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TrevorUK · Posts: 2

It looks as if CEP does not have a scrub or jog facility...or am I missing something. All help gratefully received.

Trevor

Wildduck · Posts: 466

CEP does not scrub or jog, but many of us have moved on from reel to reel editing, and no longer feel the need as we used to.

I have just had to play with a jog/shuttle/scrub editor and, frankly found it awful. And I was brought up on scrubbing reels.

Do a search on these forums using the word 'scrub' and you will find much in the way of discussion and workarounds.

Graeme · Member Location: Spain Posts: 4663

I am one of those people who would like to see a well-implemented scrub feature introduced.

Unhappily, I understand that those of us who were hoping this might happen in v2 will have to wait for v3 :-(

TrevorUK · Posts: 2

Thanks guys.

CEP Support also now confirm they are getting lots of requests for jog/scrub and reading the smoke signals we can expect it to be included in a future update.

There's no substitute for being able to hear what the eye cannot detect. However I understand some Photoshop users claim to be able to get quite good results just using their ears.

When CEP invokes jog/shuttle we'll consider moving from SADiE.

Not long to wait, by all accounts.

Graeme · Member Location: Spain Posts: 4663

There was a lot of support for the inclusion of this feature way back, long before CEP2 was announced. This was considered to be a useful feature for an audio editor.

There were also a lot of people who said they didn't want CD writing included, on the basis of us all having different requirements and not clogging up an audio editor with facilities which would already be possessed. Some of us thought that the inclusion of midi features rather missed the point as well.

So - Syntrillium have included a writer and midi play capabilities and left out the scrubbing.

As they say, in the good ol' USA, go figure.

Jay Marble · Posts: 145

Yes. A scrub feature would be great in CE2K. Very handy in a newsroom.

stevemiste · Posts: 6

Actually, you can scrub with CEP. Hope I can explain this. Ok. In the mulit track view, bring up a wave . then highlight a part of the wav…then hit the space bar. It will play the highlighted part of the wav. Next, hold down the space bar while you’re section is still highlighted. It loops. Then drag you’re highlighted area from right to left (left click move highlight from right to left) while holding down the space bar. . It will play what ever is at the start of the highlighted area. It’s easier for me to do it, than explain it. Hope that helps!

Craig Jackman · Location: Canada Posts: 909

Hey welcome to the 80's. Once you get really into computer editing, rocking reels and scrubbing is just so quaintly antique! You can see all the things you're trying to hear if you would just learn to look ... breath's look like little submarines ... "1" beats look different than "2" beats ... silence is a straight line.

The happiest day of my radio career was when I finally wheeled out the refridgerator sized Ampex analog 8-track I had used for years. The 2nd happiest day was when they wheeled in the PC with CEP.

Graeme · Member Location: Spain Posts: 4663

Graeme · Member Location: Spain Posts: 4663

Craig Jackman · Location: Canada Posts: 909

OK, to continue the thread, lets say you want scrubbing ... for arguement's sake lets compare it to the scrub wheel on the Orban DSE 7000/Audicy. They first started shipping these beasts with huge (for the time) RAM cards of 512 megs. To get the kind of fluidity you'd want for scrubbing you'd need a great whack of RAM to play with. Do you want scrubbing in just Editview or Multitrack too? If it's in multitrack wouldn't you be looking at GB's of RAM?

CEP is a nice piece of software. To do smooth scrubs - without clicks and other digital burps - would seem to poke into a hardware problem. Sure there are DAW available that will scrub, but how much of the processing is done on the proprietary hardware card? I don't really want to buy somebody's hardware just because I like their software. How many other users would be prepared to fork out for too much RAM just to get scrubbing? Yes, put your hands down, I'm sure that there would be some, but I don't think there would be a lot.

In my first post, I was saying that in the brave new world of digital editing, scrubbing and rocking doesn't need to have a seat at the table as you can do the same thing a little bit differently. Progress and age are not easy processes to reverse. How many cars can you hand crank like your Model T anymore. Sure it'd be handy when the battery went flat to turn it over yourself, but ...

