Description:
SoundEdit 16 is a solid, efficient multitrack audio editing package that can help enrich any audio-video project, be it video, CD-ROM, or something delivered over the Web. It features a suite of filters and effects for altering, sweetening, and otherwise manipulating tracks; it can import and export most audio formats; and it can create multitrack-track sound files.An especially nice feature is how well SoundEdit integrates with QuickTime. SoundEdit can open a QuickTime movie and fully control the audio tracks (number of tracks, synchronization, mixes, etc.). It also displays a series of thumbnail images (a filmstrip) of the video along the top of the track editor, which can be scaled up to a frame-by-frame view when absolute synchronization is essential. This movie with a new or newly enhanced track is then saved to disk without recompression of the video track. As an added bonus, the SoundEdit 16 CD features a library of over 300 royalty-free sound effects, each recorded at CD quality (16 bit/44 KHz). Categories include "industrial," "buttons/switches," "liquids/gases," and "impacts"--there are 22 categories in all. SoundEdit is an ideal application to accompany new media production tools like Macromedia Flash, Director, or any of the video editing packages, but it is not without some flaws. For one, this version is showing its age. It would be nice to see SoundEdit updated to work with MP3 files, and to modernize the interface to take advantage of the Mac's new enhanced file open/save dialog boxes. SoundEdit 16 fills an important niche in the toolbox of the multimedia content developer, and anyone looking to do serious sound work should consider it. --Mike Caputo
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