Preparing audio in Soundbooth

Soundbooth CS4 is an audio editing tool that integrates with Flash CS4 and other software in Adobe Creative Suite 4. Soundbooth provides a range of editing and composition tools in a simple workflow that anyone can use. New to this version is the editable ASND format—the ability to create multitrack compositions—along with a handful of other upgrades.

This section focuses on the basic tasks you'll commonly work through when preparing audio for Flash in Soundbooth. For full documentation, see the Soundbooth CS4 online documentation.

Recording audio in Soundbooth

One of the most accessible and least expensive ways to obtain audio files is to record the sound yourself. The Soundbooth environment takes this into account and provides the means to record and clean up the artifacts commonly incurred when recording audio outside of a professional studio.

To prepare Soundbooth for audio recording, follow these steps:

1. Make sure you're working on a computer with a sound card and a microphone. Note that ASIO compatibility is preferred in Soundbooth but DirectX support will work and is most likely available on your sound card. (See the Readme file installed with Soundbooth for more information on system requirements.)

2. Set properties for the sound card in Soundbooth. Choose Edit > Preference > Audio Hardware to launch the Preferences dialog box. Click the Settings button to access the Audio Hardware Settings dialog box. Click the Input tab if it's not already selected (see Figure 2).

   

   Figure 2. Soundbooth input and output settings on my Windows XP machine

3. Notice that the dialog box lists all the input and output devices available on your computer. In the Enable Devices section, choose your microphone. Click the Output tab and choose your output device if needed. Click OK to close the dialog box.
4. Adjust the Preferences settings as desired. Click OK to close the Preferences dialog box.

To record audio, follow these steps:

1. In Soundbooth, choose File > Record to launch the Record dialog box (see Figure 3).

   

   Figure 3. Soundbooth Record dialog box prior to recording audio

2. Choose your device and port. In my case, I'm using the default device as I have already configured it in the Preferences dialog box. AK5370 is the name of the port my microphone is on. You should see the levels indicator on the right light up when the port is correctly selected and the microphone is on. Click the Settings button to set your sound properties, if needed.
3. Choose a sample rate. It is a best practice to record at the default sample rate to create a high-quality WAV or AIFF master file. After recording, you can export the high-quality file to the MP3 format or FLV format, keeping a copy of the master source file for edits and changes.
4. Choose the number of channels for the recording: mono or stereo. In general you should use the mono settings to ensure a smaller file size. You can alternate playback of the mono signal on one or both channels at runtime.
5. Add a filename and select a folder location for the recording. Soundbooth will automatically save your audio clips in WAV format as you record them. They appear in the Files panel in the Soundbooth interface. Click the Browse button to select a specific destination folder.
6. Test your set up by speaking into your microphone and watching the level meter to see it light up. If you have speakers turned on in the room, uncheck the Monitor Input during Recording option. That way you won't hear an echo from the playback of the live recording. If you're using headphones to listen to the audio as it is recorded, then go ahead and check this option. If your recording levels are too high or too low, adjust the recording level on your sound card.
7. Once you've got everything dialed in, click the record button (red dot icon) to start your recording.
8. To follow along with the simple example in the sample files provided at the beginning of this article, try recording the numbers 1, 2, 3 as you count them out loud with a second or two pause between each number. You'll experiment with this file in different ways as we walk through the rest of the tutorial.

For more best practices on recording techniques, see the following resources:

• Sound isolation/acoustics posts (The Podcasting Blog)
• How to get great sounding vocal tracks in your mixes (TweakHeadz Lab)
• Recording Website Tip Archives

Working with the scores feature

One of the unique features of Soundbooth is the ability to generate soundtracks by combining audio and video clips with prebuilt audio compositions called scores. Basically, you can create a soundtrack that adds your content on top of professional compositions. You can also use the score without additional content as a quick way to add background audio to your movie. Each score template provides a range of editable parameters that allow you to customize and export the score as a new audio file. You may also save customized score templates for reuse later.

