Amadeus Pro Version 1.0.3 Macintosh

Advanced Tips for Amadeus Pro

Table of Contents

• Where to find this software
  
  
• Creating Markers
  • Individually
  • Endpoints of a selection
  • Equidistantly
  • Editing and Using Markers
    
    
• Splitting a file
  • Specifically
  • Uniformly
    
    
• Joining files
• Mixing tracks
• Denoising
• How to Quit

Digitizing and Editing Sound with Amadeus Pro

Where to find this software

Amadeus can be found on all Public Lab Macs and can be installed on faculty, staff, and student computers.

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Creating Markers

In Amadeus Pro, markers are used to label or mark the audio file for editing. By using markers, you can easily keep track of which sections of audio you want to keep or throw out in your final cut. Markers also allows you to specify splitting points in a file.

Markers can be created in several ways: individually, endpoints of a selection, or equidistantly.

• Individually
  
  
  1. In the sound file window, there is a light gray bar above the Track Name / Playback bar.
     
     
     
     
  2. Click once to place a marker.
  3. A marker window will appear. Enter a name and select a color for your marker. You can also numerically adjust the exact placement of your marker in this window, by typing in the Location field. Click OK.

     

  Note: You can also add markers by pressing apple-click on the wavelength of the sound itself. When adding markers in this manner, Amadeus will automatically name each marker and the pop-up window will not appear.
  

• Endpoints of a selection
  
  
  1. Highlight the section of audio that you would like to label.
  2. Under the Selection menu, choose Mark Selection... You will see two new markers appear at the beginning and end of your selection.
  3. Double click on each marker to enter names for the two endpoints of the audio clip and click OK.
     
     



• Equidistantly
  
  
  1. Open the sound file that you want to divide into clips of equal length.
  2. From the Selection menu, choose Generate Markers...
  3. In the First marker: field, enter a name for your marker. The name must include a number in order for the markers to be generated sequentially, i.e. clip1.
  4. Select a Color for your markers.
  5. Select Equal spaces.
  6. In the First time field, type in the time at which you want the first marker to appear. If you want the markers to start from the very beginning of the clip, leave at 00'00"000.
  7. In the Time Interval field, enter the time in min'seconds"milliseconds for the time interval between each clip. A value of 01'00"000 will generate marks in 1 minute intervals.
     
     
     
     
  8. Click OK.
     
     
     
     

  Editing and Using Markers

  • To rename a marker, double click on the marker triangle in front of its label. A marker window will appear. Enter the new name. Note: If you click on the name of the marker (i.e. anywhere on "Marker 01") Amadeus will create a new marker at this point. To get rid of this marker, click Delete in the marker window.
  • To move a marker, click on the marker triangle and drag to new position. You can also enter numbers for the new position in the Location field of the marker window.
  • To delete all markers from the current file, go to the Selection menu and choose Clear All Markers.
  • To delete individual markers, select the marker and choose Delete in the dialogue box that appears .
  • To use markers for selection, click on the file to place your cursor. From the Selection menu, choose Extend to Previous Marker or Extend to Next Marker. If there is no marker before or after your cursor, the default, respectively, will extend the selection to either the beginning or end of your sound.
  • When you want to split a larger file into smaller pieces to work on, use Generate Markers... and then go to Sound > Split According to Markers function. The smaller pieces can be rejoined using the Join Files... function in the Sound menu.
    
    
    

Splitting a file

To split a file, the file must have two (2) or more markers. You can choose to split the file specifically, keeping only specified clips, or uniformly, which keeps all the clips.

• Specifically
  
  If you choose to split the file specifically, only clips that are specified will be saved. The rest of the file will be thrown away.
  
  
  1. You specify the start and end points of the clips you want to save by the color of the markers. To change the color of a marker, click on the triangle in front of the marker name, and select a color from the pull down menu in the dialogue window that appears.
     
     It is best to work with two colors - one color for the markers at the Start of each clip, and another color for the markers at the End of each clip.
     
     
  2. From the Sound menu, choose Split According to Markers.... A dialogue window will appear.
  3. Amadeus will create a new folder to store the newly generated sound files. Type in the Split To field to name this folder. Then, navigate to the Desktop by selecting it from the menu on the left-hand side.
  4. Near the bottom of the window, you will notice a check box labelled "Consider all markers." Make sure that this box is Unchecked.
  5. Select the Start and End colors from the pull-down menus above the "Consider all markers" checkbox. Click Split.
     
