Quote I apologize if you are seeing this as a repeat post. I posted this yesterday and do not see it anywhere, so am trying again.......................

Hi,
Found your duplicate post and removed it to save confusion.

Cheers
PowerDirector Moderator

A quick reaction, not a step by step instruction, sorry.

1) If you have each clip and the mp3 file in sync, I would suggest that you produce a video file for each of them separately. Pick the specs of that video file wisely (read use high quality where possible), so that you have sufficient quality of the next steps. MAKE sure that these videos start precisely at the same moment, so that when started at the same time, they are in sync, since in the collage designer you do not have to possibility to sync them again.

2) once you have these files you dont have to bother about the synchronisation any more, but only about getting them all on the same screen. You can use the collage designer for that. The beauty is that your can have the video segments changing at opening and close. By my knowledge there is no facility to get these four videos completely in sync in the collage designer, other then as said, making sure that the video files made in step 1 do start precisely at the same moment, hence to have them start in the designer at the same moment (in advanced settings, the playback timing start them all at once), they might still be in sync.

Quote A quick reaction, not a step by step instruction, sorry.

1) If you have each clip and the mp3 file in sync, I would suggest that you produce a video file for each of them separately. Pick the specs of that video file wisely (read use high quality where possible), so that you have sufficient quality of the next steps. MAKE sure that these videos start precisely at the same moment, so that when started at the same time, they are in sync, since in the collage designer you do not have to possibility to sync them again.

2) once you have these files you dont have to bother about the synchronisation any more, but only about getting them all on the same screen. You can use the collage designer for that. The beauty is that your can have the video segments changing at opening and close. By my knowledge there is no facility to get these four videos completely in sync in the collage designer, other then as said, making sure that the video files made in step 1 do start precisely at the same moment, hence to have them start in the designer at the same moment (in advanced settings, the playback timing start them all at once), they might still be in sync.

Thank you for taking the time to respond. It was not the answer I was hoping to hear, but it's pretty much the answer I was expecting :=(

You would think they might have allowed dragging from the timeline into the collage. Maybe a future enhancement ----

OK thought I would share what worked for me.

First I recorded the first person singing to music. And importantly, the Iphone was recording both the piano music coming through the computer speakers and the singing -- the piano music was not being heard via earbuds and having the Iphone just record the voice.

Same process for the second recording. So I ended up with two video files that each contained voice combined with piano music.

I imported both files, put them on the timeline, and then of course the question: Would doing a "Synch by Audio" work, considering that each sound track was a different combination of voice and piano. Well, to my somewhat surprise, it worked!! The files were synched.

So I Produced each track separately, generating two separate videos that had been synched. From there it was easy, open PowerDirector, import the two videos, place them in a collage. Make any size, position adjustments needed in the collage and you wind up with synched videos in the collage.

Excellent! Good to know that this works. The number of tracks you had was low. Look at the virtual orchestras on YouTube, with vary large numbers of participants. How much work that be?

Quote Excellent! Good to know that this works. The number of tracks you had was low. Look at the virtual orchestras on YouTube, with vary large numbers of participants. How much work that be?

Hmm this might be harder that it looked at first. I tried the same approach with three tracks. I did the synch by audio for all three tracks at once, and it seemed to work..

So I procduced each track separately.

Then I opened a new project, imported each of the produced tracks, put them on the timeline and played just to verify that the produced tracks were in synch, which they seemed to be.

Then I opened another new project, imported the produced tracks and went straight to the collage designer and put the three tracks in a collage. However, that bad news is that things went out of synch, not sure why the collage designer would do that.

Without seeing your timeline, I can only speculate that each of the clips has a different starting point.

Since Collage Designer doesn't do any syncing, it expects that all the clips will start at the same point, which means that you'll need put your produced clips on the timeline, sync them up, and then trim each clip so that they all start at the same time.

You'll then have to produce them again, one at a time. If SVRT is available on the produce page, it will be very quick and you won't lose any quality, and when you import the new clips into Collage Designer everything should go smoothly.

