Collections
Collections are a great way of saving your favourite sounds per category (Whooshes, Grabs, Night), per client or per project. In the picture on the right, you can see some of the collections I'm currently using to give you an idea of categories you could use.
Soundly already comes with a series of curated groups of sounds to fill specific needs for places, moods or genres. These are the Soundly Collections and are a good way to find inspiration and new sounds that maybe you were not looking for specifically but may fit the scene.
There is also an special collection called Recent that will show you all the recently played sounds, including local and cloud files.
To create a new custom collection, just click on "New Collection" just below your libraries. Name your collection and you can start adding sounds just right clicking on any sound and selecting "Add to collection" and your desired collection.
You can organize your collections in folders and keep in mind that they will also appear in your search results.
The Starred collection is a somewhat special one that comes by default and you can use to tag your favourite sounds.
You can also share any collection with other Soundly users. This is really handy for teams working on the same set of projects. Right click on any collection and select share. You can then add any users using their emails. You can also choose to let them add files to the collection and even give them permissions to manage it.
Settings Page
Access the setting page by clicking on "SETTINGS" on the up right hand side, going to Soundly > Settings or with the shortcut CMD + {COMMA}
General
Output Device: Your Audio output device.
Auto play: When browsing, selecting a new audio file will play it automatically.
Loop play: Files will be played on loop. Shortcut: SHIFT + CMD + L
Start playing on clik in waveform: Turn this on if you want Soundly to autoplay everytime you jump around in a clip´s timeline.
Hide on drag out: Soundly window will hide when dragging and dropping a sound.
Auto resize search result column: When searching, columns will automatically resize to fit the content.
Show channel selecter: Useful to turn on and off individual channels in surround files but you can even activate this for stereo ones.
Reset pitch slider on new file: Activate this to always hear a file´s original pitch when you switch between them.
Remove duplicates search results: Sometimes you have the same file twice in different folders. This options filters out those repeated results.
“Remember me” is on by default: Soundly will remember your user account by default.
Window always on top: Soundly window will always stay on top, useful when using Dock Mode.
Thesaurus: Activate this to get better search results in the same family of names.
Portable mode: Turn this on if you wish to cpy soundly to an external drive and open it in any computer without installation.
Prioritized spotting app: If you are working with Pro Tools and Reaper at the same time, this option will allow you to prioritize one of them when spotting.
Export
File name on export: You can choose if either the file name or the description will be carried when exporting to other software.
Prefix file on export: Add a prefix to everyfile that comes out of soundly.
Output format: The format that exported files will have. It can be the same as the original file ("Same as input") or a custom one.
Local Database
The local database stores Soundly´s knowledge of where all your sounds are and their metadata. From Soundly 2.5 you can create multiple local databases, switch between them and even move them to another computer.
New Local Databse: Use this to build (or re-build) the local database. Useful so Soundly knows the names of each library and understands them when you search. If your library is big, this can take a while, leave it overnight.
Reset local database: Deletes the local database.
Display
Offline
Audio Storage
Audio storage location: If you work with video editing software, Soundly will not automatically save the audio to the project audio folder when exporting. With this feature, you can manually set that path to the project's audio folder. Soundly will save the files you export to this folder whenever your editing software
Cloud transfer quality: If you have a slow internet connection you can use the low quality settings to load the files faster.
Accesability
Update
Pro Tools
If you don´t see this pannel, you may need to open Pro Tools.
You will be able to see here the folder where the audio files that you are spotting to Pro Tools are going. You also have the option to force this to be your Pro Tools session audio folder although if you have “Copy Files on import” in Pro Tools (under Preferences -> Processing -> Import) this may result in duplicate files.
Spot to Pro Tools handle size: You can choose how much handles the size that you are bringing into pro tools will have. 30 seconds is the default (and is probably plenty) and you can also choose to import the whole file.
Premiere
ReWire
Networking
Soundly shortcuts
CMD + E: Edit the name of the file.
CMD + T: Edit the description of the file.
CMD + Number: Activates a saved folder selection preset.
CMD + [COMMA]: Preferences page.
CMD + UP or DOWN ARROW: Changes audition level.
TAB: Jump to the next transient.
ALT + MOUSEWHEEL or R & T: Horizontal Waveform Zoom.
ALT + SHIFT + MOUSEWHEE: l: Vertical Waveform Zoom.
OPTION + LEFT ARROW: Go back to the start of the audio file.
CMD + R: Reverse an audio file.
CMD + I: Invert the channels on an stereo audio file.
CMD + N: Normalize audio file.
CMD + SHIFT + R: Reveal in finder.
CTRL + SHIFT + R: Show in explorer.
M: Sum an stereo file to mono.
N: Sum to stereo.
F: Flag sound.
CMD + LEFT ARROW: Use the left channel only on an stereo file.
CMD + RIGHT ARROW: Use the right channel only on an stereo file.
ALT + CHANNEL NUMBER: Use only the desired channel on a multichannel file.
SHIFT + CMD + L: Toggle loop play on and off.
Features for the future
This just a compilation of ideas from myself and other colleagues that we would love to see in Soundly in the future. If there is anything that you think is missing here, leave a comment and I'll add it to the list. As you can see, some features were added