The nature of teamwork has changed substantially over the last few years; especially when it comes to media. More and more creative teams are working remotely and taking advantage of specialized tools to stay coordinated, and even teams who work in the same space rely on many of those same tools. From daily communication to file sharing, remote editing sessions, revisions, and final delivery, the tools you use can make a massive difference in your team’s productivity.
Whether you’re a sound supervisor in charge of an audio post team, a podcast producer outsourcing your sound editing to a freelancer, or any kind of team that works with audio, these tools can help you stay on the same page with your team and empower everyone to do their best work.
Even before any editing gets done, your team needs a system to help manage projects, assign work, and track progress. Without this solid foundation for your workflow, you could end up spending more time juggling emails and coordinating schedules than you’ll spend actually working. Every team needs a project management platform, and audio professionals are no exception.
At Pro Sound Effects, we use ClickUp to keep our entire team on the same page and make sure all of our library releases, software updates, and web content get done without a hitch. ClickUp provides features like project and goal management, time tracking, chat, and more; all with a clean interface that stays out of your way. Creative teams in particular will appreciate its integrations with apps like Dropbox, Google Drive, Github, and YouTube.
If your team relies on a shared sound effects library, you need a way to organize your database efficiently, quickly find the sounds you need, and get them into your editing software quickly so you can keep working. And because we’re talking about teamwork here, you’ll also need admin tools for managing your team, onboarding new team members, and setting access privileges.
SoundQ is our free desktop app for macOS and Windows that makes it easy to organize your local sound effects library, access PSE’s free cloud library, search the Freesound.org database, and purchase individual sounds or full libraries from Pro Sound Effects. Make life easier for your team with SoundQ’s advanced organization and search capabilities, shared Collections, drag-and-drop file transfers or one-click importing into Pro Tools, Reaper, or Premiere.
When you need real-time feedback from remote team members or clients, not just any kind of audio streaming will do. Sharing your computer sound over apps like Zoom subjects it to lossy data compression, latency, and possibly dropouts, making it impossible for anyone to hear what you’re hearing. To collaborate effectively, you need a way to instantly and securely share high-quality audio streams with anyone, anywhere.
LISTENTO by Audiomovers is a plugin that allows you to stream lossless audio straight from your editing software to the web with ultra-low latency, allowing your collaborators to listen in while you work just by clicking a link. LISTENTO even supports multichannel streaming, so you can collaborate on surround or spatial audio content with anyone who has a compatible speaker system. No audio files are ever hosted by Audiomovers, and for sensitive or high-stakes projects, you can set passwords and even generate random session names to avoid any possible leaks.
Whether you work in film, television, podcasting, or advertising, revisions are a huge part of the collaborative process. From sharing drafts with your fellow editors to taking feedback from leadership and getting final approval from clients, you need a platform to help you manage the review process end-to-end. There are several great options for file hosting and review, but our favorite at Pro Sound Effects is Frame.io.
Frame.io allows teams to share video and audio files in full quality, leave notes and comments at specific times, track file versions, and more. Rather than sending emails back and forth with lists of notes and links to files, Frame.io streamlines the whole revision process. Anyone with a link (and permissions that you set) can access a file, make and reply to comments, and even draw on videos to point things out. Your team can then resolve each item as you address the feedback, upload a new version to the same link, change the status from “Needs Review” to “Approved,” and so on.
So far, we’ve focused on software and web-based tools for collaborative sound editing, but none of that work can get done without the sound effects themselves. While it might be tempting to pool your resources and have your editors share their personal libraries, it’s not worth the risk of violating license agreements. Another approach is to buy individual sound effects libraries as needed, but this comes with its own complications – not only does it get expensive, but keeping track of multiple licenses can be a real headache.
Pro Sound Effects offers customizable multi-seat plans for teams that give you access to all the sound effects you could possibly need at a price that makes sense at any scale. Whether you work with a major studio or small team of sound editors, our licensing specialists will work directly with you to create a custom package that meets your needs, fits your budget, and exceeds your expectations. With a deep pool of sound effects at your disposal, simple licensing, and personalized customer support, your team will be able to spend more time collaborating.
Common Issues and How to Avoid Them
Even with all of the best tools at your disposal, teams are made up of humans, and nobody’s perfect. Whatever your audio editing pipeline looks like, you can expect issues to crop up from time to time. But the difference between a minor hiccup and a totally derailed project is how you deal with it – the best teams react quickly, adapt, and improve their process to make sure the same mistake never happens twice. Here are just a few common issues you might run into:
To learn how to prevent these issues before they crop up, react appropriately when things get complicated, and equip your team to do their best work, check out the Pro Sound Effects Ultimate Sound Workflow Guide for Teams: a comprehensive PDF packed with helpful tips, resources, and real advice from professionals working in film, animation, broadcast, advertising, and game development. Share it with your team and level up your collaborative workflow today!