For the purposes of this tutorial, I'll focus on the simple audio clip that you recorded in the previous section. To find more information on working with scores, see Customizing scores in the Using Soundbooth CS4 online documentation.

Tip: Soundbooth ships with two default scores available for immediate use. You can acquire more templates by launching the Resource Central panel from the Windows menu.

Working with prerecorded audio and video

In addition to recording your own audio and creating your own scores, you can open prerecorded audio and video sources to work with as well. The process is fairly easy. You open a file and edit it using the range of features in Soundbooth. Or you open a handful of files and copy and paste portions of them to collage together a multitrack sound file. You may also open files to use as reference clips while working with a score template.

To open an audio or video file, follow these steps:

1. Chose File > Open in the Soundbooth Menu. Browse for a file to open.
2. Notice that the file appears in the Files panel and can be managed in the workspace at that location.

Saving the source file in ASND format

New to Soundbooth CS4 is the ability to save an editable source file in ASND format. The ASND format allows you to take a snapshot of the original audio so you can revert edits all the way back to the starting point. You can save ASND files for future editing and embed them directly in Flash CS4 FLA files.

Before you make edits to your source audio, you should save the file in the ASND format:

1. Choose File > Save As.
2. In the Save As dialog box, choose the ASND format from the Type menu.
3. Click OK.

Clean up the audio source as needed

Soundbooth has some great clean up features built-in to help you create the best quality audio from an office environment. This is a fairly common situation for a web developer; you may be using professional equipment, but you're working in an office environment instead of an actual sound booth. In my studio I often deal with the hum of several large computers or an occasional dog bark that needs to be edited out of an otherwise great track.

To remove noise or clicks and pops from an audio file, follow these steps:

1. Select the portion of audio you want to clean up by dragging a selection along its waveform.

2. Choose Tasks > Clean Up Audio. The Tasks panel opens to the Clean Up Audio section (see Figure 4).

   

   Figure 4. Clean-up options available in the Tasks panel

3. Choose the type of artifact that you wish to clean up (noise, clicks & pops, or rumble) by clicking on the appropriate button.
4. In the dialog box that appears, adjust settings as desired. In most cases it's easiest to experiment with the settings and compare the new sound to the original by clicking the Preview button in the dialog box. Click OK to apply the command.

To remove a sound from an audio file, follow these steps:

1. Select a portion of the sound to remove using the Time Selection, Marquee, or Lasso tool. Zoom in to see the area if needed.
2. Choose Edit > Auto Heal to remove the sound and blend the resulting areas for a smooth result.

Another editing best practice is to cut the high frequencies out of the signal before converting the file to a compressed format. Doing so will produce a compressed sound with less of the artifacts that are commonly heard in web audio.

To cut the high frequencies or hiss out of the audio before export, follow these steps:

1. Select the length of the audio by dragging a selection across the waveform.

2. In the Effects panel, choose the EQ: Reduce Harshness or Remove Hiss options from the Mono Rack Preset menu (see Figure 5). Notice that an EQ effect is automatically added to the effects list.

   

   Figure 5. Preset list of enhancement and editing effects available in the Effects panel

3. Double-click the EQ: Parametric row to edit the specific parameters if desired.
4. Click the Apply to Selection button at the bottom of the Effects panel to apply the effect.

Edit the audio source as needed

I find that I run through a standard set of editing steps before moving on toward exporting the file to a compressed format. Usually that includes trimming the audio to the correct length, adding fades and effects, and normalizing the audio if the levels are too low.

To trim the audio file to a specific length, follow these steps:

1. You may either trim the current file or copy/paste a portion of it into a new file.

2. To trim the current file, grab the trim handle that appears on the left and right sides of the waveform view (see Figure 6).

   

   Figure 6. Trimming a clip by moving the trim handles on the left or right side of the waveform

To apply an effect, such as the Voice Enhancer, follow these steps:

1. Select the length of the sound by dragging a selection through its waveform.
2. Choose Effects > Voice Enhancer from the menu.
3. In the Effects panel, choose the effect preset setting that you wish to apply. In my case I chose the Male setting to compensate for imperfections in that range of audio frequencies.
4. Click the Apply to Selection button at the bottom of the Effects panel to apply the effect.

