Changing playing speed and pitch

This function requires the Pro or Multidisplay License. See Licenses and functions.

In order to adjust music, comments and other sounds to videos and picture sequences, you may have to stretch or compress the sound, i.e. change it in length. This affects the playing speed, which in turn has an influence on the pitch. You may be familiar with the "mickey mouse" effect, which is caused by an audio track being played at too high a speed. With AV applications, changes in the pitch are usually undesirable. This is why Wings Vioso RX offers the option of changing speed and pitch entirely independently of each other.

• Musicians talk about timestretching if the playing speed changes, i.e. audio objects are expanded or compressed, while the pitch stays the same.

• Pitchshifting, on the other hand, means that the playing speed or the length of an audio object, respectively, stays the same and only the pitch is changed.

By means of these two methods Wings Vioso RX offers maximum flexibility in designing your AV show; depending on the application you can use the more favorable effect.

Changing the speed without affecting the pitch

This is the most frequently used method. It is used for adjusting the length of the audio to videos or picture sequences without this being particularly noticeable.

• Enable tool Stretch objects by keeping the W key pressed and drag the beginning or the end of an object with the mouse to extend or shorten it. Any nodes will change their position proportionally.

• When you play the object, the sound is either faster or slower, but sound quality or timbre remain the same. As long as the speed factor ranges between 0.8 and 1.3 (shown in the object info line) the audio should sound "normal".

• Important: As timestretching at high quality requires a lot of computer performance, playback in real time is only at prelistening quality. To maintain optimum quality and save computer power, you should export the object after editing as a new file. See Exporting sound objects. If the enable option Replace original objects by exported audio file, the old object is automatically replaced by the new one.

Changing pitch and playing speed at the same time

If you want to change playing speed and pitch likewise, proceed a follows:

1. Right-click the object and select Properties.

2. In the Properties Dialog under Speed factor / Pitch factor place a checkmark next to Enable settings and Pitch factor = Speed factor.

3. Close the dialog by clicking OK.

4. Enable tool Stretch objects by keeping the W key pressed and drag the beginning or the end of an object with the mouse to extend or shorten it.

When you play the object, the pitch will be different. The timbre will therefore be altogether higher or lower, depending on whether the object was shortened or extended. As the pitch corresponds to the playing speed, this method requires only little computer performance and can be run in real time.

Free editing of playing speed and pitch

Of course, it is also possible to change playing speed and pitch independently of each other. This may be necessary if beat and pitch need to be adjusted individually for a piece of music. This way the effect of the music can be changed drastically.

1. If you require a speed factor exceeding 1, i.e. increased playing speed, you start by shortening the object correspondingly. Right-click the object and select Cut right part.

2. Right-click the object and select Properties.

3. In the Properties Dialog under Speed factor / Pitch factor place a checkmark next to Enable settings.

4. Now enter the corresponding correction factors:

5. Speed factor ...changes the playing speed and the possible object length. A factor of 0.5, for example, causes a reduction in speed by half and allows double the object length. The beat is also reduced by half. A factor of 2, in contrast, results in double the speed; a factor of 1 stands for the original speed.

6. Pitch factor ...affects pitch and timbre. A factor of 0.5 reduces the pitch exactly by one octave, which corresponds to the audio frequencies being reduced by half. A factor of 2 increases the pitch exactly by one octave, which corresponds to a doubling of the audio frequencies; factor 1 corresponds to the original pitch.

7. Button Default settings allows you to reset speed and pitch.

5. Close the dialog by clicking OK and test the settings.

Important: As timestretching at high quality requires a lot of computer performance, playback in real time is only at prelistening quality. To maintain optimum quality and save computer power, you should export the object after editing as a new file. See Exporting sound objects. If the enable option Replace original objects by exported audio file, the old object is automatically replaced by the new one.