Transforming Soundscapes in Video Production thru AI with Gabriel Cowan (Episode 140)

Chris Schwager:

Welcome to the Video Made Simple podcast. I'm your host, Chris Schwager from Ridge Films. Today our guest is Gabriel Cowan, the CEO of Audio Design Desk, a cutting edge AI assisted software suite that has won numerous awards, including the 2022 NAB product of the year. It comes loaded with over 50,000 royalty free sounds, loops, and music cues, and it's fully integrated into a popular audio and video editing system for you to use.

[00:00:29] Gabriel helps you streamline your audio creation process by letting you create sound, design, sound effects, and music in real time through the software. So I'm super keen. I wanna learn all about this to hear more about the future of sound design. Here's. With Gabriel Cowan.

[00:00:54] What, what got you started in creating the audio design desk?

[00:00:58] Gabriel Cowan: I started in music right outta high school, I got signed to Geffen Records and I got to like tour and play with some of my heroes. I earned a few platinum records and I was hired to score a movie by a guy named Roger Corman, who was kind of the king of the B films.

[00:01:12] Right. He made like all these low budget movies, but. He started so many people's careers from Martin Scorsese to Jack Nicholson to, you know, Ron Howard. I mean the list of James Cameron, who's pretty relevant right now. Wow. And me . So I was scoring this movie. One of the things that happens in a camp like that, as opposed to kind of bigger budget productions is whatever department you were in, you get access to the other departments.

[00:01:35] So I got to see editorial, I got to see their reshoots, I got to exposure to camera, and I fell in love with filmmaking. Went back to film school and got my master's degree in film directing, and I went on to produce, uh, over 20 feature films. Wow. And one of the things you quickly see when you're doing, you know, that many productions is just how much time and effort and money, uh, is spent on sound, on creating the sound.

[00:01:59] Chris Schwager: Yes, yes.

[00:02:00] Gabriel Cowan: And you quickly see how important it is. I mean, the distance between an audience's experience with sound that's decent versus sound, that's like your production audio, is night and day, and yet , all of the systems aren't built to create sound for video, right? Like whether you're in Pro Tools or you're in, you know, Final Cut Pro or Premier, none of these systems are built to create audio for video. They're being repurposed to do that.

[00:02:25] So now, about seven years ago, I was cutting a trailer to one of my movies and I was trying to find that rise that leads up to the title at the end of the trailer. And I'm out on my desktop listening to Rises and dragging them into Pro Tools. Tr trimming 'em up and nudging 'em over and UNT trimming 'em and not, yes, not the right way.

[00:02:42] You gotta do it again and again and again. And I thought there's a better way to do this. And so I got together with some really smart people and we reinvented how the audio and video connection works. And basically we created something we called Sonic Intelligence that enables the sounds to see the visuals.

[00:02:59] So they know where they connect with the visuals and so as a result you can bring those things in right away. Well, the sounds also know their relationship, like what they are. Like I'm a rise, or I'm an intense, you know, dark rise, let's say.

[00:03:13] Chris Schwager: Right?

[00:03:13] Gabriel Cowan: If it knows where it connects with the visual and it knows what it is, you can replace it. You can say, gimme a new one. You know what? I want you to be a subtle rise, or I want you to be a subtle light rise or whatever you can give it instructions. And so it creates this sort of effortless, real-time discovery, sound discovery process. Mm-hmm. , uh, where if you just know a couple of things using the system Music Tech magazine did a test and they said that using audio design desk was, was 12 times faster, uh, than using...

[00:03:42] Chris Schwager: Wow.

[00:03:42] Gabriel Cowan: Competing digital audio workstation. So.

[00:03:45] Chris Schwager: And so, how's the software being used by creators in businesses, for instance?

[00:03:49] Gabriel Cowan: Everybody's advertising now, right? Like, I mean, whether you're like the, the local plumber, you have your Walmart, like you're creating visual content is kind of the constant and the engagement rate when you have audio that's decent versus audio that isn't, doubles. Uh, in fact there was a study done just last year by TikTok of all people, but they released this study that said it more than doubles 2.2 per times the engagement rate of videos that advertisements specifically that have decent sound. You know, lighting companies are using us to swish from one light to another, or they're using us to find the right music queue or things like that for specifically your question of businesses.

