Moho Forum

As a few of you know, I'm first spending all of my time learning Audacity and Garage Band to learn the audio side of things before jumping head-first into Anime. (I'm afraid. Very afraid.)

So my workflow will consist of 30- and 60-second pieces, commercial spots, and my current audio education is simply editing and laying down final music beds.

When I import this audio music file into Anime to be used as a bed to run the entire 30 or 60 seconds, are there any limitations on additional audio files I can lay over that--like footsteps and other sound effects, dialogue, etc.?

I don't plan on needing to add dozens and dozens of additional audio clips in Anime, but I don't have to have all of this incorporated into the one music file initially imported, correct?

I know, I know...

I have to read the tutorials, but I figured that asking the question here is an easier start.

THANKS FOR YOUR EXPERTISE AND ASSISTANCE!

--Ira

[quote]are there any limitations on additional audio files I can lay[/quote]
As many as your system can handle...

[quote]have to have all of this incorporated into the one music file initially imported, correct?[/quote]
Not necessarily...

Anime Studio is primarily an Animation package not an Audio Editing Software…
Keep your projects small an manageable…
Assemble all your project, animation and sound in one of your dedicated Video Editors,
(iMovie, Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere/Elements, Sony Vegas… etc.)
Then export your final movie…

Also, consider;
a) export separate tracks as needed from audacity into AS to focus on one element - i.e. dialogue without music, or character A dialogue loud, character B quiet, etc without music
b) add sound fx later in the process to the final animation, or use sound effects to guide when to animated - sound is a great way of timing actions in real time, not having to worry about lengths on the timeline.

Even consider recording yourself just speaking the actions as they need to take place as a timing guide... you can act it out yourself and narrate what you're doing, then use that simple audio file to time actions on screen

Now I'm totally confused:

So I can't incorporate my audio directly into Anime for final output? I don't get it.

Say I have a music bed, and footsteps sound effects, and dialogue. So I need to work in Anime while hearing these elements to sync my animation.

So do I work in Anime using these sound elements as basically placeholders, and then have to resync everything in another program?

funksmaname wrote:Also, consider;
a) export separate tracks as needed from audacity into AS to focus on one element - i.e. dialogue without music, or character A dialogue loud, character B quiet, etc without music
b) add sound fx later in the process to the final animation, or use sound effects to guide when to animated - sound is a great way of timing actions in real time, not having to worry about lengths on the timeline.

Even consider recording yourself just speaking the actions as they need to take place as a timing guide... you can act it out yourself and narrate what you're doing, then use that simple audio file to time actions on screen

But this is all in AS, right? This is how I THOUGHT I should do it, with no programs coming into the picture after the AS work.

no, I'm just suggesting using sound as a guide - if all your audio tracks are exported individually but in sync (with silence) you can use them to focus on different elements of the scene.
Perhaps I'm over complicating with info you didn't ask for

You can add as many audio tracks as your computer can handle - you can change their placement with the sequencer - and while on a vector layer you see the waveform of the audio file (or mix of audio files if you have more than one in the document).

This representation is the visual guide I was refering to earlier, if you have a track with claps you will easily see hits on the timeline where the claps happen and can use those as a guide for things to happen on screen, it's really useful rather than thinking in exact periods of frames for particular actions...

Let's take a step back:

1) I have 30 seconds of a music bed, which I'm immediately going to import into AS to base the whole pace of the animation on.

2) Character A says, "Fiddle Faddle sucks! Buy Cracker Jacks!" And I have that final audio clip from Audacity, which I bring into AS to sync the mouthing and other motions.

3) He then claps his hands, and again, I have that sound effect, brought in as a separate file, to sync his hand-clapping.

But even if I had the entire 30-second audio portion of this all together as one file, can't I bring this into AS, and do all my animation to it--without using another program to mix audio and video?

[quote="Ira7"]But even if I had the entire 30-second audio portion of this all together as one file, can't I bring this into AS, and do all my animation to it--without using another program to mix audio and video?[/quote]

Off course you can… go ahead… looking forward to see the result…

Nolan Scott wrote:

Ira7 wrote:But even if I had the entire 30-second audio portion of this all together as one file, can't I bring this into AS, and do all my animation to it--without using another program to mix audio and video?

Off course you can… go ahead… looking forward to see the result…

What is "Voicevover," in the credits of your "Gone Fishing" animation?

An extra "v" at no extra charge?

[quote]An extra "v" at no extra charge?[/quote]

Well, you must have the sharpest eyes on the planet…
After all that editing, proof-reading by half a dozen of people…
(looks like they were all reading impaired, including myself)

Thank you very much for pointing that out…

Kia Ora
Nolan

Hey Ira, like I said before - you can import either a mixed down track or individual tracks, and arrange them on the time line using the sequencer.

Nolan Scott wrote:

An extra "v" at no extra charge?

Well, you must have the sharpest eyes on the planet…
After all that editing, proof-reading by half a dozen of people…
(looks like they were all reading impaired, including myself)

Thank you very much for pointing that out…

Kia Ora
Nolan

I worked for many years at a Madison Avenue ad agency. Copy editing and proofreading every piece of print and broadcast supers that left the agency were some of my responsibilities, and I annoy all of the people around me by catching errors.

You can't proofread your own stuff. I can ALMOST do my own, but I know it's not the BEST way to do it.

funksmaname wrote:Hey Ira, like I said before - you can import either a mixed down track or individual tracks, and arrange them on the time line using the sequencer.

Thanks! That's what I thought!

Basically, since I can't animate s*it yet anyway, my plan for my workflow is to use my audio bed as one would use opera--and THEN do the choreography, like for a ballet.

In other words, it's a 30-second radio commercial, and in AS, I turn it into a TV commercial.

Ira7, for one of my projects I had two audio folders; One named "narration" and the other named "SFX". I had 48 separate statements in the "narration" folder that I numbered sequentially. The video BTW was an electronic tutorial. My task was to sync the explanations to the visuals.
I made the narration track in one sitting, including mistakes. I Cut snippets, numbered them and pasted them into layers. I faded each in and out so you couldn't hear 'pops'. I imported them as I needed them.
I hope that makes sense.

3deeguy wrote:Ira7, for one of my projects I had two audio folders; One named "narration" and the other named "SFX". I had 48 separate statements in the "narration" folder that I numbered sequentially. The video BTW was an electronic tutorial. My task was to sync the explanations to the visuals.
I made the narration track in one sitting, including mistakes. I Cut snippets, numbered them and pasted them into layers. I faded each in and out so you couldn't hear 'pops'. I imported them as I needed them.
I hope that makes sense.

Thanks, Larry!