PRG Mbox - Page 110

100
MBOX® USER MANUAL
External Audio Tracks (Sidecar Files)
AIFF, WAV, MP3, and AAC audio les can be placed in the Media folder with texture les. These audio les are triggered
when a movie le with the same folder and le number is played.
Guidelines:
+ Unlike in previous versions of Mbox, no preferences need to be set to play any sidecar audio les.
+ To trigger an audio le, there must have an identically numbered movie le placed in the same folder.
+ Sidecar audio les will only play in the forward direction. The audio will play when the triggering movie on the layer
uses any forward playmode, including Layer Slave and Timecode sync.
+ If the triggering movie le on the same layer is paused, the audio will pause as well.
+ If the triggering movie le on the same layer has its playspeed adjusted, the audio’s playspeed will follow.
+ Audio les can be AIFF, WAV, MP3, or AAC les. Within those containers, the formatting of the audio (sample rate,
number of channels, etc.) does not matter.
+ A triggered audio le will always loop when the triggering movie loops (at the movie’s out-point). If the audio is
triggered by a still image, it will play once and not loop.
+ When a sidecar audio le is triggered, and the movie on the same layer uses a playmode of Forward Loop, the audio
le will loop at the exact same time as the movie. This means that audio les that are longer or shorter than the
triggering movie will not loop at the end point of the audio le. For an audio clip to loop at the right point, it must
have a movie of exactly the same length, down to the frame. Oftentimes the audio le will be extracted directly from
the movie le that it goes with, in which case they will be the same length.
+ Rather than having its own in and out points, sidecar playback uses those of the associated triggering movie. If
the in and out points of the triggering movie on the same layer are modied, the audio le’s in and out points will be
modied as well. If the play speed of a movie that triggers an audio le is modied, the audio le will continue to play
at normal speed. This means that the audio will be out of sync with the movie and that it will loop too early (if the
play speed is increased) or too late (if play speed is decreased).
+ Unlike in previous versions of Mbox, audio les can no longer be triggered using a still image.
Embedded Audio Tracks (in QuickTime Movies)
Mbox can also play audio that is embedded in a movie. There are two ways to get Mbox to play embedded audio:
+ Rename the le, adding the .audio sufx:
a le named - 001.MyMovie.mov would be renamed as - 001.MyMovie.audio.mov
+ Create an entry for the le to the MediaInfo.plist le in the /Mbox/Media folder. Then add the “audio” key to that
entry, with a boolean value of “YES”. Refer to “MediaInfo plist” on page 41 for more information.
In order to play back movies with embedded audio tracks, Mbox must play the movie in the fallback AVFoundation
playback engine, rather than the optimized Mbox playback engine. The AVFoundation engine does limit the available
playmodes. However, as with sidecar audio playback, all the forward-playing playmodes will work.
Guidelines:
+ Embedded audio tracks must use the AAC audio format. For best results use 48KHz sampling.
+ Embedded audio tracks can have as many audio channels as can be handled by the connected hardware (up to
24). Please note, however, that any audio output using more than two channels will require the use of either USB or
FireWire interfaces on the Mac computer and a compatible USB/FireWire audio output device (e.g. MOTU or RME).