loyal customer and I will keep my fingers crossed for the next sweepstakes. People do actually win these things!" Jason's prize package included two round-trip tickets Honolulu and hotel accommodations for six nights provided by Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau and Orbitz, $3,000 in spending cash, two weekly passes to the 2009 Sony Open golf tournament, two tickets to an advance screening of a Sony Pictures Entertainment movie, one round of golf with a PGA tour player in the Hawaii Satellite Pro Am segment of the Sony Open, and two tickets to the Pro-Am awards dinner featuring food by renowned Chef Nobu and a live performance by Gloria Estefan. In addition to the grand prize, 200 first prize winners received Sony® 2GB Walkman® Video MP3 players. Congratulations to all of the winners, and thank you to everyone who entered. Interfacing with Sony software by Craig Anderton You can bring audio into Sony® Sound Forge, Vegas™ Pro, and ACID™ Pro software simply by dragging in files, but recording real time audio into these programs requires an audio interface. This has two elements: Hardware with connectors that accept signals from mics, guitars, etc., and software drivers so the hardware can communicate with your computer. (Your computer probably has an on-board interface, but its specs will likely fall short of pro standards.)  Sound Forge 9 software is using an E-MU ASIO interface, set for a buffer latency of 12ms. Hooking up There are three main ways interfaces work with your computer. PCI/PCIe card. These require opening up your computer for installation, but give excellent performance. The card may have connectors mounted on its backplate, a breakout cable with connectors, or a breakout box with connectors that connects to the card. FireWire (IEEE1394) external box. FireWire's speed allows shuttling several channels of audio to/from your computer. For example, to record a live band with eight mics, get an 8-channel FireWire interface, plug in the mics, plug the FireWire cable into your laptop, boot your recording software, and go. USB 1.1/2.0 external boxes. USB 1.1 typically allows 4-6 channels at lower sample rates, and two channels at 96kHz. USB 2.0 boxes are faster, have specs more like FireWire boxes, and are more costly than 1.1. Many users report USB boxes are less "finicky" than FireWire. Click here to continue  Craig Anderton practices what he preaches: He just finished editing over 70 videos of NAMM convention show coverage (for www.harmony-central.com) in one week using Sony Vegas 8.1, Sound Forge 9 for audio editing, and Cinescore to do some of the soundtracks. Photo by Paul Haggard. Tech tip: customizing your keyboard shortcuts by Gary Rebholz  Everybody's workflow is different. Though many of the tasks we all perform in our video or audio editing applications are the same as the tasks everyone else performs, undoubtedly you have something in your workflow that is specific to the jobs you do. For those common tasks, like saving a file or playing the project back so you can see and hear what you've created, we've included keyboard shortcuts that you can use to make your job easier. But since it's impossible to make the perfect set of keyboard shortcuts for every user, we've built the ability for you to customize your keyboard shortcuts and thus create exactly the behavior you need.For instance, in Vegas Pro, the default keyboard shortcut for the Ignore Event Grouping feature is Ctrl+Shift+U and the shortcut for removing the selected events from an existing group is simply U. However, in the projects that I work on, I use the Ignore Event Grouping feature far more often than the Remove From Group feature. Therefore, I prefer the Ignore Event Grouping function to have the simpler (one-key) shortcut, so I've remapped my keyboard shortcuts accordingly. In this column, we'll walk through the procedure for making this and any other change to your keyboard mapping. When you're done, you'll be able to customize your keyboard shortcuts so that they give you exactly what you need. I'll use Vegas Pro software for this discussion, but the process for doing this in both ACID Pro software and Sound Forge software is nearly identical, so you'll know how to do this in each application once you've learned the techniques covered here. Let's make the change I talked about a moment ago where I want the shortcut for the Ignore Event Grouping feature to be U instead of Ctrl+Shift+U. To open the Customize Keyboard dialog box, choose Options | Customize Keyboard. In this dialog box, shown in Figure 1, you can check to see what a feature's current keyboard shortcut is and change it if you want to.  The Customize Keyboard dialog box gives you the tools you need for mapping out your keyboard commands just the way you need them. You can see that the Keyboard Map setting is currently Default. We'll leave that as it is for now and come back to it later. The dialog box contains a list of commands and each command's existing keyboard shortcut (if the command has one; not all commands do). You can scroll through the list to see what's there. Click here to continue  Gary Rebholz is the training manager for Sony Creative Software. Gary produces the popular Seminar Series training packages for Vegas Pro, ACID Pro, and Sound Forge software. He is also co-author of the book Digital Video & Audio Production. Gary has conducted countless hands-on classes in the Sony Creative Software training center, as well as at tradeshows such as the National Association of Broadcasters show. |
