Audio is muted with sped up video (sometimes)

PointyHairedBoss

Newbie Location: Ontario, Canada Joined: Feb 17, 2016 12:39 Messages: 31 Offline

Solved by

Dec 18, 2020 13:54

PD16
I'm having a problem getting audio with some sped up video clips in my produced video. I looked around the forum & saw a few mentions of audio being muted once the video speed exceeds 3 or 4 or 6 times. In my case I have many clips of varying speed rates: 6 to 30 times. With some 6X clips I get audio, others are muted. With some 30X clips I get audio, others are muted. Same with other speeds in between. In some cases one clip from a video file has sound & a second clip from the same file is muted. Raw video was all shot with the same camera (GoPro) under similar conditions & all clips are in the top timeline in PowerDirector.
There doesn't seem to be a pattern to which clips have audio & which don't.

One thing I noticed is that some clips have a small white dot on the left end of the audio track, some don't (see attached image). I was hoping this might be an indication of mute but it doesn't appear to be related. Some with the dot are muted, some not. Same for the clips with no dot on the audio track. What is this for & why does it only appear with some clips?


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Windows 7, HP Omen Pro 15, Power Director 16, Photo Director 9

optodata

Senior Contributor Location: California, USA Joined: Sep 16, 2011 16:04 Messages: 8630 Offline

Dec 18, 2020 14:16

The white dot is a volume keyframe and being present or not isn't related to whether the sound is muted or not. Volume keyframes often appear on trimmed clips for no obvious reason, and they don't have any impact unless you want to drag one up/down to change the volume.

You have some control over the audio on speed-changed clips as shown in this image from PD14:

If you want consistent audio from all sped-up clips, you can try unlinking the A/V sections of each clip then apply the same speed setting to each. PD16 is no longer being updated so workarounds will be the only option.

PointyHairedBoss

Newbie Location: Ontario, Canada Joined: Feb 17, 2016 12:39 Messages: 31 Offline

Dec 18, 2020 17:39

That's it! Thanks optodata.
I looked all over for something pertaining to audio & missed this menu. If PowerDirector had used a speaker icon instead of a sun(?) icon I probably would have saved a day or 2.

BTW, all of my clips had the "Keep audio" radio button selected but only some actually kept the audio. For the ones with muted audio I deselected then selected "Keep audio" & my audio returned. Windows 7, HP Omen Pro 15, Power Director 16, Photo Director 9

JL_JL

Senior Contributor Location: Arizona, USA Joined: Oct 01, 2006 20:01 Messages: 6091 Offline

Dec 18, 2020 18:14

Quote I looked all over for something pertaining to audio & missed this menu. If PowerDirector had used a speaker icon instead of a sun(?) icon I probably would have saved a day or 2.

It's a gear icon, commonly used to annotate a settings control feature. In the old mechanical equipment, a gear, gear ratio, often needed to be changed to adjust the machine, therefore, using a gear icon for settings is a metaphor which is now part of common visual language.

You will see it in other aspects of PD as well, so there to it would control features, like the gear icon in the top icon pallet to control user pref.

Jeff