Any secrets for realigning music track?

[flahagan]

I've finished my recent project, but I had some problems getting the background music to line up correctly if I had to make a change in the video track. For instance, I had two adjacent still images separated by a 1 sec. transition. Both images had a duration of 5 sec. initially, but I changed one to 4 sec. and the other to 6, thinking this wouldn't create a problem with the soundtrack. But it did. The rest of the video, the music didn't line up with the frames the way they initially had. I had a terrible time getting everything back the way I wanted.
Is the program set up so that you shouldn't do any editing to the video timeline once you add the sound?
I'm just playing around with the program now, trying different things since the pressure to produce the DVD is over! I'd love to be able to handle the sound portion in a more efficient manner and get smoother transitions with it.

Thanks for any suggestions or tips.

[Black Lab]

As you have found it is much easier to do everything in the order of the tabs across the top. Corel got it right with Capture>Edit>Effects>Overlays>Titles>Audio. But that's not to say you can't deviate from that, but you'll have to suffer the consequences.

One thing that helps is to turn on Ripple Editing. As the name implies, with Ripple Editing on any editing will have a ripple effect with the other timelines. But in your case, since you lengthened one clip by 1 second and shortened another by 1 second I don't think RE would have helped. Frankly I don't know why that would cause a problem with your audio.

Sometimes you just have to line up things by eye/ear.

[sjj1805]

Interestingly if I create a slide show I add the sound track FIRST.
The reason for this is that I want to identify where the various beats are located and then I add the images so that on play back the slide changes with the beat.

What must be remembered is that there isn't a single "right way" to do something, there is a right way for the current project but that method might be wholly inappropriate for the next project.

[Black Lab]

I, sometimes, also have a piece of music in mind and will add that early in the editing process. As I said, you can do that, but then you have to deal with the consequences if things change.

[johnrule]

Switch to the audio mode and use the waveform to line things up. The peaks in the wave form should become obvious as you listen, and you zoom in for more granularity.

JR