[00:04:31] Chris Schwager: How do people respond to this, like, sophistication of AI in helping them out?

[00:04:35] Gabriel Cowan: There's a few responses. Uh, when you're talking to people who are pros in the industry, the response is, you're gonna put me outta work. Yeah. Right? Like, the thing we hear the most from established sound designers is, you know, this grumbling feeling.

[00:04:51] Younger sound designers, you, you know, also successful people, let's say in their thirties, immediately latch into it and suddenly, you know, we're used on the new Transformers and Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, HBO Max, we're used on all these shows, all these huge movies, but typically by younger sound designers. The, the older people are mad at us cuz they think we're gonna put us at them outta work. But, uh, the, the other reaction for people who aren't professionals is amazement. In fact, we made this video of just reactions to the software and, you know, looking at people's eyes, sort of, you can't believe it.

[00:05:24] It seems like, it seems like magic. Because the sounds are just appearing and then they're all right. Like they're, it's the right sounds. Yes. And then you're instantly able to say, well, gimme a new total composition, and there's a new composition at works. So, uh, those are the two reactions. You're gonna put us outta work, or we love it and we can't believe it.

[00:05:44] Chris Schwager: I think it's gonna disrupt a lot of people, uh, and a lot of industries. I think on the flip side of all that, I think a lot of people, got it a lot of time to make decisions about whether this is truly threatening or not. And I, I, I suppose I speak more around chatGPT at the moment and

[00:06:02] Gabriel Cowan: mm-hmm.

[00:06:02] Chris Schwager: and AI and the impact on writing and copywriting and proofreading and that, just from where we see it at the moment. I mean, we've got our own. AI, AI specialist, Jarvis, you know, employee of the business, who's now the communications expert because all we do is get the content as far as we possibly can and chuck it into to AI, and it's got a pretty bloody high accuracy rate and away we go. Is it the same, I guess, thing for, you know, sound or is there still a lot of manipulating to do as part of the process as well.

[00:06:37] Gabriel Cowan: That's a great question and I, I think it is so relevant, like it does seem like just in the fa past few months since chatGPT was public, people are talking about this in a real way where AI, I think was a buzzword, you know, earlier last year.

[00:06:51] Chris Schwager: Yes, yes, that's right.

[00:06:52] Gabriel Cowan: AI is a real thing that people can touch and they can understand and we can see how big a difference the world post-chatGPT especially once chat's latched into the actual internet as opposed to being, you know, having its memory cut off in 2021. Um, I think it's a, it's a similar thing in audio to the way it is with chat.

[00:07:12] You can, you can say to "chatGPT write me a poem about, you know, my love for my wife." And it'll do it and it'll rhyme and you can say, write it in the voice of Bob Dylan and it'll, you know, do something more interesting. But then you can take that as inspiration and you can, you know, use those ideas to form your own thing.

[00:07:30] Or you can just use what the AI wrote, and it's the same with our program. You can take what we have created for you and you can just use it and it'll sound great. Or you can go in and you can refine it and really make it yours, if you have, you know, an opinion. Or you're, if you're going for something specific, part of what I enjoy about our system, and I enjoy this about like Mid journey, for example, chatGPT's a little bit of a different thing.

[00:07:56] But, um, you know, for those of you who are using, uh, whether it's Stable Diffusion or Dolly or, or Mid Journey is my personal favorite. The idea that you're going on this kind of adventure, right? Like I have something in my head. I'm trying to get the AI to do it. I'm writing the words I think are gonna get it to do it, but then it gives me something different back.

[00:08:15] And then I use that different thing to ideate and to iterate, right? And to, yes. Kind of go down this whole, and what if I tell it I want it with this kind of a lens or with backlighting or whatever. Um. It's the same with our tool. Where you, you're sort, you get inspired by mid journey, right? You get inspired by those images with our tool. You get inspired by the sounds and you go, oh, I wouldn't have thought of that. That's so cool. What if I go for, you know, make a little refinement on this and you can ask our system to do that. Less intense, more intense, light, dark, synthetic, organic. I just say one more thing on the AI piece, uh, and on sound and images in general.

