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I was wondering if anyone knows how to get CD track markers to convert to CD tracks in Audition CS6. For years I've used Audition 3 and was able to put CD track markers into an audio file in Edit view, and then right click on the file, select "Insert into CD List" and have a complete list show up in the CD view. From there I could select "Write CD" and create a disc.
Now, with Audition CS6 I'm able to put in the CD track markers, and can even see them in the markers list as CD track markers, but when I go to the CD Editor view only the entire audio file appears. So I was wondering how I get the markers to appear in the CD Editor view in the same way they would show up in the CD view in Audition 3. I'm hoping someone has an answer to this as I haven't been able to find anything about it in the help files or on these forums. Thanks.
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Burns a CD perfectly for me every time
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Very confusing!
The only thought that occurs to me is, do you have a CD writer on your computer that AA can see and recognise? I wonder whether the "absence" of a writer, according to AA, would make it not allow insertion of tracks to CD layout view?
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Are you attempting to insert them directly from a Multitrack Session? If so, you'll need to perform a mixdown first. The markers will be assigned to the new file, and you can insert these into a CD Layout.
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Thanks! That's the answer Durin. Once the markers are merged I can then do a mixdown that includes track ranges that can be exported to CD Layout. I am completely with Platinum Productions though - this workflow is seriously unintuitive. Given the number of hits this problem has in the forums some Help files would seem a good idea. And a better workflow in CS7.
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"Are you attempting to insert them directly from a Multitrack Session? If so, you'll need to perform a mixdown first. The markers will be assigned to the new file, and you can insert these into a CD Layout."
Yes, from a multitrack session!
Do you do the mixdown before merging the markers? Do you (can you) change the mixdown to CD track?
Then what?
(and yes, please put these steps into the searchable help)
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I don't know what the optimal workflow is, only what's worked.
Did I do the mixdown before merging the markers? Yes.
Do you change the mixdown to CD track? Not sure I understand. I used CD track markers from the beginning of my project, when I inserted them into the multitrack during the mixing phase.
Then what? After merging the tracks (in the Markers panel) for the mixed-down file I was able to right-click on the selected tracks and choose export to CD Layout. From there I would add that the CD-text options aren't obvious either. If you want different artists for each track you have to add the "artist" column to the CD layout table and add the information in that. Also note the pause time. If you want a gapless CD you should note that the pause time defaults to 2 seconds - so this needs to be changed to zero for each track. You do this in the pause column. These are all different, undocumented, workflows compared to Audition 3.
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There is a setting in Preferences/Markers & Metadata to set the default pause between tracks to any value you like including 0 secs.
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thanks ry,
big help!
Ty
PS: to the developers
Sonic evolved their soundBlade software over such a long period of time that it has "crept" into decrepitness. It's very unfriendly unless you came in a log time ago and sort of know the history.
I'm on a Mac so I'm new to AA. It feels to me as though features have been sort of tacked on over time. It might be a good idea to think about reshuffling the deck to make the operation more intuitive. To do that properly, you'd need to bring in some folks who haven't been drinking the "we've always done it this way" Kool Aid all along.
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Ty Ford wrote:
It might be a good idea to think about reshuffling the deck to make the operation more intuitive. To do that properly, you'd need to bring in some folks who haven't been drinking the "we've always done it this way" Kool Aid all along.
Actually, that's the problem, not the solution. Audition (and before it CEP) have had so many different interpretations of how to write CDs over the years that nobody now knows whether they're coming or going. At least one version came from a completely different team...
Is the present version the best so far? Er no, not on your life. The best version so far has been the one that has a completely separate window for CD creation, and was far more intuitive to use. Why do we not have that one any more? Probably because of outside interference from one of the other teams, I'd guess.
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Steve,
Spoken like a faithful but beleaguered obstructionist but not helpful for the users in the long run.
As my father was fond of saying, "Don't make me pull this car over and come back there!"
Regards,
Ty Ford
(Tune in next week for another thrilling episode of "Can this marriage be saved!"
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Ty Ford wrote:
Steve,
Spoken like a faithful but beleaguered obstructionist but not helpful for the users in the long run.
Don't understand what you're talking about - but there again, I don't think you do either...
