Cataloguing the Chaos
An Embedded-Based Auto-Tagging System for SFX Libraries With FMOD Integration
Managing third-party SFX libraries is one of the most time-consuming tasks in game audio production. Sound designers and audio programmers alike face a number of challenges due to inconsistent folder structures, missing metadata, and unusual naming conventions. Current middleware frameworks such as FMOD and Wwise provide no automated solution, which leaves organisation entirely to the developer and/or sound designer.
This talk presents a SFX cataloguing system using pretrained audio embeddings, a fine-tuned classifier, and a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) pipeline to automatically tag, and structure SFX libraries. By deriving tags directly from audio features and related data, this project can organise entirely untagged collections, unlike existing tools that rely on pre-existing metadata or filenames. A live demo will show an unorganised SFX library transformed into an arranged, production-ready FMOD project.
By the end of this session, attendees should have an understanding of the tools used in order to easily classify and organise the SFX libraries. This session will also focus on parsing and writing out the structure of the FMOD projects in a programmatic way, providing a useful pattern for developers to replicate.
Denise Azucena
Denise is a freelance audio software engineer with over 5 years of experience in audio engineering for adverts, short films, and audiobooks. She graduated with a MSc in Sound and Music Computing at Queen Mary University London, focusing on AI and Data Science. She has a keen interest in the field of audio programming and sound designing.
Combining her deep domain knowledge of sound with machine learning and audio information retrieval, she draws upon her post-production experiences to build software tools that address real pain points in the industry. She also likes to nerd out on video games, jazz music, and tennis.