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Editing live recording in SS 3.4

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jonmarcus

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Hi all

I have just made my first live PCM recording on my MZ-NH900 of a band rehearsal and now want to upload via USB, and create a suitably edited WAV CD. Now the recording contains fairly lengthy periods of chat and silence as well as trackmarks at random points. (We just let it run rather than keep getting up and pressing pause or stop). I have listened to lots of the MD and want to pull out certain sections and ultimately make them into separate WAV tracks on a CD, and get rid of the talking in between.

Please forgive me if the answer to my questions are on the forum but I have searched long and hard and have read the excellent pre SS 3.4 pinned thread "Guide to uploading md recordings.." - as updated November 2005). However, does this thread still apply to SS 3.4? I would particularly like to keep the original recording on the recorder, at least for a while until I have done what I want to do with the converted files. But the thread states "You can combine and split uploaded tracks in the SonicStage library, but only after deleting them from the original HiMD" .

What I am not clear on is at what point I should combine/divide/delete track marks and tracks so that I can isolate the sections that I want to export to WAV and then burn. I assume it is still unadvisable to do this on the recorder? If so then should do I use SS 3.4. combine/divide option on the PC in the transfer window before uploading, or should I do this on the uploaded files before I convert to WAV?

I am not too fussed about gaps for the purpose of this recording although I note Low Volta's reply on 2 May to mnmleung's thread stating that he doesn't use SS but instead exports to WAV and then does any editing in Audacity.

In summary I guess what I am wanting to confirm is the order of steps that I should take.

Many thanks

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Personally I would recommend uploading the recording in it's entirety and using Audacity for editing. Even with all of it's improvements I still have not ever used SonicStage for anything other than getting music to and from the device.

I have had bad experiences editing tracks on my RH10 itself (adding trackmarks in order to delete short parts I did not want) that resulted in my RH10 displaying "cannot record or play" and me being unable to upload anything from the disc. I'm not sure if this would happen on the NH900, but I don't think it would be worth the risk of losing the recording.

Edited by raintheory
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I would particularly like to keep the original recording on the recorder, at least for a while until I have done what I want to do with the converted files. But the thread states "You can combine and split uploaded tracks in the SonicStage library, but only after deleting them from the original HiMD" .

The FAQ needs to be updated. You no longer have to erase the tracks from their source disc.

That said, it appears that most of us who use HiMD don't use it as 1st generation storage only - record on the unit, upload, edit+backup using the computer, erase the original and reuse it.

What I am not clear on is at what point I should combine/divide/delete track marks and tracks so that I can isolate the sections that I want to export to WAV and then burn. I assume it is still unadvisable to do this on the recorder? If so then should do I use SS 3.4. combine/divide option on the PC in the transfer window before uploading, or should I do this on the uploaded files before I convert to WAV?

Here's how I at least do things:

* make my recording on the unit

* title the tracks on the unit using SS [the names carry across through SS and exporting to WAV]

* upload the tracks into SS

* convert the tracks the WAV

* duplicate and convert the WAV tracks to WavPack or FLAC [lossless packing formats with no copy protection/DRM] and back them up [from this point on, this copy is the "unedited master"]

* erase the original disc as it's superfluous at this point

* edit the recording using a non-destructive nonlinear editor [such as Audacity [free], Crystal Audio Engine [free], Adobe Audition, Sony Vegas, Nuendo, ProTools, Cakewalk Sonar, &c.]

* burn CDs, make MP3s, do whatever with the edited version without any concern about copy protection/DRM

The basic premise here is to free the recordings of any proprietary format and the copy protection/DRM used by them. Sony's formats are more relaxed in this regard with the more recent versions of SS, but you're still locked into using their file format. Hence the immediate conversion to WAV, which has no DRM and is a widespread format capable of being used by literally all editors.

Advice: don't do you editing in SS. Even the most basic NLEs [like the open-source Audacity] have more features and will serve you far better, enabling you to work much faster than one can with the very basic split/combine functions built into SS.

Also - recent testing done by some of us here has shown that SS no longer has problems uploading recordings that have been edited on the recorder itself. If you have the time and the inclination, not to mention a reliable power source [do it while plugged in with the AC adapter], marking your tracks on the unit itself [and removing any extraneous trackmarks if necessary] is just fine. This can actually make editing easier if you mark your tracks intelligently, and when you get to dropping the eventual exported WAV files into an editor to work on your "final," you'll have a pretty easy guide to follow with your pre-split material [every track on the unit becomes its own WAV file].

