WWDC2003 Session 003

Transcript

Kind: captions
Language: en
good afternoon welcome to the creating
content for soundtrack and live type
session soundtrack and live type are a
couple of our applications that are part
of our professional application products
available from Apple specifically
soundtrack and live type are part of the
Final Cut Pro pro 4 bundle we'll be
talking today about the process for
actually creating content for these
applications is one of the numerous
developer opportunities that are
available to help contribute to the the
professional application set which also
include things like plugins and workflow
opportunities and driver development and
such this is session is going to focus
specifically on creating content for
these two apps we're gonna start by
talking a bit about live type and we'll
get into a little bit later
soundtrack soundtrack is the music
creation application that's again part
of a Final Cut Pro but to start let's
let's get into life type life type as I
mentioned is an application that's
bundled as part of Final Cut Pro 4 it is
basically our Pro video titling
application what's unusual about live
type is it's incredible capacity for
doing animation and manipulating very
sophisticated media and what we're going
to talk about today is the content that
live type uses and how you can actually
create content to enhance the
application and ways the opportunities
you have for selling in into this
particular customer base there's a
number of different kinds of content
supported by live type things we call
active files which is kind of the high
level conceptual container model for for
this content which is built up of
different kinds of content specifically
textures which are if you will motion
back or animated backgrounds typically
objects which are similarly packaged but
are also incorporate an alpha Channel
capability basically would be used in
conjunction with other material in the
background or might be merged into some
other video or other other material you
may have and live fonts which is
new technology that we've introduced
which is the concept of having fonts
that are actually fully animated movies
where each glyph can have animation
capability motion can be as you'll see
made up of some very amazing footage or
material
to basically present text in a very very
new way and another form of content that
livetype incorporates is effects which
is the ability then take all of this
content that we've talked about and do
very amazing things entire in terms of
animation move it around on the screen
make things fade come into play etc and
lastly we have templates which are
basically all of this material that's
combined together into a form that can
be packaged up so that users can
actually build projects with it
Indiana get into this and a lot more
depth at I'm going to invite up Tom long
Walker who's the product designer for
life type and he'll give a brief demo
and actually get into what this all
means hello
check check check
glad y'all could be here today I'm
always excited to talk about life type
this is the world's only 3d or only
application that will type 32-bit
animated fonts it's a really exciting
concept that Apple is developing here I
like to think of live type and live
fonts analogous to what system fonts
were for the desktop publishing industry
in the 80s live fonts are for digital
media content creation and delivery the
new 21st century standard font font
standards and Apple owns a template
apples bringing this technology forward
and making it available for the masses
and we have an excellent opportunity
here to create content for it just by
owning live type you have the ability to
create live fonts and compile them into
a create your own animations compile
them into a life on and deliver them to
the media hungry public royalty-free
which is a very exciting brand-new
merging market that we'd love to have
you all be a part of so let me get you
started with this application right here
is the canvas this is where you do your
composing for the text this is the
inspector this is where you type in
characters and also create and influence
the attributes of the characters and in
the media browser this is where the
content comes from things like Brett was
talking about textures objects effects
and live fonts and then you have the
timeline and that's where you can
influence the timing for your
composition so let me start by typing
something out here the first thing you
notice that's truly unique about this
application is every one of these
characters are drawn as an independent
layer you have the ability to grab and
compose rotate scale essentially control
all the attributes available to you from
the inspector on a character by
character basis makes it very
pleasurable to use not only are these
independent layers but they're contained
in a single track this single track is
represented down here on the timeline
and imagine having
this many movies or animations eight
different layers on a typical animation
program it becomes very difficult to for
instance control color and your timing
considerations
whereas we give you this all on a single
track imagine if it were a sentence you
end up with dozens and dozens of layers
let me demonstrate how this works for
attribute control if I were to just
colorize for instance I can grab these
character by character and apply color
on a character by character basis
take some interesting varied colors to
work with here
okay now any of these attributes that
are available to me an inspector things
like opacity blur scale offset rotate
all of these I can apply on a character
by character basis like fonts are
essentially can be created from anything
to take this bevel for instance is
created in a 3d application you can do
something with a hand-drawn font for
instance things you can create in 3d or
2d applications this is creating a
particle generator things that you can
