Jerry,

Without seeing the rest of the time line, only a guess can be made. As the audio portion showing is not linked to the video clip abve it, I would figure you can remove the gap with a right click and remove gap.

Without seeing the rest of the following time line I have no idea what might happen to the audio (or video) to the right of the audio after the gap.

Can you post the view of the complete time line?

Hal
OS - Win11 Pro, Alienware R13, CPU - Intel Core I7-12700KF 12 CPUs), 16g DDR5 4400 RAM, Video - Geeforce RTX 3080ti 12g, PD11 & PD365
My YouTube

Your suggestion sounds good, but a gap is a gap in the entire timeline not in just one part of a track. You can't remove a gap if there is anything else that occupies that time.

The video and audio is linked in each of the clips to the right.

I tried a number of combinations of cutting, inserting, removing gaps, etc. I was able to get the audio and video to slide around relative to each other, but every time I thought I had the solution a new gap opened up.

I was about half-way through adjusting each clip manually when it occured to me that I hadn't done in editing past the point of trouble, so I could just delete them all and start over. That will be a lot quicker than the hokey-pokey I'd been doing for the last fifteen minutes.

I've attached a wider shot of the timeline. You can't remove and close the gap at the top, because the audio is using that time. Jerry Schwartz

Can't you unlink the video from the audio and remove the gap from the video.

Or would that put your audio out of sync with the video?

Maybe you could move the audio to another track, and then close the gap.

Carl312: Windows 10 64-bit 8 GB RAM,AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4 GHz,ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB,240GB SSD,two 1TB HDs.

Quote: Can't you unlink the video from the audio and remove the gap from the video.

It flat out won't let you do that. Try it yourself:

Start a new project.

Plop Aerial.jpg into track 1.

Plop Nature.mpg next to it.

There will be a gap in the audio underneath the jpg.

Try to remove the gap.

Even if you unlink the video and audio portions of Nature.mpg, you can't remove the gap. That's because the gap doesn't run through all of the tracks.

Quote: Or would that put your audio out of sync with the video?
Maybe you could move the audio to another track, and then close the gap.

If you look at the timeline screen capture, you'll see the pickle I got myself into. All of the audio from the clips downstream are out of synch with the video. Because they are still linked, I can't close the gap. I can slide the clips to the left, but the audio would overwrite the audio of the preceding track.

I'm not exactly sure how I did this to myself. It involved trimming the front off the audio portion of a clip, replacing the video portion with a freeze frame, and then recombining them so that the freeze frame and the trimmed audio were the same length. Somehow that caused the misalignment.

All I remember for certain was saying to myself "Boy, I sure did that the hard way." Jerry Schwartz

Quote: It flat out won't let you do that. Try it yourself:

Start a new project.

Plop Aerial.jpg into track 1.

Plop Nature.mpg next to it.

There will be a gap in the audio underneath the jpg.

Try to remove the gap.

Even if you unlink the video and audio portions of Nature.mpg, you can't remove the gap. That's because the gap doesn't run through all of the tracks.

Jerry,

I was able to remove the gap in the above scenario. See screen shot. You will see that I actually did it twice.

I unlinked the adio from the video, manually selected the audio and moved it to the left. Of course this only changes the position of the gap.

Looking at your last screen shot, it appears as though you may have the items grouped. If so you will have to ungroup them in order to move the audio seperately.

Don't forget, when you ungroup/unlink objects, you have to click away somewhere to deselect the grouped/linked objects, before you can manipulate the objects individually.

Hope this helps a little.

