Syncing audio to video, specific workflow

[Lowlander]

Hi there,

I'm looking for a (preferrably free) piece of software to accomplish the following workflow:

- Open an already cut video (x264, mpeg2, SD as well as HD) from a (demuxed) file
- Import a second, maybe a third audio track from a file
- Manually sync (shift, cut, stretch) the second audio to first video
- export second audio or save the whole video for remuxing

What I try to do is open a (German) HDTV recording, import an additional English audio track taken from a DVD I bought years ago and sync the DVD audio to the HDTV video. There will be no change to the video at all, but audio tracks will have to be shifted by milliseconds, stretched and cut into parts (if commercial breaks are involved) to be individually shifted and stretched. Because syncing will be done manually and by trying over and oder, a perfect preview feature is essential.

Any hints highly appreciated,
Low

[Selur]

most NLEs (non linear editor) should be able to do what you want.
-> https://www.videohelp.com/tools/sections/video-editors-advanced
(but most of them are not free, but have trials and cheaper versions that are limited, e.g. support only one audio/video stream)

[Lowlander]

I've already come across this list of 42 editors and thought someone here might be able to recommend one of them and share some of his/her experience.

Most of those editors are rich, full featured software, and without a pre-selection, it would take me ages to go through each and every trial version and learn how to handle all those mainly strange GUIs just to find that software X doesn't fulfill my specific needs.

I already went through the Lightworks registration process and found that Lightworks is very picky with input formats. It's just too much of a hassle to convert the video, considering I'm not going to process the video at all.

What about Premiere Elements, VideoLAN Movie Creator, VideoPad Video Editor and TMPGenc Mastering Works, just to name a few?

[Selur]

Edius Express or Vegas would be my first try, but I guess there are some other users that can recommend a newbie friendly NLE.

[poisondeathray]

- Open an already cut video (x264, mpeg2, SD as well as HD) from a (demuxed) file

Very few (if any) video editor will open elementary (demuxed) stream properly. Leave it in the container and sync the audio to that

[fvisagie]

Very few (if any) video editor will open elementary (demuxed) stream properly. Leave it in the container and sync the audio to that

If you do that, you may be able to get away with the free Windows Movie Maker. It provides access to the muxed video+audio, as well as an additional audio track you can specify. I've used it quite extensively to sync audio and video (only 1 track at the time admittedly) and it was good enough for that job. If you're going to encode to a format which Movie Maker doesn't support, rather render its output to an intermediate near-lossless DV file which it does support.

[Lowlander]

Thank you for your opinions so far. I've installed a trial of Premiere Elements and managed to open my sample MKV after remuxing it to TS. I could import my second AC3 audio track as well.

I could figure out how to change position and duration of my audio track. Duration seems only be changable numerically by percentage in PE, which is a bit coarse. Dragging a peak in the waveform directly to the matching position the video track where the door actually slams (without moving the start point of the audio) would be far more easy here.

The second problem I ran into with PE is that the video and second audio have different commercial breaks. Meaning I'll have to cut the audio into sections which will have to be positioned and timestretched individually to be in sync. From what I've read this is not possible in PE within the same audio track.

Perhaps my project is a bit too ambitious.