Adobe Audition | Digital Imaging COMS 226

Adobe Audition only

Go to your project file folder; Documents\Adobe\Audition\13.0\(MultitrackName)
1. Here you will see the Audition Project file.
2. Add a folder and name it Media. When you download music and sound effects, place them here to import into your project later. Then, when you need to move your project, it will transport the referenced audio with your project.
  1. If you reference audio that is not inside your project, then transfer or email the project folder later, your Multitrack will not be able to playback that missing audio.
  2. Fortunately, if you save your project and there audio files outside of your project folder, Audition will ask if you want to copy them into that folder. While I do not recommend relying on this method, it is useful to have a failsafe. Save early and often!
3. After you make some recordings later on, you will also see a file created called (MultitrackName)_Recordings. Recordings you make inside of your multitrack will be located here.

After creating your multitrack projects, Audition tends to populate the Multitrack Editor with 6 stereo tracks, which is… possibly useful? However, if you record your voice into a stereo track, your voice will only be heard out of the left speaker.

Create a Mono track.
1. Press Shift+A to open the “Add Tracks” window.
  1. You can alternately go to Multitrack / Tracks / Add Mono Track.
2. Add 1 mono track, or multiple if you have multiple voices to record and edit.
Name your track Yourname VOX
1. As you make recordings, the created .WAV files will be named (trackname)_001, _002, etc.
  1. If all your recorded tracks are called Track 1, sorting them later might become difficult.
2. If you have multiple performers on the same project, it is very useful to keep them differentiated.
Record your commercial.
1. First, arm your track for recording (In Adobe Audition) or . On the top right section of the track header, you should see a little “R” next to an M (mute) and an S (solo / mute all others.)
2. Make certain that your track is receiving input from your microphone. The PPM (peak programme meter) should move in response to your voice.
  1. If it is not, check that your microphone is connected, turned on (some mics have an on/off switch on the side) and has phantom power if it needs it.
  2. Then check that the track is set to record from the correct input (it should start at Default Stereo Input, but if this is not working try the other ones in sequential order. Worst case scenario, you waste a few minutes finding and testing them.)
3. Set the Gain for your microphone.
  1. On your interface, there should be a knob labeled “Gain.” Slowly turn up the knob until the PPM has a yellow tip, but not a red one.
  2. If you turn up the gain too high, the PPM will activate a red light. This indicates that you are clipping your level and creating digital distortion (the worst kind of distortion, especially for dialogue.)
  3. This light will stay on until you acknowledge its existence. Simply click on the red light to reset your clip indicator.
4. When you are ready, record your dialogue.
  1. Press Shift+Space to begin recording.
  2. Alternately, there is a little red button at the bottom of the track window. When you press it, your Armed tracks will begin recording.
  3. Press space to stop recording.
  4. If you are not satisfied with your take, press Ctrl+z (edit / undo) and it will remove the recorded audio from your track, but not the recordings file folder. If you change your mind, press Shift+Ctrl+Z to “redo” your recording and it will be put back into your project.
    1. To save HD space later, it may be wise to delete the unused takes from your recordings folder. Proceed with caution when doing this, and avoid deleting the .WAVs you need.
Add Music and Sound Effects
1. Scan websites or other music and sound effects libraries to collect an assortment of useful audio.
  1. Be mindful of copyright restrictions to any project you may create, even in school. Publishing work with copyrighted material is extremely risky.
  2. For music and sound effects, I will add two very public domain friendly websites.
  3. https://incompetech.com/music/
  4. https://freesound.org (requires an account, but is quick and painless)
  5. https://archive.org has large public domain archives
2. After downloading music and SFX to the project media folder, go to the Media Browser subwindow on the middle left side of the project. There you can follow the file-path to your media and click and drag them onto your other available tracks. If you drag them into empty space, Audition will create a new track for your new audio.
3. Be sure to label your tracks to keep your sanity meter high as you add more audio.
4. If you add a sound effect or music track that does not share your sessions sample rate or bit depth settings, Audition will create a copy of them with the correct settings in your project folder under Conformed Files and then reference the new copies for the multitrack. There should be a minimal loss in quality.
5. If you add Mono sound effects to a stereo track, Audition will play the mono sound through both speakers. In other words, this is fine.
Mix
1. To open the mixer window, go to Window / Mixer. This replaces your editing window with the mixer.
2. Then, grab the name of the mixer window on the top left side of it’s container. Then drag it to the righthand side of your project. This should allow you to see the editing window and change the levels of each of your tracks as needed.
Export
1. File / Export / Multitrack mixdown
2. Leave the filename as is
3. If you export multiple times, or need different versions (say an .mp3 and a WAV file) it is more useful to add numbers at the end of a project regarding how many iterations exist simultaneously.
  1. Rather than _mixdownFINAL, for inevitably comes the _mixdownFINAL2 file.
Upload
1. Get a free Soundcloud.com account. Soundcloud will allow you to upload wav, aiff, alac or MP3 formatted files. The first three hours are free. Unlimited professional is $12 / month. There are other free audio-only platforms such as iTunes.
2. Once you have uploaded your audio file, it will stay on Soundcloud and you will have a URL to reference.
3. Soundcloud will give you a URL that you can use as a link on your wordpress.com site.
  1. There’s no need to use the full embed tags any more — WordPress.com creates an embedded image.
4. Another alternative is YouTube, which has more or less unlimited uploads. You will need to import your .wav file into Premier (or other video application), include a visual element (such as an original photo), and then save in the H.264 format. See these instructions for more information on video embedding.