How can I hide a section of video?

[Bruce Brent]

Peyton, check out YouTube tutorials on your specific needs, such as this example… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZD2eujaxJA

As far as omitting the name/sound, highlight the sound clip, on the top menu, click “Insert” then click “Audio Envelopes, check “Volume.” You’ll see a horizontal blue line, right click before the mute section with two/side by side nodes, then two more nodes after the muted section. You then can manipulate by dragging down the blue line between the nodes to lower or mute that sound you want to mute.

Let us know how it turned out.

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[George Dean]

In addition to Bruce’s excellent suggestions, instead of muting the audio with an audio volume envelope, you could use the bleep trick, without using a ‘bleep’, which most often is to hide foul language, rather use some other smoother sound effect. Rather than use any number of FX modifications to the name section, I would just use a pleasant smooth sounding, sound effect, maybe birds chirping or waterfall sounds.

Another simple, but effective trick that is fast and easy, cut the audio just in front of the name and just in back. Then on the section with the spoken name, right click and select ‘Reverse’. If you have any ambient sound in the recording it should hold, but the spoken name now is unintelligible. However, remember using this trick, anyone being slick can reverse that section again and then the name is once again intelligible!

Best Regards……George

[Francois Pénzes]

Hi Payton

This is what I use to ”hide” the voice of someone that doesn’t want to be recognized.

https://www.athtek.com/voicechanger.html

The best part is that it’s free, easy to use and works beautifully well. I also use it to sometimes speed up (or slow down) the rate of speech of the talent when I have to match a short piece of video without changing the pitch.

Now, for the video part, you can use the 2D tracking feature in the free version of Hitfilm Express. Here are links to tutorials on tracking and integration of Hitfilm with Vegas.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYuQU0ORmws

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Jkiso2FLnw

Chers !

PC Win 10 Pro 64-bit 16gb Intel® Core™i7-2600k Quad Core 3.40GHz
Cameras: Canon XF305 + Canon XH-A1
Blackmagic HyperDeck Studio Mini
Vegas Pro 14, User since Vegas 3.0

\’\’When the cutting stops, the editing begins…\’\’

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[Peyton Todd]

Thanks, guys, but I don’t think any of those solutions will meet my needs. These videos will belong to a research project about a hearing child of deaf parents learning to talk. I want consumers of my ‘product’ to be able to hear the intonation pattern of the spoken sentences (the rises and falls in the pitch of his voice), so when I distort his pronunciation of his own name, it won’t work to substitute silence or reversals, etc. That’s why I think a low pass filter will work once I figure out how to use it . So far I’ve learned that it seems to involve setting parameters of the EQ FX plug-in. (I expect a low-pass filter to work since intonation is carried by the fundamental frequency of our voice; the information as to which word is being uttered is carried by higher frequencies.)

The other part of my question involved hiding his mouth movements so people can’t read his lips as he says his name (and in other sentences, his brother’s name). As far as I can see so far, this might be done with a mask, assuming I can reverse the transparency values assumed in the manual. (I should mention that, although I’m working in Vegas Pro 11.0, the only manual I have dates from when I bought the product long ago: Vegas 3.0).

But this may be tricky since the little ‘blob’ covering his mouth will have to be in different screen locations depending on where his mouth is in each sentence. If only there were a way to simply specify the screen position of the blob for each sentence as easily as one can do with text media! (These videos will usually be only one sentence in length.)

Peyton

[Peyton Todd]

Oops, I only just noticed the reply from Francois Penzes. So I’m reading that…

[Peyton Todd]

Double oops! I also didn’t notice the videos in the reply by Bruce Brent. (My excuse is: I’m so accustomed to the advertisement videos sprinkled through things I read that I’ve developed the habit of ignoring them!)

Anyway, they’re quite impressive, and I can see I have a lot of studying ahead of me – a daunting task as my age of 75. My own videos are all black and white, shot in the early 1970s with a portable reel-to-reel Sony video camera, at least 100 times the size of the hand-held ones we have now. I also won’t need tracking of movements since I only need to mask out a single word in each short video clip.

It’ll probably be a while before I can report back!

Cheers,
Peyton

[Peyton Todd]

Reporting back finally, the techniques for pixelating a small section of the screen work perfectly. What I’m still having trouble with is tweaking the EQ tool in such a way as to get only his intonation pattern – in other words, the same ‘tune’ as the original word or phrase, but just hummed. I just happened upon a sound file showing that I was somehow able to accomplish this back in 2005 (this is a very long term project!). I was going to attach the result to this note to show you what I mean, but I see no way to do that. So I put it on Dropbox at this link:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ycvk1vzcs8zoiv0/pitchonly.wav?dl=0

It might more or less serve the purpose just to stuff that sound file in at the appropriate place in each example, but the result will never match the target exactly. So if anyone has any good idea of how to get just the ‘hum’ in a sound file a spoken sentence I’d like to know how to do it. I have no memory of how I did it back in 2005.

Thanks for all your help.

Peyton

[Bruce Brent]

Peyton, there is a simple solution to your issue. No need to go looking to another sound. Duplicate the audio of the person who’s talking (place above the person where you want to change the word out of his mouth) and find a word you want to replace it with and delete the audio before and after “that word.” That way, you have the same voice pattern and audio level.