FLV Editing

Allow FLV editing / splitting of video as well as audio in multitrack. Then allow saving of the new rearranged / mastered file as .avi.

This is Flash territory, isn't it? I think that ideally, Adobe would want to wean people away from using Audition for anything to do with it... and anyway, Audition is an audio editor. Splitting video is for video editors.

But I would find it useful if you could add more than one video clip in Multitrack view in order to sync up multiple reels of a film for instance.

Well, that's a whole different deal.

Adding multiple clips requires Audition to consider mixing unmatched file attributes -- frame rate, size, etc -- which would be a whole new level of programming.  Or to not permit it, which makes it less useful.

But I feel your pain.  The one-video-clip limitation has bitten me more than once.  Easier is to line it all up in Premiere and export one video sequence, and then to edit the audio from that.  On my latest project I exported "stems" from Premiere for mic sound, music, and sound effects, then massaged the mix in Audition.

This is Flash territory, isn't it? I think that ideally, Adobe would want to wean people away from using Audition for anything to do with it... and anyway, Audition is an audio editor. Splitting video is for video editors.

As I would be a bit surprised if Adobe were to get rid of 'Flash' I'm not entirely sure I understand the logic here . . . unless you are alluding to things you can't say?

as for the other even if Audition approach to MIDI, multitrack, direct to disc recording, live processing had not been so dysfunctional I tend to agree that the last thing you want is for a great audio editor to attempt to be a bad video editor

I am a little surprised about not being able to import audio from FLV's (though I don't think I was ever able to open the vid . . . might have to check on that)  . . . it is another of those little things that will keep Audition (3) from ever being the primary umbrella app .. . my biggest problem with Audition now is trying to find something 'unique' about it that justifies even considering it for future upgrades . . . after what a month and forcing myself to use V3 when ever possible I still find I need to have V1.5 running in almost every instance in which I do use V3.  I have found V3 to do a bunch of stuff quicker (throwing that in just for balance).

but back to original question (of this reply) I would think it far more probable that Adobe would be trying to sell Audition (thus cutting ties to other of its proprietary elements) then that they'd dump Flash, and to cripple an audio editor by making it less functional in the general marketplace seems a bit counter productive

So is there any interest from Izotope people in buying Audition?

This is Flash territory, isn't it? I think that ideally, Adobe would want to wean people away from using Audition for anything to do with it... and anyway, Audition is an audio editor. Splitting video is for video editors.

As I would be a bit surprised if Adobe were to get rid of 'Flash' I'm not entirely sure I understand the logic here . . . unless you are alluding to things you can't say?

No, just implying that Adobe are developing other tools for flash users - like Soundbooth, for instance? I would guess that for most Flash-type applications, that Soundbooth would be more appropriate - especially now that the new public beta appears to support limited multitrack.

Adding multiple clips requires Audition to consider mixing unmatched file attributes -- frame rate, size, etc -- which would be a whole new level of programming

I was only thinking of video clips with identical attributes. I use Vegas if I am really into video editing. But occasionally, having completeteda restoration of a film sound track it would be nice to be able to match the reels without having to re-telecine the whole film and try to get the overlaps right.

No, just implying that Adobe are developing other tools for flash users - like Soundbooth, for instance? I would guess that for most Flash-type applications, that Soundbooth would be more appropriate - especially now that the new public beta appears to support limited multitrack.

don't mean to hijack original post but integration of Audition with Video apps more or less remains on point.  I suppose my larger problem is trying to understand . . . peer into the future of Adobe's intent . . . and it seems curious to cripple the premier audio app with regard to it's ability to function seamlessly with video (and I do not mean it should be a video editor . . . but it has certainly been more then eight years since CE/AA became an app of choice for working with video)

To be able to import Audio in V1.5, but not in V3, when to DX difficulties related directly to necessary (for me) but 'not' Adobe' video components (on a system that is similar but that lacks those elements DX plugs are supported with no problem), is at least curious.  There is other functionality that has mysteriously disappeared in V3 and while in many ways I'm pleased with it, when I look 'long term' I no longer perceive that 'unique' component  that makes the question 'Do they support AA' part of the equation for considering future upgrades of systems and OS.  My approach almost from beginning of desk top computing was to uncover the apps I needed and find hardware and OS on which those apps ran.  When I migrated the trio of project studio Video bay machines to XP it was due solely because AA did not run under win98 (and I lost a good if not great A/D card in that migration . .. ) 

I do not particularly want Soundbooth, have nothing against it but I need another Audio app about as much as I need to shoot myself in the foot . . . it was CE's ability (particularly after it supported DX plugs) to reduce software clutter that was part of my initial affection for it, particularly when my peer group made fun of its name ('pro tools is a man's tool, cool edit, that's for kids!')