shoot with a video camera real world
style fonts stop frame the high
resolution film cameras for instance
could be live fonts once I choose my
font from the media browser I'm happy
with it can demonstrate how this works
every one of these characters are
individual animations that are being
drawn character by character well let's
say I want to control the timing of this
right now they're all triggering one at
a time I have a timing tab that gives me
the ability to set when these animations
are triggered I can choose to trigger
them randomly or in sequence I can
sequence them from left to right or
right to left I can control the the
speed of it I can also loop them I can
do hold first frame hold last frame
things it would be a bit complex to do
in any other application if you're
dealing with all these layers at once
now in addition to live fonts we also
give you the ability to use system fonts
just pick one here and something really
great came out of our development as we
were working for it with system fonts
you also have the ability to control the
system fonts on an individual character
basis so that your composition is fun
and easy you're not grabbing and grab
these one at a time control their
attributes now when it comes time to
animate these the same with live fonts
as with system fonts we offer this new
concept of
facts that are essentially modules with
keyframes let me just pick an effect
here lots to choose from simple matter
of double clicking and this effect is
applied to a track and that effect stays
with the track you can apply as many
effects as you like and just by simply
clicking on it and hitting play I've
created a fairly complex animation and
obviously I can swap out my language
however I like and it's just as easy to
create effects from scratch let me
demonstrate that so if I add a new
effect let me scoot this first effect
over just a little bit as an effect
comes in from scratch I'm working with
two keyframes to begin with the
beginning and an ending keyframe and in
the effects tab you'll see that I've got
this new effect and I could call it
anything I want so if I grab any
character on here and start applying
attributes to that keyframe let's start
with the maybe an offset and a scale let
me rotate it a little bit I can even
give it a Bezier a motion path and as
you see on the wireframe
it gives me real-time updates of what
I'm doing is I go along I think I want
to give this an opacity change as well
so that it starts with zero opacity and
moves in full screen now what's
interesting here you've seen the effects
tab I've just applied four parameters to
this keyframe that's a very unique
concept in other applications you would
see these broken down into four discreet
tracks down in the timeline and then I
would have to control those each for
those and control where they occur in
relation to each other and it gets
awfully complex very quickly with this
application it's all contained in a
single keyframe now I could break these
out into various effects if I want to if
I want that level of control but for
most cases I don't want to do that I
want this nice clean timeline down here
I have all of these parameters avail
to me I can do things I can interpolate
over time with shadow and glow and
outline extrusion blur color you name it
and the same kind of control that I have
with live fonts in terms of timing I can
also do with effect so I can randomly
trigger those effects with each
character or sequence it over time loop
it so let me just set a bit of a random
here and then hit play this will cash it
into RAM and there was just a few clicks
I've created a unique animation and I
can choose if I like that effect that I
just built I can choose to save that
just come under saved save the effect
put it in my own folder call it what I
want give it a description and then
it'll show up next time I need it in the
effects browser so it's really handy if
I'm starting on another project that
effect that I built days ago I can bring
up and apply it at any time now I like
to think of this is a content delivery
system we work with the media browser
delivers effects objects textures and
live fonts as Brett was saying textures
are background elements meant to be used
as either background or perhaps
foreground layered elements but you can
also put these textures inside of the
text themselves lots to choose from but
the idea is that this is the best
delivery mechanism for the end user
because while you can buy canned
animations and stock animation this
gives you the ability to create your own
layers your own unique style you can
colorize the textures before you apply
your final touches to it you can also
apply objects and those are the ones
with alpha channels that are meant to be
in between layers or on top of layers
and of course you control that layer
order so the end result ends up being
something very specifically unique to
your own project and it's easy to save
this out and then apply it in a template
just let that render for a minute
okay so my color coordination may not be
the best but you get the idea so I've
got all these elements at play here and
I can move them around with keyframe
animation but with these effect modules
so the combination of all this content
is all nicely put together in a template
if I were to save this project I can
then apply this through the media or
through the template browser and then
call that up at any time and then swap
out my new text with this template so
it's an excellent way to deliver to the
customer how you intended to use these
live fonts and how your additional
content such as objects and textures
interplay together you can create a
number of different styles and
categories and themes that greatly
reduces the amount of time of an
animator or a video editor would you
would need in order to create these from
scratch but our primary purpose for
being here is to talk about live fonts
in the production thereof so I'm gonna