You've proposed a 'solution' that could probably make things worse, not better and you're calling me an obstructionist? You want help and explanations? Okay, here are some:
There are fundamental problems here. The first problem is that the documentation about CD writing is at best sparse, and at worst downright confusing. And the second problem stems from this - it doesn't appear to be made clear anywhere that you can't burn a CD direct from multitrack view without mixing it down first. Nor does it explain why this is, but I can explain the roots of it.
The background is quite straightforward, really. When you play back a multitrack mix, you're playing a bunch of files into a mixer and streaming the result direct to your sound device. Chances are you're working in 32-bit as well. What you haven't got at that point is a real 16-bit stereo 44.1k file for each track, and without this you can't get any CD writer to work (you need the file so that things like buffer under-run protection can function). Now whilst I suppose that it would be possible to persuade Audition to work all this detail out for you in the background, and produce these files, working out their durations from the timeline markers - which is what it will do with 32-bit not 44.1k files in Edit view - the devs appear to have taken the view that doing this from unmixed-down files is a jump too far, and not what people would want to do anyway.
From the above, I can only conclude that this isn't true, and that people do want to do this. And it raises a number of issues. What's fundamentally going on here isn't just a layout issue - the command structure is there, yes - but to make the CD-writing commands work, the devs have to decide how much work they are prepared to do in the background for you. But this is in part constrained by another issue, which is that Audition has now got to conform to an Adobe 'institutionalised' layout, and work in a very similar way to programs like Premiere. This puts different types of menus, with different options on them, in different places, and because this is audio, a video-style layout isn't intuitive for CD production, no.
To be fair, CD writing is probably the biggest victim of this, and it does need some further consideration, I think. As does Adobe's policy on providing help files and manuals. I understand that there are significant cost implications to this though, and 'minimalism' is helping to keep the product costs down.
The bottom line though, is that every time a new Audition version has come out over the last few iterations, fundamental things have been changed, and sometimes not for the better. But if you don't do this, then you can't innovate the product. Your feeling that things have been 'tacked on' isn't a correct way of looking at it at all - far from it, in fact. With CS5.5 a new shell was built, and the intention has been to add things to this - and it's still happening. Some things work better than others, and at present CD writing is one that needs some careful thought, apparently.
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Also, to clear up one other thing that isn't clear in the above posts, no you don't need to include a marker at the start and end of a file if you don't want those sections of it to be turned into ranges. But if you want to include them and turn them into ranges, then you do - and it's always been like that, whatever version you've had.
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Having seen any number of software and hardware systems go from beginning to whereever, beginning with AKGs DSE7000 in 1990, yes I do know what I'm talking about, but thanks for being civil.
You had me at, "To be fair, CD writing is probably the biggest victim of this, and it does need some further consideration, I think." Thanks for that. The before and after....enh.
Yes I understand your "group think" rock and "multiple developer's team fighting" hardspace. It happened at Apple with FCP (up to version 7.3) and Soundtrack, and it was ugly, messy and definitely did NOT server the user base.
But instead of chipping off at me, why not put your <male member> in your back pocket and spend all that lovely energy writing a comprehensive set of docs that help us use this stuff so we can go about our business and have some fun while you get rich?
You'd be less pestered. We'd be less pestered. Our clients would be obliviously thrilled.
Regards,
Ty
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Ty Ford wrote:
but thanks for being civil.
But instead of chipping off at me, why not put your <male member> in your back pocket and spend all that lovely energy writing a comprehensive set of docs that help us use this stuff so we can go about our business and have some fun while you get rich?
Shame you couldn't reciprocate with the civility.
I would have thought that the reasons for not doing this were pretty obvious. As I've already pointed out, they keep changing things - often in a significant way. Whatever I did would be out of date in no time, and nobody's going to pay me for doing it - you don't get rich from short-term documentation. I've already edited an Audition book, and had some significant input into a generation of help files back in Syntrillium CEP days, and all of that is now completely out of date. IOW, it's a completely demoralising activity - even if I had time to do it, which I don't.
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Steve,
Civil, yes. I was only responding to the comments you initiated about ego issues and suggesting they be put aside. Apparently jocularity is absent and given your present demoralized state, I understand that you're tender about it. I apologize for the thump. It was not meant to cause either pain or injury.
