Cross Fading Music Sound Items - Fade-In / Fade-Out

Requirement

With a Sound List composed of multiple music Sound Items, you want to play them in sequence. And when one music selection approaches its end, you want to fade out its volume and simultaneously fade in the next one. Need a fast way to edit/setup on a large number of Sound Items.

Solution Summary

First create a new Sound List and drag and drop all the music audio files to create the Sound Items. Then we'll Add Fade-In and Add Fade-Out markers to all Sound Items. Next we'll create an automation script to play them in sequence. Finally the play steps in the automation script must be offset timed so that each subsequent Sound Item starts playing while the previous Sound Item fades out.

For these instructions, we'll assume you want fades that take 10 seconds to go from 0% volume to 100% volume. You can adjust accordingly if you want a different amount of fade time.

Procedure

Prep the Marker Guides and Default Attributes

First, we do some setup. You should only have to do these steps one time -- they are saved as program Default Attributes.


1.  Set the marker Left Guide and Right Guide Positions (Figure 1.) in the Options -- Markers tab. Default guide positions are: Left=0 seconds, Right=10 seconds from end of audio. Defaults should be good for this setup.
2.  Select any Sound Item and Add Fade-In and Add Fade-Out markers to it (Figure 2.). Set Fade Speed of 10 on both markers. Set Target Volume at 100% for the Fade-In and Target Volume 0% for the Fade-Out. Enable both markers. Don't worry about Position, we'll set that later.
3.  Click Tools -- Default Attributes -- Save Selected Attributes as 'Defaults' . There's also a toolbar button to do this. Now the Default Attributes contain the two fade markers.

LG Left Guide; SM Start-At marker; FI Fade-In marker; FO Fade-Out marker; EM End-At marker; RG Right Guide.

Add the Fades to All Sound Items

Now we're ready to do the Mass Update to all the Music files. See the User's Guide for a discussion of Quick Markers.


1.  Click Tools -- Select All: for Mass Attribute Updates. This adds all the Sound Items to the selection set for mass updates. Or you could also select a subset if you want.
2.  Click Tools -- Quick Markers -- Delete All Fades Markers . Clears all fade markers from all selected Sound Items.
3.  Click Tools -- Quick Markers -- Add Fade Markers -- Add Both, Fade-In And Fade-Out . That adds the fade markers from the Default Attributes to all selected Sound Items.
4.  Click Tools -- Quick Markers -- Move Marker to Right Guide Position -- Fade-Out. Moves all fade-outs to the Right Guide. The Fade-In markers should already be positioned at 0. If not, Click Tools -- Quick Markers -- Move Marker to Left Guide Position -- Fade-In.
5.  Click Tools -- Quick Markers -- Add Fade Markers -- Set Sound Item Initial Volume for Fade-In. This sets initial volume to 0% on all selected Sound Items so they start a 0% volume (silence).

Create the Automation Script and Overlap the Play steps

All the fades should be setup now. So the last step is to Overlap play during fade-in / fade-out.


1.  Open the Automator (Figure 3.) and click Edit Script -- New Play All Script. Makes a script with Play-Steps for all Sound Items.
2.  Click Edit Script -- Set Time Overlap on All Play Steps. Sets the overlap to 10 seconds (default). You can change the default in the Options -- Automation tab. All Play Steps are Offset-Timed, so you can't Pause/Resume this type of script.

Test It

You're done. Now in the Automator, click the Start button to test the Automation Script. The music should do a cross fade in/out at the end of each song. It may seem like a lot of steps but once you've done it a couple times, it should go pretty fast.