MacDirectory magazine is the premiere creative lifestyle magazine for Apple enthusiasts featuring interviews, in-depth tech reviews, Apple news, insights, latest Apple patents, apps, market analysis, entertainment and more.
Issue link: https://digital.macdirectory.com/i/11584
COMPANY PROFILE SMARTSOUND OFFERS PROFESSIONAL SCORING FOR YOUR WORKS OF ART WORDS BY JONE DEVLIN A soundtrack can add immeasurably to the impact of a film or video. But as those budding videographers among us know, scoring a piece of film isn’t all that simple. Or is it? MacDirectory recently talked with Brian Dickman, the Vice President of Marketing for SmartSound (www.SmartSound.com) who discussed his company’s long history of working “to put into the hands of the average visual creator the ability to add the power, impact and emotion of high- quality music soundtracks customized to their project.” Dickman told MacDirectory that SmartSound started in the mid-late nineties, when multi-media CD ROMs were first gaining popularity. The founders of the company were composers, musicians and audio engineers who invented a technique that allowed anyone to create professionally edited music tracks. What this technology did, according to Dickman, was let users edit music into any length. He continued, “As DV video cameras came into popularity we saw the video market really take off, so we adapted the technology to fit really well for video editing and production.” SmartSound currently has “hundred of thousands” of customers that actively use their technology. As for the music itself, some of it is purchased by SmartSound, while other pieces come as the result of the relationships the company has forged over the years with music creators. These individuals are more than happy to work with SmartSound to create professionally composed and produced music pieces, which SmartSound’s audio engineers then edit for customer use. So when customers buy music from SmartSound, they not only get their original music track, but also information on how to edit it with SmartSound software, or, as Dickman put it, “The SmartSound software kind of serves as a search engine to help people organize and find their music and then it gives them the creative tools they need to customize it for that creation.” SmartSound is multiplatform, working easily with both Mac and Windows applications, and the company has recently added Mood Mapping® which uses multi-layer music to provide easy control over the music mix. This is accomplished by “offering a bunch of pre- set music mixes, we call them moods, and there is a set volume level for each instrument layer of the music. So you can have the Dialog mood remove the lead instruments automatically and lower the volume on the rest so the song fits under dialog or narration.” MacDirectory 127