Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
There is no way to examine an advanced application such as Audition in this slim
volume. Also, I cannot claim to be an expert in digital audio editing. My
experience is from the perspective of a multimedia designer with limited use on
the full feature set of the application. However, I have managed to learn some
great techniques using the software to prepare, compress, and output audio for
use in digital video projects and motion graphics elements. I would like to help
you do the same thing.
For this section, we will assume that you have some audio on your computer
already. It can be any of the following file formats: WAV, MP3, AIF, or SND.
Virtually all file formats are encoded and decoded by Audition. These listed
formats are the most common. With a file available, you are now ready to enter
Audition and begin to get your audio ready for Flash.
The Audition Workspace
Audition provides two main workspaces:
Edit View
and
Multitrack View
.
Edit view works with a single waveform. In edit view you can edit one
waveform at a time. You provide your digital alterations to one track and then
you can view the track in multitrack view and mix it with other tracks. For
example, you might have a music track and a voice over track. Each file is edited
separately, but when the complete file needs to be output, both tracks are mixed
down into one file.
Let's take a look at some basic editing features in Audition. First, you need to
open the existing waveform residing on your computer in Audition.
In Audition go to
File>Open Waveform
to open a digital audio file from your
hard drive. Choose the file, I used an .AIF that I transferred from my Macintosh
computer to my Windows computer. The file will open in Multitrack View and
reside on the left side in the organizer window (See Figure 8.4a). To edit the
waveform, you must view it in Edit View. To do this, simply
double click
on
the waveform. In edit view, you might need to delete a portion of the audio. Or
maybe you want to add a
fade in effect
or
fade out
effect to the audio clip.
Most importantly, Audition allows you to optimize and compress the audio to
help determine the maximum quality in proportion to the smallest file size. There
is always a trade off between performance, quality, and operability in digital
media. The obstacles are decreasing with the influx of broadband into society,
but there still must be serious considerations made when placing audio into your
Web portfolio. We are striving for positive user experience, so we cannot make
