You're buying a "grab-bag" of loops to create your own compositions. That's the general idea. I don't think the idea is recreate the audio preview track. What is the point of that?. You can buy some of the audio preview tracks as songs at Producer Planet.

I think the lack of MAGIX Soundpook Browser in ACID Pro is a problem. This is not an issue in Samplitude, for example, as the Soundpool manager makes using the Loop packs a breeze

ACID basically has Windows explorer docked into the DAW. Doesn't even show you the [native] tempo of the Loops..

You're buying a "grab-bag" of loops to create your own compositions. That's the general idea. I don't think the idea is recreate the audio preview track. What is the point of that?. You can buy some of the audio preview tracks as songs at Producer Planet.

Well, no, that's not the general idea when you pay for a "score." For the last hundred years or so you'd go to a commercial music house and pay for a "needle drop" and come back with a "score" you could immediately lay under film. You could cut and splice it any way you wanted, but it started out as a piece of whole composition. That's what a "score" is, as opposed to a bag of samples. If it's just a loop kit sell it as a loop kit.

The advantage of starting with a "score" as represented in the audio preview should be obvious even if you plan to totally scramble it eventually, inasmuch as they are arranged in verses, bridges, choruses, and in my case lyrics written to be sung in a specific order under specific instrumentation. But if what you get has nothing to do with what you heard in preview, you ought to be warned ahead of purchase. If what you get for your money is nothing like the preview, just call it a loop collection like any other. There's nothing special at all about PP's "score" collections in that case.

@Royce-Lerwick

One of the main reasons, I believe, that people get ACID or Music Maker is to use loops to create songs, or to create loops to make songs. If you just want to add a song to a video, you do it in a video editor, not ACID.

I suggest that you look at the screen to see what it is that you are actually purchasing before buying.

Here is the screen from Producer Planet under Score:

Loops & Samples or Songs.

You probably went with Loops & Samples which gives this when you select one:

and that is what you got.

When you should have selected Songs, to get this:

@Royce-Lerwick

One of the main reasons, I believe, that people get ACID or Music Maker is to use loops to create songs, or to create loops to make songs. If you just want to add a song to a video, you do it in a video editor, not ACID.

I suggest that you look at the screen to see what it is that you are actually purchasing before buying.

Here is the screen from Producer Planet under Score:

Loops & Samples or Songs.

You probably went with Loops & Samples which gives this when you select one:

and that is what you got.

When you should have selected Songs, to get this:

 

The web site, the company itself is named "PRODUCER Planet." So with all due respect, it's interesting that you presume Acid and its casual (but larger) user base has anything to do with my point about actually "producing" film and video. I think you'll find that the word "score" in the context of "production" is synonymous with music for "scoring" film and video. Even if you're in your mom's basement "scoring" your MST3K-like gaming talkback "production," for giggles alone, you're going to want all the convenience as well as flexibility that SHOULD be inherent to any purchase of any product called a "score."

You do know that Acid is boasted as a premier film scoring/fx sweetening platform for allegedly professional film/video production no? Do you even know Acid has a video preview window and a host of functions specifically to do that job? So yes, most low-end buyers of Acid just want to spend fifty bucks tops to make basement EDM for the fun of it, having nothing to do with SCOREing a film. Having said that, Magix and its predecessors have been hyping Acid and Vegas as professional film editing and scoring platforms for some 15 or 20 years now.

You're wrong also on your observations that I should have bought a "song." Because what I wanted was a SCORE. Fore one thing, your screen shots don't explain anything, yet you present them as if "score" says: "Just a bag of loops like any other with no project file," and "song" says, "A bag of loops with an Acid project file that assembles them into a SONG." I don't know how you could have missed my primary point of including an Acid project file in a bag of "score" loops. Or "song" loops for that matter. I don't think I mentioned expecting to get a plain one-shot long stereo sample file of an orchestra. No, what I wanted was a SCORE with an Acid project file to actually turn all those random loops into a coherent SCORE. Don't know how you missed that.

Laying down a one-shot full length audio track is nothing at all like having a modular SCORE with multiple parts stacked both vertically and linearly in chronological and compositional order. IE: A group of strings, say, violins on track 1, over cello and bass strings on track 2, and so on down to brass, guitars, percussion, vocals and whatever, measure by measure stacked in line and in compositional sync. There's a limited amount you can do with a locked stereo mix of a score, but having the raw score in sync and modularized means you can shuffle and scramble the whole arrangement at will with no effort to speak of. It's simply a great, no-brainer asset Producer Planet chose to throw away simply by not including the Rosetta Stone of the score, the key to immediately assemble the score box of parts into an actual score, the Acid project file used to present the allegedly final product in preview. And I agree with you, they've never thought of this apparently because they've set their market for folks like you, who don't know what I'm even talking about at this point.

