Audio Commentary - Revision history

Manocheese: /* Record yourself */ Described the synchronization process.

2010-08-11T19:12:31Z

‎Record yourself: Described the synchronization process.

Manocheese: Revised the recording and muxing sections.

2010-08-11T19:01:02Z

Revised the recording and muxing sections.

Njahnke: added redder warning about mp3

2010-04-26T00:45:13Z

added redder warning about mp3

RandomEngy: /* mp4box */

2009-10-21T02:38:22Z

‎mp4box

RandomEngy: /* Disabling the audio commentary for QuickTime 7 */

2009-10-21T02:35:44Z

‎Disabling the audio commentary for QuickTime 7

Moooh: /* Mixing / Compressing / Muxing the audio */ MeGUI will let you mux more than two audio streams at a time

2009-04-25T21:12:44Z

‎Mixing / Compressing / Muxing the audio: MeGUI will let you mux more than two audio streams at a time

Njahnke: revised now that quacktime supports multiple audio tracks in mp4

2008-11-26T03:45:08Z

revised now that quacktime supports multiple audio tracks in mp4

Ballofsnow: /* Mixing / Compressing / Muxing the audio */ Use AAC...

2008-08-21T04:13:52Z

‎Mixing / Compressing / Muxing the audio: Use AAC...

Ballofsnow: /* Mixing / Compressing / Muxing the audio */ LQ mono 32 kbps

2008-08-16T02:46:50Z

‎Mixing / Compressing / Muxing the audio: LQ mono 32 kbps

Ballofsnow: /* dumpster */ dumpster.zip on the KB now, with external mirror link.

2008-07-07T23:09:32Z

‎dumpster: dumpster.zip on the KB now, with external mirror link.

@@ Line 15: / Line 15: @@
 Check the sample rate of the commentary. You can find it in the box to the left of the waveform; it is in Hz. If the sample rate of the commentary is not the same as the sample rate of the game audio, you may run into pitch-related problems later when you have both in the same mp4 file. To check the sample rate of the game audio, import it into Audacity; if it doesn't import correctly, encode it as mp3 first with [[MeGUI#Setting_the_audio_compression|MeGUI]]. After checking the rate, you can press the X to the left of the waveform to remove the game audio (you can add it back later if you want to). If the rates match, you don't need to do anything extra. If they don't, you can change the sample rate of the commentary near the bottom left corner of the Audacity window next to the words "Project rate"; '''do not use the "Set Rate" feature''', as this will create the same pitch problems you are trying to avoid. After changing the project rate, click File-->Export as WAV. Close and reopen Audacity, then import the wav you just created. The sample rate is now correct.
-If you want to have your commentary track be just voice without the game sound, no further editing is required; click File-->Export as WAV to get the wav file you'll be compressing from (if you changed the sample rate above, you'll already have a wav file and can skip this step). If you want the game sound mixed in, go to Project-->Import Audio and select your game audio. As described above, it may not import correctly; if it doesn't, encode an mp3 version of the game audio with [[MeGUI#Setting_the_audio_compression|MeGUI]] and import that instead (if you did this above, you can use the same mp3 file). Adjust the volume of each track using the sliders at the left that have minus and plus signs on either side. When you have found a balance between the tracks that allows your voice to be heard over the game audio, click File-->Export as WAV. It's a good idea to save the project file as well.
+If you want to have your commentary track be just voice without the game sound, no further editing is required; click File-->Export as WAV to get the wav file you'll be compressing from (if you changed the sample rate above, you'll already have a wav file and can skip this step). If you want the game sound mixed in, go to Project-->Import Audio and select your game audio. As described above, it may not import correctly; if it doesn't, encode an mp3 version of the game audio with [[MeGUI#Setting_the_audio_compression|MeGUI]] and import that instead (if you did this above, you can use the same mp3 file). The audio tracks will not be in sync right away; this is where you can use the few seconds of game audio in the voice track that you (hopefully) recorded. Find the same few seconds of audio in the game audio track and put the cursor at a recognizable point of the waveform. Write down the time (found near the bottom of the window). Then put your cursor at the same point in the waveform in the voice track and write down the time. Calculate the difference between the two times. At this point, you will need to either add or subtract from the beginning of the voice track. To add an exact amount of silence, put your cursor near the beginning ''without'' highlighting anything, then click Generate-->Silence and type in the amount you calculated. To delete an exact amount, put your cursor near the beginning, hold Shift, and move the cursor right with the arrow keys; the size of your selection will be displayed near the bottom of the window. Press delete once you have selected the right amount. The two tracks are now in sync. Adjust the volume of each track using the sliders at the left that have minus and plus signs on either side. When you have found a balance between the tracks that allows your voice to be heard over the game audio, click File-->Export as WAV. It's a good idea to save the project file as well.
 <br>

