how to syn wav to video?

[critictalk]

Hi everyone,

Recently, my friend gave me a DV tape of his independent film. However, he found out that the sound quality of the tape is poor and tried to use a DAT tape to replace the audio of his film. The DAT was recorded on location and in good quality. How can I syn the DAT to the video?

Can Sony Sound Forge solve my problem?
Help!!!

[Sartori]

Yes , it can as long as they are the same length between fixed points . You`ll need to lip sync the video to the audio but it is a pain in the arse that way , a video editor like Vegas is an easier method to do it as you can drag the audio up and down the timeline . I have V6 of Soundforge , I am not aware of whether V7 or 8 are able to do anything like that .

If the audio doesnt line up ie it is not the same length , I wrote a tutorial on adjusting audio precisely by maths , but as it got generaly ignored by all , I never received any mails back to put in my mailbox folder to give you an instant link to it .

[guns1inger]

Do you need to edit the audio at all ?

I think vegas is probably the better solution, as suggested by Sartori. Sound Forge might be handy for cutting it up, or for cleaning it, but most of what you need will be in Vegas. It is going to be manual, and if it's not a single track (i.e. you need to edit it down) it's going to take patience. Learn to read the wave form in the timeline. You will find, after a while, that you can see the sound to a degree, and this helps a lot when trying to line things up. Keep the original audio in the timeline for comparison, then mute it later.

[Richard_G]

As has been pointed out Sound Forge isn't really the tool for this job, Vegas is. But Vegas is very expensive to buy and it seems a bit pointless for this one job. However, just about any video editing package can do it, even Windows Movie Maker 2. Download WMM2 and give it a try if you haven't got anything else that will do it..

[critictalk]

Thanks a lot!!

However, I still have question.
As you guys know, DTS or DD5.1 need 6 channels to encode, if, for example, if I want to CREATE a 6 channels in VEGAS, i.e.:
audio1: music
audio2: effects;
audio3: location sound;
:
:
audio6: dialogue

as a result,
1)can I use vegas to export the audio one by one into wav
and encode the 6 wavs into DTS or DD5.1 together?

2)can I use premiere pro rather than vegas?

3)will the DD5.1 or DTS be non-syn to the MPEG2 video?

We want to encode the final product into DVD and we use Sonic Scenarist
for DVD authoring.

[Sartori]

After some reflection on this , and as Vegas is bloody expensive , the (cheapest) way to do it with Soundforge is to open the two files and then align them via a couple of datum points and just top and tail them to make them the same length .

I found my tutorial on Soundtrack replacement , its for music videos but the principles are the same really .

https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=265495&highlight=

As I recall for 6 channel sound Vegas needs another purchased - please correct me if I`m wrong . I only use stereo and Im using windows 98 partition at the moment , Vegas is on my XP partition so I can`t check .

[guns1inger]

You need the AC3 plugin, which will run with sound forge. It is more complicated than simply putting music on 1, effects on 2. You can actually pan and shift within a single audio track in vegas. vegas then sorts out position and therefore channel data when encoding. I have done simple music only surround tracks with as little as 3 audio tracks in vegas, and more complicated audio that required more than 10 audio tracks. If you have done everything correctly, then sync should not be a problem.

I haven't had the need to push the 6 monos out to disk, as I encode AC3 from within vegas and get a single AC3 file.

Premiere Pro can probably do it. I haven't played with it's audio facilities, but I have never found Premiere's audio to be as intuative as Vegas. Some workflows suits some better than others. I don't believe it will make what you are trying to do any easier. Good multi-channel takes time and is an art.

If you do output 6 mono channels, you need something standalone to put them back togther again. Besweet or ffmpegui can do AC3, although for maximum compatability I'd use a licensed encoder such as the Sony one that ships with the DVD creation kit (Vegsa and DVD Architect packaged). Surcode also have AC3 and DTS standalone encoders. Sonic Foundry (original authors of Vegas) had a standalone called Soft Encode, which is no longer available, and is substanially slower than the Vegas plugin.

You need to read up more on surround sound. Generally, there is no discrete channel for any of these things. You have centre, front left and right, rear left and right, and low frequency effects (generally sent to the subwoofer). You might also have extended rear speakers. Dialogue is usually focussed in the centre speaker, but can come from anywhere in the surround field. Music, if sound track, needs to be balanced between the front and rear, while if it is part of the scene, it needs to come from an appropriate direction. The same with any effects. It is never as simple as dialogue in 1, effects in 2 etc.