Losing Audio clips

[KimSWilliamson]

Does anyone else lose positions of audio clips when adding, say, 5-10 audio clips to the story board? Sometimes they move out of place, from where I placed them, on different tracks and on same tracks along the storyboard, when I keep adding more clips.

Also, sometimes the audio clip graphic on the track will shrink in size, as if the length of the clip has been shortened dramatically.

Is there a trick/fix/patch/software to assist with adding several audio clips to a storyboard without this problem occuring?

Many thanks, Kim Williamson

[IanPearson]

Kim
First, when editing the general rule of thumb for editing sequence, to avoid many problems is:-

Edit to story board
Transitions
Image processing
Titles
Audio

This sequences saves a lot of re-rendering, loss of audio, etc.

However, admittedly this is the ideal world and occasionally this sequence cannot be followed and additional scenes must be added after the audio.

By default three audio tacks (the first comments track and the last two Fx 1&2) will always lock your audio to the story board scene in which you place the audio. Therefore if additional scenes are added in front of this point, the audio will also move forwards with that particular scene.

By default the two music tracks (Nos 2 & 3) are always locked to the start of the story board, therefore if any scenes are added in front of this point, the audio will shift backwards so it remains at the same point from the start of the story board.

Therefore if you require any additional audio to remain fixed to a particular scene, use tracks 2, 5 & 6. (comments track and Fx1 & 2).

A lot of people will stick to convention, adding music in the music track, which is the very track that will shift if scenes are added in front.

You do not say what operating system you are using, but I think from OS V4 onwards, if you go into “Project settings” then “audio settings” you can change the locking arrangement of all the audio tracks, by changing them to lock or unlock.

I personally always set up each project so all the audio is locked to the scene where I place it. It is very rare that I want any audio to be locked to the start of the story board.

The second part of your question, the graphs are a representation of the length of the audio compared to the length of the video. If you have a 1 minute video scene and a 1 minute audio sample attached, the audio and video will be the same length. If you place that same audio sample into say a 2 minute video scene, the audio will appear to shrink to half its original length. Therefore if you place a 5sec audio clip in a scene that is 1 hour long, you would have a difficulty in finding it, since it will appear very small, although it will always be at the beginning of the scene until you range it elseware.

Therefore, an audio sample of the same duration, will appear to be a different length, depending upon the length of the video scene. Each individual video scene always appear as the same graphical length, no matter how long it is.

Ian

[KimSWilliamson]

Ian,

thank you so much for clearing this up, very informative and excellent explanation
!

I have 6.2 or 6.3 os with Renommee.

Audio editing is my weak point, so this is very helpful, as I do use it alot for educational videos.

Kindest Regards, Kim

[jimmeeker]

Kim,

Back in the dark ages of the last century, when digital editing on a Casablanca first was introduced, I and others began laying out a set of rules for editing on a Cassie. The biggest and most important of these rules was to always do all of your video editing first, then add the transitions and titles and effects, and then after all is just the way you want it.......and never before.....add your audio work LAST. This eliminated all this movement of and losing of rendered audio clips, that would unrender themselves and then disappear. Until we figured out why it was doing this.....it really was frustrating.

It's just the way it's built.

Then they added the PRO feature which gave us 6 tracks to play with instead of the original 3 tracks, and then later added the ability to lock them all or free them up to move with any added scene length that we would throw in later.

We have come a long way in just a few years from the last century.

[IanPearson]

Kim
Pleased to be of help.

Your not on your own in stating that audio is the weakest part of your editing, lots of otherwise good editors have this problem.

Ian