Need help synching vocal track in WMM

CountryMouse · Dec 6, 2009

(if I'm posting on the wrong board, please move it to where it should be--thanks!)

I'm just now trying out putting an extra vocal track to a video I made on my Canon camera, then imported into Windows Movie Maker.

I made a backing vocal using Audacity and saved that as a .wav file.

I am having a dickens of a time trying to get the audio file in JUST the right place on the time track in Windows Movie Maker, as I'm working on the video.

Could anyone help me out here?

Thanks very much!

CountryMouse

DaveVisi · Dec 6, 2009

It's tough. I can't get my Vista machine to stay running long enough to use WMM, so I can't really help with specifics.

I do know that you need to separate (ungroup?) the audio from the video so you can manipulate it separately. You can then slide the audio back and forth to fit. If you have to start the audio before the video it works pretty well to add a second of fade in at the beginning of the video to give you some breathing room. I use Sony Vegas and I can stretch things slightly and make the music fit the video (or vice versa) if things don't match up properly, but it's a pretty big pain especially if you have a long soundtrack. I have to resort to manually entering the percentage of stretching as the mouse steps don't seem to be accurate enough. My last experiment I had to stretch the audio by less than 1/10th of a percent to get it to fit right.

CountryMouse · Dec 6, 2009

DaveVisi said:
It's tough. I can't get my Vista machine to stay running long enough to use WMM, so I can't really help with specifics.

I do know that you need to separate (ungroup?) the audio from the video so you can manipulate it separately. You can then slide the audio back and forth to fit. If you have to start the audio before the video it works pretty well to add a second of fade in at the beginning of the video to give you some breathing room. I use Sony Vegas and I can stretch things slightly and make the music fit the video (or vice versa) if things don't match up properly, but it's a pretty big pain especially if you have a long soundtrack. I have to resort to manually entering the percentage of stretching as the mouse steps don't seem to be accurate enough. My last experiment I had to stretch the audio by less than 1/10th of a percent to get it to fit right.

Whoa, that sounds confusing! My main problem is just getting the separate audio track (that I recorded in Audacity) to sit EXACTLY where I want it to on the timeline in Windows Movie Maker. If there is some drop-down menu or something I'm missing where I can enter the exact second/millisecond to start the .wav, that is what I am looking for.

Thanks!

CountryMouse

MJKT · Dec 6, 2009

Ok to make it more accurate

next to the timeline there is a little magnifying glass picture.

click it a couple times and it will zoom up on the timeline. it will be far more acurate and precise to what you are trying to do with the timing

as it has zooms in, the time in second mesurements have got smaller so its more precise and easy to deal with

then you can move the music more were you want it to be and it wont just jump to a second to late or too early

hope i helped =]

CountryMouse · Dec 7, 2009

MJKT said:
Ok to make it more accurate

next to the timeline there is a little magnifying glass picture.

click it a couple times and it will zoom up on the timeline. it will be far more acurate and precise to what you are trying to do with the timing

as it has zooms in, the time in second mesurements have got smaller so its more precise and easy to deal with

then you can move the music more were you want it to be and it wont just jump to a second to late or too early

hope i helped =]

Oh yes, that's exactly what I needed to know! Gonna copy and paste this out into Notepad and save it on my hard drive!

Thank you so much!

CountryMouse

MJKT · Dec 7, 2009

CountryMouse said:
Oh yes, that's exactly what I needed to know! Gonna copy and paste this out into Notepad and save it on my hard drive!

Thank you so much!

CountryMouse

no problem

i was just using windows movie maker the other day

Professor Palmer · Dec 7, 2009

I hope that works for you, but if not, you can also put your vocal track into audacity with the audio from your video. That way, audacity will compress it for you when you export it to a .wav, and all you have to worry about is syncing it with the video.

CountryMouse · Dec 7, 2009

Professor Palmer said:
I hope that works for you, but if not, you can also put your vocal track into audacity with the audio from your video. That way, audacity will compress it for you when you export it to a .wav, and all you have to worry about is syncing it with the video.

I'm confused. What I've already done (in a trial run) is make a video with the melody line. Then I've recorded a harmony part in Audacity, while listening to the video's music on headphones. Then I saved the harmony part (from Audacity) as a .wav file and imported that into WMM. My only problem was perfectly synching it with the audio attached to the video in WMM. But I'm getting there in the synching thing.

What if I want three-part harmony though?

Thanks!

CountryMouse

Professor Palmer · Dec 8, 2009

What if I want three-part harmony though?

That's kind of what I was talking about.

Audacity can have as many tracks and layers as you want. So, if you needed, you could have an 18 part harmony. Though by then I guess it would be a choir

So, the same way you recorded and exported your harmony to a .wav, you could record several more harmonies and lay them over your original track in audacity. This way, audacity handles all the music; all you need Windows Movie Maker for is the video.

But, I digress. You've already got it figured out

CountryMouse · Dec 8, 2009

Professor Palmer said:
That's kind of what I was talking about.

Audacity can have as many tracks and layers as you want. So, if you needed, you could have an 18 part harmony. Though by then I guess it would be a choir

So, the same way you recorded and exported your harmony to a .wav, you could record several more harmonies and lay them over your original track in audacity. This way, audacity handles all the music; all you need Windows Movie Maker for is the video.

But, I digress. You've already got it figured out

Welllll, I'm not sure. I didn't touch my original audio that was done on my camera. I left that in WMM and added the harmony .wav (from Audacity) to what I was working on in WMM. What am I not doing right? I am feeling confused again.

CountryMouse

UkuVinny · Dec 9, 2009

I feel your pain. WMM is a real pain in my rear. You just gotta zoom in as far as you can and try and match up the wavelengths. It's the only way to do it, unless you're willing to shell out the cash for a better video editor.

EDIT: Sorry, mate. I skipped over the part where you resolved the problem.

CountryMouse · Dec 10, 2009

UkuVinny said:
I feel your pain. WMM is a real pain in my rear. You just gotta zoom in as far as you can and try and match up the wavelengths. It's the only way to do it, unless you're willing to shell out the cash for a better video editor.

EDIT: Sorry, mate. I skipped over the part where you resolved the problem.

Well, I'm haven't gotten back to working with it--I'm hoping I'll be able to do what I want with it.

Thanks!

CountryMouse

Professor Palmer · Dec 11, 2009

Oh, Sorry CountryMouse, I think you misunderstood my previous comments.

What you did works perfectly fine. The video should sound great. All I was doing was offering a different way to do things. However, if you're not too familiar with Audacity then it's probably not a good idea. Sorry!

CountryMouse · Dec 11, 2009

Professor Palmer said:
Oh, Sorry CountryMouse, I think you misunderstood my previous comments.

What you did works perfectly fine. The video should sound great. All I was doing was offering a different way to do things. However, if you're not too familiar with Audacity then it's probably not a good idea. Sorry!

I've been fooling around with Audacity. I recorded a vocal track (with my funky little Tamagotchi Tree microphone), then I saved it as a .wav. I added that (in WMM) to a video that has no sound. It's gonna work fine! And for my next trick

I plan on doing a harmony vocal for the chorus of a song I'm gonna do.

Thanks!

CountryMouse

Need help synching vocal track in WMM

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