is there a way to get rid of blips / hiccups at the start of an exported movie? when I play it in MS, it is not there at all, you only notice it after creating the MPEG4. usually at the start or close to it when a transition occurs (like am audio track starting). thanks.
Hi John.
Are we talking audio only or visually as well?
I would always fade in a start, even if it is just a few frames. A sudden increase in volume from nothing can often cause a distortion in audio. For the same reason, never butt join two clips with different scenes together. Overlap by one or two frames. Same scene / direct continuation clips should be fine. Visually you will see nothing visually but audio wise it should stop sudden voltage changes in the audio signal. (Should do, but there are exceptions such as DC offset voltage in an audio stream caused by a failing or faulty ADC in the recording.) Movie Studio and VPX has no tools to fix that.
Ray.
Hi John.
Are we talking audio only or visually as well?
I would always fade in a start, even if it is just a few frames. A sudden increase in volume from nothing can often cause a distortion in audio. For the same reason, never butt join two clips with different scenes together. Overlap by one or two frames. Same scene / direct continuation clips should be fine. Visually you will see nothing visually but audio wise it should stop sudden voltage changes in the audio signal. (Should do, but there are exceptions such as DC offset voltage in an audio stream caused by a failing or faulty ADC in the recording.) Movie Studio and VPX has no tools to fix that.
Ray.
just audio. can you fade in an audio track?
In exactly the same way as you fade in a video track.
Except that you have to ungroup the audio and video, set your audio fade, then regroup.
I've had, over the years, the occasional "zit" between audio objects. Very annoying, but I never could put my finger on it. I assume a latent program bug.
If one can't do a butt join because it causes glitches then there's something wrong with the program.
Hi Al,
Good point about separating the audio and video! Because I always have them on separate tracks I forget that other users may not have them like that!
If one can't do a butt join because it causes glitches then there's something wrong with the program.
Sorry Al, here I disagree with you! Butt joins, aka instant crossfades have to occur at a zero crossing point of the wave forms, i.e., both sides of the "join" must be at zero if the join is not to include a glitch. Many audio-only programs have problems with this! So, whether MMS/VPX should automatically cope with this is, perhaps, moot!
Jeff
Jeff, never done a 4-frame fade in my life. Been doing butt joins since 2004. Apart from the few times an annoying zit occurs (not caused by the audio waveform, but fixed by adjusting the butt join point), I've never had an issue with wonky audio.
Having to do a such a thing, namely dropping the audio zero a couple of frames before and after a butt, would be incredibly inconvenient and a real pain in the butt, especially if you wanted to do a butt for the video.
Hi Al,
never done a 4-frame fade in my life
Neither have I! I also regularly butt clips together, without any need to crossfade. I think the comment about overlapping by one or two frames came from Ray.
I think I may have misunderstood what you meant when you referred above to glitches. I thought you were talking about audio glitches rather than visual glitches, my apologies. I can't say I've ever encountered visual glitches at such points.
However I think you may have misunderstood something when you write dropping the audio zero a couple of frames before and after a butt. My writing about "zero crossings" was nothing to do with the level of the audios but was a reference to the fact that butt-joining audio requires that the waveform of each side of the join, as measured or displayed on something like an oscilloscope (where the waveform passes through the central zero point from its positive phase to its negative, or vice versa) needs to be at that zero point so that there is no audible "jump" or glitch where they meet.
Jeff
Hi,
Jeff, I have seen this "zero crossing point" on the Samplitude forum and I don't understand what it means. Could you please provide an explanation/demonstration?
Al, like Jeff, I always have audio and video on separate tracks, grouped, of course. You do not need to ungroup them to put a fade in/out on the audio part. Hold down the Alt key and drag the handle. The same works for making adjustments to the duration of the audio with respect to the video and vice versa, and for making L and J cuts and even audio transitions at a location separate from the video butt or transition.
I show this at 8:15 in my tutorial on Everything Audio.
As @john-x has the basic version of Movie Studio 2024 (which is not recommended), I don't know whether or not this can be done.
John CB
Jeff, I was talking about audio. So are you saying the audio level must be zero at the butt join? In that case, John's ALT key makes it easier (but it's still a pain; if this is a serious issue, the program should have an option to duck the volume to zero over say two frames before and after the join). With dozens of cut joins in a video, doing each one manually or even applying a saved audio effect is a nuisance.
I do have audio and video on separate tracks; the ALT trick helps.
One day I'll watch John's tutes! 👍😉
@browj2 @AAProds @emmrecs @john-x
Hi John (CB)
A zero point cross over point is where there is no voltage to move a sound device from its resting place in the magnetic field, whether it be a microphone, headphone or speaker diaphragm from its resting point.
Video editors tend to crop sound exactly on the frame time wise and is often not a place where there is no sound. So you may chop a file at one volume and set of frequencies and join them to a completely different set of sounds which is jarring at best as the levels and frequencies mismatch.
Audio editors are better but still not much use on sound tracks that have more than one channel, as often when the left channel has a zero point to edit on, the right hand channel often doesn't. Multichannel mixes are even worse and often it's impossible to edit such a sound file unless the tracks can be split up. One of two advantages of using VPX over MMS.
This was also true in the days of analogue tape and why tape splicers rather than film splicers had a diagonal cutting guide as well as a vertical one, which effectively gave a softer cross fade.
The problem is, the better sound source you work with and better sound system you have (and up to a point hearing ability),the more of an annoyance this becomes. It can also be very frequency dependent as extremely low frequencies can be cut almost anywhere, and this can apply to extremely high frequencies unless you are young enough to hear 19kHz or above. I can't hear much above 17kHz any more at normal listening levels.
