Lip sync, How to slightly move audio

[janjatul]

I have a video with muted audio (because it was dubbed). I have the original English audio in the audio track. I have manage to move the audio so it is fairly in sync with the video (say within a sec). I am cutting the audio into about five minute parts and now trying to move each audio parts a few parts of a sec to bring the audio into lip sync with the video. I go to a point in the video there I have a face starting to talk. I then move the audi track.
But I have difficulties in getting it right and it is time consuming.
Perhaps there is a better way to do it?. I will be glad to hear any ideas of how to best do it. It needs a lot of adjustments as the video is nearly one and a half hours.
I am now using VS X7 Pro.
Thanks for any help.

[lata]

Hi Jan

There is no automatic way to sync audio so has to be done manually.

If you switch to Sound Mixer view, the timeline will display the Wav form, you should be able to compare the video to the audio track, that may help in positioning the clips.

If the sound clip is the same duration as the video you should be able to sync once, or does the out of sync get progressively longer as the video plays?
If so you may be able to use Speed time lapse to stretch / shorten the video and or audio

Adding a short audio clip immediately before your audio clip could be used as a buffer, changing that clips duration may allow you to position frame by frame, if you understand my meaning.

[BrianCee]

If as you say the original soundtrack does not match the new one you are trying to add then obviously there is no point in trying to match sound waves.

why did you cut up the audio - that means you have to match all the bits - is it not the same length as the video throughout.

I would just remark here that if the original video is not in English then you are NEVER going to exactly sync an English audio to it - different languages take different times to say the same thing.

It is easier to move video rather than audio so I would put the audio track in one of the sound tracks leaving it a second or so from the left hand edge - then put a short color block at the beginning of the top timeline and your video will butt up against it - now by changing the duration of the color block (which you can do up or down in one frame increments) you can push the video around by minute portions until sound and picture are in sync.

[janjatul]

Thanks Trevor and Brian,
I will try your suggestions. I forgot about the audio view, haven't been editing video for a while.

[dtvp]

Another suggestion for slipping audio clips relative to the video:

If I want to move an audio clip just a few frames, I place the scrubber at the start of the clip in project preview mode and then use the D and F keys to jog it the number of frames desired in either direction, Now I drop a cue point marker and can then drag and drop the audio so that the start of the clip snaps into position with the marker. The clip has been moved by the exact number of frames.

[lata]

Another suggestion for slipping audio clips relative to the video:

If I want to move an audio clip just a few frames, I place the scrubber at the start of the clip in project preview mode and then use the D and F keys to jog it the number of frames desired in either direction, Now I drop a cue point marker and can then drag and drop the audio so that the start of the clip snaps into position with the marker. The clip has been moved by the exact number of frames.

Thanks for that, I normally use a separate clip as a buffer adjusting its length, then snap to.
The Chapter Points / Cue points approach is excellent.