[00:08:52] I, I didn't realize this until I got into this business. But we speak in visual terms. Like humans are, are, I have a five year old and he's very good at describing what he sees, but when we're asked to describe what we hear, even as adults, our language is just much less sophisticated. And so we, it's harder to take that idea of like, I'm writing a sentence and create, what would I say, create like a nineties pop song and do I say in four four, and is it hard hitting and how do I describe the drums?

[00:09:25] Like there's so much nuance that we don't have as most people as adults. And so part of what we are trying to do is allow the users to, uh, through, through visual indications, uh, understand the types of sounds that they're going for to be able to refine, to be able to kind of get that thing that's in their head onto the computer screen and out of their speakers.

[00:09:49] Chris Schwager: What is the impact of this on the perceived, I guess, professionalism and credibility of the videos. It, it's a system that's equally as good, if not better than what they're currently doing.

[00:09:59] Gabriel Cowan: So the first thing, the perceived impact, I'll give you an example, uh, in my life about what happens with audio generally, and then I'll apply it to the, you know, to our application.

[00:10:09] But the first movie that I directed, I am somebody that needs a deadline. I so, one way that I trick myself into finishing things. So I called up everybody I knew, I said, I'm having a screening of this movie, you know, in three weeks. And I hadn't edited it yet, but I'd shot it. So I spend the next three weeks, I'm up every day, everybody's coming over.

[00:10:29] It better be good. They're gonna all judge me, right? So they all come on Friday and Saturday. Friday I play the first screening of the film and I'm sitting in the back of the room, and the movie's just not playing. People aren't laughing in the right spot. They're not, you know, screaming in the right spot.

[00:10:43] And I'm like breaking out into a sweat in the back of the room. The movie's not working. Oh my god. So everybody leaves and I look at the writings and the reviews, and I only have a day until I have another screening tomorrow night. So I stay up all night and intuitively, all I did was I added ambiance like wind and rain and things like that.

[00:11:03] Yes. And footsteps. Just, that's all I did. And I didn't change any of the, of the editorial. And the next night, everybody laughed in the right spot. They screamed in the right spot. Yes. Our ratings like more than doubled from the night before it played. And then the question is, well why? Because sounds sucks you in.

[00:11:23] It's the expectation. It's hard to describe like there's something wrong with this movie if the sound's not right. But there just is like where you that, and that's how we experience life. We experience life with sound, right? When you're walking towards me. I am not listening for it, but I hear you walking towards me.

[00:11:39] And if you don't hear . That in a movie, if you don't, it's not immersive. Uh, and so the perceived quality, again in that TikTok study, it's more than double. People uh, instantly feel a, a professionalism and feel a sense of immersion inside of videos that where the sound is, is good.

[00:11:58] Chris Schwager: What's the application? So how many people are sort of using this for, for marketing content on, um, you know, social media for instance.

[00:12:06] Gabriel Cowan: Uh, quite a few are using it on, you know, thousands are using it for social media content. Our real focus at the beginning of the business was on professionals. So Stranger Things, a bunch of, uh, big shows like that. And a lot of things that I wish we could talk about and for whatever reason, we are not allowed to. But some of my favorite things that are out there have used us in one way or another.

[00:12:30] Chris Schwager: Nice, nice. And is there a cost and is it prohibitively expensive for, uh, say a, a small, medium size business to, to engage in something like this?

[00:12:41] Gabriel Cowan: If all you're doing is like social media kind of stuff, it's $15 a month or there's a $300 like lifetime, like you can purchase it? Um, sure. And if you're a professional, it's $30 a month and $600.

[00:12:54] Chris Schwager: Right. Can you take them through the process, like exactly what might happen to the average person to, to, um, to apply this to their videos?

