Sound in Maya?
 

I am trying to add sound to a project that i am doing. I made a tacometer for a car, and i have a car reving in an audi file. I need to put it into maya so i can animate the tac... any tips on how?

Never mind, i just got it. I just drag and dropped the audi file right onto the animation slider... lol
how would i get rid of it if i wanted to?

go figure... i just figured that out too. Since i seem to have it all figured out.. is there any advice for syncing the sounds?

patience. ;)

Lots of patience. :D

Mind explaining how you did all this? I can drop audio files onto the slider, but can't hear anything when I play. How do you get rid of the audio files if you don't want them anymore too? Also, can you put any kind of audio file in there?

Ok nevermind. Figured it out. What I really need to know is how to convert an audio file to aiff or wav format. Any suggestions?

quicktime should do it the easiest

How can you convert files with QT? I have it, but can't find a way to convert. I copy tracks from CD's to my computer through Windows Media Player, so the files are .wma. I have Video Mach which can convert audio and video files to various other formats, but .wma is not supported. I would like to convert to .wav if at all possible.

Hey darkware, anything your trying to conver they have a program on the web for :).. hell you can turn avi to gif if you wanted! Haha. Anyways, go onto download.com first of all and search for what you are looking for... so for example if you are looking to convert wav to wma.. then search for.. wav to wma, or wav to wma converter. If its not on there then go to google.com and search for the exact same 2 things.. not once have i not found a program to do the job. Also, you have to take into account that if your doing audio.. you cannot go from something like wav to mod or midi, just doesnt work.

Windows Media Player 9 gives me everything I ever needed for conversion:)

...and it's free... unlike the Quicktime Pro app.

(However, I think QT's GUI is prettier. hehe..)

alright... i have a problem. I sync the sounds to the animation in maya, yet when i render, and try to put the sound onto the movie, they don't match.. they are off by 2 seconds. In maya, it plays it as a 10 second movie (260 frames) but when i render, it comes out as a 8 second movie. So the sound doesn't work.. since it is a 10 second sound.. im stuck.. am i running at too many fps for the render or soemthing?

Well, I have tried three applications so far and none of them work. Mike recommended an mp3 converter, but it only converts mp3's. Another friend of mine recommended Winamp, but I see no option to convert files. I searched for an application myself that could convert wma's to wav's (http://www.mp3towma.com/) but for some reason it doesn't work. I get a window saying the conversion was succesful, the folder the wav is supposed to be in pops up, but there is no wav file. *shrugs*

I don't have dsl, so downloading all this stuff takes a while. I'm also finding out that my infinite patience isn't as infinite as I thought...

forum - if you're making this for video, you'd more than likely want 30 fps, making a 10 second movie 300 frames.

Rage, didn't see your post until now. I just downloaded Windows Media Player 9, but can't figure out how to convert like you said. In the options, you can change what format your tracks copy as from CD's to your computer, but only wma's are in the dropdown list. There doesn't seem to be any convertion thing. You... *cringes* ...don't have to have premium services do you?

No, but now that I'm not drinking, hehe.. *hick*
I just realized that you wrote that the files are already in .wma format:(

Sorry... my bad.

For that, I would suggest maybe a demo of Sound Forge?

perhaps Camtasia Producer?

"This demo version is save-disabled and imposes a 2-minute limit on recording and playback, as are the ripping and burning features for CDs." Sound Forge demo won't work. I want something permanent.

Camtasia Producer won't work. I have it and already tried. MP3 Converter doesn't work, MP3towma doesn't work, winamp doesn't work, Windows Media 9 doesn't work. I freaking give up.

Maybe it's because I'm an audio guy or maybe I'm not understanding the situation totally but what's the problem? If you're just trying to get the cd audio into wav or aif, there are tons of CD rippers out there to digitally rip CD tracks into wma, wav, aif, etc. Fees are usually minimal. Personally, I use audio catalyst for digitally ripping tracks to mp3 or wav. If I'm grabbing samples for writing music, I just record/edit into sound forge. I can output my file to whatever I want.

ok, i tried to set it to 26 fps.. but it was set at 24... so doesn't that mean it should be longer than the audio clip? (i thought it was running at 30fps - which would cause it to be too short) any other ideas why this is happening? slow comp?

Hit F1 and look in the animation section of the help files if you haven't yet...there are examples on how to setup sound. Stick with standard formats...24fps for film...30fps for ntsc video...25fps for PAL video. Personally, I would just export the video and sync audio in another program.

but i am doing a car reving.. and it would be a pain in the ass to sync in another app

I threw together a quick tach example this morning to see what kind of troubles you might be having but it was pretty straight forward to me.

Set your animation to 30fps (real time). Drag your revving engine wav file onto the timeline at frame 1. You should now see the waveform and be able to scrub back and forth. Now just keyframe the tachometer's needle to the changes in the sound. I think with something like this, you'd be better off animating to sound rather than trying to fit the sound to your animation.

I'm sure there is more than one way to achieve what you're trying to do (if you need another framerate or whatnot) but it's all right there in the helpfiles.

that is the exact thing i am doing
mabye i will scrap the file, and do another one... mabye that will fix it... just import the tac.. thx for trying

If you want to copy or burn DVD, the review of the free DVD burning software is a good solution.And Freemake is the best one for me.