ask Dave how the lead engineer for live
type to come up and he's gonna get into
more detail about how you make live
fonts thanks time okay as Brett
mentioned before the three main types of
live type content are active files
effects and templates and of active
files there are three types there are
textures objects and the live font and
I'll go into how you make each one of
these things first of all active files
are actually a file pair they're there
there's a active font proxy file and an
active font data file AFP and AFD and
the reason there are two types is that
some users may not install all the
content that you deliver they may not
install the data a data file can be
pretty large they can be a hundred
megabytes if you've got a fonts a with a
couple hundred characters and a
and a few seconds 30 frames a second
high resolution so they're separated out
and they can be installed independently
the proxy files are relatively compact
they're compressed well and they contain
all of the parameters that define a live
phone although they don't contain all of
the compressed frames they only contain
one compressed frame for each glyph
thanks so the simplest form of a live
file is a active file is a texture the
texture is just a it's basically a movie
a 24-bit per pixel movie so anybody who
has a library of texture movies can
repurpose these and make live type
content from them and there would be a
viable product in itself just a
collection of textures and it would
enhance the application quite a bit the
textures are high resolution they're
full frame rate and they're typically
used for background tracks as you saw
Tom demonstrate and also for texture
mattes so given a character you can
texturize that and and basically mat to
the texture with that character here's
an example of a texture
now an object is again it's it comes
from a QuickTime movie you can use any
QuickTime movie with an alpha channel to
make an object and the main difference
between that and a texture is that it
contains an alpha Channel the Alpha
Channel can be straight or it can be pre
multiplied against white or black and
again it's high resolution full frame
rate and you typically use an object for
lower thirds you can use it for the bar
across the bottom you can use it as an
accent like pixie-dust you can use it
for a matte say a frame around your
video and for any special effects like
this now live file Live font is the new
font format that we've developed and
it's basically a collection of objects
one for each glyph in a font so for the
a very simple one you might just have
the Roman alphabet and you may have just
capital letters and for your own use
that might be sufficient for the ones
that we ship we have a full collection
of 127 mac roman glyphs and they're
similar to objects and the rest of their
parameters you build a life on by using
a font script and it's a simple command
language that we developed for this and
just a way of specifying all the
parameters in a way that's easy to
replicate and edit in a text editor it's
it's not something that the normal user
would would use although it is it ships
with with with live type we have a font
maker tool that's built into life type
that you would use to build live fonts
so I'll just quickly give you a feel for
what the font script looks like although
I won't go into detail on it really any
of it I just want you to see one to see
what what's involved in a font script
has a few commands that specify the
names of those source files and the
destination files also you can specify
what the name of the disk that you're
going to destroy
this is so that if if a user doesn't
have it installed it will say a life
live type will say please install the
disk in in this case demo disk to
install you tell the the font script
what the flavor is you can have an again
active font which is a live font or you
can have texture or object as the
argument there you tell it the Alpha
type which is straight white or black
you can give a description which shows
up in a template browser and the these
these two commands you see here the
lower left and center are things that
you'll measure out in a graphics
application you'll find those two points
as offsets from the lower left hand of
each source movie now the next part is
some spacing some horizontal spacing
there's the width of a space that's just
given because there is no actual source
movie for a space character typically
the there you can do you have timing
information in these two there's whether
or not the font can loop which is just
two or false 0 or 1 and then there is a
count of frames for intro frames loop
and end and when you extend the length
of a live font and duration on the
timeline we loop the the loop portion
here see the intro frames play first
then you loop some number of times and
then go to the end frames you specify
the compression quality the RGB and
alpha channels which are compressed
separately to give you finer control
over that and the source frame rate for
the movies aspect ratio you may have
rendered these you know you may have
taken them from a DV camera and you may
have 0.9 pixel aspect or you may have
1.0 if you came from a 3d rendering app
or some Photoshop or another app and you
also have a bunch of default settings
that are stored with the live font and
those are gone into in some detail in
that user manual and finally for each
glyph we we let you specify the source
movie the characters that will be map
stood
moving and some numbers that I'll go
into in a little detail here's an
example of it we have a source movie for
the letter A here and the letter A comes
from a dot movie and the next two
parameters are the advance width from
that cliff until the next cliff when
rendered out on that track and the the
next one is the proxy frame index so you
can have a you tell which proxy frame
will be used if the font hasn't if the
data file has not been installed yet