[00:13:03] Gabriel Cowan: Sure. There's a few ways the, the application is a standalone desktop app. You know, Mac OS desktop app. So if you have a video, you can bring the video into our application and you can just start adding sounds. Uh, everybody needs different things, so it's hard to describe whatever the use case would be, but whether you're looking for Foley or footsteps or ambiance or music or sound design elements, all of those things are in the program and are easy to do in the program.

[00:13:30] And, but also, we will latch in, we're the only digital audio workstation that does this to your video editor. So if you use Premiere, if you use Black Magic Resolve, if you use Final Cut Pro, uh, there's a plug in that will link the two programs. So when I push play and audio design desk is playing and final cut and so forth, right?

[00:13:48] And so there. There's, uh, it's not quite a realtime exchange, but it allows you to be in your video editor. Our whole goal is to keep you in your creative flow. Like, yes, I'm in the edit. At least for me as an editor, I'm in the edit. Like, now it's time to do sound. Yes. And oh God, like now I have to like, go online and search through some website, like, no, just open up audio design desk and boom, there it is. You can either drag the sounds right in, or you can use all our tools to just instantly kind of go back and forth between the programs.

[00:14:16] Chris Schwager: Great. And so it's, uh, Mac only?

[00:14:19] Gabriel Cowan: It is Mac only currently.

[00:14:20] Chris Schwager: But, but, but for those and any, do you have any, um, uh, do you have any, is there any plans to go pc? I mean, and I only say this, I'm not a PC person by the way, but I like to try and be ambidextrous, with my clients who, you know, it breaks my heart. But more than 50% of our clients, uh, in the DIY space are, um, pc, and I, I always struggle with them, but uh, would definitely see from a developer point, point of view just saying, nah, we're not supporting you.

[00:14:48] Gabriel Cowan: We'll have an offering. It won't be a audio designed desk like I should just describe. So ADD, like while it's about finding and places sounds, it's a full-blown digital audio workstation with plugins and a volume automation and AF and XML and all those kinds of things to build it for a pc, you're exactly right. Like that would be a super heavy lift. It is the number one question we get, is, is there a PC version? But we will have an offering, it won't be exactly audio designed us. We'll have an offering for PC users in April.

[00:15:17] Chris Schwager: Nice, nice. And how many amateurs, like straight up like raw TikTok-y, you know, people that really have no affiliation with professional videos in any way? How many, like what's your clientele like with those types of people?

[00:15:31] Gabriel Cowan: Um, you mean like what's the number?

[00:15:33] Chris Schwager: Yeah, what's the split, you know, how, what's

[00:15:35] Gabriel Cowan: dramatically in favor of, of people that are people that are young in their filmmaking careers. Uh, yes. Okay. So dramatically in favor of that, uh, students, we're at a lot of schools, uh mm-hmm. fact students, we keep getting this feedback from them where they learn on ADD and then they go out into the world and they're in pro tools and they're like, what's this? Yes. How are you using this? And I love pro tools, yes, but not for this. For fighting a place and sounds. Yes. So that, that's been really interesting. Tens of thousands of, you know, young, young, uh, students and young filmmakers using it.

[00:16:07] Chris Schwager: And what would be the common thing that they are using it for? Like if you had to just pinpoint, say, three top things. The top ways that they're using it. What? What are those?

[00:16:18] Gabriel Cowan: Yeah. I think, you know, as they're making their short films as a narrative content would be the kind of the top line thing.

[00:16:25] Chris Schwager: So Sure.

[00:16:25] Gabriel Cowan: Animation, we have a lot of people that are using us for animation.

[00:16:29] Chris Schwager: Are these sound effects, like graphical type sound effects? Or is like basically anything really?

[00:16:35] Gabriel Cowan: We're trying to cover anything. So an example of animation is, Foley and kind of, you know, all, everything that you touch and footsteps and things like that. Yeah. Yeah. But we also have thousands and thousands of vocalizations and Right. We're not gonna do your dialogue for you, but, but going, (grunting sounds) all that kind of stuff. Yeah. Right. Is in there and it's very easy to do because they're all tagged in that way. So once you've placed one sound, yeah. Gimme a new one. Gimme a new one. Gimme. Oh, that's the one. Let's move on. Like, that's the way. It's a little, our, our product is a little bit like Tinder for sound. Like you're just going, no, not that one. No, not, oh, that one's cool. And then, yeah, it, I actually met my wife on Tinder, so I love her .

