Edit Review — SmartSound Sonicfire Pro 3.2 and Quicktracks for Premiere Pro

SmartSound's Sonicfire Pro is probably the leader in soundtrack creation because it doesn't really have much competition, at least not at the level that Sonicfire Pro operates. Although you can buy a number of loop-based soundtrack creation programs these days, none really works the way this program does, intelligently scaling the length up and down to exactly fit a section of video. SmartSound recently added a new program to its stable, Quicktracks for Premiere Pro, a very pared-down version of Sonicfire Pro that we will also look at.

Sonicfire Pro 3.2 lets you assemble songs by dragging music blocks into the timeline. The Maestro interface is where you choose the genre, library, and intensity of the song.

The Sonicfire Pro interface is not very sexy (I'd love to see an overhaul in that department), but it gets the job done. The first step is to figure out what kind of music style you want. The company ships many styles with the program, and it also offers 60-plus CDs of royalty-free music (that number is ever-growing) and sound effects for just about every type and style of production. Additionally, you can order new CDs of music and single tracks directly through the program (via an Internet hookup). In fact, you can even preview the company's entire suite of music right inside Sonicfire. It's very convenient, and yes, it can be a little dangerous with such an easy click-to-buy option.

There are two ways to create a track in Sonicfire: one is through the Assistant and one is via the Maestro. With the Assistant you just click the genre (jazz, dance, rock, world, period, etc.), the type (energetic, lively, relaxed, etc.), and the length. That's it. Once the length is set, you can stretch and shrink it by grabbing either end and dragging. You can also load your video clip so you can see how the score works with it. Afterwards, you can export only the music or the music with the video.

The power of the program becomes apparent when you adjust the length of tracks. Each track in the SmartSound library is made up of many individual blocks, with sweeps, stings, beats, and more accents. When you adjust the length, these blocks slide around automatically to make a 10-second piece sound as perfectly scored as a three-minute piece. In fact, you can even access the blocks directly, sliding them manually. Think of them as audio Legos. When you slide blocks into the soundtrack, the program lights up some other blocks with a green bar; these are suggestions for what the software determines will sound best next. That's some smart sound! You'll also see visuals on some of the blocks that indicate which blocks would work best at the beginning or at the end of the soundtrack.

You can slice and dice the music as well. There are options for tasks such as Cut and Ripple Delete. Aside from the SmartSound music, you can actually bring in any WAV file, such as Acid loops, or even grab music off a CD. Obviously, these tunes won't be as smart as the SmartSound ones, but you can make them a little easier to work with. You can load a music track and have it divided up so that all the slices are the same length (the length can be adjusted via a scalable grid). All these slices can become blocks, so you can then slide them around to create a whole new mix. This works pretty well if the beat is constant and singing does not overlap the cuts.

Sonicfire Pro helps things along with regular music files by allowing you to cross-fade from clip to clip. This actually smoothes out two blocks that may have the same beats per minute (BPM), but whose instruments are a little too different to follow one other without notice. I was able to load in Acid loops and slide them around to create whole new mixes that sounded great (with a few fades added here and there). Bear in mind that the actual SmartSound library files work best, and that you only have one track of music. So unlike in loop programs, you can't layer several tracks on top of one another.

SmartSound's Quicktracks allows you to load royalty-free songs of different genres and adjust them to specific lengths.

One big question you may have is how does this program work with desktop editors and other software? The answer is just great, thank you very much. Avid Xpress in particular works well with the program. In fact, you can create metadata on an Avid timeline to insert markers where specific events happen in your video. This data can be imported into SmartSound so you know where to slide those blocks of musical hits.

Avid probably has the best hooks back and forth between the two programs; however, Adobe's Premiere Pro interaction could use sprucing up. Basically, you can export your music and then take it into Premiere (the program loads it automatically into Premiere once you save it out of Sonicfire). You can also load a Premiere-exported movie into Sonicfire to look at it while you score.

While Sonicfire provides a range of editing capabilities, Quicktracks for Premiere Pro is basically a version of the main program's Assistant feature, allowing you to select a genre, style, and length from within Premiere. That's about it. What it does, it does well, but while there are provisions for changing a tune and its length once imported, Quicktracks does not offer any of the editing features the Pro version has.

Oddly, Sonicfire Pro can be had for $149 in its download (non-boxed) version, whereas Quicktracks is $99 for a fraction of the capabilities; the slight bump up for the Pro version is worth it.

Truth be told, I had used Sonicfire Pro in the past and thought it was a nice program if you had no scoring skills and wanted to bang out some tracks. But now that I have dug deep within the program, I see it more as a music construction kit. I am constantly amazed at how the software snaps things to normal after you shuffle music blocks. And the fact that you can buy a track with a click is handy when you are in pinch. Also, the software installs new audio CD libraries that can be purchased easily — just insert your new CD and click OK.

Sonicfire Pro has a new Internet update option, so you always have access to the latest version. The program also exports to many programs (and has instructions on how to do it) such as Ulead, PowerPoint, Flash, iMovie, After Effects, and others.

As far as what can be improved, well, I guess there is always some room for improvement. Somehow, the audio for the video I imported always popped back on even though I had it toggled off. This may need a little fixing. Even though the music CDs are royalty-free, for some reason the movie music collection is licensed only for educational and noncommercial use, which is disappointing to a few of the target markets: video producers and indie moviemakers. You need to double-click a music block to play it, which gets tedious; a toggle to use a single click would be awesome. The import audio loops option needs to be able to load multiple loops at once instead of just one (although you can drag and drop groups of loops into the program).

Finally, the big question is, how is the music library? SmartSound's library is a mixed bag. Some of the CDs and tracks are really over the top and are probably in line with the dusty production CD set you don't use anymore. This is very production-ish music, which may not fit with anything but high-gloss, all-smiles fare. However, some of the CDs are good, especially some of the cinematic ones and the newer electronica CDs. Thankfully, you can preview all of them on smartsound.com, so you can choose what works. My main request for the future of the software is a filter collection and a rack of effects that lets you alter the songs via settings such as pitch, beat, echo, etc. This would allow taking a song and making it sound like nothing ever heard before.

With 60-plus CDs of royalty-free content, there is something for everyone, so listen to the preview on the Web and if it fits, the program will allow you to slide it into any production you throw at it. I have even more respect for the program and the very smart engine driving it after extensively working with it. It does make it easy to generate soundtracks quickly, but it also allows enough creative input from the user, with loop slicing and dicing and import of regular WAV loops, to make it a worthy video production tool.

Company: SmartSound Software Northridge, Calif.; (800) 454-1900 www.smartsound.com

Products: Sonicfire Pro 3.2 and Quicktracks for Premiere Pro

Assets: Great way for editors to extend their soundtrack capabilities.

Caveats: Quicktracks does not offer any of the editing features of the Pro version.

Demographic: Pros and novices alike

Price: $149 for Sonicfire download version; $299 for Sonicfire box with two music CDs; $99 for Quicktracks box

To comment on this article, email the Video Systems editorial staff at vsfeedback@primediabusiness.com.