Sony Movie Studio Editing Question

Steverobbins wrote on 11/9/2008, 3:56 PM

We have a camtasia video/audio that will be going to dvd and it has a few "umms" and "ahhs" in it.

Is there an easy way to edit them in out Sony Movie Studio? For example, currently, there is 60 minutes of audio and video perfectly matched up from Camtasia. If I delete the umm's and ahh's, there will be less audio and it won't be lined up with the video properly anymore.

if I just insert silence to fill the space, there is too much time in bewtween the word before the silence and the word after the silence and it doesn't sound right.

How can I handle this type of thing?

Thanks.

Comments

richard-amirault wrote on 11/9/2008, 7:12 PM

You don't seem to be doing a good job of explaining your problem.

If you "insert" silence, on the audio track, to replace those "umms" and "ahhs" then the audio should still match up with the video .. but there will now be an obvious silence at those points. To me that's worse than the "umms" and "ahhs"

If you just edit out the "umms" and "ahhs" ON THE AUDIO TRACK . yes, than the audio will not match up with the video.. and you end up with a project that is worse than leaving those "umms" and "ahhs" in.

If you edit out both the audio and video at those points .. then everything will still match up .. but you will have to do something to make the, obvious, video transition/edit smoother and/or less obvious.

Slightly overlapping would do this .. or using a "flash" effect might work .. but really .. leaviing them in would be the easiest and least distracting. This is video editing, not audio.

Ivan Lietaert wrote on 11/9/2008, 9:28 PM

Use volume envelope and drag down the volume where needed. (Select the audio event and hit Shift+V, add 4 points by double clicking, then drag the middle down).

Tim L wrote on 11/10/2008, 3:51 AM

You need to cut out the umms and ahhs -- leaving blank space -- then replace that space with "room tone".

"Room tone" is something all good video makers know to get when filming a scene -- record 30 seconds or so of absolute silence in whatever location you are shooting in (a house, outdoors, and office, etc.) "Absolute silence" is, of course, a delusion. There's always some kind of noise, no matter where you're shooting, so you need a sample of it to "fill in" areas where you remove audio.

In your case, I presume you are doing a tutorial so you aren't actually on screen talking -- just talking along with a computer display. This is probably the easiest of all situations. Find a place in your tutorial where you aren't talking -- even if just a few seconds -- and copy the audio from there. Then cut out the bad parts of the audio, and use the "room tone" to fill in the gaps.

You can cut and rearrange your audio in any number of ways. Isolate individual words, if necessary, to adjust the pacing. You might be surprised how much better you can make it.

Tim L

Chienworks wrote on 11/10/2008, 10:35 AM

Actually, in this case in Vegas it's not even necessary to cut out the ummms and ahhhs. Find some room tone, copy it, and simply paste it on top of the audio track in the right spot. If Vegas sees that the clip underneath extends past both sides of what you've pasted on top it replaces what's underneath with the new material rather than doing the crossfade you'd normally expect from overlapped clips. To make it sound a little less like something was pasted in you should fade the edges of the pasted room tone so that there is a gentle fade into it and out from it. Without these fades there will probably be a little click or jump in the sound at those points.

Steverobbins wrote on 11/10/2008, 11:55 AM

Great tips everyone, thanks very much!