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PaulVin
Known Participant
May 12, 2023
Question

Want to use batch-process to export, WITHOUT applying processing to originating files.

  • May 12, 2023
  • 1 reply
  • 2313 views

I'm using batch process to export from my wav originals, into mp3 files, with a favorite applied. I do NOT want to change anything in the multitrack I'm exporting FROM. I want to keep my multitrack file as-is... but in addition to creating mp3s with effects applied, Audition is replacing the wavs on my tracks with the newly created mp3s. Is there a way around this behavior?

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1 reply

SteveG_AudioMasters_
SteveG_AudioMasters_
Community Expert
May 12, 2023

How exactly are you doing this? Audition cannot have undecoded MP3 files in a session - they have to be decoded to wav files before you can do anything with them in Audition at all, so I'm not quite sure what you mean here.

 

Most of the issues people run into result from not looking carefully at the Export options (it's worth looking at the 'change' options, even if you don't change any of them), or from not specifying exactly what should happen to files in Batch Processing. Can you do screengrabs of the relevant settings?

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PaulVinAuthor
Known Participant
May 13, 2023

Hi Steve, and thanks for your reply. I'll try to describe the situation more clearly, to make sure we're on the same page.

I'm starting with a multitrack file, with around 20 tracks (it's an audiobook - 1 track per chapter). Each track has one edited, but not mastered, wav file. Mastering occurs when I apply my Favorite to the file.

For final project submission, I need mastered mp3 files. My intent is to output the mp3s to a folder, and keep the mulitrack for backup, with the edited, unmastered wavs, just as they were before Exporting the mp3s.

What I tried to do was bring all wav files into the Batch Process window, assign my mastering Favorite, set the correct Export Settings, and Run the process. This produced mp3s in my desired folder, with mastering applied - which is what I wanted. However, it also replaced the wavs in the multitrack session with the newly created mp3s - not what I wanted.

My question is, is there a way to to export those mastered mp3s, in a batch, without changing the originating multitrack?

Does that make sense, or would screenshots still be useful?

SteveG_AudioMasters_
SteveG_AudioMasters_
Community Expert
May 20, 2023

Is it correct that standard use of Batch Process involves grabbing files from the Files panel, dragging them to the Batch Process Panel, then running the Process / Export? This is how I learned to do it.

 

I understand the difference between the acutal audio file, and the graphical referant of that file that lives in the Multitrack view. Since I'm dragging from the File panel to the Batch Process panel, I don't understand why Mulitrack referents would change. Again, after export, the file referred to in Multitrack switches from the recorded wav, to the exported MP3 ... this does not happen if the mulitrack file is closed before export - but I don't see how it should ever happen, nor can I see how my use of Multitrack could be an issue. Are there users for whom this change of file reference is desired behavior?


I think that you may be experiencing what appears to be an anomaly in Audition's behaviour regarding what you think you can see, and what's actually there. If you open a file in Waveform view and do a 'save as' to an MP3, it then tells you that what you can see on the screen is an MP3 - but it isn't, as you can generally tell a) from the spectral view, and b) the fact that we know it can't be, because Audition cannot open MP3 files and display them without decoding them. And yes, that is an anomaly that really isn't very helpful. I'd go as far as to call it a bug, and indeed I did years ago. Nobody took any notice. But it's very easy to check - just record a file with content above 16kHz and do a 'save as'. Look at what's then labeled as an MP3 with its contents above 16k, and then try opening the MP3 you saved. In spectral view it should be obvious what the difference is, and that your previous screen, labeled MP3, was in fact a wav file.

 

In your case, it appears to be relabeling the files in Multitrack incorrectly in a similar manner. I don't see how this could ever possibly be desired behaviour!

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