In any case the SCORE with WORDS in it that I wanted to buy was not in the SONGS collection. (Which is pretty lame in good part.) In fact, I bought three or four packages of "scores" with and without lyrics, and paid commercial rights to use them, based on the general mood and theme of each heard in preview. While not worthless, trying to re-create the effect assembled in the audio previews in Acid (or any number of other DAWs) without a project file is almost as much work as just hand-recording a totally original score in Mixcraft, Acid, or Vegas, (in my case) using MIDI and virtual instruments--the very thing buying a SCORE is supposed to alleviate.

Also, have YOU actually bought a SONG, and if so, are they just a stereo mix of a single unbroken sample, as they appear to be, or are they, as I describe, broken down into components and come with a project file to assemble them? Because the SONGS link seems to be just one-shot stereo files, even though, in that category you will still find listed "scores." As I say, decades ago you've go buy a "needle drop" and come back with a tape of an orchestra or whatever, but that's stone age technology and a stone age approach, though far better in some ways than to a grab bag of random samples and play a musical game of Tetris. At least you'd be coming back with the themes you heard at the sound licensing house and could splice and dice a bit to customize.

For what it's worth, my main interest at the moment is video/film, I just paid 299.00 US to upgrade from Vegas 11 Pro (which worked flawlessly on my machine) to 16 Pro, specifically to get better video tricks. When that didn't really work well with my gear, I took a shot and upgraded for another 199.00 US to 17 Pro, which unfortunately fixed none of the quirks, failures, lockups and crashes, mostly related to any of the really neat "improvements" in video fx I was promised, and on top of that I just underwent a "major update" of some 697 megs that probably replaced the whole program, and that did nothing. I also upgraded to Acid 9 Pro for another 160.00 US (which I had to unlock the hidden system files to find and execute the update download because Vegas wouldn't let it run automatically) even though I don't use it much any more but thank God, that at least seems to still be fully functional. My next step seems to be laying out another two or three grand on a fully compatible GPU and other hardware, in a new system, if I expect to run this software.

In summary, over the last ten years I have about 1500.00 US invested in Sonic Foundry/Sony/Magix software centered primarily around audio recording/mixing, and film/video editing. 90 bucks to test out three PP "scores" in my latest project is a drop in the bucket. I can afford to buy loop packs all over that web site without looking close at what I buy if I feel like it. Don't lose any sleep over it mate. The sad thing is they've got some great product, I really like the "scores" I bought, but there's really no excuse not to include the Acid project files that actually assemble the product into exactly what I listened to and thought I was buying. Somebody really ought to pass this info on to PP, because they're really missing a trick.

Guess I know better now. But my question remains: Is there a way to get the actual Acid project file to assemble a PP score?

But my question remains: Is there a way to get the actual Acid project file to assemble a PP score?

To answer the question above, you should ask Magix. All I can tell you is that the song that is played is a demo of one of the moods of what can be done with the loops that you get.

Likewise, Magix sells Soundpools which are collections of loops for different instruments for use in MusicMaker. I have more than a hundred of these. Only a few came with an arrangement, and these arrangements are next to useless for scoring a video, and I would expect that the demo "songs" that you heard on Producer Planet would not be any better. You would still have to modify everything to make it fit the video.

See the video in this link on how to use loops and samples for scoring. This is what one does with the loops in ACID, MusicMaker and Samplitude.

Magix has a SoundTrack Maker that comes with Movie Edit Pro and Video Pro X. It takes a style with several moods, you can set mood change points and emotions, and adjust the length more or less. It uses loops and a compiled soundtrack file for MusicMaker that can be opened and edited to try to score a video. But, it doesn't give you a modified MusicMaker file based on the selected length, mood, emotions and mood changes that one could open in the DAW and modify (I would really like that).

Magix also has a Song Maker for Music Maker that generate a "song" from the loops based on what you indicate in the interface. See below. It is rudimentary, usually will not fit with anything, but it does supply a structure. I have ACID 7, and I don't see such a feature in it. I don't know if there is anything in ACID 9 that would generate such a thing, which would likely be similar to the demo song.

It is extremely difficult to make adjustments to a pre-set song composed of loops, which is what you seem to want, and make that fit with what is happening in a video. But, it may at least give you a song with chord progressions, and intro, verse, maybe a chorus and bridge, and an outro to start to work with.

So, ask Magix for the ACID files of the demo songs that you purchased. Maybe they will give them to you.

John CB