Cheers.

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Now that SonicStage 3.4 is out and reliable, I do a lot of track marking and editing on the unit.

The old bug was about removing a track mark: that is, hitting pause, going back to MARK x and hitting the Track button to have it say MARK OFF. That no longer causes problems with SonicStage 3.4.

Unlike Raintheory, I have never had a problem with adding track marks: only if I added them and deleted something. That is, I marked Track 1 into Tracks 1, 2 and 3, and deleted 2. The unit didn't like that one bit, and called the disc unplayable. However, I found I could still play back and upload the disc by controlling it from the computer with SonicStage (disc in the unit, USB connected). I didn't try that experiment again, though.

As raintheory suggests, just for paranoia's sake, you should upload everything for safety.

But you can upload multiple times. So if it's convenient, mark off the spots of chat on the disc: add track marks before and after them. Don't delete anything. Then retitle the group (just so you can find the new upload) and upload everything. Ignore the chat tracks, convert the ones you want to .wav and work on them with Audacity. If for some reason, a song was split during recording, combining tracks in SonicStage works fine on the uploaded tracks and makes a seamless join: just make sure you highlight them in the order you want them combined. (That is, if you have Part A and Part B, highlight Part A first: otherwise you'll have a combined track that goes BA and will be difficult to split up as it was before--SonicStage doesn't have Undo like a real editing program.) For any serious editing, convert them to .wav, out of SonicStage's clutches.

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SonicStage 3.4 is much more reliable, but there is still a very small chance that your media get corrupted during transfer. I had the case once, I believe that was due to an error on the media that made SonicStage to freeze, but this corrupted the disc in the process. SonicStage still wants the media to be write enabled and is doing some dummy check-in/check-out (which it should not do).

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The FAQ needs to be updated. You no longer have to erase the tracks from their source disc.

That said, it appears that most of us who use HiMD don't use it as 1st generation storage only - record on the unit, upload, edit+backup using the computer, erase the original and reuse it.

Here's how I at least do things:

* make my recording on the unit

* title the tracks on the unit using SS [the names carry across through SS and exporting to WAV]

* upload the tracks into SS

* convert the tracks the WAV

* duplicate and convert the WAV tracks to WavPack or FLAC [lossless packing formats with no copy protection/DRM] and back them up [from this point on, this copy is the "unedited master"]

* erase the original disc as it's superfluous at this point

* edit the recording using a non-destructive nonlinear editor [such as Audacity [free], Crystal Audio Engine [free], Adobe Audition, Sony Vegas, Nuendo, ProTools, Cakewalk Sonar, &c.]

* burn CDs, make MP3s, do whatever with the edited version without any concern about copy protection/DRM

The basic premise here is to free the recordings of any proprietary format and the copy protection/DRM used by them. Sony's formats are more relaxed in this regard with the more recent versions of SS, but you're still locked into using their file format. Hence the immediate conversion to WAV, which has no DRM and is a widespread format capable of being used by literally all editors.

Advice: don't do you editing in SS. Even the most basic NLEs [like the open-source Audacity] have more features and will serve you far better, enabling you to work much faster than one can with the very basic split/combine functions built into SS.

Also - recent testing done by some of us here has shown that SS no longer has problems uploading recordings that have been edited on the recorder itself. If you have the time and the inclination, not to mention a reliable power source [do it while plugged in with the AC adapter], marking your tracks on the unit itself [and removing any extraneous trackmarks if necessary] is just fine. This can actually make editing easier if you mark your tracks intelligently, and when you get to dropping the eventual exported WAV files into an editor to work on your "final," you'll have a pretty easy guide to follow with your pre-split material [every track on the unit becomes its own WAV file].

Cheers.

Thanks very much Dex. A great help (ditto all the others that have replied to this thread). I wasn't intending to keep the data on the disc for storage and agree that HiMd is best not used for this purpose. I was just paranoid about having to erase the data until I was absolutely sure that I didn't need it again!

Because the trackmarks are all over the place at the moment on the recording I don't have specific tracks to name yet. Therefore, based on what you, Raintheory and Small Mics have said I think I'll add the marks in the appropriate place first/remove extraneous marks (i.e. to segregate the chat etc from the bits that I want to keep), but not delete anything, name them accordingly and then upload everything. I'll then back up as you say, convert the required tracks to WAV, and then use Audacity to do final editing.

Thanks again! :D

P.S. I know there are lots of programs out there for burning WAV files to CD but would you recommend any in particular?