there also some optional glyph
parameters that you don't need to put
into your script unless they're
different from the lower left and center
values found in the in the lower left
and center commands your fonts grab so
each glyph can have its own values for
those now effects are pretty simply the
they're the same as the effects that you
build when you when you're running the
app for your own use there's some tricks
to preparing an effect for release to
the public like making sure that the
default timing values are going to show
up right for any duration of track so if
you've got something that's a fade out
you'll want it to have a start time
that's from the end not from the
beginning so it'll show up always at the
end of the track and in fact Tom went
pretty much into the capabilities of
that so I'll just skip over that but
here's an example of how you might what
it does and templates again Tom went
over that it's just a saved project file
with the description and it's something
that the user defines in the template
browser selects that edits the text and
renders out his own movie into them so
there's an example of one of the
templates just simply with the text
changed every rendered also when you're
building live fonts effects and
templates you're going to need a
thumbnail movie that the user will see
inside the template or effect or live
font browser and the thumbnail movies
are 160 by 120 movies there we've
compressed however you want just dot
movie files with the name specified from
the font script
and when you're building those you
should use a template of your own you
can make a thumbnail template that's
just 160 120 it makes it easy to build
down there's an example of what one
might look like finally you'll find in
in this user manual it says exactly
where these things should be installed
you'll probably want a ship an installer
that puts these in the right place and
on to design tips from Tom will show
some give you some tips on creating
these things now remember these are
these are movies these are animations
and so essentially all we're doing is
putting these animations into a folder
with this font script the day was
talking about and then encrypting them
into a single big data file now we it
also has a proxy file as dave was
referring to this is what you use to
compose on the screen and when you're
ready to render you use this big data
file but the point being because you've
got a lot of characters that you're
creating movies for optimization is a
key that's something that you want to
focus on so what are the number of
characters and when you're planning is
is an issue for you Apple ship 127
characters we're striving to support
English Spanish German and French so we
contain all the special characters for
accents and boom lots and and so on
maximum point sized you're starting with
an animation so the very largest size
you work with is to be scaled down from
there obviously you don't want to scale
above that so that will affect your
final file size and the size of the
animation we recommend somewhere between
200 and 500 point depending on what
you're shooting for for file size the
number of frames that you use in the
frame rate now this depends on the style
and what you're working on
typically for broadcast you'll want to
work in 30 frames a second but that's
not always the case if it's if it's
something like the the cool font that
you saw up there with the
you can get away with 10 12 15 frames a
second again this will lower the file
size and as far as the number of frames
that's the kind of thing that you want
to optimize as much as possible I don't
recommend going beyond 90 frames for
your maximum animation length okay so
for when you start this is essentially a
matter of starting out with what project
size you're gonna work in what
resolution you're gonna work in let's
say it's 900 by 900 need to keep that
same resolution for every single glyph
it's important to start with that
lower-left point that dave is referring
to and register all the characters to
that lower-left point so that you have a
common baseline and a common kerning
point for every character now you can't
override those in the glyph command but
it's a much easier if you register them
to begin with so you take a big
character like a W and make sure that it
fits your project size and establish
your lower-left point from there
characters with lower extenders like a
lowercase G you would start with a you
make sure that that lower-left
accommodates that extender point looping
does your animation loop character
should loop we handle looping in two
ways we do something really interesting
for called segment looping here's an
animation where the this is called the
TV font and these these characters they
they have three segments to them first
they come up then they sit there and
have an animated staticky screen for a
period of time and then they go down so
there are three segments to this
animation when you build this you can
define in the font script where your
segment loop is where the center portion
is so that when a user uses this and he
wants this TV set to stay up for an
extended period of time
and he sets the loop value then it'll
only loop that Center segment portion so
it's a really intelligent way to loop
and then there's also just a full loop
there's an example of that where the
beginning frame matches the ending frame
simple loop
and of course it's important to discover
who your target audience is broadcast
videos the way it's packaged right now
but it's also great for multimedia and
web I think people are finally
discovering or just now discovering
since it's a new application that this
works in keynote and keynote might mean
lower resolution depending on where
you're going with it
broadcast is typically 30 frames a
second and in high resolution you can
also go to web and of course web you
want to keep it down to 10 12 15 frames
a second and also print is a possibility
