SoundTrack Fades Away

As the eve of Apple’s latest love-in is upon us, one bit of news gathered from AppleInsider (see link) has risen that many will likely either not know or care about. The apparent discontinuation of one of my favorite aps; SoundTrack. As one of the seemingly few people who purchased it (at it’s original $299 price tag no less), it was really revolutionary.

SoundTrack started its life as an add-on to Apple’s premiere video editing suite, Final Cut Pro, and allowed for laying music tracks along with the video easily. Video actually had its own track within SoundTrack, allowing the author to set a mood with music or sound effects. Easy to use and Apple was very generous in giving it close to 5000 loops.

I suppose with the release of GarageBand as part of the iLife package, the writing was on the wall for the demise of SoundTrack. It can be very hard for an expensive (even reduced to $199) to compete with nearly free. If all you wanted to do was to create music with loops, then SoundTrack was a little bit of overkill. It is indispensable however if you are trying to sync music to a movie and want to pump up certain aspects at an exact moment. GarageBand in its current configuration cannot do it. SoundTrack did it with ease.

So whither SoundTrack? It sure looks that way at least as a stand-alone product. It is still listed as a separate application included with Final Cut Pro HD on the Apple Website.

To be honest, I hadn’t used it much lately. My fascination with GarageBand and loop-based tunes had kind of separated us. I have let some of my ‘never seemed to quite be finished to my satisfaction’ video projects languish while feverishly making loopy songs for macidol and icompositions. Maybe it’s about time I return to some of those projects and finish them before Apple changes something and makes SoundTrack no longer work correctly. Not that Apple does this on a regular basis, but seeing how one of those video projects of which I speak is my own wedding video (now clearly VERY late after 12 and a half years), there is no time to waste.

So goodbye SoundTrack. Count me as one of your most feverent fans.