importing audio files

deborahjeancrain · Post by **deborahjeancrain** » Sun May 31, 2009 12:47 am

what types of audio files can be imported into anime studio debut 6?

synthsin75 · Post by **synthsin75** » Sun May 31, 2009 2:25 am

WAV

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Sun May 31, 2009 7:49 am

AS 6 now supports importing mp3 format. However AS can't EXPORT to mp3. If for example you are going to export to SWF and you have bunches of different audio layers it will NOT export a new mp3 with the composited audio. If you need to export to SWF you still need a "single" mp3 audio file that is created by some other application. AS will import this single audio layer as MP3 and when you export to SWF that file will use the mp3 file. It just won't create a new one from multiple audio sources.

You can however use mp3 format for many audio layers and export to mov or avi format and the audio will be converted.

-vern

synthsin75 · Post by **synthsin75** » Sun May 31, 2009 9:03 am

OMG, mp3 audio import!

Post by **Víctor Paredes** » Sun May 31, 2009 7:39 pm

heyvern wrote:You can however use mp3 format for many audio layers and export to mov or avi format and the audio will be converted.

Oh, this a huge little feature!

etherpictures · Post by **etherpictures** » Sun May 31, 2009 10:27 pm

ogg? FLAC?

I also assume it will convert mp3s to flv for youtube?

NetGenSuperstar · Post by **NetGenSuperstar** » Sun May 31, 2009 10:40 pm

FLV is just a container format. It contains either H.263 or VP6 video, and MP3 audio.

I would love support for Ogg Vorbis or FLAC audio, but I'm just happy I checked back here just in time to find out about ASP6 in the first place. Which is worth the money based on the demo. Time to save up...

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Sun May 31, 2009 11:47 pm

I don't know about those other sound formats. All I know is that mp3 is still under patent. If you create an application that CREATES NEW mp3 files from other audio formats or from mp3 the developer has to pay a licensing fee to the mp3 patent holder.

So, Anime Studio 6 can open an mp3. It can even export out modified audio IN A DIFFERENT FORMAT that is not mp3... but it can't export to a NEW mp3.

The other issue is the complexity and variations of mp3. If for arguments sake, AS did export to mp3 it would require all those gizmos and settings for the different bit rates and compression etc. It's not practical when there are so many other tools available to do that. That would be a HUGE feature. A ton of work just to export audio in a different format.

-----
After seeing the new audio layer feature and how powerful it was, I had requested an "audio only export" but it was too late in the game to add that in. But not a big deal really....

Export your movie to QT or AVI from AS. Find some tool that extracts the audio from video (I use QT pro). Save that audio and convert it to mp3. I am sure there are probably free tools out there to extract audio from a video file. Then you could use Audacity or even iTunes to convert wav to mp3.

So you can do all of your animation and audio compositing... foley... layering the sound, music etc in Anime Studio. Export a really low res movie with sound. Extract the sound and convert to mp3.

Another trick Mike Clifton mentioned to me. When AS renders, the audio file is stored as a wav in a "temp" location. He indicated it would be possible to access that temp "audio only" file and no extraction is needed. I haven't tested this out yet.

I can use QT pro and iTunes if I need to convert audio to mp3.

-vern

Mikdog · Post by **Mikdog** » Mon Jun 01, 2009 2:10 am

Well, I for one am hugely looking forward to testing out AS6. Might wait for the pro version. And the audio abilities sound totally awesome. Very, very cool.

NetGenSuperstar · Post by **NetGenSuperstar** » Mon Jun 01, 2009 2:59 am

heyvern wrote:I don't know about those other sound formats. All I know is that mp3 is still under patent.

That's true, I forgot about that. FLAC and Vorbis, however, were designed to be patent-free from the start. See here for more info, if you're interested. Basically, Vorbis is an open-source equivalent to MP3, and FLAC is an open-source lossless audio compression format.

Actually, it looks like libsndfile supports reading FLAC format anyway. I don't know how Anime Studio uses the library, but that means it should be able to import a FLAC file already. I'll have to try that.

EDIT: Nope. Not a big deal, but FLAC importing would be nice for the future, especially since the library Anime Studio uses already supports it.

etherpictures · Post by **etherpictures** » Mon Jun 01, 2009 6:03 am

I forgot that FLV is a container format.
I would assume the audio import/export would not be a big issue for most users of AS. For any larger projects It would make more sense to import the AS renders into another application first anyways.

But yes. MP3 importing is huge anyway you look at it!

I user super C for a windows encoder, it has audio only exports, and is free.
http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html

Post by **Lost Marble** » Mon Jun 01, 2009 6:15 pm

Actually, Anime Studio natively imports WAV and AIFF (and a few more uncommon formats). However, if you have QuickTime installed (the free version is fine), Anime Studio will use QuickTime to transcode any format that QuickTime supports.

So MP3 is only supported if you have QuickTime. But then you can also import AAC (MPEG-4), Apple Lossless, the audio tracks of movie files, etc.