So you've spent hours searching for that mysterious click that you want to eliminate. How many hours have you saved not re-recording something to move it 100ms so it fits perfectly with the rest of the production? How many hours have you saved being able to automate a mix? How many thousands of dollars have you saved in those hours? How much does CEP cost again compared to all the software/hardware combinations that scrub?

Wildduck · Posts: 466

I'm not sure that everyone isn't actually saying the same thing. Everyone in radio would actually like a scrub/jog feature if it worked well.

Graeme is saying he would like a well implemented scrub feature, Craig is saying that to work properly the implementation would require oodles of memory or oodles of processing power and I said that I've encountered some cheap scrubbers that were less than satisfying.

I hope the above small joke translates across international boundaries and helps make the point that what we don't need is a poorly implemented scrub feature.

Graeme · Member Location: Spain Posts: 4663

stevemiste · Posts: 6

To be honest, I can't remember the last time I could have used that feature in Digital editing. I would rather see real time SFX before a scrub. I guess people get used to producing one way, and if it works for you, more power to you.

Graeme · Member Location: Spain Posts: 4663

sjess · Posts: 1

To anyone who misses being able to scrub audio in Cool Edit, I would recommend switching to "spectral" viewing mode, at least for tough edits. (In the View menu, select Spectral. Expect to wait a while for the image to draw if you're viewing a major chunk of the waveform.)

I find the visual image in spectral view is remarkably close to what I was "seeing" in my mind as I rocked the reels back and forth on the old Otari MX5050.

Of course, I work in news, editing mostly voice. But spectral view is very helpful in editing sound recorded in noisy environments, where Wavform View just gives you a lot of "hash".

Even some of my college-student employees have learned to switch to spectral for particlularly tough edits.

Graeme · Member Location: Spain Posts: 4663

Sometimes, the spectral view will show up something which is not so easily seen in the waveform view, but even then I can hear things which I cannot see easily - which rather makes them difficult to locate exactly.

All-in-all, I find it easier to precisely locate a problem by looking at the waveform rather than the spectrum. The difficulty is managing to locate the area closely enough to display the waveform sufficiently expanded to identify the actual problem area. This is where the ability to scrub would come into its own.

The real disadvantage with the spectral view is that it is, relatively, slow to write to the screen. As it is essential to switch back and forth between the two views to ensure one is not creating more damage than one is repairing, this can get a bit tedious for more than a few spots.

Note: My interest is in restoration, where we are frequently looking for incredibly small blips, usually riding on the back of something else. For the simple cutting up of voice or music, I wouldn't be looking for a scrub facility. It really is unnecessary for that sort of work, since it is extremely easy to indentify the edit points on the display - even more so than R&R editing.

Andrew Rose · Location: United Kingdom Posts: 875

Graeme · Member Location: Spain Posts: 4663

Andrew Rose is quite correct. Anyone who has learned to edit with a blade (as I did) should have no problem whatsoever getting to grips with a digital editing system such as CE. It's just as quick and infinitely more accurate.

I, too, was a little surprised at Wilduck's statement, since he obviously learned to cut with a blade and I would have thought he would have discovered just how much easier it is to do electronically - even without the aid of a scrub feature.

SteveG · Location: United Kingdom Posts: 6695

I agree with Andrew as well. I spent years with a razor blade, and quite recently some time with a 360 systems 'short/cut' which has a very prominent jog wheel, and many years with all sorts of jog/shuttle video editors. And quite frankly, I don't have any problems being just as accurate, and as fast, with CE just the way it is. The 360 systems jog wheel actually slows you down a lot of the time - well the one we had did, anyway. Having hot keys for the zoom options that you use, and a bit of dexterity with a mouse is a perfectly acceptable way of editing as far as I'm concerned.

This is really just a state of mind argument, as much as anything. Personally, I prefer driving cars looking through the windscreen (windshield), not staring in the rear-view mirror all the time seeing where I've been... and anybody who's ever flown an aircraft will tell you that there's more than one way to face it in another direction! If you're any good, you'll go with what you've got, and maybe even get to like it after a while!

Steve

Graeme · Member Location: Spain Posts: 4663

Despite what I said, I'd still like a scrub to help narrow down an area with a complex waveform which has some sort of blip in it :)

Straight editing is one thing, restoration another thing entirely.

