Workflow for Creating Dozens of Individual Sound Effects?

Nuendo
#21

It reminds me of the time of hardware. Analog tape machines, compressors… You had one wire, and you had to plug that wire into here and that was is. The connection was occupied. You could not just make up new connections or plugs and hardware was limited. And although we live in a software world where almost anything goes - I mean we can split and sum signals on the fly and add inputs and outputs - you see where the strong ties to the past in the software we use today.

I know a few examples from Logic, where you can route a channel to a new bus and Logic instantly creates one for you dynamically. It does all the necessary stuff in the background automatically (channel creation, routing). In Nuendo you have to open the VST Connections window and add a Group/FX bus as if you manually had to plug a new hardware channel to the software before you can use it :wink:. In Logic it’s 1 click. I Nuendo it’s 7 clicks.

Or in Logic you can just change mono channels to stereo or surround with one click. Something that’s certainly possible in software, yet in Nuendo it’s completely locked and you have to decide beforehand if you want to work in mono or stereo for that track. This then leads to huge templates with hundreds of tracks like the one of James Mather, where he has 8 mono and 4 stereo tracks per single sound he does. When in fact he could just have a few and then decide, based on the sound he does, what’s needed and with a click switch the configuration of the channel.

I feel like we’re still too much tied to a hardware world in our thinking, although we live in a dynamic, much more flexible software environment.

#22

In Nuendo you have ‘Add Group Channel to Selected Channels’, 'Add Fx channel to selected channels and ‘Add VCA channel to selected channels’ in the mixer which adds group/fx bus automatically.

100% agree. IMO Steinberg could perhaps consider doing an overhaul of the project browser window in order to create a more structured overview with elaborate search functions and visibility presets. In it’s current form I’d hazard a guess that the project browser doesn’t get used a lot, but if it was re-structured it would probably get used all the time. If they could add more vertical columns so you can see all nested data simultaneously and also include search and visibility tools on the toolbar they could come probably come close to some of your requirements.

#23

:blush: Oh gosh, I’m still caught in my Logic past. The menu options are only visible in the mixer, maybe that’s why I haven’t found it in the timeline view. Anyway, I quickly defined shortcuts for that now. Have I missed something for the mono/stereo thing too?

#24

I don’t think so. That might still be needed. Cubase used to have that a long time ago but it got removed.

#25

Interesting. What (technical) reason was there to remove this I wonder?

#26

Not sure there was a reason. Guessing the function got lost as a function of the re-write of the track / channel design.

#27

Well, as apparently there hasn’t been an outcry, nobody seems to be missing it but me. Fair enough.

#28

There’s been quite a few threads on the subject… it would seem there must be a technical reason for its removal (guessing only steinberg can answer that).

#29

Interesting concept Chris.

I’m sure you could build it today if you had time to spend. The wwise and perforce connection ought to be how to be used together with Msp max or the open source alternative.

Your concept as shown above for sure wouldn’t be for me, but I could fully see the usage for some.
But then otoh you are trying to push a node based system onto a timeline. It’s sounds like a less than optimal concept.
If you look at Nuke VFX software it does not at all try to be a linear video editing software. The two different concepts don’t match that well. But then otoh you touch a few brilliant conceptual ideas IMHO.

Clip packages. If clippackages could easily be opened, edited, duplicated etc then you could use a totally different workflow slightly similar to the setup you explained but within the context and User experience of what nuendo already is. And clip packages do contain automation and inserts. It depends on how you “recall” them.
But they do not contain groups and fx channels and would need to do that for this to happen.

#30

Thanks for taking the time to read through all this, ErikG! :slight_smile:

Yeah, in the further idea section I mentioned having the signal flow represented by the node system. I’m not using node based VFX systems myself. I can imagine they’re complex if one’s not used to working with them. But when kept simple they work pretty well.

On the Mac I’m using Audio Hijack from Rogue Amoeba for some things. And they switched to a simple node based interface with their latest version. It’s brilliant and simple I think, check out the video and screenshots.

But let’s say we wouldn’t go that far. In general, my concept is targeted to organise lots of small projects if working on games / FX libs / SFX for movies.

I think it could all work if we could embed a project file as a clip into a project. Nesting projects so to speak. It could look like this. Like folder track data.

Imagine the selected clip was a sub-project inside my current project file. Double click on a sub-project clip and the project opens without re-loading, because it’s not a separate project but it’s embedded. It’s a way to nest projects. Keep it all together while keeping sanity and not juggle hundreds of tracks.

#31

While I think some of the concepts are interesting and useful some of them, like nesting projects are inviting trouble. We still don’t have you know what working properly so imagine all complex routing when nesting, not to mention syncing.

