newbie questions before diving into SCS

[Brontoy]

I would like to use SCS as playback for ballet performances and have a few questions before I buy the program:

1- I would need to divide up orchestral music recordings into sections and load up each section as an audio cue in SCS. After some sections, the playback would just continue, after some other sections the playback would need to pause and await my next "GO". My question is: At the sections where the playback just plays through to the next cue, is the playback seamless, with no glitch, and no SCS-imposed quick fade-out and fade-in at the juncture of the two cues? I do not always divide up the original music recording at silent moments but where music is playing, so the transition from one SCS cue to another that plays through must be inaudible.

2- Can I assume that SCS is stable with long audio cues? I would need to have playback of up to 2 hours of audio, divided as noted above.

3- For rehearsals, can I navigate to each cue in the cue list, move the time slider to a precise time position in the audio cue, start playback from that point and have all the subsequent play-throughs and pauses of the following cues work smoothly?

4- Is SCS OK with changing sound cards back and forth? For performance playback I use a high quality ASIO soundcard (RME), but sometimes for rehearsals I just use the internal sound card in my laptop. Is it OK and easy to just re-set output and driver options?

SCS has been highly recommended to me, and if I can confirm the above queries, I very much look forward to using it.

Thanks in advance, Brontoy

[Boswell]

Can I suggest that you download the demo (which is fully functional) and have a play, it will put your mind at rest.
Come back here when you have tried it and we'll try to answer any questions you have.

Your points 2&4, the answer is 'Yes'
Points 1&3 can better be answered by you trying it out as only you know exactly what you want it to do.

HTH

[Eric Snodgrass]

I would like to use SCS as playback for ballet performances and have a few questions before I buy the program:

1- I would need to divide up orchestral music recordings into sections and load up each section as an audio cue in SCS. After some sections, the playback would just continue, after some other sections the playback would need to pause and await my next "GO". My question is: At the sections where the playback just plays through to the next cue, is the playback seamless, with no glitch, and no SCS-imposed quick fade-out and fade-in at the juncture of the two cues? I do not always divide up the original music recording at silent moments but where music is playing, so the transition from one SCS cue to another that plays through must be inaudible.

Yes. The playback should be seamless. I don't know your specific set-up but if the track has to play through then there really should be no reason to divide the track itself into separate cues until you need the track to actually pause.

2- Can I assume that SCS is stable with long audio cues? I would need to have playback of up to 2 hours of audio, divided as noted above.

As already answered, yes.

3- For rehearsals, can I navigate to each cue in the cue list, move the time slider to a precise time position in the audio cue, start playback from that point and have all the subsequent play-throughs and pauses of the following cues work smoothly?

Yes, but that does depend on how the subsequent cues are set up. You'll have to experiment to find out what works best for your situation.

4- Is SCS OK with changing sound cards back and forth? For performance playback I use a high quality ASIO soundcard (RME), but sometimes for rehearsals I just use the internal sound card in my laptop. Is it OK and easy to just re-set output and driver options?

As already answered, yes. I believe that the best way to do this is to simply save two copies of your SCS file - one for the rehearsals and one for the shows. When you make changes to the cues during rehearsals you can do a "Save As" and save the file as the show file too. Just remember to change the card output preference on that show file. Or you can avoid the hassle and simply use the RME card during rehearsals too.

As Brontoy already suggested, just download the demo and experiment. I think you'll find that it is a solid program and well worth the money.

[Peter Jackson]

Hi Brontoy

As others have answered get the demo and play but I will add I was very worried about spending money on a programme,and like yourself I new nothing about it.
But it has been one of the best purchases for my theatre and television work that I have ever made the programme will do just about anything you can imagine once you have mastered the
simple interface it has and understand what does what. I'm sure that what you have asked can all be done, my only advise would be at first keep things simple which to start with might mean
making duplicate copies of your audio files and then cutting them as required. Long audio cues are no problem I ran an audio visual book recording a few weeks ago which was 2 and a 1/4 hours
and there was not a problem, it also played many videos and still images as it went through the story.
Also as you have already seen lots of users are only too willing to help with any problems, so I can only highly recommend this great programme to you.
Good luck.
pjrails

[Brontoy]

Thanks for all the replies!

I finally did download the trial version and found that the auto-follow audio cues are not seamless.

Maybe someone else can try a little test: take a 2 minute audio file, preferably with some percussion or string plucking. Using an audio editor, divide up that file into 6 or so separate audio files. I used Wavelab. Then load up the files in SCS and have them auto-follow. I found that more often than not, the audio glitched on the auto-follow to the subsequent cue.

Maybe other people can replicate my results because I did not install the trial version on my faster production computer (I try not to install and uninstall a lot on that computer to help keep it as stable as possible), I installed it on a general purpose desktop with a Soundblaster sound card. Maybe the hardware I tried it on was lacking in terms of low latency, small buffers etc.

SCS looks like a terrific program but it seems the auto-follows are not sample-accurate. For most applications I am sure that would be inconsequential.

Would be really curious if this is not a problem on faster machines.

