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  • Fri, Oct 15 2010 11:25 AM

    Audio waveform display

    Hi Everyone

    I am after a bit of clarity with regards to audio waveforms. I have 4 edit systems running MC5 and they seem to do slightly different things with apparently the same settings.

    • Sometimes I get waveforms drawn across an entire sequence, sometimes nothing, sometimes only between mark in/out.
    • Sometimes the waveform is black, sometimes it is grey.
    • All the time that it does display, it seems to want to work it out again everytime which leaves me both wanting and not wanting the waveform to display!

    I've been through the help and manuals but can't really clear up why this is?

    Thanks, Stephen

    Avid Media Composer 5 Avid Symphony 6 Windows 7 Pro, NVIDIA Quadro FX1800, Asus Xonar D2 Audio. PDW-700 XDCAM Cameras (Mostly shooting HD422 (50... [view my complete system specs]
  • Fri, Oct 15 2010 11:32 AM In reply to

    Re: Audio waveform display

    Hi,

    Stephen Montgomery:
    sometimes only between mark in/out.

    In your Timeline Settings, the setting Show Marked Waveform controls whether the waveform gets displayed between in/out marks.

    Stephen Montgomery:
    Sometimes the waveform is black, sometimes it is grey.

    This can indicate a difference in audio sample rate.  Are the sample rates on the grey and black systems the same?

    ciao,
    Carl 

    Media Composer 2024.6 w/Symphony/SS/PF options, HP Z-Book G6 17", i7-9850H 2.60GHz, 64gb RAM, NVIDIA Quadro RTX 3000, Blackmagic UltraStudio Mini... [view my complete system specs]

    "There is hardly anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and the people who only consider the price are this man's lawful prey."  - John Ruskin (1819-1900)

     

    Carl Amoscato | Freelance Film & Video Editor | London, UK

  • Fri, Oct 15 2010 12:38 PM In reply to

    • cuervo
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    Re: Audio waveform display

    I have a similar problem. Usually, the lower audio track doesn't repaint properly and remains blank after I resize the timeline. When I playback, most of the waveform repaints, altho' portions remain absent.

    SYS1:ASUS Z97, Haswell 4.0GHz CPU, 32GB RAM, Quadro 4200 + GTX1070, Thunderbolt II -DNxIO-FSI CM171 ///SYS2:ASUS Maximus Extreme V, Sandy Bridge 3.1GHz... [view my complete system specs]

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  • Sat, Oct 16 2010 1:15 PM In reply to

    • TrevorA
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    Re: Audio waveform display

    Welcome to the world of working with waveforms. Can't live with them... can't live without them.

    Waveforms can be turned on or off (which may explain their absence?). They also don't display if the audio tracks are shrunk down small (which is a *good* thing as it gives you a way of turning them off on particular tracks pre v5). The 'display audio waveforms' is under the timeline hamburger menu and can be mapped to a key.

    If turned on and there are mixed sample rates and 'show mixed sample rates' is on then you can get grey waveforms. 

    Similarly if you also have show auto gain on then the waveforms are a different type of grey.

    If you have 'show marked waveforms' as a setting then it only shows between in and out (which is next to useless... show in to out + handles would be much more useful).

    If you do pretty much anything (open a bin, move the timeline, have a cup of coffee) the waveforms will redraw and this speed is affected by how quickly your disks can be accessed. Stop the redraw with ctl + full stop. 

    In v5 you can turn the waveforms on/off per track - but I haven't quite got to grips with how this interacts with the global waveform on/off yet...

     

  • Sun, Oct 17 2010 12:02 AM In reply to

    • jwrl
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    Re: Audio waveform display

    TrevorA:
    In v5 you can turn the waveforms on/off per track - but I haven't quite got to grips with how this interacts with the global waveform on/off yet.
    I turned global waveforms off pretty much immediately after I started using v5, so this is from memory (and may not apply to later versions of 5 either).  I'm at home at the moment so can't check...

    My recollection is that turning global waveforms on totally overrides the individual track settings.  I very much prefer track settings - it's an improvement to v5 that really is an improvement.  I find that with individual track settings I make much more use of waveform plots than I used to.