@@ Line 9: / Line 9: @@
 ==Record yourself==
-Editor's note: This is just some basic information. If you have more to add, please flesh this section out. I'm no sound expert.
+First, get a microphone if you don't have one. You'll need a recording program; this guide will use [http://sourceforge.net/projects/audacity/ Audacity], which is free. Before you record the actual commentary, you should play around with the program to figure out how loud to talk, where to put the microphone, etc. Make a test recording. If there is static in the recording, try using the Noise Removal tool. Highlight a sample of just noise, then go to Effects-->Noise Removal and select "Get Noise Profile". Now highlight the entire recording, go to Noise Removal again, and click "Remove Noise." If the slider was too far left, there will still be a lot of noise; if it was too far right, your voice will become distorted. Try adjusting the slider until you find a good balance. If you talk louder, you will probably have an easier time removing static. You can also try using Noise Removal multiple times. The best thing to do is to play around until you find what works. After you have gotten rid of noise, you may want to remove other sounds such as clicks that find their way into your recording. To do so, highlight the unwanted sound and click Generate-->Silence. If you just press delete, you'll remove a chunk of audio completely and everything after that will be too early. If there's something that's too quiet or too loud, you can highlight it and go to Effects-->Amplify. You can then move the slider to adjust the volume of that section. You may have to click "allow clipping".
-First get a microphone if you don't have one. You'll need a recording program. [http://sourceforge.net/projects/audacity/ Audacity] is a good choice. You will probably want to play around with it first to know how loud to talk, where to put the microphone, how to edit afterwards, etc. If there is static in your test recording, try using the Noise Removal tool. Select a sample of just noise, then go to Effects, Noise Removal and select "Get Noise Profile." Now select the entire recording, go to Noise Removal again, and click "Remove Noise." If the slider was too far left, there will still be a lot of noise; if it was too far right, your voice will get distorted and sound like a robot. Try adjusting the slider until you find a good balance. If you talk louder, you will probably have an easier time removing static. You can also try using Noise Removal multiple times. The best thing to do is to play around until you find what works. After you have gotten rid of noise, if you want to remove other sounds, highlight them and click Generate, Silence. If you just delete, you will get out of sync. After you are done, you will want to amplify the sound. Select the entire recording and go to Effects, Amplify. The setting provided will probably be good, so click Okay. If you listen to it and it sounds distorted, undo and try a smaller amplification.
+When you actually record your commentary, you'll want to do everything the same as you did for your test recording. Open the run in your media player of choice and press pause. Open Audacity, press record, then go into the media player and hit play. Make sure the sound is off (it's best to set it to mute within the media player itself) or you may end up recording the game sound. The game sound and the commentary can still be mixed together later, but it's best to record just the commentary and then combine the two. If you do want to have the game sound mixed in, turn the sound on in the media player for a few seconds while you're recording the commentary, then turn it back off; this will record a few seconds' worth of game audio, enabling you to sync the voice track with the game audio later on. When you are done recording commentary, press stop. Perform noise removal, amplification, and so on as described in the paragraph above.
-When you actually do your commentary, you'll want to do everything the same as you did for your test recording. Press record, then play your video. Make sure the sound is off (it's best to set it to mute within the media player itself) or you may end up automatically recording the game sound. The game sound and the commentary can still be mixed together later, but it's best to get just the commentary and then combine the two. If you do not want to do the commentary all at once, you can do it in parts and combine them. When you are done, stop it and do noise removal, amplification, etc. If you want to have your commentary be without the game sound, export as wav. If you want the game sound mixed in, go to Project, Import Audio and select your game audio. Adjust the volume of each using the sliders at the left. When you have found a good volume for each, export as wav. It's a good idea to save the project file as well.
+Check the sample rate of the commentary. You can find it in the box to the left of the waveform; it is in Hz. If the sample rate of the commentary is not the same as the sample rate of the game audio, you may run into pitch-related problems later when you have both in the same mp4 file. To check the sample rate of the game audio, import it into Audacity; if it doesn't import correctly, encode it as mp3 first with [[MeGUI#Setting_the_audio_compression|MeGUI]]. After checking the rate, you can press the X to the left of the waveform to remove the game audio (you can add it back later if you want to). If the rates match, you don't need to do anything extra. If they don't, you can change the sample rate of the commentary near the bottom left corner of the Audacity window next to the words "Project rate"; '''do not use the "Set Rate" feature''', as this will create the same pitch problems you are trying to avoid. After changing the project rate, click File-->Export as WAV. Close and reopen Audacity, then import the wav you just created. The sample rate is now correct.
-<br>
+If you want to have your commentary track be just voice without the game sound, no further editing is required; click File-->Export as WAV to get the wav file you'll be compressing from (if you changed the sample rate above, you'll already have a wav file and can skip this step). If you want the game sound mixed in, go to Project-->Import Audio and select your game audio. As described above, it may not import correctly; if it doesn't, encode an mp3 version of the game audio with [[MeGUI#Setting_the_audio_compression|MeGUI]] and import that instead (if you did this above, you can use the same mp3 file). Adjust the volume of each track using the sliders at the left that have minus and plus signs on either side. When you have found a balance between the tracks that allows your voice to be heard over the game audio, click File-->Export as WAV. It's a good idea to save the project file as well.
-==Mixing / Compressing / Muxing the audio==
+<br>
-Once you've recorded your commentary, you may want to consider mixing it with the gameplay audio, but at a low volume so that we can still hear you. [http://sourceforge.net/projects/audacity/ Audacity], a free sound editor is capable of doing this.
+==Compressing / Muxing the audio==
 Load your finished wav file in [[MeGUI#Setting_the_audio_compression|MeGUI]] for compression to AAC. <font color="red">DO NOT USE MP3!</font> It is incompatible with QuickTime 7 and people will wonder why they can't open your run.
@@ Line 25: / Line 25: @@
 SDA is fairly strict about choosing the bitrate corresponding to whichever quality version you're encoding. However, with audio commentary it's quite lax; do whatever sounds good. Commentary with just the voice and no gameplay audio mixed in can go as low as 32 kbps and still sound good. If you're adding commentary to the LQ version, use mono 32 kbps.
-Use [[MeGUI#Combining_the_finished_video_and_audio_files|MeGUI]] again to add the audio commentary. To add more streams, right click the "Audio 1" tab and select "add track". Don't get carried away, though, more audio tracks equals a bigger filesize. Consider lowering the bitrate of the commentary tracks if you have to. To make it easier for you later on, be consistent with which stream becomes input #1 and which stream becomes input #2. I suggest putting the gameplay audio as input #1.
+Use [[MeGUI#Combining_the_finished_video_and_audio_files|MeGUI]] again to add the audio commentary. To add more streams, right click the "Audio 1" tab in the muxing window and select "add track". Don't get carried away, though; more audio tracks equals a bigger filesize. Consider lowering the bitrate of the commentary tracks if you have to. Make sure the game audio (without commentary) is the first audio track.

