Background audio/music

[websmrf]

Hello,

I want to author a standard DVD from a set of >100 camcorder clips, which should go in several tracks with 30 - 50 clips for each track.

I have available and am familiar with the following tools:

Womble MPEG Video Wizard DVD 5.0
TMPGEnc DVD Author 3 with DivX Authoring
TMPGEnc Authoring Works 4
DVD Flick


Everything works fine so far and I can well author the DVD, but I find that during some moments of the tracks I would like to add some background music. Since the individual clips are very short, the music would span across several of them (but probably not across tracks).

I'm not talking about an entirely separate second audio stream (like for another language), but audio that would be "embedded" into the normal play (maybe at a lower volume).

How would this be accomplished with one of the tools above, or with another one?

Thanks,

w.

[Taurus]

You have to demux the audio from your mpeg2s/vobs.
I dont know if any of your mentioned tools can do this.
DGIndex and TMPGEnc, as examples, can do this for you.
Next you need an audio editor like Audacity/Wavelab, etc.
to convert to wav from your ac3 or mp2 and add the background music.
After this is done the wav's have to be converted back to ac3 or mp2
and remuxed to your video.
Now you are ready to go :p:D
This is lossy operation. Quality of the original audio might be slightly off.
But if it's from a camcorder you shouldn't notice any disadvantage.
Or just use the authoring progam to build a new setup.....

[websmrf]

Hi Taurus,

thank you.

This sounds awfully heavy, given that I feel my DVD is "almost" finished it looks like I would have to back to the beginning. This is very disappointing.

However, let's assume this is the way to go, I have two questions.

1) After demuxing the audio, wouldn't I get a file per clip, so eventually just the same as if I would demux each individually file? Or would it be a file per track?

2) And then in Audacity, how would I add the background music
I mean, on one hand I would either have the 100 clip- or 4 track audio files, on the other some background music files. How would I "align" them, and combine them into one?

R U sure there's no intergrated DVD authoring SW to help you in this???

w.

[Taurus]

Sure any "real" Video Editor like Edius, Magix Video Studio,etc. will let you do the task.
I dont understand what you mean with "four tracks".
If your 100 clips are already combined to four individual clips, then it's real simple.
Just demux the coresponding audios from the "four tracks"
and process each separately with an audio editor.
For Audacity: Just load your basic audio track and a background audio.
After correcting the level/loudness of the two tracks and maybe some editing (fadein/fade out?)
just save them to one new file.
I dont know if Audacity is capable to export to ac3 or mp2 for DVD compatibility.
Just try and have a look.
But there are a many tools which can do the converting stuff for you.
Maybe one of your tools might do the task too.

[websmrf]

"Track" is the notion used in the authoring pgms of TMPGEnc; a DVD can have several tracks (I guess each track will become a separate video title set) and each track will hold several clips (VOB ID's).

My question was that if in the demuxing process I would obtain an audio file per VTS track or per clip. As the clips are just some seconds long I would have to join their audio before combining it with the background music.

w.

Just curious: did you already use any program in practise which would do this in a comfortable way?

[Taurus]

Just curious: did you already use any program in practise which would do this in a comfortable way?
Yes, of course.
But not with hundred of short clips!
I dont know of any program which is capable of doing
the demuxing, converting/encoding, editing, remuxing in one simple task.
This might need some batch operations too.
Sounds like heavy work to me :p:D
The only way which seems reasonable easy for me, is to join all clips in a track to a new file.
Then doing the demuxing, converting/editing, encoding, remuxing on this track.
You can set chapter points at the beginning of each clip for navigation later on.
I'm out, no more hints to share ;).