Clip Audio

[boobo0]

Is it possible to lower the audio of all clips at once in a timeline that runs about an hour? There are about 250 clips, they are highlights from my sons Pop Warner football season. I want to lose all the talking/screaming for the most part with a background music for the main sound.

My main point is the audio in all the clips, I dont want to have to go through each one and lower it, I am sure there is a way to do it, I just cant figure it out.

Thanks in advance,

Bob

[Ken Berry]

Sorry, but I think there is no way of doing that in VS, short of highlighting each individual clip and individually muting it or reducing its volume to a certain level. That is certainly the way I do it, though I rarely have more than about 80 clips in any one project.

The only way I can think of for you to achieve your objective would be time consuming but not require much personal intervention on your part. You would do all other editing required on the clips, insert transitions, titles etc. Don't add your background music yet, however or any additional audio like voiceovers. Then you would render a new, single file of your project to date.

If it is in DV format, then you would go to Share > Create Video File > DV. This format is best because you would not lose any quality in the re-encoding which occurs. If it is in mpeg-2 (or some other format), you would choose Share > Create Video File > DVD. There is, however, considerable debate as to whether mpeg-2 (or other compressed formats) should be edited at all, or by how much. It is a lossy format, so each time you recode it, some quality will be lost. In this case, you would be recoding twice. But if you keep the quality settings (essentially bitrate) high, you may not notice much deterioration in quality even after the second recode...

Anyway, either way, you then start a new project, insert your new file in the timeline and simply either mute its audio or reduce its volume to a certain level as you are now dealing with only one file. Then you can add your background music and set that to whatever volume you like.

It's not the perfect way to go -- especially if you are working with mpeg-2 -- but it's the only way I can think of. Maybe someone else will have a better idea...

[boobo0]

Ahh....Ken very creative, and it's probably what I will have to do (that method does not seem to be too time consuming). Barring there are no other alts.

Thanks for your time.

Bob


Edit: Also I am working with DV, so that's a plus.

[Ken Berry]

The 'time consuming' part comes with the time it will take to recode/render the whole project into one file. By the sounds of it, it could be a long project. Depending on your computer resources, the speed could be anything between a little less than real time (since it will be DV to DV), to a hopefully still small multiple of real time. Look at my System button to see my computer resources. For a DV to DV render, I usually do about 0.75 real time -- in other words, a one hour project will take around 45 minutes to recode.

[GeorgeW]

I would put all the clips on the timeline the way you want them, and save the project (project_name.VSP).

Then start a new project, and insert the project (project_name.VSP) into your timeline (the project file can be inserted as a video file). You can then modify the audio for the entire project.

Regards,
George

[Ken Berry]

I confess I have never tried that, George. But it sounds as though it could be a good idea...

[Black Lab]

Yes, by using the VSP you are saving yourself from an extra render of the video.

For those of you who also use MediaStudio Pro:
As I have been reading up on the MSP manual, it talks about nesting timelines. Would this be a comparable instance of a nested timeline?

[Ron P.]

Yes it would be very similar to using nested timelines.

[Black Lab]

Gotcha. Thanks.

[boobo0]

Saving the project as a .vsp then inputing it as a video clip worked great. Thanks for all the input everyone.

Bob