I should add that just because you can't hear it, it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Even the pros get it wrong as I have several CDs with edit problems producing clicks. Frankie Goes to Hollywood's Relax is one example as I tried swapping in several copies before realising it was not a faulty CD.
There are as you know numerous ways to change the volume of a video clip and three at least don't need the audio track to be separated from the video track.
You could automated the mixers sliders by automating the slider itself to fade in or use the curve tool to draw a volume curve or use the General Audio effects tool to add control points to the key frame editor.
I have in my examples used the sound track as a separate track but it could be done on a combined track.
Some sound editing software can automatically introduce a micro volume ramp to the start and end of the audio used to eliminate this problem.
There are other problems that sometimes need addressing such as DC offset which is also a pain to deal with but as electronics in general has got better, especially with op amps, that problem is becoming a lot less common.
Ray.
Hi Al,
are you saying the audio level must be zero at the butt join
No, I'm not. What I'm saying is that all sound is transmitted in the form of waves; those waves have positive (expressed as, e.g. 0 to + 10) and negative (expressed as, e.g. 0 to -10) values which are constantly changing between the two and so "pass through" a "zero crossing", the "0" point on the curve. This point is not where there is no sound (i.e. silence) so actual "audio level" or loudness has no effect on this, but is the point where the change from positive to negative values, or vice versa, is occurring.
I apologise if this is getting highly theoretical (!) but it ain't a very easy concept to try and explain!
I see you posted again whilst I was typing. That image illustrates the audio level being faded to -inf (silence) so is not what I'm trying to describe here, sorry!
I'll try and mock up a simple illustration of the zero crossing point of a simple waveform, though I doubt I'll be able to do so until tomorrow.
Jeff
A bit quicker than I thought, but:
Below is the waveform of a 1kHz sine wave, zoomed in a long way (the total "playing time" of the screen is much less than 1 second!):
The sound is constantly changing between the upper edge of the waveform (the positive peaks) and the lower edge (the negative peaks). In the centre, the red line across the middle of the screen, is the zero crossing point. If a different frequency waveform (= a "different sound") was to be butted up against this one at points other than a zero crossing there would be an audible "glitch" because the "smoothness" of those curves would be disrupted.
I hope this helps!!
Jeff
EDIT to add, Ray's description above is rather more detailed than mine, but I hop you get the idea.
Hi Al,
Sorry, it's impossible to say! I don't think you can zoom in far enough in MMS/VPX to show such points. Remember, the "sound" in the image I posted actually lasts for 7 thousandths of a second!
As to how to avoid such glitches with MMS/VPX, nudging the second clip one frame forward, or perhaps backwards, should remove it, I think.
Jeff
@AAProds @emmrecs @browj2 @john-x
Hi Al.
I don't know whether Jeff will agree with me on this or not but just as there is no one fix for all problems with the video section. I feel there is no one fix for all solution to all sound problems when dealing with clicks but Have taken out clicks from old 78 recordings by using the Drawing mouse mode (Curve tool) in the past as it allows five node points per frame. (Unfortunately regardless of frame rate.) That could also be used at the start of a sound file to produce a curve into the volume over a smaller time frame. It doesn't always work though.
As for butt joining two video clips, sometimes even a one frame cross fade can work but mileage may vary as they say. That's when separating the video from audio is more productive as the video can be cut to the frame but there is more leeway as to where the cross fade should be and for how long.
Ray.
@emmrecs @AAProds @browj2 @john-x
It is possible to zoom in close enough in both VPX and MMS if you make the timeline page editor full screen but I don't trust the graphics are accurate. (The positive and negative sides of the waveform appear to overlap in places. Why?) and the view becomes practically worthless for the use of editing as the cursor can only be placed at the beginning or end of a frame. The view is large enough to begin to be able to see the steps in amplitude.
Ray.
That's what I was getting at. My earlier pic was "half wave form". Here's the full wave form:
If I come across a "zit", I can zoom in and pick a frame that is close-by but with less signal (one way or the other). In this case, frame 06 has a bigger signal than the one I have the Play marker on, 07. Does that make sense?
Maybe the same applies to @john-x's scenario: trim off the audio until the play marker is on a null area?
trim off the audio until the play marker is on a null area?
That's the problem. You may not find one at all within a meaningful distance. It may be audible or it may not (being frequency as well as amplitude dependant). The same as you can start a video or do a butt join with no problem at all. Definitely in the lap of the gods as to what happens.
If you do need to make a soft start with audio it is much easier to produce a volume curve making sure your first two points are set to zero volume, then the next point a gentle increase and then a more rapid upward increase over the next two. I guess that's why you get five available nodes per frame when using the curve tool. Magix explains nothing. If you don't set two points at zero at the start but set one point in a bit from the start at zero you sometimes see the volume go up before that point and still hear a glitch. Why I have no idea. I do note that VPX allows a curve to be set whereas you don't get that option with MMS.
It's not just Magix video editors that can have these types of problems. I hear all sorts of odd sounds from various YouTube videos. The thing is, when casually watching / listening to something I don't always catch the problems.
I think when you are working on something and checking as you go you are more likely to pick up on problems.
Ray.
Hi,
Just to back up a bit, here is the OP.
is there a way to get rid of blips / hiccups at the start of an exported movie? when I play it in MS, it is not there at all, you only notice it after creating the MPEG4. usually at the start or close to it when a transition occurs (like am audio track starting). thanks.
So, the problem is not audible before export and not always at the start.
I have on occasion had audible glitches at crossfade transitions, but maybe 2 or 3 times over many years, and only recently. I ended up putting the clips on separate tracks and using fades to simulate a cross fade.
As for 0 crossing, is not the original start of a video clip at 0?
We always butt 1 clip to the other with no problem, so I am a bit confused.
John CB