Chapter 3

Getting Started

The Sound Forge® Pro digital audio editing tool is for users from all musical backgrounds. It is an extremely deep program, containing features that may only be required by the most advanced or specialized users. Nonetheless, a firm grasp of Sound Forge basics is essential. This chapter is designed to provide you with information on Sound Forge fundamentals.

Creating a project

You can use Sound Forge project files to organize and work with your media files nondestructively. When you save a project file, two things are created: a .frg file and a subfolder that contains your media file and all of the temporary files created while working on your project. The .frg file is not a multimedia file, but is used to render the final file after editing is finished. When you copy, cut, paste, and otherwise edit your project, the process is nondestructive—meaning you can edit without worrying about corrupting your source files. Within the project file, you can also undo any past operations, including those occurring before your last save. When you are finished working with a project file, you can save your work to a media file using the Render As option on the File menu.

Note: To use the advanced undo/redo capabilities mentioned above, you must have the Allow Undo past Save check box selected on the General tab of the Preferences dialog. To access the Preferences dialog, choose Preferences from the Options menu.

1.From the File menu, choose Save As to save the current data window to a project file. The Save As dialog appears.

2.Using the Save in drop-down list, locate the folder where you want to save the project.

3.From the Save as type drop-down list, choose Sound Forge Pro Project File (*.frg).

4.In the File name box, type a name for the file.

5.Click the Save button. A .frg file is created with the name you specified, and a folder with a similar name (projectname_frg, for example) is created in the same location for the temporary files.

Important: The associated project folder created by this process should not be deleted, as this will cause your project file to be unusable.

Getting media files

The software can open a variety of audio and video files. There are two main methods for locating, previewing, and opening media files:

•From the File menu, choose Open to display the Open dialog.

•From the View menu, choose Explorer to display the Explorer window.

These methods are explained in greater detail in the following sections.

Note: To have pulldown fields automatically removed when opening 24 fps progressive-scan DV video files, select the Allow pulldown removal when opening 24p DV check box on the Video tab of the Preferences dialog. To open your 24p DV video files as 29.97 fps interlaced video (60i), clear this check box.

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