Narration

[bobbyfx]

I have a video of me driving around. I want to insert my voice in it so that's like me giving people a tour of what they see on the video. What is the best way to do this? Can I use sound forge 7 to do it?
Another thing is if say I record what I want to say in a wav file or whatever format, and the length does not match that of the video (not in sync with what you see), how can I match the sound with the video?

Thanks

[jdizzy40]

Is it possible to re-shoot the video? Would be much easier than what you are trying to do.

[Vejita-sama]

There's no need to re-shoot the video. This is pretty easy to do. You have two baisc choices. I'll assume you already have the video and narration sound track prepared. You didn't say what your final format is (avi, VCD/SVCD/CVD or DVD).

Demux the video into sepearte video and audio files. Convert the audio file to wav (it it's not already). You can then either mix the two audio files together (CoolEdit Pro 2.0 can do this) at different volumes (sort of like a directory's commentary). Or leave them seperate.

What I've done in the past is generate two audio streams. One - the original audio stream. Two - mixed audio stream with original volume reduced by 30-50% and voice over at normal volume.

Then author (DVD) with both audio streams. So you have original audio and commentary audio streams to choose from.

[Tommyknocker]

Vejita-sama is right on, except his suggestion is a little pricey in my opinion. Use his suggestion, but go with Gold Wave, as it is much cheaper.

[jdizzy40]

Okay then, how in the heck is he going to match his wav to the video exactly. Can't be done. Image trying to time your narration on a wav file, then blending it in with the video so that what he is saying will match the video. Maybe on professional equipment but not with the software we can buy.

[Tommyknocker]

Sure you can. He watches his video with his microphone in hand, making his comments. When he is done recording, he loads his audio and video into TMPGEnc and make his first video.

As he watches this time with notebook in hand, he makes notes on which comment should appear sooner, and which appear later. Relaod his audio back into Gold Wave. Deletes the audio before comments he wants to hear sooner, and adds silence before comments he wants to be heard later.

When he has his voice over the way he wants it, do the original mixing and muxing.

[bobbyfx]

Ok, say i did what vegeta said, and have a separate audio file with narration+original sounds and the video file.

In Tmpgenc, I don't understand if I load the video and audio file in "video source" and "audio source" at the bottom would that reencode the video or just mux the two files? Because what's the difference between doing it that way and going in to the "multiplex" tab in Files--->MPEG tools? I found the latter way to be way easier with less confusing settings

[Tommyknocker]

Do it the first way. The other way is for mpa or mp2 files. Hope it turns out okay for you.