I use Vegas as a front end for a lot of project studio work. I was not a sound forge fan, as much as I liked the $10K mini-oxford and their $10k hardware convolution box I am not a Sony fan, but every time I think about migrating to Premier I get a resurgence of 15 yr. experience with Photoshop muscle tick . . .

And V3's scripting/batch support is so poor that most of the time I would not import audio directly into AA anyway would extract audio with an app that I could script and batch so inability to import directly from Flash is a tiny consideration, but I have to admit that, that even after only about a month's use,  there is mounting frustration with all these tiny 'considerations'.   Adobe's massive indifference to small clients (even if I upgrade 10 licenses and convince 20 clients they 'had' to have AA I am assuming I'd still be a minuscule customer) demands 'faith of the upgrade' to even see if any of the issues pinged Adobe's commercial radar.

Personally Adobe is looking less and less like a good fit for the future of Audition. Which I think is sad, not due to nostalgia but because I think Audio industry needs a continually evolving muscular audio editor.  It will be interesting to see if Izotopes RX cut's into Adobe's restoration market share.  Since Restoration is far enough outside my comfort zone that opinion of those engaged in it becomes something of an objective bench mark.  (No matter what it sounds like I'm predisposed to give AA benefit of a lot of doubt . . . After V2 experience I only returned to try V3 because of long past history with the legacy product.)

One of the problems with developing any software, never mind something that's akin to a Swiss Army knife, is that the more people want to do, and get developed, the more other things suffer, and the whole thing can easily get unbalanced.

I think that Adobe have learned the hard way recently that removing or significantly altering just about anything in Audition leaves a section of the users somewhat peeved - somebody somewhere wants to use just about everything in there, and they don't like it when things get altered so they don't work properly - or even just as they used to.

On the other side of the coin, there are a few things that work way better than they used to - and some of those I wouldn't be without. Absolutely top of my list here is crossfades, I have to say. Until 3.0 these weren't usable at all, and now you can perform pretty much any transition you'd ever want to with them.

Unfortunately for the end-users, Adobe have been doing experiments with everything they have to do with Audio, and this is still an ongoing process, to a degree. Eventually they will either get it right (which will effectively be the way we've said it should be all along...), and there will be two products, one of which is good for basic radio production, and all those tasks to do with Flash, etc - and possibly other video production as well - or get out of the business. With the new beta of Soundbooth (well, from a look at the list of new features, at any rate), it looks as though they may have finally taken on board what it is that radio users want at a basic level - and some! Speech recognition? If this really works, it could be a real asset to anybody editing speech in a hurry.

They finally realised that Audition didn't belong in the Creative Suite, as well. It was this that made AA2.0 such an appalling mess, what with having to stick to externally imposed deadlines, and as a consequence having to release what could at best be described as a late release candidate. All entirely predicted, of course - but who listens to us (or possibly the developers)?

I have some confidence that eventually, they will sort out where they are going with this. Anyway, Syntrillium really couldn't afford to develop the program further, so where else where they supposed to go? I'm pretty sure that any other option would have resulted in a very real chance that the whole thing would have disappeared down the pan completely by now. Whilst Adobe may not have seemed like an ideal choice at the time, all I can say is that we're several years down the line, and the product hasn't been dropped. And that is, I'd say, quite something in itself.

One of the problems with developing any software, never mind something that's akin to a Swiss Army knife, is that the more people want to do, and get developed, the more other things suffer, and the whole thing can easily get unbalanced.

Weak excuse!!!