    MC 7.0.4 - Asus P6T Deluxe V2 mobo - Intel i7 920 2.66GHz - Windows 7 Ult64 SP1 - nVidia Quadro FX 1800 - 16 Gbyte low latency DDR3 RAM - Internal 8 Tb... [view my complete system specs]
  • Sun, Oct 17 2010 1:25 PM In reply to

    • TrevorA
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    Re: Audio waveform display

    jwrl:
     I very much prefer track settings - it's an improvement to v5 that really is an improvement.  I find that with individual track settings I make much more use of waveform plots than I used to.

    But there is no keyboard shortcut for them... and the redraw with every bin opened is painful.

  • Mon, Oct 18 2010 5:59 AM In reply to

    • cptvideo
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    Re: Audio waveform display

    There is a keyboard shortcut. Or you can create one by making a workspace with a linked timeline view that has the waveform turned on. Assign that workspace to a button and voila. Make another workspace and timeline view without the waveform and you've got your on and off buttons.

    I haven't yet tried this in MC5 but its worked brilliantly in earlier versions.

     

    Craig Umanoff 

  • Wed, Oct 20 2010 9:15 AM In reply to

    • TrevorA
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    Re: Audio waveform display

    I use toolsets rather than workspaces at the moment... but I suspect that your workaround may work - I'll try it today.

    However there was/is a keyboard shortcut for turning waveforms on/off globally (mapping the hamburger menu item to a key) but this is not the case for the new (welcome) individual track waveforms. 

  • Wed, Oct 20 2010 8:24 PM In reply to

    • cptvideo
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    Re: Audio waveform display

    You can customize almost anything display-related with workspaces. Toolsets are 'training wheels' for Avid

     

    Craig

  • Thu, Oct 21 2010 6:14 AM In reply to

    • Editmvp
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    Re: Audio waveform display

    You can also create custom timeline views.  I have separate views that expand individual audio tracks and have the waveform turn on at the same time.  You can not map these to keyboard shortcuts within Media Composer, BUT I also use MacroToolsWork to create Keyboard shortcuts for all my timeline views, as well as many other unmappable keyboard shortcuts.  I have keyboard shortcuts to expand audio tracks 1 though 6 as well as one that resets all my tracks back to what I call "Normal" which is all small audio tracks with no waveforms.  I am constantly using these to jump in and out of large tracks with waveform for "word surgery" and rubber banding levels.

    Primary System: Media Composer Ultimate 2024.6 | Avid Artist DNxIO | iMac 2020 i9 10-Core 3.6/128GB/2TB-SSD/Radeon Pro 16GB / OS 14.6.1 | Artist Color... [view my complete system specs]
  • Fri, Oct 22 2010 6:54 AM In reply to

    • cptvideo
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    Re: Audio waveform display

    "... You can not map these to keyboard shortcuts within Media Composer..."

    Quite wrong! Actually its easy to link timeline views to workspaces which are mapable to the keyboard (and are mapped by default -- 3 of 'em, anyway, are mapped, and waiting to be defined by the user) to the F2 F3 and F4 keys in MC. Here's how to set up two workspaces -- one with waveforms off and the other with them on:

    1. in project settings turn on "view all settings," right click on the default Workspace, at the bottom of the list, and choose "duplicate."

    2.  name these workspaces by clicking on the right field for each; you might call 'em "nowav" and "wav" or whatever you like.

    3. name two separate timeline views with exactly the same names as the workspaces. In one of those views turn on waveforms, using the Audio Data settings in the timeline hamburger menu; in the other view turn off the waveforms.

    4. click on each workspace in the settings list and select both: "Manually Update this Setting" and "Activate Settings Linked by Name."

    You'll notice in the keyboard settings that there are some default assignments: F2 is set to W1 (workspace 1), F3 to W2 ...  So the F2 key is a shortcut to the first workspace in the settings list, F3 is a shortcut to the second workspace, etc.  You can assign new workspaces until you run out of W# keys in the "other" tab of the command pallete. If you want to change the order of the workspaces in the settings list just re-name them in some sensible way, they're stacked alphabetically. 

