Solved Need some help with Audio in Movie Studio Platinum 13

Project Scenario: I am trying to create several audio files that I will ultimately put into a final family video project. The audio needs to come from several separate videos which are not the same video and audio specs. Forgive me for being somewhat a beginner with all this and THANK YOU for any help.

So I created a project in Movie Studio and imported all the videos that the audio will come from. I opened the first video in the trimmer to splice the sections with audio I wanted to add to the timeline. Then I would ungroup the audio and video and delete the video. I would do this for each video I imported and at the end I would have all my audio by itself.

1) First problem was that the audio played at a different rate in the trimmer and sounded really slow. Probably because when I created the project I used "match video settings" and selected one of the videos which had a different audio rate. So then I thought maybe I had to do a separate project for each video that I wanted to extrapolate the audio. Is this true or is there an easier way?

2) When I splice the sections of video that contain the audio I want and then delete the videos, I end up with several audio events. How can I label them or create them into tracks? Remember, ultimately I want to take all these audio events and place them in specific spots of the other video project. So one audio event might have a funny liner from one of my kids...can I label it so when I have it in the other video project I can see what it is quickly and move it to the right spot in the new video? I see that there is a Audio CD Track Region and Audio CD Track Index in the Tools tab but I could not find a tutorial that explained what those are and how they are different from markers.

Hopefully I explained this well enough that someone can break it down for me on how best to accomplish what I want. I would be VERY grateful.
Thanks!

Hi jryan01,
If I understand correctly, you wish to use (extract) audio that is presently associated with different clips of video.
The video clips are of different formats and so are the audio formats.

It might be advisable to convert your videos and the attached audio from their differing formats to common unifying format. One for the video and one for the audio.
From there, you will have a constant base from which to edit and then extract the audio.

Using the software: "Any video converter" should allow you to do that.

Regards,

Peter

Hi Jryan01 and welcome to the MSZ Forum.

I cannot explain why audio from trimmer is playing back slow. Match Media settings should not be affecting that. On rare occasions, some types of Video files are not decoded properly by Movie Studio, because they are using a non-standard Video Codec or Frame Rate that Movie Studio doesn't know. The most common type of video that does this is from mobile phones, because some phones record at variable Frame Rates, which video editing programs don't like. The solution to this problem is to convert videos using Video Conversion program before importing into Movie Studio.

I think the easiest solution for problem of Audio playing at wrong speed, is to simply not use the Trimmer and just import everything directly to Timeline.

There are some cool things you can do if only working with Audio.

Audio Only
Right-click the Trimmer window and select Select Audio Only
When you drag your selection to the timeline, only the Audio will be imported so you won't have to delete Video.

You can also drag any Video file to the timeline and select Video only or Audio only.
If you have videos in the Explorer tab or Project Media tab, use right mouse click (not left) and drag video to timeline. When you release mouse button, select Video only or Audio only from menu.

Labels for media on Timeline
Go to View (top menu) and select Active Take Information
File names will now be displayed for Video and Audio tracks.

Audio CD Track Region is only used if you want to make an Audio CD only.
Go to Help/Contents and Inex
Go to Search tab
Search "cd track regions" and read help file.

What is probably more appropriate for your project is to use normal regions.
If you drag out a region above the timeline or on a blank area of the timeline and then press R on keyboard, you can label regions.
Right-click region number and you can rename label to describe what this region is.

Regards
Derek

Thank you both for the replies. truly. Quick follow up questions and then I will dive into this during the weekend.

1) If I avoid the trimmer and right click the file, drag to timeline and select audio only, it asks Add Audio Across Time or Add Audio as Takes. Which should I select? Then it asks if I want to set your project video settings to match this media (I already have an audio event on the track that is 48,000 Hz and this one is 44,100 Hz). Should I say NO to this?

2) As I drag the audio only events to the timeline will it matter that they range from 48,000 to 44,100 and one video has audio that is actually 22,050?

3) I want to keep all these different soundbytes I have on the timeline for future use but I don't want to keep them long-term as the vf project file because then I would need to keep all the corresponding video files right? And I don't want the original video files anymore and they take up space. Therefore it might be best to get all the different audio events on the timeline from the various videos as you explained above and make a CD track out of it?? If so, what file type would you make it into?

4) If I make a CD Track or MP3 or whatever you suggest and then I can delete the original video files, when I drop this new audio file into a video will I be able to move the tracks around? Does that make sense?

5) Lastly, on the labels. You mentioned the Active Take Information. Are you suggesting that I select that and then I can edit the names to what I want to call them? Will this information transfer to CD Track or the audio file I create mentioned above? If not, will the region labels you mentioned transfer?

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU:)

Add Audio Across Time is most commonly used option.

Normally Video projects always use an Audio Sample Rate of 48,000 Hz and CD projects use 44, 100 Hz.

Once you have set your Project Properties, you don't want to change them just because you imported something different. Movie Studio can handle different Sample Rates and should cope OK with different levels.

If you experience problems with mixing sample rates and audio drifts out of sync, it may be a good idea to first convert all your different audio clips into a .WAV file, which is uncompressed.

If you want to archive just the Audio part of your Video files, I would render just the Audio to Sony WAV64 - then you have highest quality uncompressed file.

Yes you can move tracks around.

Active Take Information simply means to display File Name from Source Media, no matter what type of file it is.

If you are actually making CDs only, then you should use CD region markers by dragging out a region and pressing N on keyboard. This creates actual track region, which then can be named whatever you want.