Quote Without seeing your timeline, I can only speculate that each of the clips has a different starting point.

Since Collage Designer doesn't do any syncing, it expects that all the clips will start at the same point, which means that you'll need put your produced clips on the timeline, sync them up, and then trim each clip so that they all start at the same time.

You'll then have to produce them again, one at a time. If SVRT is available on the produce page, it will be very quick and you won't lose any quality, and when you import the new clips into Collage Designer everything should go smoothly.

That is what I did. I had the clips on the timeline, synched them, and played them while on the timeline. They were in synch. Then I produced each clip. When I opened a new project, imported those clips, put them in the collage they were not in synch.

Quote That is what I did. I had the clips on the timeline, synched them, and played them while on the timeline. They were in synch. Then I produced each clip. When I opened a new project, imported those clips, put them in the collage they were not in synch.

Ok, but you still haven't said that you trimmed the start of each clip before you produced them. You have to manually cut/trim the left edges of each clip so they all line up vertically when the clips are synced.

Syncing them only aligns the content on that project's timeline, and they won't retain any relationship to each other unless you force them to all start at the same time.

If you have done that, it would help to see a screenshot of your full timeline showing the produced clips in sync.

Quote

Ok, but you still haven't said that you trimmed the start of each clip before you produced them. You have to manually cut/trim the left edges of each clip so they all line up vertically when the clips are synced.

Syncing them only aligns the content on that project's timeline, and they won't retain any relationship to each other unless you force them to all start at the same time.

If you have done that, it would help to see a screenshot of your full timeline showing the produced clips in sync.

Oh, yes. I trimmed them afer I synched them to make sure they all started at the same time. I produced the clips after they were trimmed. There's something funny going on -- I'm working on it. Stay tuned.

Quote


Oh, yes. I trimmed them afer I synched them to make sure they all started at the same time. I produced the clips after they were trimmed. There's something funny going on -- I'm working on it. Stay tuned.

OK Here is a step-by-step of what I did and what worked / did not work

1. I recorded with my Iphone Video1, Video2, and Video3 of myself singing a soprano, base, and tenor part. These were each recorded to the same piano music being played by the computer. These files were saved as Video1.mp4, Video2.mp4, and Video3.mp4

2. I opened Powedirector, imported those three files and placed them on the timeline. Of course, at this point they were not synched to each other.

3. I placed the three files onto 3 separate tracks in the timeline, selected all three files at once, and did Synchronized by Audio. Although each track had different audio (a combination of one of the voices and the piano track), the process did seem to synchronize the audio.

4. I placed the cursor near the beginning, split each track at that point, and removed the section on the left, thus trimming the three tracks to all start together at the beginning.

5. I produced each track separately for use in a collage, since they were now synched.

6. I opened a new project in PowerDirector and imported the three produced tracks. Then I put them on the timeline to test their synchronization, and the sound seemed synchronized.

7. I removed the tracks, opened the Collage designer, picked a 3 part collage, and put each track in one section. Then I played the result, and discovered that, while the audio sounded synched, the accompanying images in the collage were badly out of synch with the sound.

8. Finally, not trusting the Collage Designer, I decided to produce the resulting video anyway, and to my (pleasant) surprise, it seemed to work, with video images being in synch with the music.

So my conclusion: The Collage Designer cannot be trusted to accurately play / display a collaged video -- you have to produce it to see the real result. Maybe you already knew that, but I spent a lot of time trying to figure out why the images were going out of synch with the sound when I played the collage in PowerDirector,

Thanks for your explanation.
It is great that the produced video gives the required result. Your conclusion that the designer cannot be trusted is more or less true. We see this in other functions of PD too. It has to do with the computer (program) that has to do a lot at the same time and if the computer cannot cope, the previewed video may stutter a bit, or (as in your case) video and / or audio may not be in sync. What might help, besides buying a faster computer, is lowering the preview display quality settings.
Fortunately in most cases the produced video come out okay 😊