@@ Line 21: / Line 21: @@
 Once you've recorded your commentary, you may want to consider mixing it with the gameplay audio, but at a low volume so that we can still hear you. [http://sourceforge.net/projects/audacity/ Audacity], a free sound editor is capable of doing this.
-Load your finished wav file in [[MeGUI#Setting_the_audio_compression|MeGUI]] for compression to AAC. MP3 will not work. SDA is fairly strict about choosing the bitrate corresponding to whichever quality version you're encoding. However, with audio commentary it's quite lax; do whatever sounds good. Commentary with just the voice and no gameplay audio mixed in can go as low as 32 kbps and still sound good. If you're adding commentary to the LQ version, use mono 32 kbps.
+Load your finished wav file in [[MeGUI#Setting_the_audio_compression|MeGUI]] for compression to AAC. <font color="red">DO NOT USE MP3!</font> It is incompatible with QuickTime 7 and people will wonder why they can't open your run.
 Use [[MeGUI#Combining_the_finished_video_and_audio_files|MeGUI]] again to add the audio commentary. To add more streams, right click the "Audio 1" tab and select "add track". Don't get carried away, though, more audio tracks equals a bigger filesize. Consider lowering the bitrate of the commentary tracks if you have to. To make it easier for you later on, be consistent with which stream becomes input #1 and which stream becomes input #2. I suggest putting the gameplay audio as input #1.

@@ Line 77: / Line 77: @@
 Put your video in the same directory as MP4Box.exe, open a command prompt in that folder and run the following command:
-mp4box -new -add source_video.mp4:name=Video -add "source_audio.mp4:name=Game Sounds" -add commentary.mp4:name=Commentary:disable final_video.mp4
+<pre>mp4box -new -add source_video.mp4:name=Video -add "source_audio.mp4:name=Game Sounds" -add commentary.mp4:name=Commentary:disable final_video.mp4</pre>
 Or, if you already have your MP4 file with audio on it and just want to add your commentary track to it:
-mp4box -new -add source_video.mp4#video:name=Video -add "source_video.mp4#audio:name=Game Sounds" -add commentary.mp4:name=Commentary:disable final_video.mp4
+<pre>mp4box -new -add source_video.mp4#video:name=Video -add "source_video.mp4#audio:name=Game Sounds" -add commentary.mp4:name=Commentary:disable final_video.mp4</pre>
 Return to the [[Main Page|front page]].

