I’m looking forward to 8.5, it seems that it will be a paid update. Can anybody confirm or hint at pricing?
One thing that I am wondering about is the AAC encoder feature. The info on website says “This allows music or spoken word content to be rendered directly to the AAC format (e.g. HE-AAC, HE-AAC v2, HD-AAC and 3GPP) for upload to the iTunes platform”.
Are there any iTunes aggregators that accept AAC files directly for iTunes distribution? It seems that in the US, all aggregators only accept 16-bit WAV, and hopefully 24-bit WAV soon. I haven’t seen any services that accept or request AAC files directly. This is always confusing for clients that think they need to upload mp3s for iTunes sales since iTunes sells mp3/AAC files. Clients seem to have a hard time comprehending that you need to start with high quality WAV files that get converted to AAC and tagged with data even though I try to be clear about this when sending them masters for approval.
I wish you could submit AAC directly for iTunes sales because then you wouldn’t have to worry about possible overs when WAV files are converted to AAC. I have Sonnox Pro Codec to test if overs will occur, and looking forward to trying the new Encoder Checker.
My main hope for 8.5 is a way to easily convert a montage to a different sample rate without all the markers shifting. I don’t mind manually re-linking to the correct sample rate files, but redoing all the markers, effects and clips gains etc. takes a lot of time for something that could be so simple.
iTunes ingests everything as WAV, but Mastered for iTunes ingest is 24 bits. As to self-converting, that’s not as good as the current MfiT workflow, wrt quality: by accepting and retaining full resolution files, Apple can strike higher quality transcoded delivery files as-needed, based on any changes to spec. They don’t need to re-ingest anything, or contact the artist, or labels. It just happens.
As to previewing and QC, the MfiT toolbox contains the encoder that Apple uses (and for AU DAWs, a real-time codec for A/B’ing; sadly no help to WL users, and I really can’t blame apple for not supporting VST here), so you can always hear, review and check what’s going to happen. They update the tools for any changes, so you can hear how they might affect your content (that’s not happened yet for AAC, so presently that’s irrelevant, but nothing Apple lives forever so it’s good to know). They have “droplets” for instant conversions of the base files, for sharing with clients for approval.
Obviously they’re just one store, so this isn’t a panacea. But at least as far as AAC goes, I think the new WL8.5 tools will help (at least with the preview issue). Multi-res export formats are really needed, but the watch folders help there too. So it’s getting better all the time…
This one is interesting. Looking forward to seeing how it’ll work. While it’s perfectly useable, I’m not too happy with the WL one.
I am not speaking about a replacement of the WaveLab file browser (though this should happen in the future), but about “revealing” WaveLab files in third-party file browsers rather than with OSX Finder or Windows File Explorer (because there are better alternatives for power users).
Eg. if you use on Mac: Cocoatech | Path Finder
Or on Windows: http://www.xyplorer.com
(more choices on Windows than on Mac).
What else is in here - for fixes etc. I am still struggling with a few things and I am a bit disappointed in the “chargeable” aspect of this release - I would have thought there would have been a larger list of “goodies” in a paid release.
Although any improvements to batch rendering etc are important to me.
Appreciate any update you can offer in the way of what lingering bugs from 8.x have been addressed.
This is great. Is it also possible that the built in “copy” and “paste” plugin function can copy and paste all plugins on a clip, track or montage master? Right now it only seems to copy one.
Many times I have more than one plugin on a clip and would like to copy and paste that chain to another clip without saving as a preset.
If I had one request, it would be to remove the artificial block that stops WL running on XP. Yes, I know it’s not supported, but I wouldn’t be looking for support while running it on XP. I have an isolated XP partition with some custom software on it and I’d like to be able to move from WL6 to WL8 on it as I’ve now become accustomed to working in WL8.
That’s what I thought as well…thought I remembered a thread around awayback about newer api’s, dlls etc etc that are only available in Windows 7/8 etc…
Support for XP embedded is not ending yet; only the desktop version. And yes, I am involved with replacing XP in medical systems, or in some cases making special arrangements for equipment that remains with XP to be on an isolated network.
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