Wildduck · Posts: 466

Errm, just to set the record straight, will everyone please note that my initial response in this thread was to say that I didn't find scrubbing necessary any longer.

I was just trying to reinforce the point that jog/scrubbing has to work extremely well and be instantly responsive if it is to be of any use. The hardware 'scrubbers' I've tried recently have been almost useless for anything serious.

As an OT aside, today I've been working, listening to some long files with CEP2 minimised, controlled by a Red Rover. It is brilliant with the ability to work at something else (I was working on an instruction manual for another program) on the computer, pause when the phone rings, lay down markers and so on.

Jay Marble · Posts: 145

My experiences with scrub/jog features have been good and bad..I recently spent 2 weeks filling in at a station using short cut..It was a frustrating experience. It was like looking at a waveform by holding a straw up to one eye... The thumbwheel was slow. I eventually plugged my usb mixer into a Cool Edit computer(the computer had a cheap bad soundcard). I would do my production on that computer and then dub into ShortCut. ShortCut was part of the on-air playback system..It was a nightmare..

My other experience was with an old Trackstar system..There was not much I liked about this system except the scrub/jog feature. As I recall it was set up on the mouse..Left button to scroll backwards, right button to go forwards. The farther up you pushed the mouse, the fast the playback..It was great.

SteveG · Location: United Kingdom Posts: 6695

I'm glad it's not just me that's somewhat underwhelmed with the short/cut! I'm a lot more impressed with their Instant Replay!

Steve

Arc · Posts: 58

Interesting discussion this Scrubbing debate! I just chimed in on a different thread about a similar thing, but I tend to be one of the ones that does not find it too useful a function for my needs. Im not arguing that it is not a useful feature since obviously many people seem to want it. But one other point, and maybe you guys could respond here, I have tried a few apps that offer a Scrub/Jog and found their implementation of it pretty useless! For example, Samplitude has a nice graphic "jog" wheel, but I found it painful to try to relate what I was hearing with where the cursor actually was on the waveform, and it responded so slowly to my jog wheel moves that I failed to see how it could tell me where the artifact really was. I tried a few other programs and saw pretty much the same results, sorry I forget which apps they were now. Have you guys used an editing software that does do the scrub thing accurately enough? Maybe this is why CEP doesn't include it??

Graeme · Member Location: Spain Posts: 4663

Jay Marble · Posts: 145

Trackstar by Arakis Its a package deal, part of a larger automation system..Not a great system, but the scroll feature works really good.

Marco · Location: USA Posts: 35

"Forget that I know anything about metalurgy/audio recording and just tell me "what the H#** is going on?"

Honestly, I've never had to scrub audio before...what does the term mean? The only meaning I'm familiar with is rolling the tape back and forth over the record head to "clean up" or silence an unwanted sound on a master track i.e., a singer takes a breath between lines in a song and the producer wants it off the tape during mixdown. Am I way off here?

;) Marco

Graeme · Member Location: Spain Posts: 4663

Deadly · Posts: 1

Having been taught 13 years ago on tape I have used the scrubbing method for years. I have also used Sadie and oter "scrubby digital systems" but still cannot beat simple zoom in play and edit that Cool Edit pro offers. I am music and voice editing for hours on end each day and have never looked back on the scrub method. Just keep moving the cursor and hit space / play and you'll find the bit you want without the need for scrub. That does the job for me and I reckon I spend far too long on CEP Smile

York Audio · Posts: 80

I don't miss the scrub facility on CEP at all, just as I don't miss the Jog/shuttle wheel on my NLE video editing PC.
I can see no point in making Computer based sytems operate in the same way as the old mechanical equipment.

I find that editing in CEP is so much faster and easier than using the razor blade.

This can sometimes be a problem if the client is at the session. In the Razor blade days the client would look on is awe as you removed a tiny piece of tape to make an edit now they look at you as if to say "..and you are charging for this?" Smile

SteveG · Location: United Kingdom Posts: 6695

Whenever faced with the 'Is that all you're going to do?' argument, I usually point out (in old UK-style money) that the charge of £5 for doing it is actually broken down as six pence for doing it, and £4 19/6 for knowing where to...

In US currency, this is exactly the same as one cent, and $1

Steve