I've made a life fonts before that are
500 point very high res single frame
that amount to 4 Meg's when I'm done for
the entire font which is pretty cool and
then of course the style of the font you
use font like fonts are a new animal and
it's important to recognize how they
should be used I don't want to see pages
and pages of live fonts being used I
want to see them used as it as a
metaphor for a statement or at least
that's the way I think they should be
used they can be combined with system
fonts and then just use them sparingly
in order to make it out that push that
point for the for the audience and
here's just some examples of the
metaphors that I have in mind so with
that I think that concludes what we're
what we're able to talk about today in
this short period of time and I hope you
could make life on thanks for being here
Xander Xander Xander Soren I am the
product manager for soundtrack and we're
gonna get up here and make a little bit
of noise for you
so soundtrack is part of final cut for
and it's it allows you to create
original royalty-free music
and does this in a really cool way
because it lets you use pre-recorded
musical performances and what that means
is that you don't necessarily have to be
a musician this is great for video
editors because they can take somebody
else's performances and they can combine
them together the thing about other
people's performances is that they
weren't necessarily recorded to sound
good together like one could have been
like a drum beat recorded in LA at a
slower tempo another thing could have
been a piano recorded in New York
so what soundtrack does is in real time
it will match them together so all of a
sudden you don't need to know about all
these technical things you get to just
go and say you know I want some drums
here I want a saxophone so again it's
all done in real time and it supports a
variety of really popular file formats
including AI up and wave which are
uncompressed and don't have any metadata
so there's no way for it to really know
what the tempo or the key is so
soundtrack is actually able to infer
what the tempo is of these loops and is
able to guess really most the time
really accurately and combine tempos of
AAF and WAV now there is also a file
format called
acid now the acid file format also gives
you a couple pieces of metadata that
makes it easier to match loops and that
is the the key as well as the tempo so
soundtrack recognizes acid files and
there's their libraries of hundreds of
acid files available in the market for
example for $60 you can basically buy
mick fleetwood and have mick fleetwood
playing royalty free on your session
which is really really cool but what
we're here to talk to you about today is
a brand-new file format called Apple
loops and I'll tell you a little bit
about what they are and how you can
create them and and there's our we think
a great market for creating Apple loops
for soundtrack so Apple loops are based
on AI F and it adds some metadata to it
so this is used not only for matching
the loops but also for searching them
because one of the really cool things
that soundtrack lets you do is it lets
you find files really quickly and that
becomes important
soundtrack has about 4,000 loops
that ships with it and it's very easy to
add additional loops you know the
third-party libraries so it'll be quite
common for people to have 40,000 loops
be able to find them is really really
important so the the chunks that are
included in an AI F to make an apple
loop are author and copyright
information to assign ownership the
beats which is used to infer what the
tempo is as well as the time signature
since soundtrack supports different time
signatures that's embedded within the
file the musical key as well as the
scale type if you look at other file
formats like acid it'll have the actual
key but there's nothing that tells you
whether that lets say a piano part was
in a minor and then you have a guitar
solo that was in a major they both kind
of matched to that key but they don't
sound good together and a lot of non
musicians don't know why that is so
we've taken it to the next step when
we've added major and minor information
so you can filter down and things just
sound better for you a few other
important things that we've added which
really bring out the power of the search
engine is genre instrument and then a
whole bunch of these mood descriptors so
you can what will kind of go over the
different mood descriptors but if you
just say that you want an instrument to
be find as relaxed and acoustic and
maybe it has some processing on it we
have a bunch of descriptors which which
allow you to assign value to that
and finally transient markers what's
what's happening in the application is
all your audio is being stretched it's
either being sped up or it's slowed down
and that involves samples and bits being
taken out or added to the audio file so
you want to do that to the right place
you want to make sure that you are you
know taking samples out from a place
that doesn't have a lot of active
musical information and transient
markers allow you to protect the areas
and you'll be able to see really clearly
in your waveform which areas you want to
avoid for that so with that why don't I
give you a little demo of sound track so
you can see kind of the loops in action
then we'll actually go ahead and show
you how you create the loops
okay so we're in soundtrack here and you
can see in this area here we have the
media manager we switch to the other
okay there's the media manager that I
was talking about okay so the first
thing we want to do is this is part of
the the final clip or package so a lot
of people are working with video
primarily to start out and then you add
music to your video so what I do is I go
into this directory structure and I have
basically a shortcut to my home
directory and here's a QuickTime file
that I drag in and this is kind of the
