FUQ (eff -yu - cue) - FAQ's with an EDGE

Tagged As: Sonar Music

Question:
Why wouldn't you use Sonar to produce the music, and something like Vegas to produce the video which has your Sonar music and footsteps as separate finished music and sound effects tracks?

Answer:
I'm not quite clear on the question, but I think you mean why not do music in Sonar & sound effects / dialog in something like Vegas?. My answer is based on that interpretation. I don't do any of the video editing, just music / post production audio. The biggest reason for me is that I hate using multiple pieces that have to be locked together with timecode. When I first got into scoring, I was using a Roland DM-80 (yuk!!!) for a DAW (later replaced by DAL V-8), Cakewalk for MIDI (version 6.0 I think, but can't remember for sure), and a Sony 3/4 video deck. They were all sync'ed via a MOTU MTP AV, with SMPTE coming from the video deck. When I would play on the video deck, it would take close to 10 seconds for everything to lock up. Talk about killing the creative flow! Once Sonar came out, and it looked like Cakewalk finally had the audio thing together, I couldn't wait to start doing everything in Sonar and I became a thorn in our video editor's side until he figured out an efficient way to get me video files instead of tapes as work dubs. Granted, a program in the same box won't take as long to lock up, but it will still take a few seconds as either Sonar or Vegas will have to be a Master clock, and supply MIDI time code to the other. I have a work around for the lack of locked clips that for me is preferable. Because I prefer having everything in one project, I've been moving more & more to soft synths & relying less on outboard stuff. It's common in the radio/ TV production business for a client to want to update a 6 month old or even year old commercial with a new tag line. Restore the entire project & it's all there. Less to deal with - makes for better efficiency. Keeps the clients comin' back for more! anyway- that's all just my preference.