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Edit audio in a magic built theme clip?
FrightRisk [Avatar]
Newbie Joined: Feb 27, 2018 21:55 Messages: 7 Offline
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I am using themes like the notebook and walkthough photo gallery to make a slideshow. When I enter it into my timeline, it is one big black box. I don't have access to the slider to make the volume louder or softer. How do I edit this? For example, many of the themes allow some of the photos on a wall or album to be videos. The video is not loud enough. If I double click on the theme clip hoping to edit it and maybe make the sound on the video louder, it implies I will lost all my editing changes. What does that mean? Will it make me have to start from scratch and input all the pictures again? I should be able to adjust the sound as well as go back in and change pictures.
ynotfish
Senior Contributor Location: N.S.W. Australia Joined: May 08, 2009 02:06 Messages: 9977 Offline
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Hi FrightRisk -

If you use Magic Movie Wizard, Styles, or Theme Designer that's what you get. You're right - the audio section isn't editable like regular audio tracks.

One way round it (so you can still use the template effects) is to either (a) right click the "black box" & Unlink the audio/video, then delete the audio or (b) just uncheck/disable that audio track in the timeline.

THEN you can add your own audio & do what you like with it.

When you say "the audio from the video is not loud enough" do you mean the background music or the original audio from your video clips?

On your other question about Theme Designer - no - you don't have to start again. It just allows you to re-order media, adjust titles etc.

Cheers - Tony
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FrightRisk [Avatar]
Newbie Joined: Feb 27, 2018 21:55 Messages: 7 Offline
[Post New]
Tony, it is the audio in my clip. I created a slideshow using the "notebook" theme and some of the slots for pictures can be a movie or a picture. On other clips, I can go into the wave editor and jack up the volume using the decibel slider. Or I can grab the horizontal line on the audio track and pull it up. Then I see the waveform on the track and can even see if it is clipping. Maybe I can try what you suggest, get rid of the audio track on that section and insert my own. But syncing it may be tough. In a 3 minute sequence in this case, one of the media pieces is a video. So I would have to find that section of my original video, edit it separately somehow (maybe in another video track or at the end of the piece), then use the scrubber to try and find just that section and do a rough trim, then pull it up in an audio track under the theme video and try to move the beginning back and forth while watching the picture to try and sync the mouths of the people talking. I will also try to edit it on a backed up copy and not save it if I mess up. I can try to insert the same clip after adjusting the audio volume in the wave editor.

Another related question. Is there a way to get more granularity for volume on an audio track? I want to reduce it when a scene has dialog and then bring the music back up. I do that just fine, but with my mouse using cntrl-click and drag, I can only go down to -14db or no sound (the infinity symbol). It is still too loud against pretty loud talking. Instead of what seems to be a scale or 1 to 10 in volume, I need 1 to 100. The audio volume line seems to snap to just a few possibilities.

Quote Hi FrightRisk -

If you use Magic Movie Wizard, Styles, or Theme Designer that's what you get. You're right - the audio section isn't editable like regular audio tracks.

One way round it (so you can still use the template effects) is to either (a) right click the "black box" & Unlink the audio/video, then delete the audio or (b) just uncheck/disable that audio track in the timeline.

THEN you can add your own audio & do what you like with it.

When you say "the audio from the video is not loud enough" do you mean the background music or the original audio from your video clips?

On your other question about Theme Designer - no - you don't have to start again. It just allows you to re-order media, adjust titles etc.

Cheers - Tony
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