How many sound tracks are there in IC7?


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By TopOneTone - 7 Years Ago

Currently working on a project with 5 speaking characters and a music track. I have used separate pre-recorded tracks for each and they are working fine in terms of generating lip movement. However, each time I load the project, one (or maybe multiple) tracks doesn't play - the lips move but there is no sound. If I reload the project the original missing track plays, but another one (or more) is missing. It makes me think that there are a limited number of audio tracks playable at one time in Iclone....is this right, if so what is the limit? I'm really only using this audio as a guide to the animation, as I will be creating a proper sound mix outside of iclone, but its an annoying problem.
I can't find anywhere in the manuals or menus that clarifies this, so appreciate any input.
Cheers,
Tony 
 

By mark - 7 Years Ago
I've only been able to do 2 maybe 3 sound related things in iClone with my system...pretty sure it's some kinda  memory thing.
I always do most of the sounds in post but mulltiple speaking avatar's is a bit tricky...

By TopOneTone - 7 Years Ago
Thanks Mark. I just reloaded the project and now all 5 tracks are playing...weird. Would be good if Peter or maybe someone else at RL can confirm how the sound is set up in iclone and what limitations there are. Like I said I'm only using it as a guide for animation, but it would be good to know what the parameters are to work in.
Cheers,
Tony
By animagic - 7 Years Ago
I have had it happen to me also that the sound of dialog tracks disappeared when it's more than 2 or 3. My system is powerful enough, so I think it's an iClone limitation that's been around for a while. It's slightly annoying but not enough to create an FT issue.

That said, it would indeed be good to know the limitations.
By StreamingTrout - 7 Years Ago
I've encountered the same problem.  I can't get more than 4 concurrent tracks to play.  I have a 7 minute piece I'm doing with a music track, 3 chorus voices and another 5 featured soloists.  When I added a fifth voice one of the tracks would disappear, and it seemed somewhat arbitrary.  I looked at my CPU and memory usage and it wasn't that bad 39% on the CPU 7.5 of 16 Gig of ram, 2.0 of 3 Gig graphics memory.  FPS is at 24.5

I can delete the silent portions of a track because there are never any more than 4 concurrent tracks, and if forced, I can consolidate the chorus, but for verisimilitude I would prefer not to.  

So I have the same question, is there an upper limit to concurrent sound tracks in iC7?  I too looked for documentation and found nothing.
By gardener - 6 Years Ago
We all same or similar problems when it come to iClone 7+ and its sound tracks problems, but no body seems to consider taking a note.
By TopOneTone - 6 Years Ago
I have to say I'm surprised that no one from RL has posted on this. It's not really a controversial issue. We are simply asking for information to understand the parameters we have to work within, it's not like we're expecting state of the art audio features in animation software. But it does seem strange that there is nothing in the documentation and RL are using the "cone of silence"....maybe there is a 500 track super plug-in audio suite in the works.....lol.
By raxel_67 - 6 Years Ago
A possible workaround this would bet to do all your animations, add some visual reference for sync at the beginning of a project, or insert one second and add a prop that is only visible for one second then add a one second tone, beep or whatever suits you to your audio, then mixdown all your vocal tracks to one track, insert that  track into iclone, sync the tone with the prop and remove the duplicate tracks if visible/possible then you should hear all your characters talking, in sync with the audio.

note: this method could require some tinkering or more steps depending on how your scenes are setup, but the principle is this: have a reference for sync in both audio and video, think of tv color bars, mixdown all vocal tracks to a single  file, remove the old audio files, add the new file to a prop or as background music. This way you can have it all inside your project for further tinkering of animations. And if your daw allows it set your framerate to 60, this will give a 100% accurate time code, if not stick to 30 fps this will give a timecode that is accurate to the second, but frames will need to be multiplied by 2 in order to calculate the exact time code. Remember timecode is the best friend of picture editors and post production sound engineers.

hope this helps.
ps, rendering the video before mixing down all tracks can help you to sync the reference audio but remember that you daw must run at the same framerate as your video, or your audio will end up drifting after a while