Sony Vegas: stretching/shrinking audio?

[stantheman1976]

Let's see if I can word this to make sense. There a couple local bluegrass outfits I record video and then audio from the mixer and sync the two sources up in Vegas 6. Getting them synced at first is easy. Of course, later on in the recording the timing from one source will be slightly different than the other leading to audio drifting. I usually open the WAV of the board audio in Goldwave and use the Timewarp feature to shrink or stretch it accordingly and Vegas will automatically rebuild the WAV in it's timeline. This method works great, but takes a little extra time.

Does Vegas have the same function to shrink/expand an audio track and preserve the pitch and tempo?

[liquid217]

Yes. Go to the end of your audio event, hold down the control key, and then click and hold on to the edge of your audio event. You can then expand or contract it as needed. You may need to right click and goto properties to adjust the stretch method. (Some produce less echo then others)

In my opinion, if you are only using audio from this audio event (and not mixing in any audio from the cameras), then i prefer to make the pitch change, as this produces a higher quality audio signal, and there is less chance of echoing. Obviously, you wouldn't want to do that if you are mixing audio from different sources.

[valvehead]

I have done a few live recordings with my miniDV camcorder and a separate stereo pair of mics connected to a Marantz flash recorder. The clock speeds are slightly different, but since they are both digital the difference is constant. I combined the audio from both the DV and the Marantz in Vegas 6 directly. Using the DV audio as the timing reference, I located one drum hit at either end of the recording. I then used the shrink function to line up the Marantz audio. I had perfect sync through the whole performance.

You should try the shrink/extend function in Vegas. If your mixer audio source is recorded digitally then it should work just fine.

[stantheman1976]

Yea, that's why I was wondering if Vegas does the shrinking/expanding directly. Until now I would import the separate audio source and use the visual of the waveform along with listening in headphones the sync up the beginning and then go later into the recording to see what's happening. The iRiver source always seems to run a little slower, so I shring it about 1/10 of a second each time until I get the timing right. Next time I get a chance to record I'll just use Vegas though.

I appreciate teh responses and advice.