Hi John C.B.

I understand your answer but surely Magix Soundtrack Maker is only for those people who can compose music and make it sound good, I can't so rely on Smartsound.

Magix IMO would make alot of new customers if they allowed Smartsound into their fold!

Perhaps Magix has a reply too?

Hi,

Soundtrack Maker (SM) is not to be confused with Music Maker, which is a separate program. SM is part of MEP and it makes music similar to Smartsound, using existing music files. I suggest that you insert a dozen or so photos on the timeline, then go to Edit, Wizards, Soundtrack Maker. You select a music style from the list, a mood from the right side table, and you can have the mood change at a chosen location by clicking on Add emotion. Uncheck Automatic cut adjustment at the bottom before continuing. This option re-arranges the video and photo objects in your project to match the music and you may not want this. Press on Create soundtrack and it will create one using the options that you have selected.

On the SM screen, there is also an option to Apply style to selected range, which you can set up before going into SM if you only want to apply music to part of your project.

This is like Smartsound, except that Smartsound is more intelligent and can handle almost any length, and musically terminates the song. SM uses predefined lengths and tries to match things up and either makes cuts (reasonably well) and then uses the end of the song to terminate it or simply fades out. Usually the song does not match the desired length.

Another alternative in MEP, is to use SlideShow Maker. There are many more styles available here, for some reason and it is not all that obvious.  You can choose a style, change all transitions and effects to none, and then select background music. On the background music screen, click on load file(s) and you will see the list of SlideShow music styles/folders that are in the ProgramData... folders. Open a folder and select a song (ogg file). It will be added to the bottom of the list. You can drag it to the top. Note the Size in minutes of the file. That is how long the song will play for. Anything less will simply be a fade out. Go to Properties & title and change the top choice to "Adapt music length to movie." Then  uncheck Group associated recordings together. Apply. Then click on Create movie (preview) and run it to hear the result. Finally, Apply. The problem with this option is that there is no option to do only a selected range; it does the entire movie, which is often not what one wants.

Finally, you can also simply drag and drop the ogg files onto the timeline and adjust the length and fadeout the end yourself. Go throught the C:\ProgramData\MAGIX\Movie Edit Pro 2014 Plus folder searching for ogg and wav files. You actually have a lot of music to play with, it's just that you do not get the same control as using Smartsound.

Hi

. . . . but surely Magix Soundtrack Maker is only for those people who can compose music . . . .

Not at all - have you tried using it? I find it very useful sometimes.

@ JohnCB

. . . . SM uses predefined lengths and tries to match things up and either makes cuts (reasonably well) . . . This option re-arranges the video and photo objects in your project to match the music and you may not want this . . . .

Only if you accept the defaults it uses - you can specify where the emotion changes occur and turn off the automatic cutting.

John

Hi again,

Further to my last posting, I looked at the differences in music between SlideShow Maker and Soundtrack Maker (SM). I learned something new.

In SM, the ogg files are mostly soundpools with different instruments, which allows SM to mix and match and create songs from the soundpools. The instruments oggs are usually very short, from 1 to 4 bars and they have different tones.

There are also base ogg files with the various moods. These are compositions of equal or different lengths, for example all of the ones under Classical such as ScoreAction, ScoreEmotional, ScoreMeasured are all 1 minute in length. Those in other musical styles are different lengths. These may be the preview files as they are not used in the MusicMaker compositions. They are prepared compilations of the instruments. These could be simply dragged onto the timeline for short compositions, the length modified and fade-in/out used.

What binds the ogg files together is the MusicMaker (MMM) file that contains the various arrangements.

You can make up your own arrangements in MEP using the supplied files, and this may be desirable especially if you are musically inclined. You may just want one or two instruments to repeat for several bars. You simply drag them onto the timeline in MEP onto different tracks and then repeat them. This method is similar to creating songs from soundpools in MusicMaker.  Try it out.

I looked at the MMM file in Music Maker to see how the songs for one style are composed. They combined the elements, ogg files, to create each of the songs and each has a name as per the style/mood. There is an intro, main part and an outro. Some of the elements (ogg) are included but muted. I presume that SM is actually using an MMM engine that takes the compilation from the MMM file, mixes down the song and inserts it into MEP. For various lengths, it reduces the main part of the song, uses the intro and outro, and tries to come close to the requested length, but can't, because the program does not change the tempo, as far as I can tell, and that all of the elements are probably a minimum of 1 bar long. For adding emotions, SM probably unmutes some of the muted files.

Since I have MMM, I can copy the MMM file and make my own modifications. For example, if there are vocals, like in the Brazilian beach style, I can remove them if I don't want them. Hmmmm, I can change the tempo somewhat (but not the pitch) to get the song to the length that I want. Great! I just found a new feature.

But wait, I can also change the tempo in MEP. When you create a song from Soundtrack Maker, click on the audio object and from the top menu, select Effects, Audio objec effects, Timestretch/resample. A toolbox will appear. Simply drag the Tempo knob around and watch the length of the audio object change - shorter or longer depending on which way you go. With this, you can adjust the length. I don't suggest changing it by very much or it may not sound too good.

While on the subject, I said to turn off Automatic cut adjustment. You can try it with this option on and you will see that the lengths of the objects, photos in particular, and videos, will be modified to suit the music. This should make image changes from one photo to the next correspond to the beat of the music. This is a desirable feature.

Lots of things to play with.

The Slideshow Maker ogg files are all songs; there are no separate instruments. As I said, they can simply be dragged onto the timeline and adjusted.

Your query about Smartsound got me looking closer at the Magix possibilities and I have discovered more than I was aware of and I have some new ideas. For that, I thank you.

Let me know if you try out Soundtrack Maker.

I will have a look at your suggestion but I really would like to use the numerous Smartsound discs I have collected over the years if I am to use MEP for my main editor program...

You can use the Smartsound output files. Create your song to the length that you want in Smartsound, export it to a WAV file and save it somewhere, like in a subfolder of Magix projects in My Documents. Simply drag the file onto the timeline in MEP.

Alternatively, export your video or a range from your video from MEP to one of the formats supported by Smartsound. Import it into Smartsound, score it and export only the Smartsound wav file. Then import the wav file into MEP at the desired location. Complete the sound editing in MEP.

Hi

Looking more into Smartsound -

IMHO it is not a Magix failure to implement Smartsound,  but Smartsound's failure to providing a plug-in which is compatible with MEP or VPX - they have plugins for Premiere, After Effects, Avid / Pinnacle and FCP.

Perhaps this topic ought to be taken with Smartsound?

John

Hi,

I contacted SmartSound. Here is the reply:

Unfortunately there are not currently any plans for creating a plugin for Magix Movie Edit Pro. You can, however, use Sonicfire Pro as a standalone program and export out a .wav or .aif file which you can then manually import into your project.

I replied back that there were interested Magix users. In the meantime, the methods that I outlined previously are the best we can do.

Until we get a plugin, there is a third alternative for anyone with one of the other products. Instead of importing the video into SmartSound, import it into the other product for which you have the plugin. Create the song to fit the video, export it and then import the resulting audio file into MEP. Keep the project in the other product in case of any need future changes. However, this is about equivalent to importing the video into SmartSound.