Movie Maker - simulating 2 camera setup

[Bobtheduck]

Ok... I've got video of something where I stay on the subject... If I want to keep the audio from that going but switch to other video, then back and keep it all in sync, how do I do that in movie maker? EDIT: Maybe I should have said "question" or something in the title...

[kryptech]

I was just browsing the Tutorial thread and this title caught my eye. Dunno if you've already come up with an answer or are still checkin' on this thread but hey, doesn't hurt to reply I guess. I'm no expert in WMM but I think I figured out how to do what you're looking for.

Let's say you import the two video clips and drag clip 1 onto the Timeline. Once it is there drag its audio track down to the Audio/Music track. Ya, this deletes the clip 1's video track from the Timeline but what can you do. That gives you a separate audio track for clip 1.

Then re-add clip 1 and mute it's audio track - right-click > Mute. Otherwise you'll have double audio tracks for clip 1. Now you've got clip 1's video and separate audio. You can trim clip 1's length as needed and then drag clip 2 onto the Timeline after clip 1. Mute clip 2's audio track. Now you have the audio from clip 1 playing the whole time, even when the Timeline passes into clip 2.

As for switching back to clip 1's video... You can drag clip 1 on to the Timeline again, after clip 2. Synchronizing the video with the Audio/Music track (originally from clip 1) can be a challange. You'll have to trim the front end of the second clip 1 video chunk so the end of it lines up with the end of the Audio/Music track. You can leave the audio track for the second clip 1 chunk un-muted so you can hear if the audio lines up. If they are off it'll sound echoy. Once they do line up, just mute the audio track for the second clip 1 chunk. Or basically, mute all the audio tracks aside from the Audio/Music track.

OK, so maybe that was uber-confusing... If it helps at all, hey, that would be cool.


P.S. Or, download the 30-day trial of Sony Vegas 6 . I did and it was true love, lemme tell you! Now I'm working on some way of justifying its purchase...

[Bobtheduck]

Thanks for the help. I probably won't be using movie maker much, now, because I'm getting the video production suite for school. I will likely only be using movie maker for capturing purposes. I don't have a firewire capture card, which is required to captue in Premiere (why the ruddy heck won't it accept capture cards?)

The only thing I'll have to worry about now (because of the glitchy way the all in wonder handles captures, it won't let me capture in NTSC dimensions with non-square pixels on movie maker) is pixel aspect ratios. Even premiere elements handles multiple video tracks perfectly fine (it just doesn't like most of my video formats...) I am interested in finding out the features on the full version that aren't on elements...

Do you know any other FREE programs I can use to capture with my all in wonder (besides the all in wonder's built in software, which crashes constantly) besides movie maker? Through movie maker, I can only set it to 640x480 as "default" sets it strangely to 720x240, which gives me a very squished image... If I try to customize my ratio to 720x486 (default NTSC) the capture capabilities become unusable ("The capture card is allready in use") 720x486 is the only footage that Encore will accept, and I'm really ready to start designing better DVDs than premiere elements can make...