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Just installed 2508 build of PD8 on my home PC.
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Just wanted to share some ups and downs.

Got home last Friday and started PD8 on my Vista platform. As expected, a popup came up, saying there is a patch available. No sooner have I selected <OK>, PD8 crashed. I restarted the program and no pop-up anymore, so I manually went to <Upgrade> and tried to download and run the patch. When I ran the PD after the installation had completed, the soft went unstable and kept on filling my screen with errors.

I was prepared, I had the actual full version of PD 8.0 build 2508 (as well as Service Pack) preliminary downloaded from CyberlLnk. I did have to uninstall the previous built 2220C and replace it with 2508. All went smooth.

I finished my very first project on Sunday; an 11 min video with tons of music, transitions, effects, titles. I think it was my first most complicated project to-date. PD8.0 has not crashed once during the editing. The only thing I noticed was it considerably slowed down at the very end of the project, to a point, I could not work with transitions anymore as playback had jerky video and mismatched audio. I solved the problem by dumping that entire memory overload by restarting PD and my project.

I found one bug in this new build. It is in Smart Music. Every time you try to preview a song and when click <Stop>, the pointer in the timeline goes all the way to the beginning of the project. Quite annoying.

I quite loved the feature of Smart Music. It smoothly stretches sound track to any length of the video you are trying to match. One question. If you want to <Purchase> additional tracks, can you only buy one single track at a time or the whole package? I tried to find out and came to realize that there are three options:
1. Home quality – 22k
2. Pro quality – 44k
3. The whole - CD.

Are 1 and 2 – prices per track? Is 3 a CD with all the library of songs that are visible in the Smart Music library drop down list for every track category? What if I do not want a CD and would like a download version?
Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted... but to weigh and consider.
ynotfish
Senior Contributor Location: N.S.W. Australia Joined: May 08, 2009 02:06 Messages: 9977 Offline
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Hi Andy -

Thankfully, those numbers aren't prices!!! 44K = 44 000, which is a pretty hefty price for a song - unless it's in Zimbabwean dollars!

No - they're Audio Sampling Rates, which are usually from 8000 to 192 000 times per second (8 kHz - 192 kHz). Size matters. In other words, it refers to the quality of the sound... a bit like video bitrates.

When you see 44K (except in a car yard!), it means exactly the same as 44KHz or 44 000 cycles per second.

Hz = Hertz, which means 1 cycle/second so MHz = MegaHertz, which means millions of cycles/second. While we're on Latin derivations, Mega = 1 million, Kilo = 1000... no - I won't keep going.

The sampling rate used to create a CD is 44.1 KHz. 20kHz is the frequency an average person can hear. Voice for a phone is typically 8000 times per second (8 KHz), but if it was sampled at 4 KHz it would capture the full voice spectrum.

In PD, if you go to the Audio Recording room (click on the microphone)... then click on Profile, you'll see the range of audio sampling available is between 11kHZ & 48kHZ. The profiles refer to the QUALITY of the sound.

Cheers - Tony

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at Jan 25. 2010 12:18


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Tony, thank you for the lengthy reply but you misinterpreted my question. I already knew that 22k and 44k were sample bit-rates and not the price. Let me rewrite my question again with the actual prices added:

Pro Quality 44k - $19.95
Home Qlty 22k - $6.95
Entire Just Blues: $99.95/49.95

I think (while typing) I got the answer. Prices are per each track with CD price per track category:: Blues/Jazz/Rock, etc.

If you ask me I think the prices are waay over the top, especially after having downloads available at I-tunes for $2 per song.
Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted... but to weigh and consider.
ynotfish
Senior Contributor Location: N.S.W. Australia Joined: May 08, 2009 02:06 Messages: 9977 Offline
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Hey Andy -

Can you cut me a piece of string, please?

Re: prices of songs, I'm not sure how the SmartSound music is configured, but I'm pretty sure that if you asked an mp3 file from iTunes to behave as flexibly as the SmartSound tracks do, you wouldn't get a very happy result.

Cheers - Tony

Oh, about that piece of string... I'll let you know if it's the right length later!
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BarryTheCrab
Senior Contributor Location: USA Joined: Nov 06, 2008 22:18 Messages: 6240 Offline
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If you go to the Smartsound Website, get on their mailing list. They have album sales quite frequently. And Tony is correct in that the flexibility of the music is why you pay a little more, oh, and you won't have to go to court when you use it on Youtube.

http://www.smartsound.com/index.html HP Envy Phoenix/4thGen i7-4770(4@3.4GHz~turbo>3.9)
Nvidia GTX 960(4GB)/16GB DDR3/
Canon Vixia HV30/HF-M40/HF-M41/HF-G20/Olympus E-PL5.
Tape capture using 6 VCR, TBC-1000, Elite BVP4+, Sony D8 camcorder with TBC.
https://www.facebook.com/BarryAFTT
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Thanks. That explains high prices. Has anyone ever done purchasing? Can one carry those tracks over to the next versions of PD? Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted... but to weigh and consider.
BarryTheCrab
Senior Contributor Location: USA Joined: Nov 06, 2008 22:18 Messages: 6240 Offline
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I have almost 700 tracks, they work in every version and build of PD.
HP Envy Phoenix/4thGen i7-4770(4@3.4GHz~turbo>3.9)
Nvidia GTX 960(4GB)/16GB DDR3/
Canon Vixia HV30/HF-M40/HF-M41/HF-G20/Olympus E-PL5.
Tape capture using 6 VCR, TBC-1000, Elite BVP4+, Sony D8 camcorder with TBC.
https://www.facebook.com/BarryAFTT
RobertJ/OZ [Avatar]
Senior Contributor Location: Melbourne Australia Joined: Aug 14, 2006 02:26 Messages: 1209 Offline
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Hi Barry,

So you have finally resolved your SmartSound issues with PDR8 then, did you do as we discussed, completely remove SmartSound and start again and did you eventually find where the corruption was?

Robert Intel i7 930, 16GB ram, Radeon HD 5770 1Gb,Ver. 14.12 Win7 64 bit
Intel i7 7700 HQ, 16 GB ram Nvidia GTX 1050Ti 4GB dual drives 1 TB SSD + 1 TB HDD Win 10

PDtoots
BarryTheCrab
Senior Contributor Location: USA Joined: Nov 06, 2008 22:18 Messages: 6240 Offline
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No RJ,
I may submit a screencap to Smartsound.
I can get around the problem, it only happens in the menu.
Curious tho. HP Envy Phoenix/4thGen i7-4770(4@3.4GHz~turbo>3.9)
Nvidia GTX 960(4GB)/16GB DDR3/
Canon Vixia HV30/HF-M40/HF-M41/HF-G20/Olympus E-PL5.
Tape capture using 6 VCR, TBC-1000, Elite BVP4+, Sony D8 camcorder with TBC.
https://www.facebook.com/BarryAFTT
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