Introducing Laybacker. 

A free tool for sound professionals to simplify relaying sound. 

Like a lot of people, I've been playing around with AI and realised I could use it to solve an annoying micro-problem that a lot of sound people will recognise: laying multiple sound mixes to picture for review or delivery. Pro Tools can lay to picture, but Video Engine is temperamental, and file format requirements mean multiple exports are often necessary. Existing tools like Shutter Encoder will do it, but they're video-centric and force you through one relay at a time.

I'm not a coder, but I asked Claude to build a tool that would take sound files and put them to picture. Incredibly, the first draft worked. I added a handful of features - smart filename generation, automatic file pairing, and a feature for UK commercial houses to check and fix the 6 frames of silence required by broadcasters. I refined it when I could, swapped the garish dark mode for something more soothing, then thought about how to share it.

I knew it worked, but didn't know how robust it was, or how to convince users I hadn't laced it with malware, spyware, or a cheeky bitcoin mine. There's an unavoidable hump for Mac users on first install - Apple discourages software it doesn't vouch for, which is fair enough but the annual $99 Apple Developer fee put me off, so I asked Claude to use independent security and code quality audits. The reports are published on the website with links to the full analysis. Users can check for themselves that the app isn’t slop.

I've maybe put a day's work into this, certainly no more than two, and I'm confident I'm not taking work from a developer who'd actually want it. The problem's too small for that. But, as seems to be the way in the world of freeware, I’ve given users a way to express gratitude, so there's a coffee button. 

I've learned a lot. AI does what you ask it to, but it's your job to check whether it meets expectations. It's been rigorous here, though I had to ask it to run tests and be critical of itself. And Claude left me with one final reminder: it should not be blindly trusted. It invented my surname for the (unused) press release I asked it to write. I’d love feedback and feature suggestions, get in touch via the feedback button. 

Available now for free at laybacker.com for Mac and Windows