Steinberg WaveLab 3 Operation Manual
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WAVELAB The Audio Montage 19 – 531 Preparing the Audio Montage for CD/DVD- Audio burning See “Background information” on page 366 for a general description of the DVD-Audio format. The descriptions in this section cover preparations for both CD and DVD- Audio burning, as the basic procedures are almost identical. The term CD/DVD used there thus applies to options in both the CD and DVD-A view unless otherwise stated. However, there are some important differences: •A CD can be burned directly from within the Montage, which is not possi- ble with DVD-Audio. Montages are always rendered prior to the DVD burning process. •While you make much the same preparations in the Montage for CD and DVD-Audio, e.g. using Markers to define tracks, etc., a DVD-Audio project can contain up to 9 Montages with up to 99 tracks in each Mon- tage. Thus, for DVD-Audio you will probably make preparations for several separate Montages that are to be included on the DVD first, then proceed to configure the DVD-Audio project where you add the separate Montages as groups. Lastly you render the files before the ac- tual burning process takes place. So for DVD-A the descriptions apply to making preparations for a single Montage, which can then later be added to a DVD-Audio project (see “DVD-Audio projects” on page 551) together with other Montages. Each Montage can have a different channel configuration, bit resolution and sample rate in the DVD-Audio project. 1.Make sure the Audio Montage contains exactly the material you want on the CD/DVD. • Note that CD tracks must be at least 4 seconds long, and DVD tracks at least 1 second long. 2.Select either CD or DVD mode from the Edit view : Mode menu, depend- ing on what media you intend to use. 3.Click the CD/DVD tab to select the corresponding CD/DVD view. This contains a CD/DVD track list, much like a Basic Audio CD. However, at this point, it will be empty (since there are no CD/DVD track markers inserted yet).
WAVELAB 19 – 532 The Audio Montage 4.Select “CD/DVD Wizard…” from the Functions menu (or click the “magic wand” icon). The CD/DVD Wizard dialog appears. This contains a number of settings that help you auto- mate the CD/DVD creation. 5.Activate the option “Generate CD/DVD Track Markers” and activate the desired sub-options. These options are: •“Ensure minimum required size for CD tracks” is activated by default. If a clip is shorter than 4 seconds, the CD end markers are moved to the right so as to make the track 4 seconds long (Red Book requirement). Create markers at clip boundariesThis causes the CD/DVD Wizard to add CD or DVD track start and end markers at the beginning and end of all non-overlapping clips. Most likely, you want to have this activated. Create markers at crossfade pointsWhen this is activated, the CD/DVD Wizard will create CD or DVD boundary markers at all crossfade intersection points. Activate this if you have clips that overlap each other, but should become differ- ent tracks on the CD. Keep locked CD/DVD track markersNormally, any previously created CD or DVD track markers in the Montage will be removed by the CD/DVD Wizard. However, if this option is activated, any locked CD or DVD track markers (see “Ed- iting in the markers list view” on page 494) will be kept.
