Need advice: Syncing audio from a cassette to a video

[maximus92]

Been awhile since I last posted. Anyhow, I captured my wedding from VHS to my hard drive. It has audio, but the camera that was used was set so far back that it is very inaudible. Luckily, someone had the foresight to record the ceremony on to cassette from a tape player that was hooked up to the church's P.A. system. So basically here's my questions:

1. What's the best way, or program to use to capture audio from a cassette? The last time I did this was in 98 when I hooked the tape player to the line in, and used the Windows sound recorder to capture the audio.

2. What is the best method to put it all together?

[gadgetguy]

1. Audacity should work.
2. With an editing program that has a time line that allows you to play both the recorded audio and the audio from the video at the same time, so you can line them up. Then delete the Videos audio. Ulead Visual Studio is one that can do it, as well as many others.

[wild4trv30]

Best of luck on the project. However, I wonder if it can really work. Given my experience with my old audio cassettes and depending on the player, the cadence of the track has varied. I guess if the software allows you to speed up/slow down the audio when needed it could work--tedious though.

[dphirschler]

It will be tedious work. If it had been recorded to DAT or MD (or even VHS), then it'd be alot easier to synch. Hopefully it will synch right up, but the chances of that are slim. You will be looking at a lot of trial and error with slowing or speeding the cassette audio to match the video's audio.

My advice would be to cut up the cassette's audio into ~5 minute segments at quiet parts. Then you can align each piece up seperately and cross fade into the next. Each piece will drift slightly out of synch but it not be so ovbious because it won't be allowed to drift too far.

It will be tedious, but not impossible. I've done this sort of thing before with music concerts. It's not too bad.


Darryl

[gadgetguy]

I've only done a couple projects with cassette taped audio, and I did not encounter the difficulties that the others did. But that is not to say that what they're saying is wrong. Only that it's possible you won't experience those problems, and you won't know until you try. Alot of it depends on the quality of the recorder that was used to make the tape and whether it was operating on AC or batteries, and also the tape player used to output to the computer. If the audio goes out of synch progressively and consistantly it is a pretty simple procedure to adjust the speed of the audio file to match. But if there are fluctuations then Darryl's method is probably the most workable.

[mikiem]

Haven't had any big prob with cassettes, though if the player's decent but a bit old, could have some issues with the belts & such causing the speed to vary. Geeks sells a cassette deck that fits into a 5.25 bay if you have prob. with yours.

To do the matchup I'd strongly recomend Vegas. Increase the volume of the camera audio so peaks are more visible, then add cassette audio in track below it. Match up the peaks. If it does go out of sync with the camera audio, it's really simple in Vegas to alter the play length by time stretching or compression. [THis is one place Vegas shines]

In extreme cases, starting at the beginning of the file in Vegas, find the first place peaks don't match by more then a frame or two, & split the audio track where it's relatively quiet (no peaks or visible waveform). If the cassette audio is faster (matching peaks are to the right of camera audio), cntrl-drag the end of the clip on the left so they match. Drag the entire clip on the right to but up against clip on left.

IF the cassette audio is slower, drag the entire clip on the right so it matches up near the split. Cntrl-Drag the end of the clip on the left so it matches. Repeat as needed working your way down the timeline. Takes about 10 minutes *if* you have to make 4 - 6 corrections. Once you've got everything lined up, mute the camera audio track.

AFAIK When audio like this is off using good tape deck, the cause is capture hardware varying the audio to keep sync -- audio & video work on your PC using different clocks/timing. But hopefully won't have too many, or any real sync prob. -- wind up just matching the waveforms.

[gadgetguy]

Another option (but using free software) is to extract the audio from the video and do roughly the same procedure as mikiem described in Audacity to make the tape audio match the video audio.

[maximus92]

The splitting of the sound file sounds pheasable. The camera was placed on the loft next to the organ, so the organ is nice and clear. So if I split the files at the organ parts, I could just dub in the speaking parts, and keep the organ parts from the original soundtrack.