Steinberg Nuendo 3 Operation Manual
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NUENDO Export Audio Mixdown 24 – 561 Options When you click the Save button, an Options dialog opens in which you can enter information about the file. This additional information (called the ID3 tag) will be embedded as text strings in the file, and can be displayed by some mp3 playback applications. • For the information to be included in the file, you need to activate the “Insert Options” checkbox in the dialog. Ogg Vorbis files Ogg Vorbis is an open, patent-free audio encoding and streaming technology, offering compressed audio files (extension “.ogg”) of small size but with comparatively high audio quality. The following options are available for Ogg Vorbis files: Channels Use the radio buttons to select mono or stereo files. Sample Rate Determines the frequency range of the audio – the lower the sample rate, the lower the highest audible frequency in the audio. Quality The Ogg Vorbis encoder uses variable bit rate encoding, and the Quality setting determines between which limits the bit rate will vary. Generally speaking the higher the Quality setting, the higher the sound quality but also the larger the files. Options When you click the Save button, an Options dialog opens in which you can enter information about the file, as when creating mp3 files. • For the information to be included in the file, you need to activate the “Insert Options” checkbox in the dialog.
NUENDO 24 – 562 Export Audio Mixdown Real Audio G2 files Real Audio files (extension “.rm”) allow very high compression rates and can therefore be made very small. This makes the format especially use- ful for downloading and streaming multimedia from the internet. The following options are available for Real Audio files: Coding and Content This is where you specify the desired audio quality for the file. In the Real Audio G2 format, this information is divided in two pop-up menus: Coding (determining the bit rate) and Content (specifying the typical audio content – voice, music, etc.). When you select a Coding/Content, a descriptive text appears in the field below the pop-up menu, describing the suitable use of the se- lected format. • Note that the choice of mono or stereo is included in the Coding/Content options. Options When you click the Save button, an Options dialog opens in which you can select one or more modes (each explained in the dialog) for the file. You can also enter information about the file. These text strings will be embedded in the file and can be displayed by some Real Audio playback applications. Windows Media Audio files (Windows only) Windows Media Audio is an audio format developed by Microsoft Inc. Due to advanced audio compression algorithms, Windows Media Au- dio files can be made very small, maintaining good audio quality. The files have the extension “.wma”.
NUENDO Export Audio Mixdown 24 – 563 The following options are available for Windows Media Audio files: Attributes This pop-up menu allows you to select a bit rate for the WMA file. As a rule, the higher the bit rate, the better the audio quality and the larger the file. For stereo audio, 96 kBit/s is often considered to give “good” audio quality. Options When you click the Save button, an Options dialog opens in which you can enter information about the title and author of the file, as well as copyright information and a description. These text strings will be embedded in the file and can be displayed by some Windows Media Audio playback applications. Windows Media Audio Pro files (Windows only) This is a continuation of the Windows Media Audio format (described above) developed by Microsoft Inc. Due to the advanced audio codecs and lossless compression used, WMA Pro files can be decreased in size with no loss of audio quality. Furthermore, WMA Pro features the possibility of mixing down to 5.1 surround sound. The files have the ex- tension “.wma”.
NUENDO 24 – 564 Export Audio Mixdown •Click the Options button to open a dialog in which you can make set- tings for the Windows Media Audio files. When you have made the desired settings, click OK to encode the file. The following options are available: Input Stream Here you set the sample rate (44.1, 48 or 96 khz) and the bit resolu- tion (16 bit or 24 bit) of the encoded file. These should be set to match the sample rate and bit resolution of the source material. If no value matches that of your source material, use the closest highest available value. E.g. if you’re using 20 bit source material, set the bit resolution to 24 bit rather than 16 bit. Encoding Scheme These settings are used for defining the desired output from the en- coder, e.g. whether it should be a stereo file or a 5.1 surround file. Make settings appropriate for the intended use of the file. If the file will be downloaded or streamed on the Internet, you might not want too high bit rates for example. See below for descriptions of the options.
NUENDO Export Audio Mixdown 24 – 565 •Mode The WMA Pro encoder can use either a constant bit rate or a variable bit rate for en- coding to 5.1 surround, or it can use lossless encoding for encoding to stereo. The op- tions on this menu are as follows: Note that if you encode to a surround file, it can only be played as in- tended on computers using Windows XP, since no other Windows ver- sion supports WMA surround. With other operating systems than XP, the surround file will instead be reproduced as a stereo file. Mode Description Constant Bitrate (CBR)This will encode to a 5.1 surround file with a constant bit rate (set in the Bit Rate/Channels menu, see below). Constant bit rate is preferably used if you want to limit the size of the final file. The size of a file encoded with constant bit rate is always the bit rate times the duration of the file. Variable Bitrate with QualityEncodes to a 5.1 surround file with a variable bit rate, according to a quality scale (the desired quality is set in the Bit Rate/Chan- nels menu, see below). When you encode with variable bit rates, the bit rate fluctuates depending on the character and intricacy of the material being encoded, The more complex passages in the source material, the higher the bit rate – and the larger the fi- nal file – will be. Unconstrained VBR (Average)Encodes to a 5.1 surround file with an unconstrained variable bit rate. Unconstrained means that there will be no limitation to the bit rate used for encoding certain complex passages in the source material. You can however set a recommended average bit rate to somewhat help constrain the size of the final file in the Bit Rate/Channels menu. Constrained VBR (Maximum)Encodes to a 5.1 surround file with a constrained variable bit rate. This means that even though the bit rate fluctuates, it will never be allowed to exceed the maximum value you set in the Bit Rate/Channels menu. Lossless Encodes to a stereo file with lossless compression.
