How to mute audio on cutaways

Heather Cowper wrote on 6/6/2009, 2:34 PM
I've filmed an interview which I have in the main video track. I want to break up the interview with some short cutaway shots which I've put in the video overlay track.

My problem, is that I only want the audio from the interview, not that from the cutaway shots which is currently also playing over the interview. How do I mute the audio of each individual cutaway shot or all the shots in the video overlay track?

Many Thanks

Comments

Terry Esslinger wrote on 6/6/2009, 3:18 PM
You could mute the entire audio track from the overlay or
You could delete the audio track from the overlays or
Right click and drag your overlay to the time line and chose video only from the pop up menu and you will have no audio track to worry about.
There must be other ways too.....
musicvid10 wrote on 6/6/2009, 5:10 PM
On the cutaway video, ungroup the video from the audio.
Heather Cowper wrote on 6/11/2009, 12:31 PM
Thanks so much to both of you - Terry, that's done the trick - I knew there had a to be an easy way, just couldn't figure it out.
GBR wrote on 6/11/2009, 5:19 PM
You should try audio envelopes which provide for variation of volume wherever you want along the timeline.
For your application, insert an audio envelope (volume) on each of the video tracks. Expand the timeline so that you have time marks in seconds and insert a marker (double click) just before you want to start the transfer from one audio track to the other.
The audio envelopes will initially be inserted as a blue line at zero db audio level. The first marker inserted "anchors" the level at zero. Next insert another marker a second or two after the first one.
Then move to the point at which you want to end the transfer of audio between the two tracks and insert two markers there.
Next step, grab the volume envelope line midway between the start and finish point and drag it down as far as you want - in your case minus infinity for the main track.
Spacing between the two markers at the start and finish sets the fade in and fade out slope.
This procedure is also very useful when inserting voiceover. In that case, you can just reduce the main audio to a background level and increase the voiceover (or second track) to get the desired effect.
After a little bit of experimenting you will find this a very useful and easy feature to apply.