Brontoy

[Theatre III Sound]

For the past two years, I have been using SCS in a production of "The Nutcracker" and can assure you it will do everything you asked about splendidly. We used to do the show with CDs and that was a pain, especially for rehearsals where you might want to start in the middle of a track, etc. With SCS, it's a piece of cake to move anywhere in a track and have it play on from there.

One hint if you decide to go with SCS... For a production of your type, set all the cues to "exclusive". That way you avoid mistakenly starting a second track while one is already playing. That was one of the features that sold me on SCS over other sound cue software.

Good luck!

[Mike Daniell]

I finally did download the trial version and found that the auto-follow audio cues are not seamless.

SCS will not provide 'sample-accurate' transitions, but as Eric points out "I don't know your specific set-up but if the track has to play through then there really should be no reason to divide the track itself into separate cues until you need the track to actually pause." During rehearsals it may be common to chop and change around parts to be played, but once the performance has been finalized you should be able to set up a complete track for each dance.

My son-in-law has just used SCS for playing all the tracks for a ballet concert, in which two of my granddaughters performed The director loved the fact that she could get tracks just the right length during rehearsals, but by the date of the performance everything was finalized and so each dance had it's own cue which played from start to finish.

[Brontoy]

Thanks for all the suggestions. I have decided to move ahead, buy and use SCS on my next production. In the trial version I loaded up the cues that auto-follow from the next show and they sound OK.

The situation last time was unusual with a Russian choreographer that came in with his own audio files which he insisted be kept as he divided them. And some of these divisions were on a violin string pluck or a trumpet blast. In all honesty, he probably had some proper method as he kept me time-stretching/shrinking the files to fit to the dancers. The way he had them divided worked well with this time-stretching/shrinking.

I am confident SCS will work 99% of the time for my purposes. And if I ever come across another situation like the last one, at least next time I will know how to deal with it.

Thanks for the suggestion regarding "exclusive" on the cues. The next production has about 20 audio cues that are 1 to 5 minutes in length and the last cue which is 39 minutes long. Are there any suggestions regarding buffers or any other preferences that I should note to help make this coming show as stable as possible with my new setup?

The help of this forum is much appreciated, Brontoy

[Mike Daniell]

Are there any suggestions regarding buffers or any other preferences that I should note to help make this coming show as stable as possible with my new setup?

A few suggestions:

• Run some tests on your performance machine (the one with the ASIO soundcard). The reason for this suggestion is that the handling of ASIO drivers is significantly different to the handling of WDM drivers. If you encounter any problems let me know.
• Since you have a different sound card on your performance machine, go to Production Properties in the SCS Editor and select Other SCS computers have DIFFERENT physical device types. The effect of this is that the mapping to physical devices is kept in the Windows registry instead of in the cue file, so each machine has its own settings and you will not have to reset them each time you re-copy the cue file from your design machine to your performance machine. You should only need to set them the first time you copy a cue file to the performance machine.
• To simplify the process of copying your production files from your design machine to your performance machine, look in the SCS Help under Miscellaneous / Portability.

[Brontoy]

Hi Mike,
What sort of performance tests do you suggest I run on the machine with ASIO?
Brontoy

[Mike Daniell]

Just run some cues, including your longest cue, and check that you get clean sound, ie no glitches.

[Brontoy]

Hi Mike,
I did load up one of the ASIO laptops with all the audio cues for the next show and I'm afraid I did get a some glitches. Afterwards, I un-checked "use software mixer instead of hardware mixer" and maybe this will help. Also, I suppose I do not need to pre-open more than 2 cues for my purposes. Any other suggestions would be appreciated, and I will run some more performance tests.
Thanks,
Brontoy

[Mike Daniell]

Does the RME have a WDM driver as well as an ASIO driver? This may be listed in the Physical Devices drop-down list (in the Production Properties) as an RME device name that does not contain 'ASIO'. If you do have such a device name, then select this device and also disable the SCS Internal Mixer. See the Forum topic Fixing stuttering or skipping audio for more info.

[kallek]

I suggest you to use sound editor program to combine files and save files in combination what needed in production. That solves glitches problem. I don't see reason to put many cues to auto-follow which are still same song. Best to play 1 edited file or if needed separate to 2 or so on.

Kalle

[Brontoy]

OK, I did manage to disable the internal mixer and use a non ASIO driver. Been listening and performance testing and the glitches seem to have gone.

Details: I had to check "disable ASIO" and re-start SCS before it would let me choose another device besides the "ASIO Hammerfal DSP". After re-starting I could choose a pair of outputs from the RME, and the "ASIO Hammerfal DSP" was gone. Then I could disable the internal mixer.

Conceptually I am still not completely clear what the internal mixer does, have to read up on it.

Anyway, I am going to keep performance testing to get my confidence up before the upcoming shows.

In response to the suggestion that I combine the audio files that do not have a pause between therm - I wish I could, but this dance company navigates by the time lines within the individual tracks. I hope SCS proves stable in running lots of auto follow audio cues.

Thanks all for helping me get this going properly.
Brontoy