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Audio editing software with scrubbing?


RayL

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A feature of all video editing software is the ability to scrub the timeline i.e. move the cursor along using the mouse to 'play' the time line at a speed determined by mouse movement. None of the audio editing packages that I've tried have this feature. They all allow one to select a section and play it but that has its limitations when, for example, exploring the rising edge of a waveform to decide on a cut point.

 

Because I find scrubbing such a natural thing to do, I mostly use video editing software when I want to edit audio.

 

I can't claim to have tried all audio software, but is there something that I have missed?

 

Ray

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A feature of all video editing software is the ability to scrub the timeline i.e. move the cursor along using the mouse to 'play' the time line at a speed determined by mouse movement. None of the audio editing packages that I've tried have this feature. They all allow one to select a section and play it but that has its limitations when, for example, exploring the rising edge of a waveform to decide on a cut point.

 

Because I find scrubbing such a natural thing to do, I mostly use video editing software when I want to edit audio.

 

I can't claim to have tried all audio software, but is there something that I have missed?

 

Ray

 

Ardour has a jog/shuttle wheel does almost what you want (although the mouse position determines the speed of playback rather than the actual playback position).

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The main Logic page doesn't allow it, but if you go into the Sample Editor there is a button there (can't remember which off the top of my head) that you can do it from. Never found it useful, but it''s there http://www.blue-room.org.uk/public/style_emoticons/default/smile.gif
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Thanks to you all.

 

My original route into audio editing software was through the Cakewalk / Sonar path (which didn't scrub). I found myself preferring to use the lovely Adobe Premiere 6.5 which, with DVD Storm hardware, gives smooooth scrubbing. This thread was triggered by the purchase of a Zoom H1 'the microphone that records' which comes with Wavelab LE7 on the supplied microSD card. That also doesn't scrub so I was interested to know what did these days.

 

A quick run of the evaluation version of Reaper (thanks, Rob_P) confirms that it is certainly able to scrub, though it has the same inertia problems as Sony Vegas.

 

I'll experiment further.

 

Ray

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I guess it's because I started with reel to reel tape decks (both video tape and audio) but I find the Adobe Audition scrub capability very useful even with all the visual displays.

 

I agree. All those years of rocking tape reels (don't try it with an ATR-100) make scrubbing to find edit points the easy way for me. The grandaddy of all DAWs, SoundTools, the precursor of ProTools was the last editor I've used that had good scrub editing, and that was many years ago. I have missed it ever since, although I am quite used to waveform editing.

 

Mac

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Can't say I've noticed a latency issue with scrubbing in Reaper, though I've never worked reel-to-reel and I am usually editing/recording on a low-latency audio link to a Firewire Presonus interface. Scrubbing can be laggy when running on internal audio hardware, especially when running Reaper in Windows. I'd guess the latency on-board sound (especially on Windows machines) might be rather different depending on how well the drivers and hardware are working together.
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