If you were at the April meeting, you'll remember that Jiri promised to let us know about his experiences with the Larry Jordan DVD - well here's his review. More of these to follow in future weeks (I hope) - Phil
Review: Larry Jordan's Soundtrack Pro Essential Training DVD
by Jiri Kolozsi (info@kolozsi.cz)
I am not going to write the whole table of contents of all lessons and give my comments to each of them - everyone can read it on Larry Jordan's web page here:
(Editor's note: URL updated by request) http://www.larryjordan.biz/store.
Instead, I would like to be very concise and just sum up good things that I have noticed while going through all lessons and what I think is unique in Larry's approach.
Despite the fact the total duration of the whole course is claimed to be 6 hours - it took me a few days to go through all lessons. Almost every lesson is accompanied by exercise files so you are going to spend some extra time just playing with those files.
The course is aimed on beginners and intermediate users - that means terminology of sound editing and basic editing/mixing principles are explained. For the most of you it wouldn't be necessary, but for any novice to sound editing information provided are invaluable, given in very understandable and concise way.
Larry teaches you how to set up your system and then maintain it. He shows you how to tweak Soundtrack Pro's preferences according to your needs. Different techniques and approaches to sound editing in FCP and ST Pro are compared as well.
During the course, Larry had to invent some workarounds around ST Pro's bugs - so if you have ever ended up being upset by an odd behaviour of the application, you're not alone!
If you have wondered what are the best practices how to achieve this and that - Larry tells you. This way, beginners can save precious time learning the best practices right from the very beginning. You will be able to achieve one thing multiple ways and use keyboard shortcuts effectively.
Having visited Larry's PowerUP! seminar in Manchester this year my expectations of the DVD course were really high - and I haven't been disappointed. I appreciate his real-world production experience, i.e. you are taught by someone who actually does video & sound editing and can provide you with some handy tips that can save you a lot of time - and, of course, money!
If you have never used ST Pro or if you are completely new to sound editing - this training DVD is for you. But even if you are a pretty skilled sound editor the chances are that you will be able to find new approaches and techniques in using ST Pro.
