Merge clips automatically using audio waveforms

>> There are several ways that you can align clips here inside Premiere Pro and several circumstances in which you'd want to align clips, for example, you might do an interview with your camcorder and then have a separate audio recorder and want to align those clips up, or you might shoot with multiple cameras and you want to set up a multi-cam sequence or align them up inside the timeline.

The thing is in the newest version of Premiere Pro there's an automated way to line up clips using audio waveforms.

So I'm gonna show you three different circumstances in which you can line up clips and I'm gonna show you the automated way in each one of the circumstances.

Let's start off by merging clips, we have this interview here.

And it's little bit noisy, a lot of wind noise.

We have a separate audio recording down here that was done at the same time.

It's a little bit quieter, not so noisy.

>> I get a little sloppy...

>> Just a little bit a wind noise there but not anywhere near as much.

So I want to merge these two clips so I can take advantage of the cleaner audio with the video.

I want to select both of these clips in the Project panel.

I've got the audio selected, hold down the Ctrl or the Command key and click on video there.

[Merge Clips] Now I right-click and say Merge Clips.

Now there are several ways that you can synchronize clips.

These are the old ways of doing it.

You line up the In-Points with the Out-Points, that takes a little bit of work though.

You've got to make those in-points and out-points.

[Timecode] You can line it up by Timecode, but that means you have to have the same timecode when you recorded them.

I'll pull this aside a little bit, you can see that the audio timecode starts at 7 hours and 43 minutes.

And the video starts at zero so they definitely don't line up.

You can put markers on there.

And that can be done fairly easily here because of this clapper here that you can see here in the audio file.

But we're gonna skip that process and go right to this new one here the Audio alignment.

[Audio] This is an auto Audio alignment.

So we're gonna choose that before we go there, [Interview Merged] let's make a name for this thing, we'll call it "Interview Merged" and I'm gonna go down here, look at these two features, [Use Audio Timecode from Clip] it says Use Audio Timecode from Clip.

I don't want to use this audio timecode since it's a lot of work, so we'll stick with this one.

[Remove Audio from AV Clip] This lets you remove audio from the AV clip, which is fine.

We don't need that really windy audio.

So I'm gonna remove it.

So now I'm gonna click OK.

And that creates a new item here inside your Project panel.

It doesn't put a file on your hard drive.

It just creates a little linked up audio video clip here inside the Project panel.

Let's take a look at that over here inside of Sequence.

So let's drag that over here.

Here's the video and there's the audio, and you see two audio tracks here.

It's not because we ended up actually putting both clips here, it's just that we split the stereo in the two different channels.

I'll expand this view a little bit, you see channel one, channel two, which is kind of nice.

But now let's see if it actually did align it.

There's the clap right there, let's see if it worked out.

I'll go over here and see if it did a line up. >> [inaudible] interview, take two.

>> You can still hear the wind noise but it's not as bad.

This is the cleaner version here.

>> Assets for Adobe.

>> So it does look pretty good and did line up nicely.

So that's how you merge two clips.

I'm gonna delete this.

Now I'm gonna synchronize clips.

I'm gonna put a couple of clips here on a timeline and see if we can align them up that way.

I just want to take the same audio here, put that down here in audio two and then take that same video here and put that on audio one and video one like that.

And now I know these are not lined up.

There's the clap there, and audio, and here it is over there in the video.

So they're definitely not lined up.

So let's see if we can line them up using synchronize.

Now when we synchronize with just audio, we need to select only audio, but I'll show you what happens if you don't select only audio.

Let's click on this video clip and Shift click to select this other one down here, [Shortcut Shift] you Shift click when you want to select individual clips in a timeline.

I'll right-click now.

[Synchronize] Up here it says Synchronize, click on that.

And now I can't choose Audio because I'm not selecting only audio here.

[Clip Start Clip End] And I can only choose Clip Start or Clip End, which is so easy to do anyways manually why bother doing this.

[Cancel] So I'm gonna Cancel out of that.

Now I'm gonna select only the audio, so I'll click away.

I'm gonna select only the audio part of this video and audio clip.

So hold down the Alt or the Option key and click.

That selects only the audio.

I'm gonna Shift click to get this other audio.

Now I'll right-click again, go to Synchronize.

Now we have the option to do audio again, the automated audio method, click on this.

Let's see if they line up.

I think they did.

Let's try it out.

Perfect.

That's nice.

What happens though if we don't have that nice little clap there, if we don't have that distinct sound?

Sometimes without the distinct sound, it might not work.

We got a lot of wind noise here.

Let's try it out.

I'll click away here.

Put this back like that, I'm gonna trim it away so we don't have that clapper.

Same routine here, I'll trim this away as well, so we're past that clap point, put them both of the beginning just to throw things off really badly here.

Select only the audio again, click on that and then Alt or Option + Shift click on that, right-click, Synchronize, select Audio again, click OK.

Let's see if it works.

Let's see if this guy lines up there.

>> So that's both still in motion.

>> This is incredibly fine...

>> Yeah, it didn't work.

The wind noise throws it off.

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

But here, the wind noise made it difficult for Premiere Pro to really find the audio waveform and line them up.

So sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

You do need to find kind of a distinctive bit of audio, and with all that wind noise, sometimes it just won't work.

But I'll undo this now.

I want to add the other two clips to this.

I'm gonna pull this up a little bit, expand the view a little bit like that.

I'll take the audio down here, put it in track four, we'll bring in the other two clips here.

This one here, two, this one here on track three.

I want to line all these guys up.

So I want to select only the audio, click on this one to select that audio, Alt or Option + Shift click on this, this, and this.

Now I've got four clips.

Let's see if you can line them all up using audio.

We'll right-click, say Synchronize, using Audio again.

Let's see how they do.

I think they did well 'cause we've got that clap, that distinctive thing again, should work pretty well.

All four lined up very well.

So you can use this Synchronize process on more than two clips.

I'm gonna delete all these guys again, 'cause I want to do one more thing here.

Let me move this down a bit.

I want to make a multi-cam sequence.

Now I talk about multi-cam in a separate lesson but I'll just give you a brief runthrough.

I'm gonna select these four clips, that one there, Ctrl or Command click on this, this, and this.

Right-click on them and say Create Multi-Camera Source Sequence.

There is that Audio option again, which is great.

We're not gonna worry about the rest of the stuff here.

I just want to make show you how to make this, click OK.

That creates this new source sequence there.

I want to view it over here in the timeline.

I'm gonna nest it over here.

So I'll go over there to nest it.

I'll change the sequence settings, like that.

These guys up like that.

And let's see if they lined up.

Here we go. >> [inaudible] interview, take two.

And they did, all four of them did.

If you want to make sure you can see all four of them.

I want to go over here to multi-cam like this.

Let's see if they really did line up.

It's is a little tight there, but you can see they're lined up there.

So there you go, if you've got fairly distinctive audio, you can use the automatic audio align when you merge clips, synchronize clips in the timeline, or create multi-cam sequences.

[InfiniteSkills.com]