Any Avidemux users?

[eager to learn]

Hi,

I've only edited out the first 5 minutes of a video using Avidemux - that's the extent of my experience so far.

I have a video which is only 50 seconds. The aduio (a song) is 2m21s - much longer. There are no obvious spots in the audio (looked in Audacity (Windows 7) to edit the audio. I wanted to keep the beginning and end of the song. I'm not sure how to compress the aduio so it fits the video length. Or what else I might try without adding lots more credits rolling to fill up video length. TIA.

[-Habanero-]

I don't use Avidemux, it crashed or messed up on me way too many times. If you want to temporally compress the song, you can do that with various editors. It's usually called tempo or time stretch. I use Sound Forge but it's not free.

[eager to learn]

Hi Habanero,

Have you trued using Sound Forge Audio Studio 10 $59.95 for that?

Or have you found only Sound Forge Pro offers the features to accomplish that task?

Gracias.

[theewizard]

you don't want to compress it, you want to cut 1:31 out of the middle
demux your source file to a video file no sound and a audio file no video
use avidemux to cut and save video
do the same cut and safe the audio
the final step is RE-mux aka mix them back together
also using aviDemux

[eager to learn]

Hi theewizard... I'm a newbie to video editing so I'm having a little trouble following your post. How does one "demux" my source file to a video file no sound? Then, how would one demux that same source file to an audio file no video? I really don't want to cut any of the video. I just want to match the audio length to the video length. Thank you for your much appreciated help and insights.

[theewizard]

The name of the program is AviDemux
Audio video demux
It's a function of the program
One of the editing options on the menu
Save video
Save audio track
Apparently you already have separate files a 50 second video and a 2:21 song you want to cut
Load the song in avidemux and cut it just like you would video
Mark the start and end points for the part you want to cut out
Then save the file with a new name
You just need to set down and explore/play with the program

[jagabo]

Use Audacity (free) with the ffmpeg source plugin and it can read the audio directly from your A/V file. It has cut/paste, time stretch and many other filtering functions. Then export the audio with whatever compression (or not) you want. Finally, you can use the muxer of your choice to mux the original video stream with the new audio stream.

[eager to learn]

Hi theewizard, Yes, I downloaded Avidemux and edited one video so far. The challenge is this song does not have obvious points to edit it or else I end up with these awkward splices so the music does not sound seamless.

[eager to learn]

Hi jagabo - Audacity is a great program. I've been using it for a while and it's a great program. It cuts well but I don't want to cut the audio (song) I want to "fit" it somehow so it comports with the video length without sacrificing the beginning or end of the song. Editing this song in the middle would take a sound engineer with a lot of experience and audio editing talents which I don't possess. How could I compress the audio to fit the video length using Audacity? Thank you.

[jagabo]

You can't make a 141 second audio fit a 50 second video without cutting something out of the song or time compressing it. But time compressing to nearly 1/3 the original length is totally impractical, whether you keep the pitch or not. You'd be better of creatively lengthening the video.

[eager to learn]

Besides, adding credits beginning and ending to the video (which I've done), any creative suggestions for lengthening the video to 141 seconds? Maybe if I had more experience editing songs I could cut and splice but I wondered about someone's suggestion of
"just compressing the audio." Seemed like something one does with a magic wand! Thanks.

[-Habanero-]

The Sound Forge I have was bought over 10 years ago when I was like 13, it's seriously outdated but still does everything I want.

However, time-compressing the song almost 3 times will ruin the song, I thought this whole time that you wanted to condense it only a little bit.

You can slow down the credits instead. Cut the credits out, triple the frame rate and then change the assumed frame rate back to normal. You'll have credits 3 times slower to accomodate the song. They might be a little choppy but that can be fixed with all kinds of tricks. I'll do it for you for free if you post the credits here, I'm bored.

[Steve(MS)]

You can edit the music in audacity to the same length as the video.
Find places in the music where when you cut out a portion, the next section of the song seems to blend in.
Either that or just cut out a piece of the music, fade it in and out...there are ways to get what you want.

[eager to learn]

@Habanero - Sorry I wasn't clearer from the start. So, in Avidemux is where I would triple the frame rate? Could you possibly share the steps to do that? Then, how and where would I change the assumed frame rate back to normal? I'm really not trying to become a video editor but to simply learn some basic video editing with this short video of my dog I've set to music. Thanks so much!!

[jagabo]

Since the credits account for only a (small?) portion of the video you would have to stretch them by (much?) more than 3x to stretch the overall video by 3x. And nobody wants to watch long boring credits. Duplicate the sections with your dog. Show some shot in slow motion, backwards, whatever. Shoot some more video of your dog to insert into the video.

[-Habanero-]

First of all, what are you making? A music video or a documentary? If its a music video, you should add more scenes, slow motions and so on like jagabo suggested. Make the credits slower only if its by a little bit. No one's gonna watch a video where half of it is consumed by credits.

[eager to learn]

Jagabo and Habanero – Thank you for all your creative and much appreciated brainstorming. I’m making kind of a video memorial for my dog. He’s on his last legs so I can’t record him running, etc. The 50 second video really captured his personality at his best trotting down a pathway. I’m worried still photos inserted would make the video too sentimental. I just wanted to capture a slice of his life and the song fits him and the video perfectly – except for length. If I knew more about animation, maybe I could transform him into an animated character to fill space at the end of the video and then run credits?