Soundtrack Pro - premature audio clip cut-off

jens07

Hello there,



I'm fairly new to Macs and Soundtrack Pro so please bear with me!



I'm currently tasked with cutting clips from long audio interviews. They're provided in .wma so I convert them to .mp3 using Switch. Once in Soundtrack Pro I'm cutting and trimming them, improving the sound quality, saving them as WAVE files and finally, using Easy WMA to convert them to mp3.



The majority of clips have been fine but there are few particular clips which are cutting off prematurely. It doesn't matter how much allowance time I leave after the desired end point, (I've tried from 5 seconds to 50 seconds) it always cuts off at the same point - a point before the end of the sentence. Has anyone come across this before?



Also, while I'm here, can anyone tell me what is the most effficient format to use audio in Soundtrack Pro? just that .mp3 takes a long time to decompress when opening. Of course it depends on the length of the audio but I was wondering if there is anything quicker?



If anyone has any suggestions or advice, I'd be very grateful...

Thanks very much!

Marvin

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jens07


I'm currently tasked with cutting clips from long audio interviews. They're provided in .wma so I convert them to .mp3 using Switch. Once in Soundtrack Pro I'm cutting and trimming them, improving the sound quality, saving them as WAVE files and finally, using Easy WMA to convert them to mp3.

Try to get from .wma to .aiff then open that in Soundtrack Pro. Then go from aiff straight to mp3 again (you can do this in itunes).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jens07


The majority of clips have been fine but there are few particular clips which are cutting off prematurely. It doesn't matter how much allowance time I leave after the desired end point, (I've tried from 5 seconds to 50 seconds) it always cuts off at the same point - a point before the end of the sentence. Has anyone come across this before?

It could be the same issue that affects mpeg video or it could be Soundtrack Pro not handling the format well enough. These formats aren't editing formats. With MPEG video, the frames are encoded as groups of pictures and when you cut a piece out, it cuts the entire group back to the keyframe. There are two main categories of compression, editing and delivery. Editing formats tend to have little to no compression (and take up lots of space), delivery formats like MP3, AAC etc are usually highly compressed.



I don't know if you've noticed that some AVI files skip when you drag your slider in Quicktime. This is because of the way AVIs are compressed to save more space. If you convert the same file to DV or an editing format with no temporal compression then the slider is completely smooth. Using a format like .aiff should work best in Soundtrack Pro and won't as much quality as WMA>MP3>WAVE>MP3.

jens07

Thanks Marvin, yep using .aiff seems to do the trick. I also noticed that using Easy WMA converter was cutting the clips, whereas using Switch did not!?