I could see how some “easy additions” could greatly improve it for you though and I wholeheartedly support those.

#32

Thanks. Yeah, as I said. Those are just ideas and concepts. Those are cheap.

I’m just saying there’s currently no good solution for people working with hundreds of SFX for games, film, FX libs right now in any DAW and I was offering a constructive suggestion / providing my perspective how this could work. Bringing in new ideas, maybe it’s a spark that starts something off. You never know. Let’s hope.

#33

I’ve just seen Avid’s IBC announcements for Pro Tools 12.6 and thought a little bit about that.

Trying to increase efficiency in the UI and all, I think the Clip Effects they introduced as well as the new fade tool helps to speed up work.

The Case For Clip Effects
I went on in this thread about how it’s hard keeping the overview when creating lots of individual sounds for a game. Because for every layer in a sound effect you usually create a single track, ending up with hundreds of them, which is hard to manage.

I think Clip Effects could drastically reduce that number. The most used effects are Compressor and EQ anyway. So instead of creating a new track for each sample, you could have a couple of tracks with no plugin inserts, and share these tracks for many sound effects together. If you had to low cut or EQ a clip, one could do those standard operations individually on a per clip basis. Take a look at Clip Effects.

I’m not sure if in PT you can only use EQ, Filter and Compressor, or also other inserts. To me it looks like you can just use these on a per clip basis. I know that in Studio One you can add whatever plugin you like to any clip individually, but I guess PT keeps it simple and standardized, which is OK. To me, the PT way looks fast and efficient, even better than Studio One.

#34

In PT 12.6 it’s currently essentially the processing of a ‘channel-strip’ plugin that’s done on the clip. So no 3rd party plugins can be used, and it can’t be automated. From what I can see it’s close to what we can do with offline processing on events in Nuendo. If we dialed up a channel-strip plugin in Nuendo and applied it offline it’d be pretty much the same thing, except one could arguably go further because of 3rd party support and batch processing and key-commands.

So out of curiosity I’d love to know if you’ve used offline processing and batch processing and what your thoughts are on it.

#35

Beside…this feature is added only in 12.6 HD …if I’m reading correctly. :question: There are and will be a few different ways around this, might take a bit more time ( I am invoicing by the clock ) so …?

#36

I used it from time to time when I called RX for noise reduction. It’s true that it would probably work. But in my opinion it’s not suited to quickly add EQ or anything to a clip, move on, do it again. It’s too slow for that. Offline Processing to me is really for deliberate editing of a clip with a plugin, not for quickly dialing in an EQ, move on, come back, tweak the setting.

And from what I’ve experienced, it only takes 1 clip at a time. So when I want to process a selection of multiple clips quickly, I’d first need to RIP them first, correct?

@lemix Sure there are ways around it. I could even do a mixdown of this clip, take it to another software, do EQ and bring the clip back. But this would be tremendously annoying. I don’t really bill by the clock, so everything I can save time on is welcome. Besides, I like to work efficiently. The quicker I get things done, the better. I hate workarounds, clicking 7 times, and opening 4 dialog windows. I’d rather click 3 times and have the result I want. That’s just my way of working.

#37

I agree that PT’s implementation seems faster at first glace at least, but I’m not 100% sure we’re losing that much time compared to offline processing or automation writing.

No, you can select multiple events and process them in one go. Each clip then has its own process history if I remember correctly.

I totally see where you’re coming from. I’ve set up a macro that I use all the time for automation. I start by highlighting the event(s) I want to EQ (for example), then click this one macro-key;

  • set locators to event(s)
  • enable preview
  • enable punch to loop
  • enable loop/cycle
  • start playback

I can then tweak settings and press “punch” when I’m done. So it’s essentially a two-click process to get that done. I find it to be quite quick.

#38

This is the way I do it also…

#39

Somehow, at least with RX Connect, it didn’t work. Maybe with “normal” plugins. I’d have to test that again.

The marco is a very good idea for the multi-step “punch” process. Thanks!

#40

Well, hold on; “RX Connect” is the plugin that sends events/clips to RX standalone for further processing, correct? I’m pretty sure that’s indeed only working with single events, AND that that type of integration between Nuendo / RX is still a bit wonky due to Steinberg’s quite frankly ‘dumb’ window management. I believe I both looked into to it quite a bit a while ago and wrote about it as well. It’s one of the reasons I never upgraded from RX4 to RX5. The inability for the two parties to get things to work correctly and as described and advertised (by iZotope) made me not want to spend more money on them.

But apart from RX Connect it works for me, with RX DeClicker for example.