SF 15.0 - Project saving and rendering workflow issues

James-Boer wrote on 7/19/2021, 7:01 PM

OS: Windows 10 Professional.

I'm working on some video soundtracks, and have noticed some issues when working with Sound Forge mixed audio-video projects.

Project "save" command acts like "save as"

When you click the "Save" button or menu item, instead of simply saving the project, it acts like "Save As...", opening a file dialog, and forcing you to overwrite the existing project file with a confirmation dialog. This seems a bit ridiculous, as it drastically slows down the normal workflow, in which it is prudent to save often.

Render As dialog doesn't remember previous render target
When I want to render the soundtrack I'm working on, this dialog always defaults to "avi". It should remember the last file type I rendered as. Ideally, I'd like to have a "render" command that remembers this information and no longer asks me. Barring that, it would be nice if the settings were persistent and I didn't constantly have to select the type of type I want to render. This is also somewhat related to the next issue...

Render As (save as) dialog shares previous type info with Save As command.

After you Render As, say, to a wave file, the next time you click on Save (project) (which, again, incorrectly acts like Save As), it shows you a default type of a wave file. The default file type persistence should be context sensitive to the command, not shared for all uses of the dialog. That is, the last type used for Save As and for Render As shouldn't be shared between these two commands.

(Wishlist) Add support for Matroska (mkv) containers.

I'd love to hear if you have any plans addressing these issue. The first one seems particularly egregious, IMO.

Comments

emmrecs wrote on 7/20/2021, 4:14 AM

@James-Boer

Welcome to the Magix user to user forums, so not a contact for any Magix staff, sorry. Hence, it is highly unlikely that your suggestions will be seen by the developers.

If you wish to bring these matters to their attention I can only suggest you email infoservice@magix.net and ask that they forward your ideas.

HTH

Jeff
Forum Moderator

rraud wrote on 7/20/2021, 10:22 AM

Unless I missed something, @James-Boer, you did not state which version of Sound Forge you have (Audio Studio or Pro). SF Pro can not natively replace audio without re-rendering the video.. hence the 'Save as' behavior (which naturally causes generational (quality) loss) to the picture. As I recall, Audio Studio (AS) 12 had a 'muxing' option, but AS-12 was a 'unque' build and I am not sure about subsequent AS versions.. In any case, I have SFP and save a video project's audio track in the pertinent audio format and use a third-party 'muxing' utility to replace a video's embedded audio track. The original picture remains untouched.

SFP 'remembers' the last "Save" format and parameters, I do not know if AS is the same or if there's an option

James-Boer wrote on 7/20/2021, 10:41 AM

I'm using SF Audio Studio.

I think you are misunderstanding. I'm editing a discrete soundtrack with an attached video. SF isn't editing a muxed soundtrack embedded inside a video, so that doesn't explain the Save As behavior. I'm not re-encoding the video, just saving the audio data. There's no reason I can fathom for SF not to save over that data without prompts each time, as the "save" command implies.

rraud wrote on 7/20/2021, 12:53 PM

So you have two separate files, one audio and one video. You 'attach' the video after opening the audio. Once you add video, SF will default to 'save as' since video cannot be saved in an audio format. At least that's way SFP works.. SFAS may differ. To save just the audio, choose the original audio only and overwrite it or create a new audio only file.

James-Boer wrote on 7/20/2021, 6:25 PM

Yes, the video is just attached. It sounds like SFAS works similarly to SFP that way.

I'm not sure I understand the reasoning of your explanation, though. I'm not having SF save any video. It's certainly not re-encoding it each time I save (it's a large HD video, so that would take hours). You can see that it's just an external file sitting in the folder SFAS created under the project file, and the date-time never changes. When I use the Save commend, then click through the Save As dialog and overwrite the project file, only the audio and metadata are saved. There's really no reason this shouldn't be a one-click operation, at least that I can fathom.

From what I can see, the only time video is saved (technically, re-encoded) is when you use the Render As command, in which it allows you to generate a new video file from the content. I suspect a more typical use is to simply render out the final wave file. It would be silly to re-encode the video when all you need to is re-mux it.

Anyhow, I appreciate your response, but it looks like I'll need to e-mail the company if I want to bring this to their attention.

rraud wrote on 7/21/2021, 9:51 AM

You can contact Magix Customer Service at
https://support2.magix.com/customer/en/request
or email: infoservice@magix.net

SF Pro has been that way since attaching video was introduced many moons ago. I am not very familiar with Audio Studio aside from the beta version of AS-12.