I am hopeful with all the technical upgrades to SoundForge 15 they included punch and roll. Without it, I am not likely to upgrade until they have it or as a plug in of some kind.
Hi @Peter-Brooks, Sound Forge Pro has always had pre and post roll record options. I am not very familiar with the lower cost Audio Studio versions.
FWIW, Sound Forge is a multi-channel editing application and really not designed for sound-on-sound overdubbing, if that is your desire. A multi-track application is much better suited for that task. ProTools, Samplitude and the free Audacity are among multi-track options. Vegas Pro video also has a substantial multi-track DAW built in that has punch-in/out record options, and can be integrated with Sound Forge.
I agree with you. However, if you notice in 15 they ARE positioning themselves as a voice-over solution aimed at the ACX market. Well, I can tell you as a narrator, if they don't have punch and roll, they aren't going very far.
Every time we have to cough or someone interrupts and we have to stop recording, we can go back to where we left off with a runway so we can get up to speed and carry on the rhythm. That's called punch and roll.
Does sound forge pro have that capability?
@Peter-Brooks, recording in SF is not as intuitive as punch in/out on a pro reel-to-reel machine but it can be done.
Without having a manual (*hot-key) to punch-in on the fly, which SF does not currently have without a custom *script, you will have to calculate the pre-roll duration. For instance, if the previous sentence is 10 seconds, go to "View> Record Options". Set the 'Method' parameter to 'Manual'; Open the "Settings" options, check-mark 'Pre-roll' and enter 10:00 seconds; Set 'Mode' to "Normal" or "Create regions"
Set the 'Monitor' mode to "Auto"; Place the cursor at the punch-in point and select "Record" transport icon or Ctrl+R.
If 'Stop' (Spacebar) is selected. the cursor will return the previous point on the timeline for a 'do-over' and overwrite the current data. If "Pause" (Enter key) is selected, the cursor will stop at that point.
Arm (record ready) is a preference setting and will open the mic prior to 'Record' and in Record Pause ..
Starting on page 177, the SFP-15 manual, covers parameters, settings and scenarios in depth.
Markers can also be inserted on-the-fly (with the M key) to ID edit points. Regions can be an option as well in record>pause>record. Coughs and such are easier to edit out than doing a punch-ins (at least from an engineer's stand-point). Try out the Pro-15 demo to find out if it will work for you.
* Read this article: https://www.voiceoverxtra.com/article.htm?id=os8e0h14
The article states SF does not have pre-roll. SF Pro does have pre and post-roll, The script however is for SFP-10, so would it need to be altered for SFP-15 and other versions.
I can't say, I'm any longer up to speed on what direction Sound Forge is heading. Honestly, I'm pretty confused with seeing features such as "record up to 32 tracks of audio" in Sound Forge and have yet to even play around with multi-track recording of audio in Sound Forge.
I've worked in professional voice over studios and will say the best overall workflow feature set I have worked with for voice over on a PC is Magix's Vegas. I understand "Sound Forge" is more popular with the audio community than Vegas is currently, but Vegas started off as a DAW and as such, got a lot of multi-track audio features during those early development years. I'll also add, at the time of those early Vegas developments I was working in the pro vo work studio using a Neve Audiofile editor and was part of the Vegas beta test team, where I worked pretty closely with the Sonic Foundry developers in outlining the workflow typically used for voice over recording and editing since that was part of their vision at the time for Vegas, to focus it towards video editing and audio vo post work.
You should love the punch-in/out roll recording features in Vegas with it's multiple take selections at the punch-in/out points on a single track as well as the using the trimmer window tab for adding Sound Fx's and music to your voice over project. The audio editing features in Vegas for VO editing is 2nd to none with it's slip editing features for getting rid of those deep breaths and interrupted reads and stumbles no one likes. Really the only features Vegas didn't get to mimic the Neve Audiofile was my suggestion to add a record feature to the trimmer tab, via "Source Record" function from the Neve audiofile. However, that feature can be done through other methods in Vegas by inserting a new audio track, and soloing that track.
I would venture to say, if the price of investing in the full version of Vegas is a concern, even getting the $50 Vegas Studio Platinum version at this point would be better working with Voice Overs than Sound Forge, and then anything you find you can't do in Vegas is just a right click away via the "Open in Sound Forge" feature which is built into Vegas. You just select the audio event in Vegas, right click and do whatever task you would do in Sound Forge, click save in Sound Forge, and all your changes are right there synced in Vegas.
I honestly feel you may be mistakenly headed down a path of trying to use a screwdriver for Vo work when you would really prefer a hammer when trying to do voice over work in Sound Forge. Not to say you aren't correct in thinking Sound Forge's current direction is to do voice over work as you mentioned, but I will say it's years behind what Vegas can already do and since Vegas has close integration with Sound Forge, you would still benefit by owning Sound Forge.
Rednroll, can you make a video showing this?