FLV video importing not allowed in AA3.0 - because I don't have an Adobe license higher than Premiere 6.5 - is laughable. AA 1.5 works fine - does the job: imports MP4 as well as FLV!!! BTW - AA should promote this feature of importing FLV video as a great tool for guitarists (and other musicians) to import, review, and learn songs (ie learn song demonstrations off YouTube).

Crossfades: (Co-Title: Audio Brain Surgery / By Hand)
Line up end of last section / trk with beginning of new track. Note: Having both trks on separate tracks in multitrack works best here.
Let sine wav shapes of each trk overlap perfectly.
Adjust wav boundaries. Check sound. Is this right? Nudge wav(s) until you get it right. To Nudge: Highlight wav, then hit ALT "." = left // ALT "," = right.
Repeat above procedure until you get what you need. Does it sound smooth? Natural? If you can hear the edit, go back and redo the above - until edit is not noticable at all!!!
Polishing sound: adjust volume envelopes of each wav to further shape curve of sound. Imagine you are at a mixing board using a fader control. Make it sound real.

Brewer

Weak excuse!!!

It's not an excuse, it's an observation, and it applies to all software of this type, always has done and always will.

Great observation!!! That's better. Right now looking for codecs to allow FLV / MP4 v-i-d-e-o importing into AA 3.0

Observation - Adobe Audition 3.0 can NOT import FLV/MP4 video.
Observation - Adobe Audition 1.5 can import FLV/MP4 video.
Observation - Cool Edit Pro 2.1 (beta tester version) can import FLV/MP4.

Observation - Adobe Audition 3.0 can NOT import FLV/MP4 video.
Observation - Adobe Audition 1.5 can import FLV/MP4 video.
Observation - Cool Edit Pro 2.1 (beta tester version) can import FLV/MP4.

Another observation - Cool Edit Pro was a Syntrillium product, and could have whatever codecs were freely available in it, pretty much without let or hindrance. But now rights for both products are owned by Adobe - so I'm still suggesting that what I said in my initial reply holds true.

And we have to accept this - because now they have us by the testicles, and our hearts and minds will follow!

Well actually no!, minds do not..  Don't know if this attitude is a curious artifact of European culture or extreme technical skill, but the history of audio recording is a history of challenging the premise of conventional wisdom. (other then non transparent economics that one has to bow to any marketing driven tool has to be anomalous to productivity) The rules of physics might be immutable but how they are deployed is not.

And each successive wave of technological innovation changes the way humans, culturally, define music.  Syntrillium in its own way was an active participate in that dialog, my experience with Adobe, predating their acquisition of Cool Edit by decades (Adobe acquired Photoshop in 1988) has always suggested that they consistently lag behind the curve, marketing driven dinosaurs in much the same mind set as Avid (with regard to software).

There are a good number of things I like about AA V3.  It is highly unlikely that I will upgrade all available licenses, even less likely that it will stay in the pool of software whose development I actively follow.  That is not to say I will never purchase another upgrade (though point of fact I didn't get V3 via upgrade)  . . . Merely that, not unlike photoshop, while I will need to be vaguely conversant, for at least a while, with AA it stands no chance of remaining at the center of audio work . . . And as more and more of that work is conjoined with video work that might seem curious

But again not unlike photoshop Adobe is doing little to improve integration and productivity of Audition.  For every feature that has improved I've lost some long time function and unlike photoshop AA is not industry standard . . . I found/find little in AA V3 to justify continued education purely to learn to negotiate the software.  I see nothing it brings to the process not already supplied by other apps,  V3 will not let me retire even CE2k.  AA 1.5 & 3 will have to continue to run concurrently, which becomes one more reason to avoid Vista @ all cost so when the AA 'vista only' version shows up that is likely the end of the line (starting in 1996) for me.