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Because the trackmarks are all over the place at the moment on the recording I don't have specific tracks to name yet. Therefore, based on what you, Raintheory and Small Mics have said I think I'll add the marks in the appropriate place first/remove extraneous marks (i.e. to segregate the chat etc from the bits that I want to keep), but not delete anything, name them accordingly and then upload everything. I'll then back up as you say, convert the required tracks to WAV, and then use Audacity to do final editing.

Despite what I've said about uploading post-editing [on the unit] working fine, I'd upload the entire thing -before- editing on the unit just in case.

I'd still recommend as the least stressful and time-consuming methods either combining everything with SS [and adding trackmarks/splits in your editor after] or simply adding everything to the timeline of your editor and subtracting the bits you don't need. I'd get carpal tunnel trying to deal with that many trackmarks on the unit itself.

For CD-burning, I tend to take my projects to a friend who has CD Architect. There are certain things it doesn't do [such as CD-Text] but otherwise it's a straight redbook CD layout editor that you can actually do all your basic editing right on the timeline of if you prefer. [i find CD Architect to be one of the most brilliantly-designed single-use interfaces of any program I've ever used, to be honest. Even the very old versions are far more functional for the single purpose of making audio CDs than any other software I've ever tried for that purpose. Its one serious missing function is the ability to write directly to an ISO image or WAV with cuesheet, though it does support creating an encapsulated WAV+cuesheet that is usable only by it.]

For pretty much everything else I use Nero. I find Nero too slow for [gapless] audio CD layout [because it doesn't pre-render images and its editing facilities are in fact simply slow] but it is functional.

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Currently I have two regular methods of preparing concert audio for CD.

1) I use Adobe Audition for the editing and general 'post production', and I have track markers (points, not ranges) at the beginning of each song (or whatever), including one at the start. Audition inserts these, together with the annotations I provide for each marker, into the final wave file. I then open the file in CueListTool (freeware), read in the markers from the wave file using the button provided, and then click the button to create a cue sheet. CueListTool then calls Nero with the cue sheet as part of the command line, and Nero does the burning, CD text and all. You can use CueListTool to do all the marker creation if you don't want to do that in your editing software. Audition does have its own burning facility but for various reasons I prefer to use the method described, which also works with Cool Edit.

2) Alternatively I use Reaper (currently freeware while it's still in beta) for the editing etc, and then use the procedure described in http://www.cockos.com/forum/showthread.php?t=957 to create a cue sheet. The method is a very weird way to do it, and I rather hope the Reaper developers will improve on it in due course, but it works. Then I simply drag the cue sheet onto the Burrn (freeware) program icon, and hey presto, out comes a CD a couple of minutes later.

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Despite what I've said about uploading post-editing [on the unit] working fine, I'd upload the entire thing -before- editing on the unit just in case.

I'd still recommend as the least stressful and time-consuming methods either combining everything with SS [and adding trackmarks/splits in your editor after] or simply adding everything to the timeline of your editor and subtracting the bits you don't need. I'd get carpal tunnel trying to deal with that many trackmarks on the unit itself.

For CD-burning, I tend to take my projects to a friend who has CD Architect. There are certain things it doesn't do [such as CD-Text] but otherwise it's a straight redbook CD layout editor that you can actually do all your basic editing right on the timeline of if you prefer. [i find CD Architect to be one of the most brilliantly-designed single-use interfaces of any program I've ever used, to be honest. Even the very old versions are far more functional for the single purpose of making audio CDs than any other software I've ever tried for that purpose. Its one serious missing function is the ability to write directly to an ISO image or WAV with cuesheet, though it does support creating an encapsulated WAV+cuesheet that is usable only by it.]

For pretty much everything else I use Nero. I find Nero too slow for [gapless] audio CD layout [because it doesn't pre-render images and its editing facilities are in fact simply slow] but it is functional.

OK. Thanks. Will upload everything.

If I use Audacity for editing will I need a cue sheet to burn the CD using, say, Nero?Sorry if I sound a bit thick but this is my first experience of burning a CD from my own recording!

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When you open a .wav track for editing, Audacity does all its editing in its own format, .aup. The Save command in Audacity actually saves an .aup file. However, Audacity always offers you the oddly named option to Export as .wav--that is, to save the track as a .wav file.

So edit each track and then Export it as a .wav into a folder with the other tracks. (It's probably a good idea to name them in numerical order, like 01-Artist-Songname, when you Export them.) Then just open Nero Express, Add them to a CD Project and Burn. No cue sheet necessary.

Edited by A440
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