WAVELAB The Audio Montage 19 – 533 6.If you like, activate the option “Adjust pause before tracks”. This automatically adjusts the pause before each track, either to a fixed value (as specified in the Set time value box) or to the number of whole seconds closest to each current pause in the Montage. If you want to adjust the pauses between tracks but don’t want the start time of the first track in the Montage to change, be sure to activate “Don’t change first pause”. If you do, the original position of the first track will not change relative to the start of the Montage. •The Red Book audio CD standard requires that the pause before the first track is at least 2 seconds (this does not apply to DVD-Audio). If the option “Automatically set the standard duration for pause #1” is activated on the CD/ DVD-A view : Options menu, WaveLab will automatically adjust the first pause to 2 sec- onds. This option is activated by default. 7.Adjust the other settings if you want. Click the question mark icon in the dialog for details. 8.Click Apply. The dialog closes. Now, CD or DVD track markers are generated and pauses are adjusted according to your settings. The CD/DVD view will now display a list of CD or DVD tracks, as defined by the corresponding track markers. 9.You can use the Play Next/Play Previous buttons on the toolbar (also available on the Functions menu) to audition tracks. 10.You can use the “Play all track starts” playback option on the toolbar (also available on the Functions menu) to check the beginning of – or the tran- sition between – consecutive tracks, see “Checking transitions between tracks” on page 539. 11.If needed, you can adjust the CD or DVD track markers manually in the Track View or Markers view. An example of a situation where you would need to add markers manually would be a con- tinuous recording (one clip, e.g. a live recording), which you want to divide into separate CD/DVD tracks. Since this would contain neither clip boundaries nor crossfade points, the CD/DVD Wizard would not add any markers (apart from at the start and end of the whole clip). Then it would be necessary to add track splice markers at the desired positions. Other instances are track indexes (see “The different types of “events” on an audio CD” on page 578 – this describes events on an audio CD but applies to events on a DVD-A as well). However, in most cases the CD/DVD Wizard will do a good job, and we recommend that you don’t edit the generated markers unless you really need to. 12.Select “Check” from the CD/DVD-A view : Functions menu or click the “glasses” icon. WaveLab will check the CD/DVD list and inform you whether it’s OK or not (this check is also performed automatically before actually burning a CD from the Montage). For DVD-Au- dio you can also use the check function for all Montages added to a DVD-Audio project be- fore the final rendering process.
WAVELAB 19 – 534 The Audio Montage 13.If the Check gave a warning message, make manual adjustments and re- peat the Check procedure until the list is OK. You may get warning messages for several reasons, including: • You have CD tracks that are shorter than 4 seconds, or DVD tracks shorter than 1 second. • The pause before the first CD track is shorter than 2 seconds. • There are clips (or sections of clips) outside the CD or DVD tracks. • There are CD or DVD track start or end markers within clips (if you want a new CD or DVD track to begin within a clip, you should use CD/DVD track boundary markers). • The CD or DVD is too long (the total length of the CD or DVD is displayed in the control bar at the top of the tab). • The average bit rate for a DVD-A Montage exceeds the 9.6 Mbps limit (see “Au- dio format considerations” on page 369). If the “Audio in pauses” mode is activated on the CD/DVD-A view : Options menu, there will be no warnings if clips are placed outside the tracks, see below. Audio in pauses Normally when creating a CD or DVD, only the section between the CD/ DVD markers are burned, and the pauses between tracks are replaced by silence. However, when Audio in pauses is activated, the exact image of the Audio Montage is burned to CD/DVD, including any audio between tracks. Not all CD/DVD drives support this feature, and the only way to find out if this works with your drive is to test it. Here are two possible uses for the Audio in pauses function: Moving CD/DVD track markers to “hide” clip sections Let’s say you have a live recording, with a section of applause between two songs. By moving the track markers so that the applause section is between the tracks and activating Audio in pauses, the applause will not be heard if you play any of the two tracks on their own – but it will be played normally when playing “through” the CD/DVD tracks.
WAVELAB The Audio Montage 19 – 535 Proceed as follows: 1.Place the CD/DVD track end marker of the first track at the position where the music ends, but before the applause section. 2.If necessary, place the CD/DVD track start marker of the following track at the position where the music starts. 3.Activate the “Audio in pauses” mode from the CD/DVD-A view : Options menu, or by clicking the corresponding icon on the icon bar. Placing a clip before track 1 To create a “hidden” CD/DVD track before track 1, proceed as follows: 1.Place a clip without CD/DVD track markers prior to the first track start marker in the Audio Montage. •It is recommended that you do not place the hidden track at the very start of the Montage, but leave a little room between the Montage start and the start of the hidden track. 2.Activate the “Audio in pauses” mode from the CD/DVD-A view : Options menu. If you now run the CD/DVD-A “Check” function, there will be no warning and the CD or DVD-A track list should be “valid” (given that the rest of the Montage is ok). 3.Proceed with writing the CD or continue making the necessary DVD-A preparations before burning. To hear the hidden track after burning the disc, rewind from the start of track 1.
