audio editing question

[AVITRY]

Hi all. I thought I posted this but I didn't see it on the forum, if it shows up as a duplicate, I apologize in advance.

My first question is, when a video clip is on the timeline, is there a button or way to completely mute one channel (be it left or right) and then playback the timeline and be able to listen to only the channel that is not muted?

My next question is, can an audio clip be added to the timeline of a video clip that also has audio in such a way that the added audio clip is only played from one of the two audio channels?

The first question is much more important to be able to accomplish if possible. thanks all!

[Steve Grisetti]

Actually, Joe, I think the solution for both situations is essentially the same tool.

By default, your audio clips on your timeline display a yellow line that represents the clip's volume. If you click on the little notation on the clip that says Volume, you'll see that the clip's properties display can also be set to Balance.

If you set it to dispaly Balance, the yellow line represents the balance of right and left channel. By moving the yellow line up or down, you can turn off the right or left channel completely.

You can, of course, also control right and left channel balance by opening the clip's Properties panel.

[Chuck Engels]

Hi Joe,
One thing you can't do is control a whole video track if there are many clips.
I just opened version 3 to take a look, no tools to control an entire track that I can find.

I think there are other options in version 7.

[Chuck Engels]

I think the Audio Mixer is exactly what you need Joe, but that wasn't added until version 4 or 7, can't remember which.
With the Audio Mixer you can control the entire track volume and balance easily.

[Bob]

Since you are talking about single clips, the "Fill Left" and "Fill Right" audio effects may do the trick for you. Fill Left replaces the right audio channel with the left so you have the left channel coming from both speakers, Fill Right does the same thing with the other channel.

Where you are using the left channel of one clip and adding the right channel of another clip, the balance effect can be used on each.

There is also the option of exporting the audio and using Audacity or some other audio editor to combine the clips as you want them.

[AVITRY]

Since you are talking about single clips, the "Fill Left" and "Fill Right" audio effects may do the trick for you. Fill Left replaces the right audio channel with the left so you have the left channel coming from both speakers, Fill Right does the same thing with the other channel.

Where you are using the left channel of one clip and adding the right channel of another clip, the balance effect can be used on each.

There is also the option of exporting the audio and using Audacity or some other audio editor to combine the clips as you want them.

Thanks guys, thanks Bob for this suggestion. If I use these fill effects, am I hearing them when I playback the timeline right away, or do I have to either render the timeline or wait until it is hard re-rendered to hear the effect?

[Steve Grisetti]

You'll hear the audio effect as soon as you add it.

[Chuck Engels]

Using the Fill effects causes the sound to still come out of both speakers. In your post it seemed like you wanted the sound to come out of just one speaker, for that you need to adjust the balance control in properties or add the balance effect and set it to -100 for left speaker only or +100 for right speaker only (or the other way around).

If you want only the sound from one channel to come out of both speakers then the Fill effect is what you want.
Fill Right will mean that everything coming out of the right speaker will come out of both and you will not hear anything on the left channel at all. Left fill is just the opposite.

[Steve Grisetti]

That's what I thought you were asking too, Joe. Hence my first post.

[AVITRY]

Well, actually I have to do quite a few different things to the audio on different S-VHS tapes that I'm converting. Each one seems to be messed up in its own way, so all the suggestions will most likely be used at one point or another.

Honestly I do so little of these kinds of things in depth that I'm just not familiar. I usually just convert the videos and color adjust them with that analog means that the ADVC300 has available. These tapes however are a mess. I did purchase quite a while back a copy of Premiere Pro 2. I'm not as familiar with it as I am with Elements ( which is limited as well) so I'm hoping I can just stay with that program. Especially because I can't import the AVIs to DVD Workshop as AVIs. ( If you remember that ridiculous problem I experience) and Premiere Pro 2 can't encode to mpeg.

Ya know, the multi hundred dollar program doesn't have the mpeg converter, but the 89 dollar one does. It all makes perfect sense.