     
     
     
     
  6. A folder will appear on your Desktop. Double-click on the folder to open it and see your clips. The clips are named according to their Start markers.
     
     
     
     
     
• Uniformly
  
  If you split a file uniformly, every clip is saved.
  
  
  1. From the Sound menu, choose Split According to Markers.... A window will appear.
  2. Amadeus will create a new folder to store the newly generated sound files. Type in the Split To field to name this folder. Then, navigate to the Desktop by selecting it from the menu on the left-hand side.
  3. The Consider all markers box should be Checked.
  4. Click Split.
     
     
     
     
  5. A folder will appear on your Desktop. Double-click on the folder to open it and see your clips. The clips are named according to their beginning marker.
     
     
  
  

Joining files

Before joining files, make sure that your clips are named numerically i.e. clip1 will be the first clip, clip2 will be the second, etc.

1. To glue several AIFF files together into one file, go to the Sound menu, then choose Join Files...
2. To choose the files that will be glued together, click the + sign at the top right corner of the screen.

   

3. A dialogue window will appear, prompting you to select the files you would like to join. Navigate to the folder where your clips are located, and select the clip(s) you would like to join. If you would like to select several at once, hold down Apple() key and click on the files to select them. If you want to select all of the files, hold down the Shift key and click the first and last file in the folder.

   

4. Once you have selected all of the files you want to join, click Open.

5. The order in which your clips appear in the box is the order in which they will be glued together. Click and drag the files to arrange in the desired order.
   

   

6. Click Join. A new file will appear, with all the clips glued together.

   

Mixing tracks

1. Open the files that you would like to mix. From the File menu, choose Open...
2. Select one of the files to be the final mix and go to File > Save As or create a new file. To create a new file, go to the File menu and choose New.
3. Copy the portion of audio that you would like to mix, select an insertion point in your final mix file, and from the Edit menu choose Paste Over . Repeat this step until you are satisfied with your final mix.
4. Save your final mix file.
   
   NOTE: Mixing audio tracks containing only speech is relatively easy. Audio tracks with music, however, is much more difficult due to the variations in sound levels. Keep your original files open as you test the different mixes. If you do not like a certain mix, go to Edit > Undo. Go back to your original file, make some modifications i.e. amplitude, and try mixing again.

Denoising

The denoise function is used to suppress background noise. Amadeus Pro has some options that will allow you to customize the type of noise you would like to suppress.

Change the Denoising Settings

1. Go to Effects > Denoising > Settings ...

   

2. For the Algorithm field, there are two options to choose from. The Long FFT algorithm produces better results, but the Short FFT algorithm is faster.
3. The Noise Type allows you to choose the type of noise you want to remove. Peaked noises are usually background noises which are very well localized in frequency space, i.e. humming produced by the power supply. Smooth noises are noises which are spread over the whole frequency range, for example a tape hiss.
4. Adaptive Filtering should be checked unless you have a very low signal-to-noise ratio.
5. Sensitivity Enhancement lets you specify the amount or tolerance of background noise to remove. Usually, values between 30% and 70% yield the best results. For lower values, some background noise may remain after the denoise filter has been applied. For higher values, the signal may become distorted.
6. Click OK.

To denoise a file with clear sections of only noise

1. Select a portion of sound containing only noise.
2. From the Effects menu, scroll down to Denoising and select Sample Noise. This will construct a noise profile of your selection. When it is applied, anything that matches the profile will be suppressed.
3. To apply it to the entire file, go to Edit > Select All.
4. From the Denoising submenu, choose Suppress Noise.

 

To denoise a file with noise interspersed with the music or spoken word

1. Highlight the portion of audio that you would like to denoise or go to Edit > Select All.
2. From the Effects menu, scroll down to Denoising and choose Suppress White Noise...
3. A dialog box will appear asking for an estimate of the noise level it should start compressing at. A good level, RMS Power, to begin at is -75 dB. The range is -150dB to -10dB. You may need to go through several trials, raising the power towards -10dB, before finding a level where all the noise is removed. Choosing too large a value of the RMS Power will result in a significant loss of quality in the clean signal.
   

How to Quit

Go to the Amadeus Pro menu and choose Quit Amadeus Pro.

• Jeanna Barbieri, jbarbier@wellesley.edu
• Information Services
• Date Created: October 21, 2002
• Last Modified: July 5, 2007
• Expires: June 1, 2008