Inserting B Roll Footage Help

[emmjay]

Hi Folks,

I am totally new to video editing and still on the month trial of X7. Using Canon T31 and Zoom H4 for external sound. While I have been a computer engineer for 30+ years and have even more years in film and digital still photography, this whole timeline concept and even the video terminology I see in video is very foreign to me.

I have figured out some basic stuff like adding a video, adding a second audio track recorded externally, synching them (doing that manually right now by aligning the spikes from 3 claps - seems to work so far) and muting the audio from the T3i video.

I want to make a 25 or so minute video of a solo musician. Rather than just a straight head on view I wanted to intersperse some brief clips such as various panned views of the instrument. While doing that I need the sound to maintain synch so when it goes back to the main video it is still playing properly.

I can see where to add the short clips but when I play the whole thing the audio track doesn't play at all, even from the start. When I remove the clip the sound plays normally.

If someone can explain the process that would be appreciated, but even just knowing what topic(s) I should be researching in the Corel docs, etc. would be very helpful.

Thanks!

[BrianCee]

You 'A' roll should be in the top track of the timeline and 'cut-aways' to the B roll should be in one of the overlay tracks - with their sound muted - and obviously the audio is in one of the audio tracks.

Are you also making sure you are in 'Project' mode by selecting the word project under the bottom left corner of the preview window.

if you do that does your sound disappear from the project ?

[emmjay]

You 'A' roll should be in the top track of the timeline and 'cut-aways' to the B roll should be in one of the overlay tracks - with their sound muted - and obviously the audio is in one of the audio tracks.

Are you also making sure you are in 'Project' mode by selecting the word project under the bottom left corner of the preview window.

if you do that does your sound disappear from the project ?

Thanks so much Brian! You guessed. Looks like I never clicked on "project". I was thinking to myself "I wonder if I have to consolidate this?" and sure enough, clicking Project rather than leaving "clip" selected did it. So now I am thinking if I want to edit the clips I insert for fade, duration etc. I guess I click on "clip" to edit then "project" to see the whole thing.

I am starting to enjoy this. Just a simple tip like this seems to open up other concepts!

[BrianCee]

Whenever you select an individual clip VS will switch to clip mode and you only need to switch back to project if you want to see the final effect including all tracks - most of the time VideoStudio will automatically be in clip mode - you just need to remember to switch to project in order to see/hear all tracks.