Soundtrack Pro 2: sound Editing & Mastering

Ripple Training need no introductions. They make the best tutorial DVDs for Apple products period. So in reality this DVD shouldn't even need a review, but I'll do so anyway because I think it is particularly worthwhile.

Sound is often one of the most neglected areas of video. My own expertise is in camerawork and general editing. I'm not a master at Motion or After Effects, and I am certainly no master when it comes to audio mixing and mastering. so I am always on the look out for anything that can help me to further understand this dark and mysterious art since I value my sound greatly.

For the purposes of this review I downloaded the iTunes version of the tutorials. Ripple Training should be commended on this approach because it means that you can get on with the process of learning immediately and not have to wait for pesky postal services.

As readers of this website will know I haven't really given Soundtrack Pro 2 much respect. I have always regarded it as beta software after some awful experiences of continued crashing while working on projects with tight deadlines. There have been a couple of updates to the program since then however so I decided to give it a second shot. I really, really want to like Sountrack Pro as it is obviously an extremely powerful tool so I bought the Ripple Training tutorials not only to give me some insight into audio processing, but also to find out where I was prhaps going wrong with the program itself.

As per all Ripple Training series this one is very well presented with an extremely knowledgable clear and concise narrator taking you through all the steps. Each lesson is broken up into sub chapters which can be accessed quickly and easily from within Quicktime or iTunes. Ripple eshew the usual route of making their series on standard playable DVDs. Instead, by making them Quicktime movies it is possible not only to view them easily while working from within the program in question itself, but the tutorials can also be presented at high def levels of detail very easily.

In total there is around 5 hours worth of in depth lessons here. Everything from the user interface to specific audio functions is taken care of including final mixing and output. To cover all the bases in this review would take me forever. The information presented here really did clear up a number of issues that I had with the program as well as making the workflow easy to understand. This is what I love most about it. The subject at hand could be highly complicated and it would be easy to get caught up in meaningless mumbo jumbo. But at every stage the trainer makes everything easily understandable and clear.

If you are a 'doer of all' like me and want to take your audio workflow to the next level using Soundtrack Pro 2 you owe it to yourself to get this tutorial series immediately. It is worth each and every penny many times over.

You don't often get me gushing that much about a product let me tell you!

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