Video and audio Help

[sinz]

Hey all long time reader first time poster,

Just want to say the learning experience has been awesome and I just love the help and tutorials more knowledgeable users have contributed to the community which has made my experience into this new video editing venture much more fluid and enjoyable.

Okay to my point and current status I have used this guide https://forum.videohelp.com/topic301015.html which is just great thank you Cheekie_Moonkie for that.

Now I have the outputs and want to edit the files but retain the audio in sync with the video.

What is the best way to go about this? When I say edit I want to cut both the audio and video from the episodes at their beginnings and ends.

On the same principle I have two sources of a particular show and want to remove video from one and audio from another and edit the audio where needed and then combine the two into one, I assume this process would be the same as for my first question or is there more to it than what I am thinking?

I have searched and used some tools before posting but my results aren't where I'd like them to be so any experienced help would be appreciated, Thank you!

[guns1inger]

There are much simpler ways of doing this that the guide your followed, but that is for another post.

For just trimming the start and end from an AVI file, I would use AVI Demux. Load the video, move the slider to the start of the edit and click the A marker, move it to the end of the edit and click the B marker, then hit Del. Repeat for other edits, then save the results using Copy mode. If it asks if you want to use Smart Rendering say yes, and use a quant of 2 or 3.

The audio editing is a bit trickier because of the need to maintain sync. This is much more easily done in a real editor where you can see the video and the audio tracks on a timeline, and edit back and forth. I don't know of a free tool for this. I would use Vegas because I have that at hand.

[sinz]

Guns1inger,

Thank you for your help thus far I would like to know the simplier way of doing things as I have about 20 dvdr's I need to rip and would rather it be as easy as possible because it's a lot of editing which I am usually doing while I rest, so any additional help is always welcome.

A friend has Vegas I could use/borrow if needed so if you can supply the processes I'll try just about anything to get the results I am after.

I will be giving AVI Demux a try in the morning on one of the episodes with your suggestions thanks again.

Edit: I found Cheekie's method nearly perfect because I wanted a particular file size and a multi-automated converting tool. (while I rest it's working saving me time). If any other process's can mimic this again I'd like to know.

[guns1inger]

Personally I believe you can simplify the ripping by using DVD HD Decrypter to rip the disc, then VOB2MPG to extract the episodes. It would be at this point I would do any editing required using VideoRedo, then set up AutoGK for the encode. I love AutoGK. I often grab a whole series of a show from the digital broadcast streams. When I have the lot I edit out the ads, top and tail them (all in VideoRedo) then let AutoGK convert them. On my quad core I can convert a whole season of Top Gear in around 4 hours.

As for editing the audio, first thing to remember is that Vegas hates VBR MP3, so if your audio is in this format, convert it to WAV first. Load the video on the first timeline. Add an audio track and drag the second audio file onto it. Line the two audio tracks up so they match, using a combination of visual cues from the wav form, and listening for echoes. Once you have them lined up, add a Volume Envelope to the audio tracks, and add points and set the volume levels to mix between the tracks. Once you have the audio as you want it, render it out as a WAV file. If you need to actually cut chunks out of the audio, make sure you keep checking for sync issues along the way.

Finally, mux the new audio into the original video track. If the source is AVI, use virtualdubmod as it makes it really simple.

[sinz]

Took some time to get back to ya,

Had to learn a bit of Vob2Mpg but I think I got the hang of it and I learned a bit of the avidemux to try and get settings down like AutoGK but I couldn't get the VBR for audio to work and I didn't know how to cut out audio so it was way out of sync but it was easy to cut out video so a bit of a downer there.

After (30mins later) I found out the hard way that Vegas doesn't like avi I gave up on that.

Right now I'm doing the first paragraph of your suggestion and after going to give Virtualdubmod a try for my other issue out.

I heard using AutoGK wouldn't give me the best possible results, is that true? I hope not...

So far it's going great with this new process I would love to somehow create a batch file that will allow me to just stick in the DVDs have them ripped to mpg with vob2mpg then when I've edited the parts I don't need in VideoRedo have another batch file to have them encoded in AutoGk saved as avi's with my settings then I'd be relieved I wouldn't have to do all these DVDrs by hand again for a third time =/ the joys of learning .

Thanks a bunch for your help gun.

[guns1inger]

For conversion of mpg or DVD source to AVI (Divx/Xvid) AutoGK does a very good job. If you are trying to squeeze a video into a stupidly and arbitrarily small space (say, 350 MB for a TV episode, or 700MB for a movie) then you might get slightly better quality from tweaking the settings in Virtualdub. However you are simply going to make crap look slightly less crap. It is easier to just allow for more space and give the video the bitrate it needs. Then AutoGK takes all the hard work out of it and gives great results.

[sinz]

What I am doing is toon eps and there not long about 10:00mins so I made the files around 75.mb each to watch on my divx player. I came across some results and targets I want for my encodes here:



I really wanted a 'constant' bitrate for both audio & video as shown in the screenshot provided of two seperate avi's summary info dialog...(right click an avi, properties, summary) I also provided a GSpot dialog screen with some hopefully useful information that will lead to these results.

How would I be able to get these kinds of results? I already see the audio having constant as it's bitrate but the video?

[poisondeathray]

I'm not sure if I'm understanding what you are asking correctly.

You can change your settings to get a set file size if you want (this is what was probably done in the screenshot to a file size of 199MB). Or you can choose a constant video bitrate and the final file size will depend on the length of the clip, for a given audio bitrate.

The video settings are under video => compression => XviD => Configure => (now you can toggle 'target size' vs. 'target bitrate' by toggling the button. It even has a bitrate calculator there). If you wanted 'constant bitrate' for you video, just enter it.