Nor do I quite get the cross fade bit . . . Are you talking automatic crossfades?  When I was discussing some 7 years ago things I would like to see in CEP v2 and stressed automation there were several voices raised to school me in how superior manual manipulation of amplitude envelopes were to how automation was implemented in other software.  So are you indicating that for all these years CE & AA amplitude envelop implementation was deeply flawed?  (your quote: 'weren't useable at all')

I am fairly conversant in arc of software development (in which my role has always been to irritate conventional code writers by asking 'OK, why can't you do that?') . . . Only thing I've ever said is that choices Adobe makes (and they are 'choices' not immutable laws of physics) guts the functionality of their programs for me.  With V2 AA was no longer an app I could recommend to others, with V3 it has slid into the category of 'used to be interesting' . . . . And unlike Photoshop it is not industry standard so I do not 'have' to have it the arsenal.  I had frequency space editing prior to it's introduction in AA, find that I still 'need' 1.5 and that it is just as efficient to shell out of 1.5 for frequency space editing (or VST's or the occasional MIDI) as it is to shell out of V3 to 1.5 . . . I.e. No net gain with introduction of V3.  And while I am not saying Adobe is not working on the things that are genuine anomalies ('bugs') the fact is that I have no indication, let alone evidence, that, in fact, they are . . . To continue to invest time in AA becomes purely an article of faith and Adobe's traditional marketing decisions make reward of that 'faith' a very, very long shot.

In any case while they might have you by the short and curlies, Adobe has not locked in the butterfly hooks yet and it is highly unlikely Adobe's marketing driven mentality will lead me anywhere. . .  in point of fact after vehemently rejecting PT for more then 15 yr. it is likely that if it handled float math I'd be ready to reinvestigate it . . . 7.4 showed some potentially significant improvements in function . . . Integer math remains a deal breaker as umbrella app . . . But was surprised that I hated 7.4 a lot less then earlier versions . . . & float math is such a huge part of how I think about editing and mixing that to even review PT seriously surprised the hell out of me . . . At this point PT's foundation approach to audio is more alien, to me, then a Cambodian language MAC . . . Each successive editing step, for me, is intimately intertwined with float math, even the two main 'volumes' at which I monitor is been adapted to float as opposed to integer, math.  I have no intention of rushing out and dropping 10K on a PT system but for the first time in 13 years it's now back in the short listed pool of software to consider with each successive modification of both project and professional studios . . . (I still want to like Nuendo)

All those little things that Adobe does not think to be important mean that AA no longer is (in that pool).

(while not directly pertinent to this post the fact that current versions of EDL to not seem to support migration of PT sessions to Adobe is quite problematic for me.  (admittedly this is not an Adobe issue at all) . . . like it or not PT is 'industry standard' for me to snobishly reject PT would be economic suicide . . . the ease with which I could import PT sessions into the more powerful CEP, AA was a huge economic benefit for me for a lot of years & not surprisingly a factor in my Syntrillium loyalty)

Nor do I quite get the cross fade bit . . . Are you talking automatic crossfades?  When I was discussing some 7 years ago things I would like to see in CEP v2 and stressed automation there were several voices raised to school me in how superior manual manipulation of amplitude envelopes were to how automation was implemented in other software.  So are you indicating that for all these years CE & AA amplitude envelop implementation was deeply flawed?  (your quote: 'weren't useable at all')

I never managed to get a decent, flexible inaudible MV crossfade out of Audition at all before 3.0, never mind whether it was automated or not. This wasn't the envelopes as such, it was just the way that they were 'controlled'. Weird stuff happened - things jumped up and down, and the whole system didn't follow any logic that I was conversant with.

As for the rest of it, there's one big thing that I haven't mentioned - but only because to do so sort-of infers something that I don't particularly intend, so before I mention what it is, I should make it very clear that the fact that Audition now has a new product manager implies absolutely nothing, as far as I'm concerned, about the previous one, who has gone on to greater things within the organisation. All this might mean is that things could be different - not necessarily better or worse.

But if anybody, as a user, intends to stick with Audition then I'm afraid that they do have you where they want you - but not necessarily if you don't. Obviously everybody would have a point where things would have gone too far, but as far as I'm concerned they haven't got there yet, and they may never do so. They got close with all this MIDI stupidity, but since, in public, I have now been held personally responsible by the developers for them having to keep it hidden when not wanted (which I'm quite delighted to accept the responsibility for!), things are still okay for the time being.

To have even shaken the dinosaur's tail that much and moved it slightly is amazing - they really do have a lot of ideas set completely in stone, and trying to alter them, even when the ideas leave a lot to be desired, is nearly impossible. But to be fair, if you have a large development team with loads of stuff partitioned out to different teams, I don't really think that it could be any other way.