Audio mixing

Wolf713 wrote on 7/16/2008, 11:04 AM

Hi
I checked all my reference material and forums, still stumped.

There are some clips in my project where I want to eliminate the sound track and use background music instead. How is this done?
Is there a way of deleting the original audio, clip by clip and replacing it with a music file in the timeline?
Presently I’m muting the original sound track in the Voice header timeline by pulling the Volume Envelope all the way down, then I insert the new music file in the Music header time line. The playback is great. I know a little bit about ‘de-muxing’, should I go that route?

Great Forum, learning a lot

Thanks for any help

Sony HV30 Camera
VMS 8d
DVDA 4.5

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 7/16/2008, 11:13 AM

What you're doing is fine.

Another way to do it is to click on the audio event, press U to ungroup it from the video, then click on it again to make sure the video isn't selected, then delete it.

Another way is to hover the mouse pointer near the top edge of the audio event, click, and drag down. This reduced the volume of just that one event. The farther you drag the quieter it will be, all the way to silent if you drag to the bottom.

Another way, assuming you have a whole track of audio you don't want anymore, is to delete that track after you've got all the audio events on it.

Another way is to use the trimmer to add the clip to the timeline, right-mouse-button dragging it to the track. When you let up on the button a menu will pop up asking how to add it to the project and one of the choices is video only.

Another way is to right-mouse-button click on the audio event, choose switches / mute.

I'm sure there are other ways too. It's up to you to decide which works best for you.

MSmart wrote on 7/16/2008, 4:17 PM

One more "another way" and my head will explode. :)

richard-amirault wrote on 7/16/2008, 7:24 PM

Got enough towels to clean up the mess???

The way I do this .. is

Select the ENVELOPE EDIT TOOL in the menu bar, right next to the NORMAL EDIT TOOL (which is the default tool) On my screen it is three icons to the left of the reel icon for MAKE MOVIE.

THEN, go to the audio track you wish to not use and right click on it and select INSERT / REMOVE ENVELOPE and then select VOLUME.

This will put a horizontal line thru the entire audio track. By clicking on the line you can add points. If you add two points next to each other .. you can then click and DRAG that point (and the line with it)

If you drag the point/line towards the bottom of the track it will lower the volume AT THAT POINT. Putting more points in the line further along the track will let you raise the volume back to normal (or even above normal .. if you want)

I've used this technique to edit out "bad words" from my video. You need to expand the timeline horizontally quite a bit to do this .. but it works just fine. You can also use this technique to lower the volume for a voice over.

Richard in Boston

ritsmer wrote on 7/17/2008, 12:02 AM

One more "another way" and my head will explode. :)

Right! - and that is what Vegas does: Not only it can do many, many things but it can do them in many different ways depending on what the single user finds best in the current situation - i.e. clicking icons, right-click-and-menu, shortcut keys etc. etc.

BTW: You really see this when you try to pass the Vegas Certified User exam: After years of editing you are a good and experienced editor - but you mostly develop some habits about how you do the different tasks - in 1 or 2 ways - but in this exam they presume that you know all 5 or 6 possible ways precisely and by heart :-)))

Wolf713 wrote on 7/17/2008, 4:09 PM

Thanks all for the great help. After my Birthday Party in a downtown Restaurant, and after the speeches and stuff (and yes, I need a better mike for my HV30 ), we strolled through the downtown area in our Tourist Town, I took a lot of clips, which I was able to put towards the end of the movie. The background sounds of busy sidewalks and places of interest didn't turn me on very much and the fourth suggestion of how to eliminate the sound as suggested by Chienworks, became my number one favorite during editing so I simply right click the mouse and drag the clip directly from the Project Media Window (Explorer, bypassing the trimmer) to the timeline. When the mouse button is released, a menu pops up and I chose VIDEO ONLY and ADD VIDEO AS TAKES. Cool, short and clean..no audio. After doing the same with about 10 more clips ( Splitting and trimming as I went), I had a nice view of our town and selected some great background music.
Wow, this is starting to be fun and I'm grateful to have you all help me out.

Thank You

Wolf