WAVELAB 19 – 536 The Audio Montage Editing the CD/DVD-A view list Once you have prepared a CD track list as described previously, you can go ahead and write the CD. For DVD-Audio you first need to make some settings in the DVD-Audio options dialog (see “The DVD-Audio options dialog” on page 537) before adding the Montage to a DVD-Audio project (see “Creating and opening a DVD-Audio project” on page 552). However, there are some additional settings you can adjust in the CD/ DVD-A view track list: • You can hide or show CD/DVD-A track list columns by using the column pop-up menu (accessed by clicking the arrow button to the left of the column headings). You can also drag and resize columns as usual. • You can adjust all settings (except the “Length” value) numerically in the list. However, changing track start and end positions may result in warning messages, as de- scribed above. • If the option “Allow reordering by drag-and-drop” is activated on the CD/DVD-A view : Options menu, you can change the order of CD/DVD-A tracks by dragging tracks in the CD/DVD-A view list. There is one restriction: you can only drag tracks that are enclosed by CD/DVD track start and end markers – not by CD/DVD track splice markers. Tracks divided by a CD/DVD track boundary marker (a combined start and end marker) can only be moved as an entity. About the “ATS” column in the DVD-A view list ATS stands for “Audio Title Set” and defines a set of one or more tracks. An ATS start is automatically added for the first DVD track in the list. Nor- mally, you just leave this as it is, without ticking the ATS column for any of the following tracks. There are only two instances where you should add a new ATS: •To increase the number of pictures you can use for slide show presenta- tions (i.e. pictures placed on the time line for DVD-Audio tracks). A DVD-A player has a buffer limited to 2 MB for pictures. At each ATS start, the player scans all the pictures used in the Montage (i.e. up until the next ATS start) into this buffer, so that the audio streaming isn’t interrupted during playback. If you use just a few pictures (e.g. one per track), it’s usually best to use one ATS. But if you wish to use more pictures you can add a new ATS further down in the track list, to increase the number of pictures you can use in a given group on the DVD. •To increase the number of available sub-indexes. There are 255 sub-indexes available per ATS (up to 99 per track).
WAVELAB The Audio Montage 19 – 537 Setting a new ATS will mute the audio in the DVD-A player for up to two seconds. Therefore you should never set a new ATS at a gapless track tran- sition or for Audio in Pause transitions! About the “DM” column in the D VD-A view list “DM” stands for Down Mixing. If you tick this column for a track using a sur- round format, a “smart” stereo down mix will automatically be created ac- cording to the settings made in the DVD-Audio options dialog, see below. The DVD-Audio options dialog The DVD-Audio options dialog is opened from the DVD-A view : Functions menu or by clicking the Tool icon. This dialog contains two vital settings for creating DVD-Audio: Resolution on DVD This determines whether the audio data should be stored in 16 or 24 bit resolution (word length) on the DVD. Stereo Down Mixing An important issue when creating DVD-Audio is stereo compatibility. Al- though surround playback devices are becoming more and more common, there are still many occasions when playback is done in stereo – when us- ing headphones, boomboxes or computer monitors, for example. To make a DVD-Audio playable in stereo, you could include two versions of each track, one in surround and one in stereo. The problem with this solution is that it requires more storage space on the disc – there will be room for less music.
WAVELAB 19 – 538 The Audio Montage An alternative solution is to use Stereo Down Mixing tables. This means that you can specify how each surround channel should be represented in the stereo mix by supplying gain coefficients. When the DVD-Audio is played back on stereo equipment, the surround channels are combined to stereo – but they are “mixed” according to the coefficients you have specified. Look at this example: The two columns show the gain coefficients for each surround channel, for the left and right signal in the down mixed stereo output: - The left and right front signals are sent to the left and right channel respectively, with a slight attenuation. - The center signal is sent in equal amounts to the left and right channel. - The left and right surround (rear) signals are more heavily attenuated and sent to the left and right channel respectively. - The LFE signal is not included at all in the mixed stereo output. To set up a Down Mixing table, proceed as follows: 1.Select a table from the Table number pop-up menu. You can set up 16 different Down Mixing tables. You select for each DVD track which table should be used. This is done in the DM column in the DVD-A view, see “About the “DM” column in the DVD-A view list” on page 537. 2.Specify the desired gain reduction for each surround channel in the Left and Right output columns. The value fields are pop-up menus, allowing you to choose values from 0 dB to -61.8 dB or “Off”. 3.You can invert the phase of a signal by ticking its “inverse” checkbox.