To add a fade in or out of the sound, follow these steps:

1. To set the amount of fade in, click the Fade In button located just below the timeline above the left side of the waveform (see Figure 7).

   

   Figure 7. Fade In button as it appears with a fade applied to the sound

2. Click and drag the button to extend the fade area. Move the cursor up and down while you drag to bend the shape of fade curve.
3. To set the amount of fade out, click the Fade Out button located above the right side of the waveform.
4. Click and drag the fade curve into the desired location and curve shape.

 To normalize the recording and boost the volume level, follow these steps:

1. Select the length of the sound by dragging a selection through its waveform.
2. Choose Processes > Make Louder. Notice that the waveform increases in height.
3. If you need more specific control over how much the audio is normalized, then you can skip the Make Louder command and simply click and drag the selected waveform. Dragging upward will increase the signal and dragging down will decrease it.

Saving timing cues

One of the benefits of this new generation of audio software is the ability to easily generate and export timing markers to use for content synchronization.

To create time markers in your audio file, follow these steps:

1. Open the sound file you wish to update with time markers.
2. Select the time to add the first marker by using the waveform and the timeline to visually identify the desired cue point. Move the current time indicator line to the desired time and choose Edit > Markers > Set Flash Cue Point. Notice that a marker icon appears along the timeline.

3. Add markers as desired. In my example, I'm adding a marker before the each number in the count of one, two, three (see Figure 8).

   

   Figure 8. Timeline ruler displaying the marker icons where cue points have been added

4. To edit a marker, click the marker icon and edit the properties in the Markers panel. You can edit the name of the marker and adjust the time it occurs. You can also set the marker to correspond to an event or navigation cue point in an FLV file. Use the navigation option if you want to be able to seek exactly to that location in the file using ActionScript. The name and time are standard elements of FLV cue points, but you may also add as many name/value pairs (variables) as you like to each cue point.
5. Position your markers and edit the related information until you're happy with the layout. From here, you will export an XML file containing the information. The XML file can be combined with MP3 files or FLV files to produce synchronization effects using ActionScript.

 To export the markers as an XML file, follow these steps:

1. Continue with the file from the last section or open a new file containing markers.
2. Choose File > Export > Markers to export the markers in XML format.

Tip: It's interesting to note that you can use the File > Import command to import a marker XML file. This feature allows you to create marker definitions for reuse across other media files or allows you to write markers in XML for output in FLV format. You can also import and export marker XML files in Adobe Media Encoder.

Exporting audio to MP3 or FLV format

Last stop on the audio production side of things is to export the compressed audio from the source audio. Usually you'll be exporting to MP3 or FLV format, although you can work with ASND, WAV, or AIFF if you plan on embedding the audio in your FLA file.

To export an MP3 audio file, follow these steps:

1. Choose File > Save As.
2. In the Save As dialog box, choose the MP3 format from the Type menu. Click OK.

3. The MP3 Settings dialog box appears (see Figure 9). Choose your setting preferences and click the Save button to save the file. Generally, the higher the bit rate, the higher the quality and larger the file size.

   

   Figure 9. MP3 compression options

To export an FLV file (with cue point markers bundled with the audio), follow these steps:

1. Choose File > Save As.
2. In the Save As dialog box, choose the FLV format from the Type menu. Click OK.

3. Adobe Media Encoder opens and prompts you for information (see Figure 10). Turn off the Export Video option if it's currently turned on. Choose your settings and click OK to save the file.

   

   Figure 10. Adjusting settings in the Export Settings dialog box for FLV audio export

Whether you export your source files in MP3 or FLV format, you should end up with two sets of audio files: your master files (used for editing) and your exported files (served from the website).

Note: If you encode the FLV using Adobe Media Encoder outside of Soundbooth, you can embed the cue points directly in the FLV format. F4V video does not support cue points in the same way as the FLV format.

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