Shannock9
09-28-2008, 01:34 PM
J and L Cuts (http://www.videomaker.com/article/13532/) are when the audio cut is deliberately not synchronised with the video cut. When removing adverts you will often find the wanted program dialog over-runs the ads/station id cards which leaves you with an editing dilemma - cut the dialog or leave the station card in the final edit? Here is how to overcome it, with one proviso: I'm assuming you have a way to merge separate video and audio sources (and you probably do - see below).
The essence of this solution is to make two separate edits with VRD, one for video and another for audio, both with the same total length. Suppose at the end of an ad break the wanted dialog starts 17 frames earlier than the fade of the station id. That means your cut-in point (f4) will be 17 frames earlier on the audio version than on the video version. Then to balance this, at the start of the same break (f3) you must include 17 more frames in the video version than the audio one. Usually it's easy to do this artistically, but just occasionally you may have to make a separate adjustment a little before the actual break start - if the character is walking out the door no-one can check the lip sync! Or in a severe case you can find some black video someplace else and insert it with the Joiner. Nowadays I keep a folder of black silent clips of various A/V standards ready for difficult cases.
OK, so you've got two separate mpgs of the same length, one with the 'right' video and one with the 'right' audio. Those of you with a dedicated mpeg encoder will know what to do next. But what if you haven't? Well you probably do have a DVD authoring program of some kind. 'Most' of these will allow you to specify separate video/audio sources for each track. I happen to use Pegasus TMpgEnc DVD Author which allows you to name separate video and audio sources for each segment/track. Have a look at the details of your authoring program, noting the acceptable formats for separate source streams. Hint: VRD has quite a few output formats. Finally, if you want the result as a regular mpg just use VRD again to remux the created Vob file(s).
With a long original, I sometimes cut from maybe 30secs before the problem break to maybe 30 secs after, using points where the video and audio do slice neatly, to get a short segment including the ad break. I'll work on this separately, possibly involving some trial and error, then when I'm done I slot the result back into the main program using the Joiner. Using a subproject like this means that the sync remains perfect for the main program, since that never leaves VRD.
I hope this gets you past some frustration. And you'll probably find other ways to use the same idea in your own creative way.
The essence of this solution is to make two separate edits with VRD, one for video and another for audio, both with the same total length. Suppose at the end of an ad break the wanted dialog starts 17 frames earlier than the fade of the station id. That means your cut-in point (f4) will be 17 frames earlier on the audio version than on the video version. Then to balance this, at the start of the same break (f3) you must include 17 more frames in the video version than the audio one. Usually it's easy to do this artistically, but just occasionally you may have to make a separate adjustment a little before the actual break start - if the character is walking out the door no-one can check the lip sync! Or in a severe case you can find some black video someplace else and insert it with the Joiner. Nowadays I keep a folder of black silent clips of various A/V standards ready for difficult cases.
OK, so you've got two separate mpgs of the same length, one with the 'right' video and one with the 'right' audio. Those of you with a dedicated mpeg encoder will know what to do next. But what if you haven't? Well you probably do have a DVD authoring program of some kind. 'Most' of these will allow you to specify separate video/audio sources for each track. I happen to use Pegasus TMpgEnc DVD Author which allows you to name separate video and audio sources for each segment/track. Have a look at the details of your authoring program, noting the acceptable formats for separate source streams. Hint: VRD has quite a few output formats. Finally, if you want the result as a regular mpg just use VRD again to remux the created Vob file(s).
With a long original, I sometimes cut from maybe 30secs before the problem break to maybe 30 secs after, using points where the video and audio do slice neatly, to get a short segment including the ad break. I'll work on this separately, possibly involving some trial and error, then when I'm done I slot the result back into the main program using the Joiner. Using a subproject like this means that the sync remains perfect for the main program, since that never leaves VRD.
I hope this gets you past some frustration. And you'll probably find other ways to use the same idea in your own creative way.