Figuring out what Audition scripts do?

[Colin Dunn]

I'm trying to figure out what the Audition scripts do, in terms of a step-by-step, what-filters-and-what-settings process.

So I thought I'd load up a script and select the "pause at dialogs" option. However, when Audition pauses, it doesn't show the settings the script applies, just the default settings for the filter!

As an example, here are two code snippets vs. what the GUI told me. The GUI showed the same information on both, though the value in line 6 varies in the code:

Freq: Off
Comment: Filters\Center Channel Extractor
cmd: {EA93BBBE-0B8F-47D6-AC6D-B67B45747845}
1: 68,Ďč￾€~Đ´Ďčč}ÛÚZĎč￾AAAAAAÁ€ĄïxAAÁ€AAÁAAA€AAA€±Ļn~ýĢYëåÁŀķ￾€ĕBø
2:
3: 17
4: 0
5: 0
6: 198527672
7: 0
8: 0
9: 0
10: 1

Freq: Off
Comment: Filters\Center Channel Extractor
cmd: {EA93BBBE-0B8F-47D6-AC6D-B67B45747845}
1: 68,Ďč￾€~Đ´Ďčč}ÛÚZĎč￾AAAAAAÁ€ĄïxAAÁ€AAA€AAA€AAA€±Ļn~ýĢYëåÁŀķ￾€ĆBò
2:
3: 17
4: 0
5: 0
6: 199116552
7: 0
8: 0
9: 0
10: 1

... and what I saw in the GUI for both:

; This code invokes Center Channel Extractor with the following settings:
; Extraction settings
; extract audio from center
; phase degree: 0 degrees, pan 0%, delay 0ms
; frequency range: full spectrum
; center channel level: -48dB
; discrimination settings
; crossover: 100%
; phase discrimination: 6 degrees
; amplitude discrimination: 1 dB
; amplitude bandwidth: 5 dB
; spectral decay rate: 0%
; granularity and resolution
; FFT size: 32768
; overlays: 12
; interval size: 28.4ms
; note: only value 6 changes above, but not visible in dialog box?

So how do I interpret the parameters so I can figure out what each step is?

It seems, that in principle, the SQ script does the following:
1) Open a copy of the SQ-encoded .WAV file
2) Apply a 3dB cut
3) Perform multiband compression (not sure about parameters)
4) Using PhaseBug and Center Channel Extractor, remove the out-of-phase back channel information from the front channels.
5) Open another copy of the SQ-encoded WAV file.
6) Apply a 3dB cut
7) Perform multiband compression (not sure about parameters)
8) Using PhaseBug, Center Channel Extractor, and Stereo Field Rotate, remove the front-channel information, leaving the back channels

The real magic is in steps 3-4 and 7-8, but that's where the script data appears to be obfuscated.

 

[monarchee]

Colin,

If you want to see what the settings are for each effect, manually edit the script and put "End:" after the step you want to look at. The script will stop at this point. The last settings used can now be seen in the effect. Very time consuming for a long script though.

 

[Colin Dunn]

Thanks for the info ... will try it and see if I can get a better idea of what these scripts do. Once I've documented that, I'll start up another thread about how we can improve the scripts to overcome the known problems with them.

 

[Colin Dunn]

Today, I tried going through a QS script. Putting the End: statement after each item did reveal settings for some plug-ins (like Channel Mixer), but not for others (like PhaseBug and Center Channel Extractor). I still have some cases where the script has different numeric values, but can't see the actual settings in the plug-in dialog box. It appears some plug-ins remember settings and others revert to defaults.

I was able to deduce the following:
- The numbers related to matrix vectors are contained in the "Channel Mixer" parameters.
- PhaseBug is used to perform phase shifts, but I haven't been able to determine parameters.
- The first two operations done are a 3dB cut and multi-band compression, but I'm not sure of the multi-band compression values as they don't display (they appeared to be defaults in the GUI, no way to confirm if that's intended in the script). This appears to be intended to avoid running out of bits and is not related to the actual decoding. The same cut/compress is done to both files before any decoding.
- The script works by "taking out" information meant for other channels.