old way of going and finding your file
now that's fine with my video in this
case I'm actually going to create a
little cycle region here so I can get
the video playing in the background but
if I've got 40,000 loops and I want to
go and find a specific drum that I'm
looking for this is not the way you want
to do it so we built a search engine
which makes it really really easy and it
leverages all these tags that are in the
asset loops so you can see we have a
bunch of keyword buttons here and this
one's kind of a grab-bag of a bunch of
different instruments here you can see
like cinematic rock and blues urban some
different genres and then a few
different descriptors and again that's
just one page of many different ways
that you can access key words including
a custom page so you can define your own
but we'll stick with this kind of
assortment and in this case I want to
find a drum so I click on drum and
you'll notice that I get about 950 drums
we have over almost a thousand drums
that just shipped with the application
that's still a lot to go through so
fortunately I can use these keywords and
combinations to find exactly what I'm
looking for in this case I will say that
I want something that's fairly relaxed
so I'll combine that and now I've got
drums and relaxed and a much more
manageable list but I want something
that has a little bit more of a modern
feel so I know if I type the word dance
now this refined search field
what refine search lets you do is type
in a word that will actually be found
either in the file name or the entire
directory path so it's another really
powerful way of Zoning and to find the
exact content that you want in this case
I'll type the word dance and I get a
whole bunch of electronic club dance
beats now the cool thing is I can just
click on one of these
some audio coming in there and I'm kind
of previewing them against my
composition if you just wanted to kind
of make a mental note here you can see
the tempo and all these tags are
identified it's a drum so it doesn't
have any key information so we have 130
bpm drum group going here and I'll just
drag that into the composition now
because this is a loop I can just drag
out kind of as much or as little as I
want and you can see the length of the
loop is pretty easily defined by this
this little indentation and I've just
filled that to my video and now I have
drums going through the entire
composition but it's also very easy to
add additional instruments even again
ones that weren't designed to sound good
together so I'll actually click off of
relaxed and in this case I want
something that is acoustic so I'll make
it acoustic and in this case I'll type
the word funk in my refine search field
and I have a bunch of these funk master
kids I noticed these tempos are 110
which is completely different than the
130 that we first heard so I'll drag
that in and you'll hear that they
they're played in sync and the other
thing you notice is that the icons are
different because the the musical
instrument is one of the tags sound
track knows to assign the appropriate
icon in this case an electronic drum kit
in this case something that was more of
an electronic beat and there are a lot
of different instruments and these are
all brought up by the TAT so let me
quickly get a couple more instruments in
here so we can we can see some of the
other power of the app will go into
synthesizers and I want to just work in
the key of minor so I wanna make sure
everything fits together in the you know
minor loops I'll go ahead and play this
composition let's try a couple different
sounds
because here's a little synthesizer
that's in the key of C and I'll drop it
and I'll just get one more instrument
going here I will click on cinematic and
issue the since and now here's one in G
so I'll bring that in and it still fits
so again you don't have to know anything
about music or what keys work or what
tempos work soundtrack kind of does that
for you and it does it all in real time
the other really amazing thing is
because that's all in real time you have
this unprecedented flexibility to be
able to say well I want to hear all this
stuff faster so you just take the tempo
slider and now it's all faster I can
take it all and just make it slower you
can hear even though it's substantially
slower now I'm down to like 90 beats per
minute when some of the loops were we're
at 130 it's preserving the audio quality
and it's doing that because of the
transient marker assignments that I'll
be showing you in a little bit and the
final thing I'll show you here is that
all the keys are being matched to a
project key of a and I can very easily
just change it all until it's a the key
of G don't change it again and back of
him - and it does that all in real time
instantly - all the loops so that's just
a little bit of an overview of how sound
track handles all these Apple loops and
now let's show you how to go ahead and
create your own ok so creating Apple
loops a few things we're going to cover
is the actual recording and editing of
them the tagging and adding transient
markers to the loops and then some
things you can do in the naming and
directory structure and then finally
just some quick things you can do to
test your loops and make sure that you
you did the right job so when it comes
to recording soundtrack supports really
really high resolution audio up to
24-bit 96 kilohertz resolution most of
the content out there is at CD quality
which is at 16-bit 4401 so there's an
opportunity to deliver a really really
high quality audio to people that are
looking for high quality audio loops
like most other production environments
audio is follows the garbage in garbage
out model the the audio you're going to
get at the end is only as good as what
you put in so the the quality of the
connectors becomes really important the
input chain if you've got a fan blowing
in the room those are all going to make
