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Sampling sounds from video footage (for Dummies!)


Percepto

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I am a Sonar Platinum/Native Instruments K10U/Vegas Pro user who hasn't yet installed the "new" CBB. I haven't done any music production for over 2 years (my son is now 2 1/2, there maybe a correlation!?)
I'm just about to receive my new desktop pc which should make music and video editing fun again!
My question:
I have footage from my EOS 5D from which I want to make percussive sound effects. Bearing in mind that my Kontrol keyboard is gathering dust and even opening CBB and K10U will be a culture shock, what is the easiest/most effective way to sample these sounds and play them back in my DAW?
Many thanks in advance
Chris

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Hey Percepto!

Welcome back to creating!

I'm a little confused from your post. You're saying you have footage from the EOS 5D which is a camera, and you want to make percussive sound effects from it? One is a graphic file (from camera) and one is an audio or related file (percussive sound effect). Not sure I get the correlation. Any clarification would be helpful.

 

Edited by razor7music
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Well I see two possible questions regarding different tasks here.

#1 is extracting the audio file from the video. If Vegas can export the audio directly from a video file, well then that part is done. If not, then using something like the free Audacity will let you record audio from any Windows application. Just play the video in Vegas and capture an audio track in Audacity. Done!

#2 mapping slices of the audio to a keyboard. Well since Cakewalk doesn't really include a sampler suited for this task, you will probably need a 3rd party sampler plugin for this part. Since you already have Komplete, there is probably something in there you can use for that.

 

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For percussive sounds you can load them into Session drummer.  

I make my own sound effects and it's super easy. 

Record the sounds. Load them into Wave lab , normalize, top and tail. You want to cut right to the absolute beginning of the sound. 

These are wave files. Browse to the Session drummer folder.

Programs Files/ Cakewalk/ VST plug ins/ Session Drummer 3 /Contents / Kits. 

Drop the files into a new folder and call it "My Samples"  (or??) 

Now open Session Drummer and assign the samples to kit pieces. 

It's was so cool to sample my acoustic drum kit and load it up and hear SD3 playing my kit! But I also sampled things like Tamborine, wood blocks and a railroad spike among others. I'm just about to re do some brush sounds as I just scored a set of wire brushes at the Goodwill store for $5. 

As said it's easy to edit and export the audio using Vegas. Only reason I see not to use a Camera is it would be much better to have the samples as WAVE files rather than compressed audio from a camera.  A Zoom or Tascam handy recorders are great for this stuff.  

Edited by Cactus Music
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20 minutes ago, Cactus Music said:

For percussive sounds you can load them into Session drummer.  

 

Record the sounds. Load them into Wave lab , normalize, top and tail. You want to cut right to the absolute beginning of the sound. 

These are wave files. Browse to the Session drummer folder.

Programs Files/ Cakewalk/ VST plug ins/ Session Drummer 3 /Contents / Kits. 

Drop the files into a new folder and call it "My Samples"  (or??) 

Now open Session Drummer and assign the samples to kit pieces. 

This sounds very cool to do.  I have SD 3, but I got lost when you said to load them into Wave lab.
 

Is that something we all have in CbB?

Can you explain a little more?

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1 hour ago, Toddskins said:

I got lost when you said to load them into Wave lab.

It's a .wav editor. You can use the free Audacity for the same functions. Or, since you're a Vegas user, maybe you also have Sound Forge. These are all the same type of application. Note you could also use CbB to do this, but the others are more focused on .wav file editing.

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11 hours ago, razor7music said:

Hey Percepto!

Welcome back to creating!

I'm a little confused from your post. You're saying you have footage from the EOS 5D which is a camera, and you want to make percussive sound effects from it? One is a graphic file (from camera) and one is an audio or related file (percussive sound effect). Not sure I get the correlation. Any clarification would be helpful.

 

It is HD video footage.

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7 hours ago, abacab said:

Well I see two possible questions regarding different tasks here.

#1 is extracting the audio file from the video. If Vegas can export the audio directly from a video file, well then that part is done. If not, then using something like the free Audacity will let you record audio from any Windows application. Just play the video in Vegas and capture an audio track in Audacity. Done!

