seems like not a lot of movie composer

[dolphie]

i think i did see avatar being used as promo for pro tools
but nice to see other people using ableton for scores

[scientist]

I work as a full-time film composer and use Live as my one-and-only DAW. But that doesn't mean we are many, though...

+1. i do everything in live, with the exception of 5.1 mixing in logic. midi can be clumsy, but for the most part it does the job just fine.

[dolphie]

this discussion is going faster then i thought but maybe ableton is noticing us now
and me and 5,1 mixing is a long time away

[petit nuage]

I use ableton plus kontakt for orchestral's thing and its nice !

as i said , for me the only one feature is that cubase's feature (i dont know its name) where you see all the midi parts in one window...i imagine that is wonderful for complex arrangements ,conuterpoints etc ..otherwise live is very capable

[chris vine]

Because Live is my main DAW and I'm familiar with it plus I really like the workflow, I use it to make soundtracks for videos. Even if I had a big project with scoring and the need for serious sync or 5.1 to do, I would still use Live as much as possible before porting over to Logic or whatever..just my 2 cents.

[mr.ergonomics]

I use ableton plus kontakt for orchestral's thing and its nice !

as i said , for me the only one feature is that cubase's feature (i dont know its name) where you see all the midi parts in one window...i imagine that is wonderful for complex arrangements ,conuterpoints etc ..otherwise live is very capable

I also would like to use ableton more for that but I miss a legato midi function and more advanced quantisation. the groove pool doesn't work for me because it does mess up note length. cubase is really better here.

regarding midi in one editor, I hear you, give it a push

http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php? ... lit=inline

[dolphie]

i just gave that suggestion a +3 would love that

[reeloy]

...i would love the implementation of the best offline timestretch algorithm you can get....

That would make live a real help at least in soundtrack finishing...musical cut.

And then ableton could do a job even for james horner...

But i'd go for your midi all over editor in live, too.....

[posssu]

I work as a full-time film composer and use Live as my one-and-only DAW. But that doesn't mean we are many, though...

+1. i do everything in live, with the exception of 5.1 mixing in logic. midi can be clumsy, but for the most part it does the job just fine.

Well said. But actually I've always done the 5.1 mix on the mixing stage... although it would be nice to be able to do some kind of preliminary 5.1 mix before going there. But has worked ok so far.

I also wish editing midi was easier. It's the one thing that takes most of the time usually and it takes too long to access and switch between CC and note data. They should be actually in the Arrangement-view, integrated somehow that I wouldn't have to "go" somewhere to edit it - I could do it on the spot.

[kanuck]

I use ableton plus kontakt for orchestral's thing and its nice !

How high would you grade kontakt's orchestral samples?

[dolphie]

i use the kontakt strings to but i prefer at the moment those from garritan pg4
but again

[dolphie]

found a work flow that seems to be good, but is curious.
I load up a vst or a ableton instrument, and then uses arranger view.
And play the different parts of the music, whit my piano that is used as a midi input.
Seems a bit easier then remember all the scales, i use the midi scale thing when i play the parts.
Maybe some one got a better idea

[luddy]

I've done some soundtracks for TV in Live.

There are a couple different issues being mixed together here I think.

One is video playback. When I've scored, I don't need (or want) a very high-res image to work against, just something that won't bog down the computer. Live is perfectly fine for the image sizes I've used. It talks directly to the QT playback engine under Mac OS X and seems to do just fine, on my machine anyway.

Another is timecode, and frame-accurate placement of audio. It's not nearly so easy to read frame positions out of Live's timeline as it is in some other DAWs. There isn't for example a separate SMPTE timecode display as there is in Logic. That said, if you set the Options > Time Ruler Format to one of the timecode formats (assuming the one you want is supported) then if you zoom on the timeline you can get down to frame resolution and even below frame resolution. AFAIK the resolution of Live's timeline is in no way more coarse than Logic's.

Another issue is the hosting of big string libraries. In this regard, I'd have to say that I'd be more comfortable in Logic. If you use an EXS24-based library, it is enormously efficient. For something like Kontakt, the handling of multitimbral instruments in Logic is more convenient. You can insert the same instrument multiple times, on different tracks, and talk to the different MIDI channels from those different tracks. To do this in Live you have to route all the tracks into a single track containing one instance of Kontakt. Logic has 64-bit support which can be critical (a dealbreaker if missing) for big sample libraries. This stuff is far and away the biggest issue for big scoring projects IMO, when comparing Live and Logic.

There is stuff like automation curves and the sophistication of the MIDI implemention. meh. The mixes and electronic music I do in Live are as complicated and more complicated than a typical score. Not as big, in terms of tracks, but they lean a lot harder on the DAW in most ways, they are more sophisticated in terms of production techniques. I prefer Live, including for MIDI. Live's handing of controllers and control surfaces alone makes me prefer it for projects where you have to do a lot of articulation control, etc. YMMV, but I don't think it's anything like an obvious fact that Live can't handle this kind of stuff, far from it.

Live renders video with audio embedded in it far better than Logic, no comparison. When it comes to making a rough to show someone, Live rules in this dept. You have access to all the QT codecs. In Logic all you can do is punch a new audio track over the original. Not nearly as handy IMO.

5.1: Live just plain can't do this properly. It lacks the per-track surround panning support. If you're mixing in 5.1 it would be crazy to choose Live IMO. That said, it's a little unusual I think for the guy doing the scoring to be worried about 5.1 mixing. That's typically a separate matter and is most often done in PT anyhow.

-Luddy

[nylarch]

nice post

[swishniak]

nice post

+1

it seems like there are alot of us out there flopping back and forth between live and logic. . export / quit / import / mix / export / quit / create / etc..