Good overall coverage and insights to tips and techniques.

I thought you should have a copy of what I wrote to Richard Lain to say a word of very great thanks for the Soundbooth tutorial: the tempo, the relaxed focus, the attention to detail, the combination of thoroughness without 'talking down' to the learner, the feeling of leaving space for people to have different needs and styles, and for the same person to have different needs at different times - all in all so completely empowering, I think I have to say it's simply perfect in every way, and quite the best computer learning experience of hundreds I've had - and a reason for getting up in the morning! (And I speak as a rather specialised trainer of teachers for whole-person education) I'm just afraid of when it's finished and I don't know if he's done any other subjects, apart from using synths ... I had another look at the tutorial videos Adobe include in the CS4 box, and was strongly reminded why Richard's is so special: these were way too fast for any normal mortal to keep up, with an accent so strong it feels like an English actor's bad parody, the horribly-offputting brash trendy style the rest of the world thinks of as specifically-American, emphasising how easy it is [making you feel far more stupid than before since you can't understand it] and how quick everything is [as if no-one has even a thought of giving any time for a quality experience], assuming prior knowledge without specifying which (perhaps not even aware of doing it), assuming a specifically commercial, specifically modern, specifically stressful, frame of reference ... I wonder why Adobe can't do like Apple do with Final Cut Studio and celebrate and rejoice in the different styles of five leading exponents in the field of video-tutorials ... As someone who has created music in many different studio settings and with a dozen different software programmes and read some reviews, I'd formed a first impression that Soundbooth was like Peak included with early versions of Final Cut Pro, or like Premiere compared with FCP, and had written it off along with all the other stuff that comes with the creative suite when you have to buy Photoshop and Dreamweaver, but which you never use ... then when I needed MacProVideo:s Dreamweaver tutorial and you had your birthday offer, I just casually looked at the demos of Richard's tutorial, and became completely hooked! All best wishes and thanks David _____________ David Kettlewell, Harper formerly professor, Tartu University, Estonia