Trying to do professional work with waveform 12.5. Impressions. Didnt end well.

[pdk_]

Ok. now that waveform has proper video support, I decided to do some of my work with it, so I can see how things will go. I buy waveform every year, but I never use it for prof work. I would love to use it, but it always leads to a disaster.

So I had to import a video, import music track. vocal track, b vocals, record some folley and sfx. Tune vocal and b vocals. Mix and master the thing for youtube. I usually do this with cubase or reaper.

First things first, waveform looks amazing! And this is a big deal for me. I also use reaper, cubase and reason. But waveform is so clean and beautiful. It really inspires you to create music. Love the new browser, the ability to make your themes. UI is awesome and it makes sense.

So I import the video, the video imported fine into the daw, realized that the video had an error, so I re-render, delete the previous video from the waveform project and... the new video is not importing. It doesnt convert and it just shows a thin red line, where it was supposed to have the whole video clip. I do this thing for 3 more times and then the video converts and gets imported in the daw. Fine.

Video engine runs fine, and I have to admit, it uses less cpu than reaper. Which is great.

I then tried to remove some low end from the vocals, before tuning. I grab the waveforms stock eq and when I move the high pass filter below 40hz, there is a big boom noise. I lower the volume of the interface, cause you know I need my ears to work, and do a sweep around 40hz. The boom keeps happening. So stock eq is out of the question.

Then I go to tune the vocal track. I pick melodyne as my pitch algo. It transfers the track, but it also transfers glitches. Its not a buffer problem. It just messes the transfer and prints a lot of glitches. So after 3,4 tries, I thought its ok, lets put melodyne as a channel fx. So I press play and wait for melodyne to trasfer the vocals, like the old times. This seemed to work. So I am starting tuning. I started to realize that the vocals were losing sync with the music as the song progressed.

Well thats it folks. Fired up reaper. Did the whole thing and also I can put melodyne as a channel fx and still cut and move things where ever I want. Without any rendering.

So yeah. I feel bad that I have to wait another year, to test again, if waveform can be my main daw.

[irpacynot]

Didn't realize you could make videos with this thing

[Scrubbing Monkeys]

That was a real patient effort. I have 12.5. I am excited about its potential but truly wish the devs would tighten up what is there before adding anything else. Otherwise the mess just gets bigger.

[dysjoint]

Yeah, first thing I found with 12.5 is that the stock eqs appeared to be broken. Had one confirmation. Some other things got fixed, but so far not this.

[pdk_]

Didn't realize you could make videos with this thing

You cannot make videos. You can import videos and add music sfx etc. Like all daws.

[pough]

I started to realize that the vocals were losing sync with the music as the song progressed.

One thing I have always found with Melodyne is that it wants to figure out the BPM on its own and gets it wrong. In older versions it was pretty easy to get it to just use the DAW's BPM but in more recent versions I've had a more difficult time finding that setting. I guess with Reaper there is some kind of behind-the-scenes communication where the DAW gets Melodyne to default to the DAW BPM. Maybe we should pester the Waveform devs to do the same.

[pough]

You cannot make videos. You can import videos and add music sfx etc. Like all daws.

It's certainly not a video camera, but can't you output a new video file from the imported video and audio clips?

[pdk_]

Yes you can do audio work on the video and some really basic video editing. I dont think that anyone needs more in the video department. Its not a video editor.

[irpacynot]

Didn't realize you could make videos with this thing

You cannot make videos. You can import videos and add music sfx etc. Like all daws.

Ahh...honestly, just in the past, heck, not even a full year, I've started to use a DAW again. The last time was DAW hardware (Roland VS-880EX), and I sure as shit don't remember being able to bring anything into the system that wasn't exclusive VS data. That's close to 30 years ago.

So, a lot of this is new to me.