NUENDO 24 – 566 Export Audio Mixdown •Bit Rate/Channels This menu allows you to set the desired bit rate – from 128 kbps to 768 kbps, depend- ing on the selected Mode (see above). If the Mode “Variable Bitrate with Quality” is used (see above), the menu allows you to select from six levels of desired quality, with 10 being the lowest and 100 the highest. Generally, the higher the bitrate or quality you select, the larger the final file will be. The menu also shows the channel format (5.1 or stereo). •Method Lets you choose between “One Pass” and “Two Pass”. • One pass means that the source material is passed through the encoder just once, and analyzed as well as encoded during the process. • Two pass, on the other hand, means that the source material is passed through the encoder twice. During the first pass, the material is analyzed, and the actual encoding is applied during the second pass. Two pass encoding can result in a file of better quality, but the pro- cess takes longer. Dynamic Range Control These controls allow you to define the dynamic range of the encoded file. The dynamic range is the difference in dB between the average loudness and the peak audio level (the loudest sounds) of the audio. These settings affect how the audio is reproduced if the file is played on a Windows XP computer with a player in the Windows Media 9 series, and the user activates the special “Quiet Mode” feature of the player to control the dynamic range. The dynamic range is automatically calculated during the encoding process, but you can specify it manually as well. If you want to manually specify the dynamic range, first put a check- mark in the box to the left by clicking in it and then enter the desired dB values in the Peak and Average fields. You can enter any value be- tween 0 and -90 dB. Note however that it is usually not recommended to change the Average value, since it affects the overall volume level of the audio and therefore can affect the audio quality adversely. The Quiet Mode in a Windows Media 9 player can be set to one of three settings. Below, these settings are listed together with an expla- nation of how the Dynamic Range settings affect them:
NUENDO Export Audio Mixdown 24 – 567 • Off: If Quiet Mode is off, the dynamic range settings that were automatically calculated during the encoding will be used. • Little Difference: If this is selected and you have not manually changed the dy- namic range settings, the peak level will be limited to 6 dB above the average level during playback. If you have manually specified the dynamic range, the peak level will be limited to the mean value between the peak and average val- ues you specified. • Medium Difference: If this is selected and you have not manually changed the dynamic range settings, the peak level will be limited to 12 dB above the av- erage level. If you have changed the dynamic range, the peak level will be lim- ited to the peak value you specified. Surround Reduction Coefficients Here you can specify which amount of volume reduction, if any, should be applied to the different channels in a surround encoding. These set- tings affect how the audio is reproduced on a system incapable of playing back the file in surround, in which case the surround channels of the file will be combined into two channels and played back in ste- reo instead. The default values will normally produce satisfactory results, but you can change the values manually if you wish. You can enter any value between 0 and -144 dB for the surround channels, the center chan- nel, the left and right channels and the LFE channel respectively. Output Media Description In these fields you can enter a number of text strings with information about the file – title, author, copyright information and a description of its contents. This information will then be embedded in the file header and can be displayed by some Windows Media Audio playback appli- cations.
NUENDO 25 – 570 Synchronization Background What is synchronization? Synchronization is said to exist when you make two pieces of equip- ment agree on time or tempo and location. You can establish synchro- nization between Nuendo and a number of other types of devices, including tape recorders and video decks, but also MIDI devices that “play back”, such as other sequencers, drum machines, “workstation sequencers” etc. When you set up a synchronization system you must decide which unit is the master. All other devices are then slaved to this unit, which means they will adjust their playback speed to the master’s. Nuendo as a slave When a synchronization signal is coming in to Nuendo, from another device (such as a tape recorder, video recorder etc.), this device is the master and Nuendo is the slave. Nuendo will adjust its playback to the other device. Nuendo as a master When you set up Nuendo to transmit synchronization information to other devices, Nuendo is the master and the other devices are the slaves; they will adjust their playback to Nuendo. Nuendo – both master and slave Nuendo is a very capable synchronization device. It can operate as both a master and a slave at the same time. For example, Nuendo might be slaved to a tape recorder transmitting timecode, while at the same time transmitting MIDI Clock to a drum machine, acting as a master for that. The VST System Link feature (with which you can synchronize separate computers running Nuendo or Cubase SX for example) is described in a separate chapter. See page 598.