[Ardour-Users] New user and 'large' projects

[Paul Campbell]

Hi, I'm Paul Campbell and I'm a new user to Ardour.  I'm a convert
from Audacity.

Still just getting to grips with what I can do with Ardour.

I'm using it to produce a full-cast audio drama and an audio book as
podcasts (cossmass.co.uk).  Might as well get in a question while I'm
on about it.

In the following scenario, am I organizing my work in the most
efficient manner for Ardour?

* I'm producing a serial of 30 minute episodes, which have a common
intro, outro and a couple of elements (scene changes) within.

* The source audio for the 12+ actors come from a selection of WAVs of
about an hour per actor.  These source WAVs contain a selection of
scenes that will be in as many as a half-dozen episodes.

* Each track for dialogue for a character can easily have over two
dozen regions, as I select the best take for each line.

* Source for SFX are picked from a library as needed.  A few are used
several times in multiple episodes.

* Soundtrack is primarily from a collection of pre-composed music.
(mostly from incompetech.com).

* Each episode consists of nearly a dozen scenes of between 30 seconds
and seven minutes in length.

* Each scene can have between two and a dozen or more tracks.

* I don't always know what order the scenes will be in until nearly
ready to publish an episode.

I did consider trying to do all this in a single session per episode,
but quickly ran out of JACK connections (128) after only a couple of
scenes.  I also found that while envelope would allow me to keep gain
control with the regions, there isn't an equivalent for pan or other
plugins.  A horizonzal drag for automations would be great.

My current plan is to have my source audio (dialogue, SFX, music) all
be Imported (i.e. linked) into the sessions.  Have a snapshot per
scene and per header & footer.  Have a snapshot that pulls in exports
from each of the other snapshots, and use that for mastering.

Does anyone have any observations or suggestions on how to improve on this plan?

My current new trick that I've just learnt is sending the output from
all dialogue and SFX in a scene to a Bus with all the ambience and
reverb setup for the scene's location.  Tried using Sends, but found
redirecting the Outputs easier to understand.

Thanks,

--
Paul W. Campbell
* IM - AIM & Twitter: kemitix / MSN: paul at paulwcampbell.com / Yahoo: kemitixii
* Science Fiction Audio Drama from Cossmass Productions - http://cossmass.co.uk/