[00:17:18] Chris Schwager: I, I didn't meet my wife on Tinder, but I did meet her online, as did my business partner, uh, met his wife online too. So it seems it's probably pretty common these days.

[00:17:29] We'll be back in a short moment with Gabriel Cowan, are you sick of setting up video equipment and all the tech hassles that come with producing your own videos? Well, nowadays video is everywhere, right? And there's a more streamlined way to present yourself professionally on your website rather than a crappy quality webcam. And you can do it from the convenience of your desk, and it's called the DIY Video Program. The DIY Video Program allows you to create course content, send personalized sales videos in emails, record regular video updates for social media, and look and sound amazing in every video interaction with a single push of a button. You get professional gear and all the video coaching and editing and publishing you need to supercharge how you sell, market and teach. Learn more and go to ridgefilms.com.au/diy.

[00:18:22] Gabriel, how do you see AI assisted technology impacting the future of sound design in video production.

[00:18:32] Gabriel Cowan: I think it's gonna change everything. I think with, with all creative fields, AI is gonna do what, you know, plug-ins did when you, you know, back when digital audio workstation suddenly it was like, oh, I can add a compressor. Like I don't need outboard gear. Uh oh, there's a preset for that. I can, you know, kind of get close quickly.

[00:18:52] Uh, except this is, these are more collaborative tools, like they actually inspire you as opposed to kind of getting you closer to the sonic idea, you know, which a plugin might do. Uh, so I think it's, uh, I think these tools are gonna have a dramatic impact, for example, Um, I wanna make a, maybe six years from now, something like that.

[00:19:13] Uh, a tool like ours will look at your video and it'll just make the first pass for you. It'll know when people are walking, it'll know when they're taking breaths and running, and it'll see what the atmosphere is and we'll add, it'll know when the, where the cut points is, and it'll, on a phone call cut from the background of a police station to the background of the car.

[00:19:32] You know, it'll cr-- be able to assume what the, what music it should place based on things like the dialogue. I mean, all of that stuff is not science fiction. That is yeah, you know, just a, it's just a matter of time. Visual ID identification is already getting quite sophisticated as is AI. You know, the, the AI understanding of kind of the meaning of dialogue and of course, so you can take a video and transcribe it and then something like chatGPT can say, well, this is a sad scene, this is a happy scene. This is a, here's where the climax is. All of those kinds of things. And they all relate to sound.

[00:20:05] I think also not to worry, like taste matters, people's stamp on things I think will matter for quite a long time and so I, I really think it's about having a super solid assistant. The other thing that's so amazing, and we've seen this already, is that these tools learn from you. So as you correct it, as you say, no, no, no, not this, I want that, it goes, oh, he or she wanted that. I, I I'm gonna give them that next time. And then the more you correct it, the more it learns from you. Yeah. So it's li I think it will be like having a really, really good assistant.

[00:20:39] Chris Schwager: Oh, are we, and I'll put this out there, but I, I do feel like when I hit applications like TikTok and just thinking, all right, if I wanted to recreate this in Premier Pro, I'm in, I'm, my days are numbered, by the way, in the world of editing. My, my editor, I see, you know, slugging it out manually, keep framing stuff and just go on, shit, man. You know, like TikTok and Instagram and stuff are, Doing it, you know, key something out, boom, instantaneous.

[00:21:09] Right, right. Um, you know, I've always been in awe of the power that is coming out of the, the iPhone to be able to do this. Now, obviously, you know, there's two different polarizing spectrums here. One's, you know, an automated thing and you'll get what you get. Whereas the others, you can really, you know, on a professional note, you can refine and make it exactly how you want to make it. But I've gotta say where I sit from, you know, production or post-production workflow and seeing how long things typically take and feeling that sense of overwhelm like shit. Isn't there, like just this easier way just to like bang up a couple of titles and have 'em flash up and do their thing, you know?