Hal
OS - Win11 Pro, Alienware R13, CPU - Intel Core I7-12700KF 12 CPUs), 16g DDR5 4400 RAM, Video - Geeforce RTX 3080ti 12g, PD11 & PD365
My YouTube

I do not know if I understand right.
The PD9 of more flexibility on the issue, but it is also necessary to observe certain procedures, not to undo an edit ready, in case more than one track of video and audio.
In the latter case, you use a padlock to lock the track that is already correct.
--------
In the case of adding audio to video, after syncing, you can link to the video.
Also we can group a block that is ready, so it is not possible apart unintentionally. AMD-FX 8350 / 8GB DDR3
SSD SUV400S37240G / 2-HD WD 1TB
AMD Radeon R9 270 / AOC M2470SWD
Windows 7-64 / PD16 Ultimate

To set a new audio to video.
First separates and delete the original audio if necessary
Adds the new and synchronizes audio, select audio and video, right click and select Link Objects


AMD-FX 8350 / 8GB DDR3
SSD SUV400S37240G / 2-HD WD 1TB
AMD Radeon R9 270 / AOC M2470SWD
Windows 7-64 / PD16 Ultimate

Hi Jerry -

Just chiming in to confirm Hal's post above...

No problem manually shifting audio once it's unlinked from the video in Nature.mpeg. Other audio in track is unaffected by the shift.

Cheers - Tony
Visit PDtoots. PowerDirector Tutorials, tips, free resources & more. Subscribe!
Full linked Tutorial Catalog PDtoots happily supports fellow PowerDirector users!

At this point, everyone seems to have lost track of my original question.

First, let's see if a movie is worth a thousand words.

The attached clip shows what happens when I try to remove a gap from one track when there is no gap in another track. This was only a quick example showing that one particular tool, which looked like it might have done exactly what I wanted, won't work in my circumstances.

Second, lets go back to the beginning.

I did something (I'm not sure quite what) that left a gap in the audio, but not in the video. The audio was a few seconds behind the video. Please take a look at the attachment to my first message. All of the clips were still linked, and they had never been unlinked!

I don't see why this should have happened; in fact, I don't see why the software allowed it to happen. The whole point of linking tracks is to make sure they don't move relative to each other, isn't it?

I needed to get all of my video and audio synchronized the way it had been originally. Moving a clip with the audio and video linked wouldn't get them back in synchronization, because both pieces would move together. You can't slide one without sliding the other. I would have to unlink a clip, slide the two pieces around until they were lined up, and then link them again.

You can only do that one clip at a time. You have to do one, then the next, then the next, and so forth. With dozens of clips, this would be time-consuming and annoying.

Since I hadn't done much editing yet, I just started over. Jerry Schwartz

Jerry,

I am sorry if you think we have strayed from your original question. I understood the question and my answer was based on the very small screen shot attached. I did realize that you had restarted the project from scratch.

In the first screen shot there was a gap in the audio portion of the track. It was not linked to the video above it.

In the second screen shot there is a gap in the video portion of the track. The clips to the left of the gap are linked, but all the visible clips to the right of the gap are unlinked from the video. It also appears that the audio & video in light blue might be grouped.

Two different screen shots may have added to the perceived confusion.

My second post referred to the portion your post that I quoted.

Quote: It flat out won't let you do that. Try it yourself:


Start a new project.

Plop Aerial.jpg into track 1.

Plop Nature.mpg next to it.

There will be a gap in the audio underneath the jpg.

Try to remove the gap.
Even if you unlink the video and audio portions of Nature.mpg, you can't remove the gap. That's because the gap doesn't run through all of the tracks.

I did as you asked and was able to remove the gap.

Hal OS - Win11 Pro, Alienware R13, CPU - Intel Core I7-12700KF 12 CPUs), 16g DDR5 4400 RAM, Video - Geeforce RTX 3080ti 12g, PD11 & PD365
My YouTube

Oh, I wasn't upset. This isn't my first pony ride.

I just lost a fairly lengthy reply, so now I am upset; but here's a quick summary.

We might or might not be talking about the same thing. I've attached a clip that shows (I hope) what I was talking about. I compressed it with DivX.

The bottom line is that all of my clips were still (and had always been) linked, but somehow the audio portion of the entire track had gotten out of synch with the video portion.

I couldn't figure out any way of getting things re-aligned without doing it clip by clip: unlink, slide, relink, repeat.

I was hoping there was a more effective way, and that the "Remove and Close gap" mibht be it. It wasn't.

