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Those links led me to how to do it. The main thing is to give up on using the Collage Designer because of its limitations to only seven tracks. I had not known about the grid approach. Thanks for the response.
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I am using PowerDirector 18 and love the collage designer, which I have used to make some collages with fellow choir members singing virtually.
The problem is I want to include many more than 7 videos.
Is there a version of PowerDirector that allows working with a large number of videos (like 30), and also with ability to collage such a number?
And if not, what other alternatives are there?
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Well done on managing to do a manual sync, it's not the easiest way but sometimes you have to resort to this method.
Just a little question... Did you trim ALL the clips to just a few second around the handclap, THEN use PD to sync up. After the sync has been performed ( it's usually quite quick when using this method !) you just pull out he tails of the clips to there full length, it usually stays in sync for the entire length. I've had to use this method for long-ish clips.
thanks for keeping us updated
Not sure I completely understood what you are saying, What I did was expand the timeline to a point where I could identify the clap on each timeline, and then I manually aligned the claps. Having alinged the tracks, I then trimmed the beginning away and moved all the tracks to the start point.
Then I produced each track separately for use in a subsequent collage, now that the individual produced tracks had the same starting point.
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Yes, you have stated the problem quite well. I figured from the beginning that the biggest problem in the whole approach would be whether the software behind the "Synch by Audio" button was sophisticated enough to handle four tracks that were each a mashup of piano and vocal.
I did manage to get the four tracks synched, but it was not a slam-dunk. There was enough difference in the starting times of each track (each person took a slightly different amount of time between when they pushed the button to start their video recording and when they pushed the button to start the piano music file they were going to sing with) that I had to manually trim the tracks to get the start times fairly close to each other. After doing that, the "Synch by Audio" worked. It would be very interesting to me to know what kind of algorithm was used to accomplish that -- it has to be one bit of impressive software!
This was just done by four of us amateurs from my church choir, unexceptional voices, and whatever phones we had to record the videos. Three of us used phones, one used a webcam. And one of the phone recordings was done with the piano music being played from only laptop speakers! I played the piano track on my computer speakers, and I don't know how two of them played the piano music file. So , bottom line, questionable equipment all the way.
I had promised all of them that the result would not see the light of day without their permission. But if they are ok with my offering it up as music for one of our virtual church services, I will share it here.
An update for anyone following this. I am up to five individual tracks recorded as above. Because I was worried about the ability to Synch by Audio all those tracks, I had the pianest do a loud hand clap before starting to play, to use as a backup method of synchronization. To make a long story short, I was unab.e to syncn five tracks using Synch by Audio, so I did resort to manually aligining the sharp blips of the handclap in the audio tracks. That did work.
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Hi,
I'd be interested how it turns out this way.
I see a potential problem in that you have 4 recordings of both vocal and backing. So, depending on each member's recording environment, you will be working with 4 different audio "qualities". By that I mean,, room ambience, playback systems, etc. not necessarily technical quality (but that too may play a part).
For vocals only that may well be part of the effect wanted and the vocals can be edited to bring out or exclude varying parameters to your requirements, but by having the combined vocal and backing you have to combine 4 different voices and 4 "different" versions of the same backing. It may turn out to be as required, but it may turn out to be not that way.
A simple example:
If you take a piece of music and play it back and record it in a bathroom, a lounge area and an aircraft hangar you will get 3 very different sounding pieces. If you then combine them into one track it may turn out to be great - or maybe not!
So it will be interesting to see/hear how you get on. Perhaps you could post a link to your work in the Showcase Forum when you are done? https://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/forums/show/183.page
Cheers
PowerDirector Moderator
Yes, you have stated the problem quite well. I figured from the beginning that the biggest problem in the whole approach would be whether the software behind the "Synch by Audio" button was sophisticated enough to handle four tracks that were each a mashup of piano and vocal.
I did manage to get the four tracks synched, but it was not a slam-dunk. There was enough difference in the starting times of each track (each person took a slightly different amount of time between when they pushed the button to start their video recording and when they pushed the button to start the piano music file they were going to sing with) that I had to manually trim the tracks to get the start times fairly close to each other. After doing that, the "Synch by Audio" worked. It would be very interesting to me to know what kind of algorithm was used to accomplish that -- it has to be one bit of impressive software!
This was just done by four of us amateurs from my church choir, unexceptional voices, and whatever phones we had to record the videos. Three of us used phones, one used a webcam. And one of the phone recordings was done with the piano music being played from only laptop speakers! I played the piano track on my computer speakers, and I don't know how two of them played the piano music file. So , bottom line, questionable equipment all the way.
I had promised all of them that the result would not see the light of day without their permission. But if they are ok with my offering it up as music for one of our virtual church services, I will share it here.
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Since you sent identical mp3 files to each individual you should line up the beginning piano notes before the singing starts and then let everything fall in place. The piano part should be consistent in time length if you sent them all a constant and not a variable bit rate mp3.
There is no need to use sync by audio since each vocal is different. This is not multiple audio recordings of the same event but each recording is a separate and not identical event.
Yes, thank you. I was thinking along those lines as a fall-back if I could not get the synch by audio to work. To use that method, do you just greatly expand the tracks and then try to match some early peak in the audio waveform?
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I am trying to create a collage virtual quartet. I sent each person an mp3 piano file to use as accomaniement as they record their individual video.
So now I have 4 videos, each of a person singing along to a piano music file being played. As each video is being recorded by an Iphone, both the piano music being played through speakers, and the singing are being recorded.
So I wind up with four mp4 video files, each containing audio that is a combination of voice and the piano accompaniement..
I then import the four videos, place each in a trrack, highlight the four audo tracks, and click the synch by audio button.
When I tried this with only two tracks it seemed to work, but it seems not to work with four tracks. I might get three of them synched if i am lucky, but not all four. I realize it is asking quite a bit for the software to synch multiple audio tracks when the audio tracks are composed of a combination of the piano music mixed with different voices.
I am new at this What approach should I be taking here? And suggestions much appreciated.
Thanks
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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,
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 ----
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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.
I am new to this, just purchased Powerdirector Ultra. The primary reason I spent the $ was for the Collage ability.
What I am trying to do is assemble a "virtual quartet" where each person has an mp3 accompaniement file, and they record a video of themselves singing via an Iphone while listening to the accompaniement via earbuds. They then send me their videos.
I then imported the videos and the mp3 file and managed to synch them in the timline.
Then I tried to put them in a collage, but I cannot seem to do that and keep them synched. Nor can I figure out how to synch them after they are in the collage.
Can someone please provide me step-by-step how start with such files, and wind up with them synched in a collage?
Thanks in advance.
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