• Adobe Premiere Pro

  What’s the best software to do this?

  Posted by Andre Meyer on November 28, 2011 at 12:57 pm

  Dear all,
  in the context of a scientific research project, we recorded participants while they were
  (a) filmed using Panasonic HDC-SD99EG consumer full HD cameras (~500€/piece)
  (b) audio-recorded using professional lavalier microphones

  What we now need to do is to add the high-quality audio track of (b) to the video of (a) and bring them into synchrony.

  Maybe some more data regarding the files:
  (a) we filmed in the highest possible quality, i.e. 1080p@50Hz. Note that the manual of the cameras explicitly states that the produced files may be viewable only using the supplied software. I think this is because the camera was produced when 1080p@50Hz was not specified for AVCHD yet (only @25Hz was specified). However, it opens also in VLC player, here’s the Codec info from the VLC player (its a .mts container) :
  Stream 0
  Typ: video
  Original ID: 4113
  Codec: H264 – MPEG-4 AvC (part 10) (h264)
  Auflösung: 1920x 1080
  Bildwiederholrate: 100
  Stream 1
  Typ:Audio
  Originale ID: 4352
  Codec: A52 Audio (aka AC3) (a52)
  Kaiye: Stereo
  Abtastrate: 48000 Hz
  Bitrate: 256kb/s

  If possible, we would like to keep as much quality of the video file as possible. However, if we need to recode to be able to open it in some specific software, we would first sacrifice some image quality before sacrificing refresh rate. The reason for this is that we may need to be able to cut the clip with a high temporaly resolution, as we need it for a speech study in which a brief clip of a person saying only a word or a syllable is shown – i.e. we need to be able to cut exactly at the (auditory) boundaries of the word or syllable.

  (b) are auditory files (wav-files), presently with 44.1 kHz, 32bit (but could be downsampled to 16bit).

  The functionality we need at least is the following:
  (a) replace the audiotrack of the video camera with the high-quality microphone track.
  (b) bring the new audiotrack in sync with the video. For this, we could use several information: First, the camera and the high-quality microphones where in the same room, i.e. they recorded roughly the same signal. In addition, we used a self-made “flap” (or however this is called: these black-and-white things which are clapped together in front of the camera in real movie productions), so that we have the clapping noise on all audio-tracks and in addition the closing of the flap on the video. By this, synchronisation will hopefully work.
  (c) cutting, i.e. export short bits, such as a single word or a syllable, optimally as video file and separate audio file. For this, it would be helpful, if one could set start-marker and end-marker and export the selected area. This way, the project could stay open and just the markers would have to be moved for the next word/syllable to be extracted.

  In addition, the following would be very helpful:
  (d) We usually had 3 participants, 3 cameras, and 3 high-quality microphones, one for each participant. However, participants swapped seats and took their microphones with them while the cameras stayed fixed. In other words, while one audio file contains only a single participant, a video file may contain several participants. Thus, it would make extracting syllables much easier if we could load all three video files and all three audio files and bring them into synchrony. Then later on, just select one video and one audio track, set start end end marker, and export the marked bit of the marked audio/video tracks.

  (e) sometimes we had four participants, so that a camera filmed two participants. Here we would need to somehow split the video into two areas (like zooming in on one participant) and save only the zoomed-in area. If this results in another aspect ratio, this shouldn’t be a problem, as it is probably better anyway to convert all videos to 4:3 or something alike (by just cropping left and right borders).

  As we are unexperienced in video editinng, suggestion for an appropriate software would be much appreciated. Although University funds are generally sparse, we would be able to spend up to a couple of hundred dollars or euros on a commercial software.

  Thanks a lot &
  Kind Regards,
  Andre

  Todd Perchert replied 14 years, 9 months ago 2 Members · 1 Reply
• 1 Reply

• 

  Todd Perchert

  November 28, 2011 at 3:25 pm

  Premiere Pro will work well for what you need. Adobe does have great education discounts. Or you could try Lightworks – it’s free. https://www.lightworksbeta.com/

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