Nuendo in the Games Industry

Hi there -

I’ve seen recently that Steinberg have marketed Nuendo more and more to game sound designers/developers. Having worked in the industry on some of the larger titles (http://www.sweetjusticesound.com for anyone whose interested). I was wondering if there is a contact/discussion base for features aimed primarily at this audience.

There are a few untapped features within Nuendo which would provide hugely powerful for us game folk - for instance, the post export functionality - currently it allows for upload to soundcloud. This has huge potential for game audio, being able to run a script, do a batch process on exported files, the list goes on.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that within Nuendo there is a lot of low hanging fruit that would massively improve myself and my colleagues workflow. It would be great to be able to have an open discussion about it with other people who work in that area directly with Nuendo devs.

Thanks!

This is a perfect example of how the single-minded way Steinaha has been trying to shoehorn Nuendo into a very specific area of audio production, namely post, undermines the larger potential it’s so capable of.

No doubt, someone will come around and say that Cubase is a better candidate for this kind of functionality, but the reality is that Nuendo is more capable in many areas that are required for industrial production, not just post production.

Mind you, someone at Steinaha has woken up to the idea of a larger potential: rather recently someone realized that the “ADR Taker” could be used for Foley. In fact, it could be used for many things! And so can so many aspects of Nuendo. Why limit it’s market potential?

IMO, Nuendo should be looked at as an industrial tool along the lines of Auto-Cad, Maya and Max. It should have an integrated customizable scripted language allowing customization for various purposes. The potential is extraordinary, but whether or not they have the manpower and resources to exploit this potential, and whether revenues can justify it, is another story. It won’t replace the established and advanced audio middleware available in the games industry, but it could integrate the tools required to adapt its functionality for specific workflow scenarios.

The bottom line is where does Steinaha want to take Nuendo? I agree the potential is great but they may already have committed it to the post-prod world. IMO, It would be a great loss to the other worlds…

You can’t be more wrong …

Since I am personaly involved in this, I can give you a clear answer.
I originally wrote the .csv marker import/export specification (or better: proposal) in 2006.
The user cases were determined from day one.

  1. Scene detection
  2. ADR spotting
  3. Foley spotting
  4. Music spotting
  5. Foreign language dubbing

It has always been the idea to use the .csv import/export as being the “engine” behind a complete feature set which needed import/export to other applications.

All those feature implementations can be found in my 2007 paper, where marker attributes could be linked to other parts within the application and soft- and hardware outside the application.
I.e. markers triggering midi notes, wipes, streamers, VTR’s, samples, samplers, etc …

Each and every idea has been evaluated by the product manger(s) and the technical staff.
They did the hardest part, they improved the basic ideas and developed them within a long term vision and development roadmap.

You have absolutely no idea what it takes to implement an idea, make it fit into the application, and be sure that it still fits almost a decade later. Some things had to wait for a long time because of other “problems”. Like the wipes and sweeps; that couldn’t work at all with the old video engine. And that list of (things to change before we can do this- or that) is extremely long. And all these things need to be specified and coded within the available resources.

Just to say that our product managers and technical lead have a very good idea where they are going. I haven’t seen any other company that has such a clear long term vision, and actually commits to it.

I can only say that there is so much more on that list, stuff you will see growing in the coming years.

I’ll let you in on one more thing:
The “record enable target track” you find in the 6.5 update wasn’t actually meant to be there, because it’s not finished. The assignment of the target track is not user friendly since it is based on the track number.
Since the feature wasn’t finished, it was never supposed to leave the Alpha stage.
We could however convince the product manager to put it in anyway, since it is so extremely usefull.
And that the wait for implementing it correctly (as they would like to) would have taken’ way too long, because there are other technical issues that currently prevent this.


In short, it’s all about prioritizing … Doing the best you can within a specified timeframe and budget.
The job description of a Product Manager.
And as far as I am concerned, our Nuendo Product Managers do an amazing job.

Fredo

You may already be aware but Nuendo has a basic batch process function which operates on audio events in the project.

Why not discuss it further here now or put a list of suggestions in the Nuendo ‘Feature Requests and Suggestions’ forum? …you could start with a detailed list here of your top ten games adapted features you’d like to see in Nuendo. You might get some interest here and the devs are listening.

Thanks Fredo for the candid and verbose view of the world behind the curtain at Steinberg development. Obviously I stand a very good chance of being wrong about things I know nothing about. :wink:

Yes I have been rash to judge, and quick to point fingers; it’s what happens when you don’t know what’s going on and why decisions are being made to push an app into direction that seems counter-intuitive to where you feel an app should be going. But it’s clear that anyone in a position of influence will push for features that benefit their own needs and workflows. I get the feeling this is what happened with Nuendo. Perhaps if people in other industries, like gaming, had been as close and influential to the dev team over the last 7 years, Nuendo might not have been re-focused to such a single purpose.

In my mind, Nuendo’s depth and flexibility should allow it to adapt to many different kinds of workflows and project types. Despite all efforts to push it into a primarily post-production environment, many of us still find it useful and functional in many other contexts, enough so that giving it up in favor of just Cubase or some other program seems absurd. Yet the deep drum beating from Steinberg sings “Post-Production! Post-Production!”, from every pore, nook and cranny, to the point where I suppose we’ll just have to let go at some point and let Nuendo become a pure post-production application and move off to something else.

Is this what Steinberg expects us to do? Do I have this wrong as well? I can’t tell what the message is anymore…

Hello,

thanks for the discussion. With the upcoming versions we will see unique features especially
tailored to game audio use cases. Despite Nuendo can be used for any audio-related work,
expanding the marketing & development strategy into a certain segment requires considering
many aspects.

Nuendo is already used in various game audio facilities such as EA, Ubisoft or Microsoft.

Thanks,
Timo

Here is one of many game trailers we have done using Nuendo.

Great one, music/FX well arranged. Have you also been working on the audio of the game itself?

Thanks for sharing,
Timo

Hi Samuel,

have you been using Nuendo on all (most) of your projects?

Thanks,
Timo

Fredo and Timo,

Many thanks for your interesting comments. They help restore my faith in the product after a period of doubt. You are probably aware that there are some things that I don’t like in the latest version (since the introduction of N6) and some things I would like to be implemented (particularly the need for more Cue Sends), but I have more confidence now that these things are not falling on deaf ears.

N6.5 is a great update and I shall be updating from N5.5.6 shortly.

Thank you for this comment. We will continue to add as much value to the product as possible,
even if it isn’t possible to consider each feature request for the next update. Nuendo 7 will
be a very big update.

Beginning of September an extensive maintenance update für Nuendo 6.5 will be released.
Incluing Version History! :slight_smile:

Thanks,
Timo

THIS is a remarkably open and potentially vulnerable discussion from a product developer. I have been doing this (computer based audio) since it began in the late 80’s. I was deep into the development as an end-user, at a Fredo-ish level, as far back as C-lab and then Emagic with Gerhard Lengeling, Michael Haydn, etc.

Nuendo is very deep, and I doubt any single user has plumbed the full depths of what can be accomplished through educated use of the customization features currently available. It is logical, even obvious, that great thought and planning has gone into those features. There is some implementation of features I would have approached a bit differently, as I’m sure is true for all of us (including various opinions inside SB, I’m sure). But the result, in terms of usability continues to impress me as I dig deeper into 6.5.

So…thanks for the candor, Timo and Fredo. And it’s on us, the forum users, to maintain an environment where such discussions are possible. This is good stuff!