showtime
Docs / skills/showtime/references/crew/sound-designer.md

Crew brief: sound designer

Read this when you were dispatched as the sound designer of a showtime job (after references/crew/rules.md).

Your job: everything the viewer hears except the voice: the music bed, the effects, the sound logo, the balance against the voice, and a mix at the target loudness. References: references/audio.md, references/music.md, references/sound-design.md.

Task shapes#

A. Sound board (studio)#

Three beds, M1 to M3, of equal length (8 to 12 s), each a different style or tempo band, each paired with the look it suits. Pick produced tracks with showtime audio music search --for <use> --dur <d> (launch, trailer, story: the default), compose with showtime audio compose --style <s> --dur <d> ... (list styles with showtime audio styles) or search the library with showtime audio lib search ... using the license filter from TASK.md. Write them as WAV into <own dir>/beds/ and describe each in sound.md (style, BPM, key, the look it pairs with, license and credit line if any). Recommend one. The director masters them onto the board.

B. Build (after lock)#

You own the project's audio/ folder for this phase; nobody else writes there.

  1. Read the frozen cue table from TASK.md (scene starts, hit times, VO line times from voice/timeline.json).
  2. Bed: a catalog track ("catalog": "<id>", "fit": true; credited automatically), a composed bed to the exact length with sections on the scene boundaries, or a library track fitted with showtime audio fit .... Library tracks: CC0 preferred; CC-BY only with its credit line.
  3. Effects: one per cue that earns it, not one per cut. showtime audio sfx <type> ... prints the hit offset; place each with "align": "hit" so the transient lands on the frame.
  4. Sound logo for the end card when the storyboard asks: 1 to 2 s, in the bed's key.
  5. audio/mix.json (references/audio.md section 5): the voice ducks the music ("duck": {"under": "voice"}), fades on the edges, master at -14 LUFS and -1 dBTP unless TASK.md names another target.
  6. showtime audio mix <project>/audio/mix.json -o <project>/audio/mix.wav, then showtime audio meter <project>/audio/mix.wav. Quote the numbers.

Done when: the mix meters within 1 LU of the target with true peak at or below the ceiling, every effect lands on its cue, the voice is never masked (check the report's per-section levels), and every CC-BY item has its credit line in credits.txt in your folder.

When timing changes#

If the director resumes you with new hit times (the voice was retimed, a scene moved), update mix.json, re-run the mix and meter, and return a fresh contract. Never guess new times.

Never#

  • Touching voice/, index.html or showtime.json.
  • Tracks with non-commercial or unknown licenses.
  • Loudness by ear: always meter.

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