    Because you've told your MC to "activate settings linked by name" when the workspace changes then the timeline view will change as well.

    Unfortunately, in MC5, the individual track waveforms don't seem to respond, by themselves, to timeline views -- that would be an improvement, Avid -- using the workspace shortcuts described above all the track waveforms are either on or off. 

     

    Craig

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Sun, Oct 24 2010 4:23 PM In reply to

    • witold
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    Re: Audio waveform display

    cuervo:

    I have a similar problem. Usually, the lower audio track doesn't repaint properly and remains blank after I resize the timeline. When I playback, most of the waveform repaints, altho' portions remain absent.

     

     

    Hi cuervo,

     

    I have the same problem. It occurs only on MC 5.03 , and when I try to enlarge and reduce the timeline any times to redraw the waveform, the system freezes. On 5.01 I can work without problems. Have you solved this problem or have you asked Avid support for help? Anyone else has the same problem with waveform?

    Ciao, Witold

     

    I have downgraded the Nvidia driver and the issue is solved.

    W.

  • Thu, Jan 20 2011 3:32 PM In reply to

    • Eyar
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    Re: Audio waveform display

    TrevorA:
    If you do pretty much anything (open a bin, move the timeline, have a cup of coffee) the waveforms will redraw and this speed is affected by how quickly your disks can be accessed.

     

    Actually- I have a tip that might help you out here. Use "Show Entire Sequence" (Ctrl+/) to, well-- show the entire sequence on your time line, and go ahead and plot sample or energy waveforms. After While this might take a good few seconds for long sequences, once you've done it, Avid will save the entire sample to memory, and you will rarely need to resample and replot the waveform. Zooming in still takes a second for it to re-render the wave form, but this is done from the memory rather than from disk access and will takea far far shorter time.

  • Sun, Sep 25 2011 9:21 PM In reply to

    Re: Audio waveform display

    Hi I too have a question concerning the view of the waveform itself, In FCP I used to do all of animating with gererator created shapes for various BG videos for performace venues. I often did this by lining up video hits with the transient hit, for accurate beat placement of the image. IN AVID can see the waveform in the timeline howerer the transients are so big they fill the entire track with black and I cant see the transient? Any advice? Moving over to AVID has been quite time consuming and somewhat frustrating, just building a simple shape and animating it or doing a simple compostie takes twice as long?

    Thanks,

    Mac Pro, Quad Core 2.66 16 GBs RAM ATI 5770,Macbook Pro Quad Core i7 8 GBs RAM, HVX Cameras, Canon DSLRs, Sony Cameras. AVID MEDIA COMPOSER 6 Boris Continum... [view my complete system specs]
  • Sun, Sep 25 2011 9:30 PM In reply to

    Re: Audio waveform display

    Hi,

    Mathew Milani:
    IN AVID can see the waveform in the timeline howerer the transients are so big they fill the entire track with black and I cant see the transient? Any advice?

    You can make the size of the displayed waveform larger or smaller by using CTRL+ALT+k (smaller) and CTRL+ALT+l (larger).  Or you could also make the actual track larger or smaller with CTRL+k (smaller) and CTRL+l (larger).

    Mathew Milani:
    Moving over to AVID has been quite time consuming and somewhat frustrating, just building a simple shape and animating it or doing a simple compostie takes twice as long?

    If I tried to do the same thing on FCP, I'd probably think it was time consuming.  The more time you put in on the machine and get comfortable with the way it works, hopefully stuff like that will get easier.

    ciao,
    Carl 

    Media Composer 2024.6 w/Symphony/SS/PF options, HP Z-Book G6 17", i7-9850H 2.60GHz, 64gb RAM, NVIDIA Quadro RTX 3000, Blackmagic UltraStudio Mini... [view my complete system specs]

    "There is hardly anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and the people who only consider the price are this man's lawful prey."  - John Ruskin (1819-1900)

     

    Carl Amoscato | Freelance Film & Video Editor | London, UK

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