WAVELAB The Audio Montage 19 – 539 •You can also use the Preset pop-up menu to store and recall Down Mix- ing table presets. •You can check the results of your Down Mixing settings by selecting the desired table in the “DM” column in the DVD-A view (see “About the “DM” column in the DVD-A view list” on page 537), activating the Stereo button in the Master Section (see “The Stereo button” on page 525) and playing back. Checking transitions between tracks On the CD/DVD-A view : Functions menu there is an item named “Edit playback times…”. This dialog allows you to set two things; a pre-roll time before a track is played back, and a test time, which is the time the begin- ning of a track is played back when using the “Play all track starts” function on the toolbar (also located on the CD/DVD-A view : Functions menu). Say for example that you wish to hear a few seconds of each track end and following track start, to check the transitions between them: 1.Open the “Edit playback times” dialog on the CD/DVD-A view : Functions menu. 2.Enter suitable values for pre-roll and test times and click OK. You can tick the option “Pre-roll starts with one second of silence” if you wish to make the transitions less abrupt. 3.Activate Pre-Roll mode on the CD/DVD-A view : Functions menu. When this is activated all tracks will start with the set pre-roll if played back using the Func- tions menu playback items. 4.Select “Play all track starts” from the Functions menu, or by clicking the corresponding icon on the control bar. Each track start and end (including the last track) are played back according to the values set in the dialog. Edit CD-Text This CD view : Functions menu item opens the CD Text editor, where you can input the track’s title, artist and other information. It will be burnt onto the CD as CD Text. Some CD Players support CD Text and display this information during track playback. For details, click the question mark icon in this dialog. See “DVD-Audio text” on page 566 for a description of the Edit DVD-Audio text dialog.
WAVELAB 19 – 540 The Audio Montage Render selected CD/DVD track It is possible to render a selected CD/DVD track as an audio file. This fea- ture is reserved for stereo audio montages. The rendered file can replace the existing clips that make the CD/DVD track, or can be placed on a free track or on a new track. For details, click the question mark icon in this dialog. About the two CD write methods The final phase of CD creation can be done in two ways: • By burning directly from the CD view in the Montage. This is an easy process, but puts some demand on your computer. Keep in mind that even if your Audio Montage plays back without problems, the CPU load will be four times as high if you burn in 4x speed (since the audio file has to be rendered four times as fast)! There is, however, an option in the CD Write dialog to “Render a temporary file before burning” that alleviates this problem – see “About the “Render to temporary file before burning” option (Audio Montage only)” on page 573. • By using the Render function in the Master Section to first render the Montage to a CD image on disk, and then burn the CD in a second pass. This method is recommended if your Audio Montage contains a lot of clip effects (or is other- wise CPU intensive), since it separates the audio file rendering from the CD burning process. It is also recommended if you want to create multiple copies of the CD. For a description of the Rendering process and its options, see “Mixing down – The Render function” on page 527. In both cases, all clip and track effects are used and the Montage is pro- cessed through the Master Section, including any activated effects and the dithering/noise shaping stage. Rendering a CD image and cue sheet 1.Open the Master Section and click the Render button. The Rendering Preferences dialog appears. 2.Select the “Whole Montage” option in the Range section and activate the “Create specific file” option. 3.Specify a name and location for the file, and make sure the Wav 16 bit format is selected. 4.Select the “Create CD image and cue-sheet” option in the Options sec- tion and activate the “then open as new Audio Montage” option.