Video Help - How to combine videos

I've read a few of the related posts on this topic and I've tried a couple things out, but I'm not quite "getting it." I was hoping someone could give me a push in the right direction.

First things first, I'm running a Mac. I have iLife 08 installed.

I started by opening up iMovie and making a new recording using my built in iSight camera. That would be the base of the song. So far so good. Then I moved over to GarageBand and pulled in the movie that I made. I have been able to figure out how to add additional tracks to the song in GarageBand and I'm pretty sure I could put together a song that has a decent combination of ukulele and several vocal tracks.

But I still only have the one video feed from before. I'd like to be able to work in video from when I recorded the other tracks. That's what I'd like your help with.

One thing I tried doing was recording multiple movies in iMovie and them importing both of them into GarageBand to mix the audio. That didn't work for me, I only get to bring in one. In iMovie I can bring in multiple videos and combine the video (so I can cut from one take to the other) but I can't figure out how to play the audio from all of the recordings at the same time.

Any thoughts on how to solve this? Is there some other software I could be using to make this easier?

My software, Pinnacle Studio, I'm allowed two video tracks plus two additional audio tracks (along with the audio from the two videos). Sometimes, even that's not enough, so what I do is then render the multi-track file (without all the tracks I want to add, but as many as I can), into a final product like an mp4. Then re-open the software, bring in that rendered version (on which the previous multiple tracks are now one), and then continue to add more audio or video tracks from there.

The tricky part is that once you've rendered 3 or 4 tracks into one, you can't adjust their levels any more, so you got to make sure that part is right.

It's sort of a jerryrig, but it works!

I'm not on a Mac, but I use Sony Video Vegas. It allows five video tracks and (quite a few, I don't know how many) audio tracks. I haven't done any video mixing of live pieces yet, but I would think the tough part would be synchronizing multiple takes. For that, I'd suggest a multiple camera recording of the same performance and cut/paste/blend as desired. For other accompaniment parts, I'd either play along to what I deem to be the "master track" either with headphones or a separate playback device, and then paste in segments of it into the mix, taking care to match up the audio with the reference track.

Each audio/video combo can be "split" and edited separately so you can cut/paste/blend/ fade, whatever, all the resultant audio tracks until you get a result you like.

I only have one computer camera, and one handheld, so I'm going to try aiming one for a full shot, and the other for closeup and shoot both in a single take and blend the two and see what happens. If it turns out halfway decent, I'll post the results.

Here's an internet guitar friend of mine who uses the headphones for a reference track and synchronizes multiple takes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXgEB26vrxU

blackfist said:

One thing I tried doing was recording multiple movies in iMovie and them importing both of them into GarageBand to mix the audio. That didn't work for me, I only get to bring in one. In iMovie I can bring in multiple videos and combine the video (so I can cut from one take to the other) but I can't figure out how to play the audio from all of the recordings at the same time.

Any thoughts on how to solve this? Is there some other software I could be using to make this easier?

Click to expand...

All you have to do is export the finished song and drag it over to iMovie. That way, you'll have the combined audio as one track that you can use to sync all your video to.

In GarageBand, under the Share menu, choose "Export Song to Disk..." Locate the file that GarageBand just created, and drag it into the audio timeline in iMovie.

You can also import your movie into GarageBand, delete the movie track (but leave the soundtrack) then export that to disk. Then open a new project in Garageband, import movie #2, then add the original saved soundtrack file as a new track. Now you have the soundtracks from both movies under one movie track.

You can then delete the movie track, leaving only the two soundtacks you want. Mix them and add effects, then export them to disk.

Then back in iMovie just drop this new master soundtrack onto the movie project - kill the sound in your clips so you only hear the new master.

Sounds complicated, but it takes about 5 minutes and gives you what you want... a master soundtrack to sync video clips to.

I might be able to do a tutorial vid iof you need it. Let us know.

If you are running the new iMovie ('08 and beyond), I'm not sure if you can do it. iMovie HD (which is available for free on apple.com) is a much better video editor. Basically what I do is film the two (or however many) parts, then extract the audio from each of them. Next, making sure "show audio waveforms" is not selected, you can cut and splice the video clips together, and the audio from all of them will play simultaneously. It takes some playing around to get it exactly right, but it works.

If you send it over the Garageband, however, the audio will be combined into one track. You could, however, send each clip individually to Garageband, and then import them back into iMovie HD.


I hope this made sense.

Thanks for the tips. I'll try some of these out and let you know how it works out. If I should find the secret sauce that makes my videos awesome I'll probably whip up a video tutorial on how I did it.

any video tutorials on how you guys make your vids would be great.
We just bought our first mac and I am having a hard time figuring out how to use imovie/garageband for making a music video.

combine videos on mac

If you tried iMovie and failed to combine videos, then you can try Joyoshare Video Joiner, which is compatible with both Mac and Windows computers. You can folloe the steps as the video shows:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDn8aG_GwqU

Save the audio in garage and to a mp3 and import it into movie and synchronisation it to the video.