Picture Window

May 1, 2007 12:00 PM, By Mike Levine and Dennis Miller

One by One

Next we'll look at the individual programs (listed alphabetically by manufacturer) and give you a few ideas about each one's suitability for scoring. When reading our synopses of the various programs' scoring-related features, keep in mind that there is no right way to score to picture; it's only the results that count. Every composer has his or her own method for scoring and will use only the features in a sequencer that fit his or her work style. The sequencers that will appeal to the largest swath of audio-for-picture composers, therefore, are the ones that can provide a wide range of features that are both intuitive and efficient.

Ableton Live 6 (Mac/Win; $599 boxed, $499 download)

Live's video support is in its infancy, having just been added in version 6. According to Ableton, a lot more functionality will be added in subsequent releases. Currently, Live allows you to import several different movie formats and edit the imported video using cut, copy, and paste. But you can't export your finished product as a movie file. Import is easy, though: just drag the video file into an audio track in the Arrangement view. The QuickTime movie window that pops up is of the floating variety (that is, it always remains on top of the other windows), and its audio waveform display appears like a regular audio track (see Fig. 1).

Setting the start point of your music is a breeze. Just select the video track and drag the Start Marker in the clip display. The movie will follow what you're doing, and you can stop at the point you want your sequence to start. If later you want to change the start point, no problem: just drag it again. Live's excellent manual even describes a method that allows the program to temporarily disable any video prior to the start point of your music.

The easy start-time manipulation, combined with Live's adroitness with tempo, makes it an excellent app for quickly finding workable tempos for your cues. A good way to do this is to drop in a drum loop of the style you're looking to compose in, set it to loop throughout the length of the video, and then start finessing the combination of tempo and start point until you find values that work well with the picture.

You can even experiment with using Live's Warp Markers on the video track (with that track set as the Master) to alter tempos within your sequence to hit particular events. You'll have to be careful that any changes you make are subtle, or they won't sound natural.

Live is missing some important scoring features. For example, it doesn't display timecode, only bars:beats:ticks. This complicates your ability to go to a particular frame location by scrolling to it with the counter, because except at ridiculously fast tempos, a single counter tick is larger than a frame. The work-around is to click on an empty track, as close on the timeline as you can to your event. The video will jump to the point in time corresponding to where you clicked. If you're zoomed in enough, you'll be able to move the transport to an exact frame location. If your video has SMPTE numbers burned in on it (aka window burn), it will be even easier to find specific frame locations.

You can mark spots with Live's Locators, which are similar to standard sequencer markers, but they can't be locked to absolute time. Also, the program doesn't let you change meter within a song.

With its unique work flow, Live is a good choice for less-demanding scoring situations such as band and Web-site videos. Although it doesn't have the breadth of features to be the primary sequencer on a complex film or TV scoring job, its creativity-inspiring features make it an excellent ancillary scratch pad for composing your cues.

Apple GarageBand 3 (Mac; $79 for iLife bundle, included on new Macs)

GarageBand (see Fig. 2) is by far the least expensive application that we looked at, and considering its price point and the fact that it's a consumer program, it has surprisingly robust video support.

You can import a range of video types into GarageBand, and you can even drag-and-drop the files into the timeline. The video's audio track is immediately split off into its own track, a video thumbnail track appears at the top of the main window, and a video window pops up in a window fixed on the right-hand side. The counter can read out in bars:beats:ticks or in absolute time, but not timecode.

With GarageBand's well-implemented support of Apple Loops, it's easy to insert loops and start experimenting with tempo. You even get a modest collection of sound effects as part of the large Apple Loop collection that comes with the program. If you zoom in sufficiently, you can scroll to any frame location by dragging the Playhead.

GarageBand offers a number of different screen-size and compression options for exporting your movie/soundtrack combination: Full Quality, Video Podcast (iPod), Web Streaming, Web, and Email. The program is also integrated with the other iLife apps, so you can import movies directly from iMovie, and export to iDVD and iWeb. You can even add chapter markers for video Podcasts.

If you try to do anything more than simple scoring in GarageBand, you will run into its limitations. For one thing, you can use only one time signature and tempo setting per song. In addition, the markers can't be locked to absolute time, and they don't show bars:beats:ticks or timecode. Further, there's no way to offset music or video start times.

For adding music to a Web site or composing some incidental music for a basic video project, GarageBand may be all you need. But for professional scoring work, you'll want a more fully featured application.

Apple Logic Pro 7.2 (Mac; $999)

Logic Pro, Apple's flagship audio application, is stocked with useful features for video scoring. Movies can be opened in a floating or nonfloating window, and you have the option of opening a video thumbnail track as well.

Markers can be dropped in with a key command and viewed and edited in the Marker List. Within that window, you have the option to lock the markers and to toggle back and forth between their SMPTE and bars:beats:ticks positions by pressing the U key. You can view your markers against the timeline by opening up the Marker Track.

Logic also makes the process of constructing a tempo map easy with its Scene Markers features. When used with Logic's Beat Mapping Global Track, you can graphically adjust the tempo to hit your marked locations (see Fig. 3).

Also handy is the Tempo List window, which provides fields for entering tempo and for offsetting the audio start against the movie. Once you've set locked markers that correspond to your important hit points, open both the Tempo List and the Marker List. You can then drag up and down to change values in the Tempo field of the former, watch the effect on your markers in the latter, and find the bpm setting that most closely hits your markers.

Logic Pro lets you easily program tempo and meter changes, and the Loop Browser window gives you access to the huge collection of tempo-flexible Apple Loops that are included with the program. You also get the same sound-effects collection that is in GarageBand. Logic's comprehensive group of soft-instruments and effects plug-ins gives you access to a wide range of sonic ingredients for your scores. Logic's EXS-24 sampler is extremely useful in scoring situations, particularly because it can convert Tascam GigaSampler libraries (a favorite of film composers) and stream their contents from disk.

When you're finished composing and mixing, the Export Audio To Movie command lets you combine whatever audio you recorded with the movie file in a new QuickTime movie file. New in Logic Pro 7.2, you can export a selected portion of the movie. That could be handy if you're working on a long-form project and are scoring small sections of it at a time.

With its scoring-friendly and comprehensive tool set, it's not surprising that Logic is the sequencer of choice for many professional film and TV composers.