Novedge: Tell us about CrumplePop and the kind of tools it provides.

Novedge: Can you go over the different plugins and explain what they do?

Gabe Cheifetz: CrumplePop makes a suite of plugins that fix the most common problems in video and podcast audio:

• EchoRemover.  Many, many videos and podcasts are recorded in rooms that are not treated for sound.  The resulting reverb is distracting for the audience and sounds unprofessional.  EchoRemover removes this echo with just a few clicks.  We're especially proud of this tool. 
• AudioDenoise.  Air conditioner noise, hard drive fan noise, and hum from appliances are extremely common types of noise.  You hear them all the time.  AudioDenoise gets rid of noise and gives your project a much more professional sound.  Often it makes a pretty dramatic difference. 
• Levelmatic.  If a subject moves closer to the mic, then farther away, the levels need to be adjusted in order to get a consistent sound.  Levelmatic does this automatically, so you don't need to keyframe your audio by hand.  It's a big timesaver. 
• PopRemover.  This is a simple but very handy tool for removing plosive sounds - the kind you hear when a subject pronounces "p" and "b" sounds close to the mic.  It's also good at removing mic bumps, which happen when someone accidentally bumps the microphone during recording. 
• RustleRemover.  This tool removes exactly one type of problem noise:  The rustle sound that you get when someone wearing a lavalier mic touches their clothing or moves around.  You won't need it as often as our other tools, but when you need it, it can save your entire project. 
• WindRemover.  Wind noise is absolutely notorious in its ability to wreck audio.  Wind is very unpredictable, and technically speaking it's a complex mix of high and low frequencies.  WindRemover actually restores audio that was recorded in a windy environment.  When reshooting is not an option (which is often the case), WindRemover can be a game-changer.

Novedge: What are the major products your plugins work with?

Gabe Cheifetz: CrumplePop plugins work with Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Garageband, DaVinci Resolve, and other popular host platforms.  

Novedge: Who is your target customer?

Gabe Cheifetz:We have customers who work in broadcast TV, small production teams, podcasters, YouTubers, educators, people who produce training materials - a very wide range of users.  Audio is hard and there aren't many other tools that can match CrumplePop's AI at the moment.

Novedge: Are CrumplePop's plugins easy and intuitive to use?

Gabe Cheifetz: Yes - simplicity and ease of use were our design goals from the start.  We wanted to let the user drop a plugin onto their project, adjust one or two simple controls, and be done.  All CrumplePop plugins work this way - most of the time, you can get excellent results by adjusting just one knob.

Novedge:  What should we expect, in terms of innovation, from the video-making industry?

Gabe Cheifetz: I think the race to get more pixels in the frame - this focus on resolution - has mostly cooled off.  That's a good thing.  We have plenty of resolution now, thanks to the amazing advances by camera manufacturers over the last 10 years.  Now there's a shift to focusing on quality - for instance, delivering good color.  Or in our case, good sound.  Parallel to this, there has been an explosion in the number of jobs that now involve producing video.  Almost everyone who is marketing a product needs to have a video strategy now.  In my opinion, the most interesting innovation will come in the form of tools that empower this very large and diverse base of video creators.  These tools will need to deliver a high quality result, be quick to learn, and relatively affordable. 

Novedge: Do you have anything in store for the upcoming future?

Gabe Cheifetz: Yes - we're getting ready to launch a completely new lineup of audio tools, with a lot of very cool new capabilities.

Novedge: Do you have any famous customers?

Gabe Cheifetz:Back when we made visual effects plugins, it was always fun to spot our tools being used in TV and movies.  There were a few times I remember being at lunch with the team, and there would be a TV on somewhere in the restaurant.  A commercial or something would come on that used one of our plugins, and everyone would just freeze and stare at it for a second.  Now that we make audio tools, it's a lot harder to tell if one of our plugins was used in a production.  With audio, the goal is for the audience to just hear audio that sounds great, and that's it.

Novedge: Any fun fact about CrumplePop?

Gabe Cheifetz: When we started in 2009, we had a small storefront office that was divided between plugin development and bicycle repair.  We had a small bike shop worth of tools and spare parts.  That was back when you still had to wait for projects to render, so we'd work on fixing or building bikes for friends while we were waiting for renders to finish.  People would visit the office and look very confused.  For some reason, a lot of people's first question was "Do you live here?".  It was that kind of office.