#2 mapping slices of the audio to a keyboard. Well since Cakewalk doesn't really include a sampler suited for this task, you will probably need a 3rd party sampler plugin for this part. Since you already have Komplete, there is probably something in there you can use for that.

 

Yes, I can extract the sounds using Vegas Pro.
Thanks

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5 hours ago, Cactus Music said:

For percussive sounds you can load them into Session drummer.  

I make my own sound effects and it's super easy. 

Record the sounds. Load them into Wave lab , normalize, top and tail. You want to cut right to the absolute beginning of the sound. 

These are wave files. Browse to the Session drummer folder.

Programs Files/ Cakewalk/ VST plug ins/ Session Drummer 3 /Contents / Kits. 

Drop the files into a new folder and call it "My Samples"  (or??) 

Now open Session Drummer and assign the samples to kit pieces. 

It's was so cool to sample my acoustic drum kit and load it up and hear SD3 playing my kit! But I also sampled things like Tamborine, wood blocks and a railroad spike among others. I'm just about to re do some brush sounds as I just scored a set of wire brushes at the Goodwill store for $5. 

As said it's easy to edit and export the audio using Vegas. Only reason I see not to use a Camera is it would be much better to have the samples as WAVE files rather than compressed audio from a camera.  A Zoom or Tascam handy recorders are great for this stuff.  

This is great advice thanks.
What is "Wavelab"? I remember this being a Steinberg program, but is there something with a similar name in the new CBB?
I can do the normalising and editing the audio in Vegas Pro anyway.
I take your point about audio quality too, but the visuals are more important than the audio. That said, I'll definitely look into your suggestions.
I wouldn't have thought about using Session Drummer, even though it is obvious now you have suggested it!
Thanks again.

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3 hours ago, Larry Jones said:

It's a .wav editor. You can use the free Audacity for the same functions. Or, since you're a Vegas user, maybe you also have Sound Forge. These are all the same type of application. Note you could also use CbB to do this, but the others are more focused on .wav file editing.

Thanks, should have read your reply before asking the same question!
I used to use (and love!) Soundforge back in the days when it was Sonic Foundry. For music production it was a fantastic tool, but I can extract and edit (for this project) the audio directly in Vegas Pro. My question was specifically aimed at CBB (and KU10) users as there may have been a better tool in there that I wasn't aware of.
The Session Drummer idea from Cactus Music is the way to go for playback, especially as I already know SD sufficiently well.
Thanks

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6 hours ago, Larry Jones said:

It's a .wav editor. You can use the free Audacity for the same functions. Or, since you're a Vegas user, maybe you also have Sound Forge. These are all the same type of application. Note you could also use CbB to do this, but the others are more focused on .wav file editing.

Ok, thanks.  I actually have a Wave Editor 2 by CyberLink (the very popular DVD Blu-Ray software company), that I have not even used once.

So you use the Wave Editor for just that purpose - to edit the wave and prepare it for use in whatever sample playback system you have, i.e. Session Drummer 3.

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A real Wave editor just does the job faster and without fuss.  

I like Wave Lab's workflow out of all the ones I've used. It's the fastest. I paid $99 a few years ago and it has paid for itself a million times ove.   I also like http://www.goldwave.ca/    free to try  and https://acondigital.com/products/acoustica-audio-editor/    which also is free to try.  Gold wave has the best batch converter which I use to convert my Wave masters to MP3.  Faster than re-exporting a song.  There is a older free version of Acoustica found here https://acondigital.com/downloads/   along with a bunch of free VST's on this page. see Acoustica 6 

 

You open the file, takes 10 seconds to edit and then save it. done.  Doing this in a DAW would take too many steps. 

As I said what you want is to normalize the file so it's as loud as possible I give mine a peak of  - 2db.  

Then you zoom in and cut the beginning tight.  

Then cut off the end were desired. 

Wave files seem to work, not sure about other formats. 

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6 hours ago, Cactus Music said:

A real Wave editor just does the job faster and without fuss.  