it into your final mix so make sure that
you
have as good of an input changes you can
have from the beginning and that carries
into whether your instruments are in
tune or not
so you most of the content out there is
tuned to an a 440 so you want to make
sure that you're in tune with the rest
of the world and even over a session
guitars fall out of tune really quickly
so it's good to keep up on that the
other thing is when you develop your
content it's important to play to a
really really steady click or a steady
drumbeat that doesn't have a lot of sway
and a lot of a lot of excessive feel
because you want to keep things fairly
on the beat because you're not
necessarily trying to match the field to
the things that you're working on you're
trying to match the feel of your content
to the rest of the world and in loop
based music most of it is fairly
straight now you can add feel later and
there are things you can do in your
project but for the most part you want
to make sure things are really really
steady and finally it really pays to be
organized and to to keep a recording log
of all your performances if you're if
you're sitting there and playing a
guitar and you have 30 different takes
and they're in a variety of keys it's so
helpful to know that when you actually
have to go and tag them and define what
those those keys are so in terms of
editing what you want to do is you're
gonna have a long track probably 30
different guitar takes and you want to
start cropping and trimming it down into
the final loops a lot of great waveform
editors out there there's one in logic
spark and final cut for includes an
application called peak Express from
bias which is also a fantastic way of
trimming down loops so what you want to
do is find that perfect looping region
and you establish that and the best kind
of test is to close your eyes and you
know try some different tweaks and get
that start and end point and you really
want to make it so when you close your
eyes and you kind of tap out a tempo you
just don't hear where the brake is you
kind of forget where the the beginning
and end was and that's kind of you'll
know at that point you're you're fairly
successful in creating a good loop but
the second part of that is you want to
make sure that the beginning and end are
happening at a zero crossing so you want
to make sure that the waveform is
actually crossing the zero line of the
the x-axis and if you have one that's
kind of at the top of the waveform and
then one that's at the zero you're gonna
have pops and clicks the reality is that
sometimes you get that perfect timing
and the zero crossings aren't where that
where you want them and that's where
you'd want to use actually a manual
destructive you can do a fade
at the beginning and a fade-out at the
end and that'll force it to kind of
begin and end at a zero crossing on the
last thing is since you're probably
recording a lot of different instruments
maybe a different volume levels it's a
safe last step to just do a
normalization so that everything you
have is kind of at a consistent volume
level so tagging to sign the metadata
it's the AF I look at all these things
that we have to do you've got author
copyright beats and time signature
musical key scale type genre instrument
mood descriptors the transient markers
and ultimately file name that's a lot of
work so how are we going to do this well
we created an application for you to
make this really really easy called the
soundtrack loop utility and we built
this in conjunction with a lot of people
that were doing this for years that were
you know professionally doing content
production so we learned a lot of things
about about what people are looking for
when they're when they're tagging their
loops they need to be able to batch
convert a lot of files at a time or
possibly even run the entire thing off
of a keyboard instead of a mouse there's
a lot of content developers that are
getting carpal tunnel so we built an
application that makes it really really
easy to work with that kind of a
stressful production environment so I
will actually jump in and give you a
quick demo of the soundtrack loop
utility as you can see this in action
okay so the first thing the soundtrack
loop utility asks me for is what files
do I want to work with and as a mission
before you can work with single or
multiple files in this case to start out
I'm just going to go ahead and select
this this whole list of files and I've
got these different organs and I can go
ahead and I can preview them
[Music]
so in this case I want to work on this
this one jazz guitar riff so I've
selected that and now I have the ability
to assign all the different parameters
to it well I know it's not it's a loop
so I'm checking on loop a one-shot is it
would be an apple loop Apple loops file
that doesn't get stretched so if you
have a cymbal hit or a spoken-word there
are times where you don't want it to
actually stretch like a loop so you
enable that as a one-shot in this case
it's a loop it is eight beats right now
the key I happen to know is in the key
of D so you sign that there and it's
also major then you can assign the time
signatures you can see there's some
author and copyright information and
even some kana there's a comment field
so you can either make some internal
notes or if you just want to say for
more information go to my website you
know that kind of thing then we have the
ability to sign John row we put some
really really basic big buckets for
genre we could all argue about the the
30 different plate subgenres of
electronic music so we just basically
kept it fairly fairly vague as far as
rock blues electronic jazz just to kind
of accommodate the the largest genres so
in this case that was a jazz loop and it
was an electric guitar so I click on
guitar and I have a whole bunch of
different choices here and then you can
see here we have all these different
descriptors that we can assign and I'm