[00:21:52] And, uh, and, and, and it's happening, but it's just not happening fast enough in, in, uh, in, you know, desktop applications like, um, like Premier and whatnot. Uh, case in point, I put out a video this morning, actually, I've recorded it yesterday, did a cut in Premier Pro and then put it through a Caption App. That was intuitive enough to, to get everything like word perfect, by the way, like, which is pretty, uh, slim chance that it ever does that.

[00:22:24] But in this case, uh, for a minute and a half video, it actually had everything. I think there was only one Zed that should have been an S, but I let it go. Um, but otherwise, Accurate. And then I was like, okay, that looks good. But the way that it animated it all, I was like, man, this is saving the editors literally hours.

[00:22:44] Yeah. Right. Yeah. And then when I did commit to having a particular, uh, format for the captions, I went, you know, publish or whatever, or just, you know, save to my, to my photos. Um, it also actually, it, it also, um, generated a title, a description, and the hashtags for me. And it was good. Wow. It was good. Like I was there going, it's abbreviated what I've been saying for in a minute and a half and put it into a headline.

[00:23:11] I'm like, I'm . I'm so into it. Like I'm, I'm so into having the, uh, brain space and the head space of these, all these micro decisions being made for me by someone else or something else,

[00:23:28] Gabriel Cowan: mm-hmm,

[00:23:28] Chris Schwager: to, to just take that slug out of the process.

[00:23:31] Gabriel Cowan: Mm-hmm.

[00:23:31] Chris Schwager: Um, and so, um, , I am all for what it is that you are doing. Because I, I, again, see anything that is been historically time consuming for, for my team, um, to, to put together and go, look, you've gotta pass it through this now. This is just our standard process because Right. It's better, (right) it's gonna save you time and we can all get on and do, uh, higher volumes of, of work because, uh,

[00:23:56] Gabriel Cowan: a hundred percent.

[00:23:56] Chris Schwager: You know, we're not pouring so much mental energy into stuff, you know? Mm-hmm. , maybe that's a good thing. I don't know. um .

[00:24:02] Gabriel Cowan: Well, hopefully it opens up space for other things, right? So hopefully

[00:24:05] Chris Schwager: that's right.

[00:24:06] Gabriel Cowan: At the end of the day, if we can get rid of the manual stuff, if we can automate the manual stuff and we can serve up things, you know, whether it's the tool you're talking about, uh, that's doing subtitles or things that are doing titles in general, right. Flashing titles in front of you or in ti I mean, we're getting to the point. you can just say to Google, make me this video. Yes. And it'll make you a video of a duck flying an airplane. Yes. Like that. That's gonna open up the space for you to be extraordinarily creative. I mean, remember when we were kids and we would make mix tapes and like all of the energy that we would put into like the, the, I mean, did you do that too?

[00:24:42] Like Ah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, now what they can, what kids do? I have an, I have a 12 year old and, and she's able to, you know, make these incredible. She uses cap cut and she takes videos off the internet. She cuts things. So like the, the modern day equivalent of the mix tape is the, so , you know, puts the mixtape a little bit to shame. As great as my mixtapes I think were.

[00:25:07] Chris Schwager: Well look, I can't wait to check this out cuz as I said, um, you know, if, if you are struggling with, with sound, go and have a look at AI-assisted audio design, uh, and reach out to, to Gabriel.

[00:25:22] Thank, thank you for gracing us with your presence today and giving us some amazing value that our, I know that our audience and listeners and businesses will learn a lot from. Thank you.

[00:25:33] Gabriel Cowan: Thanks so much. Really nice meeting you.

[00:25:37] Chris Schwager: If you wanna learn more about AI Assisted Audio Design or Gabriel Cowan, uh, have a look at the show notes for details. Video is everything. But having a superior audio track takes it to the next level and having a, uh, third party, if you like to remove some of that brain space, that re is required to execute a lot of these actions, it's gonna make it a truly memorable, outstanding for viewers and save you a hell of a lot of time.

[00:26:05] Thanks for tuning in. That's all for this episode of the Video Made Simple Podcast, and see you next week.