I like Wave Lab's workflow out of all the ones I've used. It's the fastest. I paid $99 a few years ago and it has paid for itself a million times ove.   I also like http://www.goldwave.ca/    free to try  and https://acondigital.com/products/acoustica-audio-editor/    which also is free to try.  Gold wave has the best batch converter which I use to convert my Wave masters to MP3.  Faster than re-exporting a song.  There is a older free version of Acoustica found here https://acondigital.com/downloads/   along with a bunch of free VST's on this page. see Acoustica 6 

 

You open the file, takes 10 seconds to edit and then save it. done.  Doing this in a DAW would take too many steps. 

As I said what you want is to normalize the file so it's as loud as possible I give mine a peak of  - 2db.  

Then you zoom in and cut the beginning tight.  

Then cut off the end were desired. 

Wave files seem to work, not sure about other formats. 

Thanks again for your input and links.
I agree that a dedicated Wave editor should be better, but I can't imagine there would be too much of a time-saving as I can do everything you mentioned in Vegas Pro, working directly with the audio in the video file.
I can zoom in to sample accuracy, normalise and export as WAV, MP3 or whatever. I also have the visual reference of whatever it is making the sound, so I can name the samples appropriately and use the video clip in my final production. It sounds obvious, but when I'm sampling the sound of a box cutter, ripping plastic or a barbell dropping on the floor, you can see that they are not typical musical/percussion sounds!

I just re-read my OP and I wasn't precise enough about my aims. 
My question has more to do with collecting all the samples together, making some kind of patch or kit, and then the most effective way to play them from my keyboard in a musical piece.
Your suggestion of Session Drummer and/or abacab's Battery idea, seem to be the way to go.

FYI: I use Xilisoft Video Converter Ultimate to batch convert video and audio, it's very simple and versatile.
http://www.xilisoft.com/video-converter.html
Thanks again, 

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8 hours ago, Percepto said:

Yes, I do, but am not as familiar with it as Session Drummer. Is it a better option? Steep learning curve etc?
Thanks for the input.

Well I don't have Komplete or Battery, so I cannot advise on their use. But I frequently see Battery mentioned as one of the go-to drum sampler instruments by others. Looks very deep, and much more tweakable than Session Drummer, just based on videos I've seen.

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Yes Vegas is one of the most amazing bit of software I’ve bought in years   So well thought out and lots of support from community.  I was blown away when I found it has full vst support and that I can use my Cakewalk plug ins on the audio. 

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17 minutes ago, Cactus Music said:

Yes Vegas is one of the most amazing bit of software I’ve bought in years   So well thought out and lots of support from community.  I was blown away when I found it has full vst support and that I can use my Cakewalk plug ins on the audio. 

I still have a copy of Sonic Foundry Vegas Audio 2 from back before the Sony days. It came out before they made it into a video editor. It was a multi-track DAW for audio, and had many of the simple UI features  in common with other Sonic Foundry products.

Sonic Foundry Vegas Audio 2.0

https://www.mixonline.com/technology/sonic-foundry-vegas-audio-20-370065

So at the core, Vegas is a robust audio editor.

 

Edited by abacab
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12 minutes ago, Cactus Music said:

Yes Vegas is one of the most amazing bit of software I’ve bought in years   So well thought out and lots of support from community.  I was blown away when I found it has full vst support and that I can use my Cakewalk plug ins on the audio. 

I still get puzzled looks when people ask me which editor I use! I'm amazed that it's not more well-known. I've used it from it's Sonic Foundry days too and I found it really intuitive to use even then.
 

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Well that explains it.  I wonder why Sony sold it to Magix. I guess they have bigger fish to fry.  

Anyhow, cool project your working on.  Now I see the need for the video cues too. 

I always wanted to mike up my arm chair. I can play a pretty awsome beat on it.  And then think of what you can do with drum replacer and using crazy samples. 

We once had this guy drum for us ( in front of 1,000 people) on a old  suitcase. The Elvis song Don't be cruel was played on the back of a guitar. 

 

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