Jerry Schwartz

I already understood your problem, I think was error of PD, has happened to me, I immediately click Undo button and resolve the case.
---
One option that you may already know, if not, look in the folder where saved PD projects automatically, see the date and time your project before giving the problem, if you find, I think the easiest way
---
Folder path, see Set user Preferences / Projects / Browse
The program saves the project every 10 minutes automatically. AMD-FX 8350 / 8GB DDR3
SSD SUV400S37240G / 2-HD WD 1TB
AMD Radeon R9 270 / AOC M2470SWD
Windows 7-64 / PD16 Ultimate

Jerrys,

I watched your demo of your problem. Nicely done.

My one question is why did you not try an undo?

PD9 has the undo and redo buttons on the main menu, they are curved arrows between save project and Aspect ratio buttons.

an undo or a few undo's may have corrected the cause. Carl312: Windows 10 64-bit 8 GB RAM,AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4 GHz,ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB,240GB SSD,two 1TB HDs.

Carl312

I understand that Jerry, saved the project and returned to it later, there the undo function does not return AMD-FX 8350 / 8GB DDR3
SSD SUV400S37240G / 2-HD WD 1TB
AMD Radeon R9 270 / AOC M2470SWD
Windows 7-64 / PD16 Ultimate

PlayVideo
Ok, that would not return the undo.

I don't know why he does not just unlink and move with mouse to close the gaps, true you have to move each clip behind also, but it would still work, I think. Carl312: Windows 10 64-bit 8 GB RAM,AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4 GHz,ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB,240GB SSD,two 1TB HDs.

Hi Jerrys,

This has been a very interesting thread. However, I cannot tell whether or not the issue has been resolved. After reviewing your attachment, and reading the entire thread, I understand that the gap is in the audio track and it is too late to do an undo. However, I did not see any mention of the possibility of using power tools to extend the existing audio to fill the gap or the use of voice over, if it was a speech problem. Of course, the nature of the audio may be such that neither of these would offer a solution, but I just thought I would inquire.

Regards,

Pax Laptop PC, ASUS
Core i7 Q 720
Win 7, 64-bit
RAM 8GB DDR2
Graphics, NVIDIA GeForce GTS 360M 1GB DDR5

Hi Jerrys,
The "gap.png" image looks to me as though you've had a slipped image error caused by the detaching of audio from the video (even if you didn't want it). This error was reported a while ago and should have been fixed.

OK the audio gap cant be closed if the two tracks contents - video and audio are not aligned. This might be one frame out. You'll need to go to frame level to check that out. Even when they are BUT are in an unlinked form I have had a "refusal". To circumvent that I have grouped objects and made the corrective closure.

Forgive me if you've mentioned this already. Are you using build 2930?

Thanks for your suggestions, everyone.

Yes, I'm on build 2930.

Unfortunately, it didn't occur to me to try undo until I'd already tried a bunch of things to fix the problem.

I don't know if that's what you're talking about, Dafydd. The gap was certainly more than one frame. I don't remember for certain, but looking back at "gap.png" I think it was about six seconds.

I just reproduced the problem! As math professors like to say, "It is obvious to the casual observer..."

Important: I forgot to mention one thing in my video, and it is critical! If you drag and insert an audio clip from the media room, the problem will not happen. If you drag the same audio clip onto the timeline first (any track) and then insert it, then the problem will show.

In short, the audio has to be on the timeline already for it to trigger this problem.

Please let me know if that's unclear. If necessary, I'll make another video showing that behavior.



Jerry Schwartz

Hi Jerry
You tried to reload from saved project, automatically by the PD.
Unless you have manually deleted it is stored 30days.
As your project seems to be great, must have saved several files PDS.
By the time you get there.
I do it sometimes crashes and PD before I save the project. AMD-FX 8350 / 8GB DDR3
SSD SUV400S37240G / 2-HD WD 1TB
AMD Radeon R9 270 / AOC M2470SWD
Windows 7-64 / PD16 Ultimate