@@ Line 35: / Line 35: @@
 <font color="red">You absolutely must do this, even if it may be tedious to do so.</font>
-You have two options:
+You have three options:
 * [[Audio_Commentary#mp4nerf | With DJGrenola's mp4nerf.exe.]]
 * [[Audio_Commentary#dumpster | With Apple's dumpster.exe.]] (tedious)
 <br>
@@ Line 51: / Line 52: @@
 <br>
 ===dumpster===
 * First, you'll need to download and extract [[Media:Dumpster.zip | Dumpster]] [http://developer.apple.com/quicktime/quicktimeintro/tools/ (mirror)].
@@ Line 67: / Line 70: @@
 <font color="orange"><b>Warning:</b> If you do any re-muxing of a file, it may reset the flag to $000001 and you'll have to start over.</font>
 Return to the [[Main Page|front page]].

@@ Line 23: / Line 23: @@
 Load your finished wav file in [[MeGUI#Setting_the_audio_compression|MeGUI]] for compression to AAC. MP3 will not work. SDA is fairly strict about choosing the bitrate corresponding to whichever quality version you're encoding. However, with audio commentary it's quite lax; do whatever sounds good. Commentary with just the voice and no gameplay audio mixed in can go as low as 32 kbps and still sound good. If you're adding commentary to the LQ version, use mono 32 kbps.
-Use [[MeGUI#Combining_the_finished_video_and_audio_files|MeGUI]] again to add the audio commentary. Notice the audio section lets you pick only two audio streams at a time. To add more, first save the file with the two streams. Load that into the Video Input field, it will recognize that there's already audio tracks inside. Then just repeat like before. Don't get carried away, though, more audio tracks equals a bigger filesize. Consider lowering the bitrate of the commentary tracks if you have to. To make it easier for you later on, be consistent with which stream becomes input #1 and which stream becomes input #2. I suggest putting the gameplay audio as input #1.
+Use [[MeGUI#Combining_the_finished_video_and_audio_files|MeGUI]] again to add the audio commentary. To add more streams, right click the "Audio 1" tab and select "add track". Don't get carried away, though, more audio tracks equals a bigger filesize. Consider lowering the bitrate of the commentary tracks if you have to. To make it easier for you later on, be consistent with which stream becomes input #1 and which stream becomes input #2. I suggest putting the gameplay audio as input #1.
 <font color="green"><b>Tip:</b> [http://yamb.unite-video.com/download.html YAMB] can also mux files for you and has other useful features.</font>

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
 ==Introduction==
-SDA allows audio commentary in the form of a secondary audio track in an existing H.264/AAC audio/video stream. In other words, one video stream and two audio streams in one MP4 container. It's about time, isn't it? The main reason it took so long is because QuickTime 7 doesn't handle multiple audio tracks properly, and it still doesn't but we've found a semi-solution. As it is now, QuickTime 7 will play all audio tracks <i>at the same time</i>, not very pleasant to the ears. The idea is simple: disable the secondary audio track so that QuickTime won't play it, while all other decent media players will still have the option.
+SDA allows audio commentary in the form of a secondary audio track in an existing H.264/AAC audio/video stream. In other words, one video stream and two audio streams in one MP4 container. However, you must disable the secondary audio track so that QuickTime won't play it at the same time as the first (but still letting people switch to it if they want). This is easy to do and instructions are given later on this page. You don't actually even need QuickTime to do it.
 Multiple audio tracks in the AVI container is still not allowed. Windows Media Player also happens to play all audio tracks at the same time.
@@ Line 32: / Line 32: @@
 ==Disabling the audio commentary for QuickTime 7==
-<font color="red">You absolutely must do this, even if it may be tedious to do so.</font> Be sure to double-check your work in QuickTime when you're done.
+<font color="red">You absolutely must do this, even if it may be tedious to do so.</font>
 You have two options:

@@ Line 51: / Line 51: @@
 ===dumpster===
-* First, you'll need to download and extract [http://developer.apple.com/quicktime/quicktimeintro/tools/ dumpster].
+* First, you'll need to download and extract [[Media:Dumpster.zip | Dumpster]] [http://developer.apple.com/quicktime/quicktimeintro/tools/ (mirror)].
 * Drag the MP4 file over dumpster.exe to load the program.
 * Double-click the line with 'moov'.