Your comments sort of confirm that this is really a management/leadership issue. e.g. management allowing or promoting internal factions to fight over which way to go. It's no wonder you're demoralized. I worked in corporate america and had a GM who actually thought it was good business to pit one department against the other. Jerk,
About writing that goes out of date. Yes. I have written many articles and two books. The last one about location audio recording. It was difficult, but necessary to write in a non-application specific manner so it wouldn't be out of date five minutes after the ink dried.
So, is what you're saying that the company (or companies, as all of them are pretty much in the same boat) don't allocate proper resources to keep the users properly up to date?
Writing a good manual that people can understand and find useful is VERY difficult. Ron Koliha did it pretty well, and with humor, when he was at Mackie. The guys at Sound Devices do a very good job. But both are hardware manuals. Software is at least as tricky.
I'm thinking it must be somewhat like songwriting. There are lots of people who can write songs, but a few write GREAT songs. Maybe in this down-economy environment where "good enough" wins the day, management has failed to find the person who can breathe written life into features, or they have decided not to pay what that's worth....subsequently "getting what they paid for" but not serving the user base very well.
Well then, Steve. From where you are, what is the best way out of this forest?
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I'm not really demoralised, just somewhat resigned to the situation. It has been suggested in the past that something like a loose-leaf format might be adopted, and the up-to-date version of this is some sort of Wiki, I suppose - which, last time I looked, is what Reaper has.
As far as I can make out, Adobe's current take on how to do help files is to let the staff write them, or present them as video tutorials, or just to give up and answer questions on the U2U forums. Nice leverage, of course... but it's very difficult to get the stuff written when it's needed, and with forums, you end up with the same things being asked over and over again, because NOBODY reads the FAQs - which is why I haven't put most of them back on the site. Old stuff is still available on AudioMasters, though, if anybody really needs it, and if anything here occurs enough times, I'll copy and paste it into an FAQ and post it.
Maybe in this down-economy environment where "good enough" wins the day, management has failed to find the person who can breathe written life into features, or they have decided not to pay what that's worth....subsequently "getting what they paid for" but not serving the user base very well.
There may well be something in that. They've employed people in the past to do manuals, but I don't think they have (certainly for Audition) recently - and as a result, what there is in the help files can read rather tersely. I don't blame the staff for this - it's not really what they're employed to do.
Is there a good answer that doesn't involve employing somebody? Probably not, because even if loads of people stepped up and did a bit, it wouldn't read very well, as everybody's writing style is different. And yes, it really is hard to find good people to write; the book I edited had absolute howlers in it - several of them. But there again, so did one Adobe manual (spell checker substituted several wrong words...).
The only good answer would be for enough people to convince Adobe that they'd be prepared to pay for a decent reference guide (with step-by-step instructions) for them to think it was worth organising one. At present, it looks as though the market research indicates that this isn't the case, hence the current arrangements. It's no good Adobe saying that they're leaving this to the free market, either (not that I think they have), because for reasons already outlined, the product life isn't long enough, and probably neither is the market size. And video tutorials aren't any sort of an answer at all; they leave out details, and only ever cope with the single scenario they're describing - which generally isn't what everybody else wants to do.
So there's no best way out of it - it's just going to be the least worst, I think - whatever that is!
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Not sure if this is what you are exactly going for considering this is mostly referencing CD's. Assuming that we're cool with not going directly to CD but also digital, here's what I have found to work flawlessly...
I'm a radio personality, DJ, commercial producer and do some VO work as well so I tend to find the most efficient ways to get things done, and done right and CD Layout just doesn't get the job done for me...so here goes (For CS6)
1. Create your markers
2. Change your workspace to Radio
3. Change all markers to "Type" to CD Track on the top right (Note: make the beginning of your first track at 00:00)
4. Select All in the Markers Tab and merge
5. Rename markers as you see fit
6. Edit ID3 as you see fit
7. Select all on the list and click on the small disc icon/Export audio of selected range markers to separate files
8. Save in whatever format you want (I suggest creating a new folder for the project/mix)
aaaaaand voila.