Adding New Audio to Your Video
Most of your videos will probably use the audio tract that was created while you made the actual video shoot. There maybe times when you want to do a voice narrative over or add other audio pieces to your video.
This can be done with Windows Movie Maker (WMM). I made it a personal challenge to learn the process. I will share it with you. I will take the video from my last blog entry which showed video editing techniques and add the before and after so you can see the difference audio can bring to the quality of your videos.
First you need a source for your outside audio or music clips. If you are going to do a voice over the video, you will need a microphone to record your narrative while the video is playing. One source of music is www.shockwave-sound.com. Here you will need to pay for the music or sounds but they will be royalty free. It’s important not to be using other people’s music without their permission.
Like your video clips, you want to import your audio into your movie project. Click on the Import Tab and go to the area where you audio clips are located. Then click on them or drag them into the Collection area. Then you can drag them to the lower part of the page to the audio section of WMM.
It’s important to make your new audio clip the same length as your video clip. So you my need to do some editing with the audio clip.
This is how you separate and add new audio from the video
> In time-line view of WMM (Windows Movie Maker), click the + button beside the Video track in the Time-line view. It turns to -
> Right-click the Audio track and select Mute from the drop-down menu.
> Close the + Button beside the Video track
> Import the audio you want to use with the project
> Drag it into the Audio/Music track
> Click Play in the Preview pane to see the results
Here are some instructions from WMM help desk on doing your own narratives.
Adding Narration to Your Movie (From WMM Help Desk)
With Windows Movie Maker 2.1, you can easily add a voice-over to your home movies. Adding narration lets you use your own words and voice to describe the scene that viewers are seeing.
You can add voice narration to your movie, but first you need to connect a microphone to your computer.
Once you have assembled the elements of your home movie on the timeline, you are ready to start your narration. Mute any existing audio.
The audio narration you capture is imported automatically into the current collection and the narration is added automatically to the point on the Audio/Music track where you started the narration.
Windows Movie Maker 2.1 also includes the ability to tune the volume level of the narration or background audio tracks so you can focus your viewer’s auditory attention. For example, you can set the audio levels so that dialog in your video can be heard over the music that plays in the background of your movie. In this example the background music appears on the Audio/Music track of the storyboard, and the narration appears on the Audio track.
There are times when you may decide that you want to use only the audio from a scene that you shot with your video camera. Windows Movie Maker 2.1 makes it easy to incorporate the audio portion of the scene without displaying the video in your movie. Simply split the section and make sure you un mute this section so you can hear the original audio..
Conclusion
Now check out the before and after video below. The first shows the editing techniques using the original audio tract. In the second video, I muted the original audio and added Lori Line’s Nights in White Satin song as background music. You will immediate see how this new audio improved the quality of the video. You can do these techniques with your marketing videos.
To be continued, your comments are welcomed…
Al Hanzal