actually going to go ahead and turn on
keyboard tagging because again this
whole application can be driven by
keyboards and I can listen to the loop
[Music]
so when I listen it it's a it's a single
instrument it's not an ensemble and I'm
going in and I'm just typing keys it's a
part not a fill it's electric it's dry
it's clean it's kind of cheerful and
it's relaxed and it grooves and its
melodic so really really easy to just go
ahead and assign those and then I would
just say about the file and then all
that information would be embedded and
we have an apple loop as a tagged AI F
other thing that a lot of people a lot
of content developers need to do is they
need to work with the content they
already have because they want to add
all this additional rich data let's say
to their existing AF or their acid files
so we allow you to select let's say
there is a whole bunch of acid eyes duay
files and i just batch selected the
whole thing as you can see the key
actually came in
from the the loops as well as all the
other of the copyright information so it
was very easy to say okay my scale type
for this is these are minor loops and
it's a it's an organ in this case so and
then I go ahead and I'd save that out
and it would create a whole new set of
the AF files one thing that I won't
actually go back to this guitar riff and
show you how transient muckers are
assigned so by clicking on the transient
tab I'm going to intentionally go to
kind of a wrong setting here I'm going
to switch to transient markers happening
at whole notes and we'll play this loop
through you can t see there's some weird
delay happening and the more I stretch
this loop so there's some weird stuff
happening in there and that's because
the transients are in the right aren't
not in the right place so I want to make
the transient divisions go to quarter
notes because it seems like there's more
happening there and it seems like it
could even maybe benefit from eighth
notes that's too many let's go with
quarter notes and then I have a
sensitivity fader so it'll actually help
line up you can see that the transients
are now like popping to the beginning of
the the major transient events where I
don't want the stretching to occur so
it's most of it is pretty automatic and
you can kind of use sensitivity to Zone
in to where you want to go and I can see
this one's a little bit off so I can
move it maybe I want to add a point
right here and drop in a couple it's
always good when you have a trail to add
quarter notes in between and we'll get
one more in here and hear what that
sounds like so it's basically it's
playing it a lot faster than its
original tempo which was this
but because the temp of these transient
markers were properly defined I now have
a good-sounding loop that stretches well
so that's kind of the the soundtrack
loop utility in a nutshell and we'll go
back and just wrap up a couple more
production tips so when it comes to
naming and directory structure the thing
that we really encourage is to this is
the opportunity to be more descriptive
than you would be inclined to be if
you're a whole bunch of guitars if you
name them guitar oh one guitar oh -
you're gonna the same file names as
thousands of other loops on the market
so down-home Delta blues guitar would be
a much much better name the other thing
is that refine search field not only
uses the file name uses the whole
directory path so if I actually had a
folder called Xander Sauron and then
inside of that I had Delta blues or if
I'd strumming within that I could type
any of those words within sound track in
the refine search field and those loops
would come up so that's again an
opportunity to provide the users with
with additional ways of finding your
loops so finally you've created these
these loops using the soundtrack loop
utility best way of testing the loop to
see if it works is drop it back into
sound track one of the first things
you'll see right away is if an
instrument icon pops up you know you're
at least kind of going in the right
direction so checking the icon is kind
of the first telltale thing and then you
probably want to make sure that the
rhythm works with with your other
content that's in the project so we
recommend having a really really
straight and straight steady drumbeat
like an electronic drum and if you're
finding the loop is either just not
looping writers drifting back and forth
probably needs a little bit of attention
and then finally since you have the
ability to sign key and then major and
minor it's very helpful to have let's
say a major and a minor organ or a pad
or some kind of a loop that you can drag
in and test your loops out against and
and see if they sound good and then the
final thing that that would be good to
test against is there's an additional
info field like you saw that media
manager that we had at the bottom
there's a disclosure triangle that gives
you even more information about the loop
and you'll see all the tag and the
copyright information within that so
then you'll know if the the file
received it all correctly so getting
started you guys all look really anxious
to get out there
start recording and creating your own
Apple loops so we've developed an SDK
for you it includes the soundtrack loop
utility as well as documentation for
that app and a separate application
which talks of much deeply to all the
topics I was talking to today again
working with content producers to talk
about the things that were important to
them and the things that you can do to
really optimize your loops as well as a
few different sample loops we have
examples that you can go through and
each different loop type has different
ways or strategies of assigning
transient markers to make sure that they
sound really good and that is all I'm
told going to be available by the end of
the week on the Developer connection
site so we hope you guys all go out
there and start making some great Apple
loops for us
you