Avid Xpress Pro Power!

The Audio Tool

Of all the audio tools available, the most basic is the Audio tool itself. As with the other audio tools, you click on the Tools menu and choose the Audio tool. The Audio tool will open (see Figure 7.32).

The Audio tool has several features. First and foremost, the Audio tool displays your audio levels, so you can quit adjusting levels by your ear, especially when you're running Avid Xpress Pro off a laptop computer with no external speakers .

The meters display the analog signal values on the right and the digital values on the left. Ideally, you want your audio levels to hover around 14, which compares to zero on the VU scale (VU stands for Volume Unit).

If your levels exceed this range, your audio can flatten out and sound over-modulated. In the Audio tool, you can also adjust the speaker output of Avid Xpress Pro. Click on the small speaker icon to make any adjustments.

The Peak Hold Menu

The Peak Hold menu has several options to make handling audio levels easy (see Figure 7.33).

The Peak Hold option makes the meters hold for a brief moment before they drop back down. As your audio levels play you'll notice a line appears displaying the peak signal. The line then disappears and goes to the next peak level.

If you want to see the highest level your audio tracks ever reach, choose Infinite Hold from the Peak Hold menu. Similar to Peak Hold, a line will appear but this time it will not disappear. This line will denote your highest audio level or peak in your sequence (see Figure 7.34).

Play Calibration Tone simply plays audio tone. Tone is the sound you hear when a tape has color bars. It is a consistent sound and level that editors and engineers use to calibrate equipment. Basically this is done so that no matter where you watch your finished video, the sound is consistent. This is a great item to turn on when you need to set your levels on any deck or VTR you plan to record to.

The Audio tool also lets you set reference and calibration tone. Without going into great detail, do not adjust these values. You want your digital audio levels to maintain at 14.

You can also create tone media from this menu. Tone is used when color bars are added to a sequence. I'll cover adding color bars and tone in more detail in Chapter 15, "Outputting Your Sequences". Simply choose the Create Tone Media from the pull-down menu and type in an amount for the Tone Media length in seconds. You then select how many tracks of tone you want, determine in which bin they'll be created, and determine the hard drive to which they'll be saved.

Setup Control

The last Audio tool options covered here are collectively called the Output Settings (see Figure 7.35).

From this window, you can bypass any of the audio tools you adjusted and switch from a stereo output to a mono output. You can also adjust the overall master volume of your finished project.