[ This article was first published in the October, 2010, issue of
Larry’s Monthly Final Cut Studio Newsletter. Click here to subscribe. ]
[ Updated Dec. 31, 2022. This tutorial applies only to FCP 7 and QuickTime 7. QuickTime Player does not support this action. Also, the images disappeared a while ago due to a server change. However, the written steps are still correct.]
Most of the time when I send a mix from Final Cut to Soundtrack, then export it back to Final Cut, everything stays in sync and sounds great.
However, with many of my webinars, I’ve discovered that the audio sync tends to slowly slip out of sync. I suspect this has to do with the frame rate that I record the webinars, which is 30 fps. I’ve tried a lot of different things to fix it, but haven’t found a solution.
So, whenever I have a problem like this, I fall back to an old technique that allows me to combine audio and video using QuickTime, which works perfectly every time.
Here’s how.
This window lists all the components of the QuickTime file. In this case, the new soundtrack is listed at the bottom as Sound Track 2.
Now is a good time to play your movie to make sure everything sounds right. To disable an audio file, uncheck the checkbox at the left side of the audio file you don’t want to hear.
Once you decide everything sounds correct, there is still the older soundtrack (Sound Track 1) to delete.
Done.
19 Responses to Adding Audio to Video Using QuickTime 7
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sourav says:
December 12, 2011 at 11:16 pm
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Thomas says:
February 28, 2012 at 2:24 am
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FurryToes says:
November 7, 2012 at 3:33 am
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AaronV says:
January 24, 2013 at 8:54 am
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Dan says:
January 29, 2013 at 12:32 pm
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Chris says:
April 11, 2013 at 12:00 am
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Vinod Singh says:
May 30, 2013 at 6:43 am
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john ballinger says:
October 20, 2013 at 8:26 pm
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Sam says:
December 21, 2013 at 1:25 pm
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Jack says:
August 24, 2014 at 6:28 am
Newer Comments →thx it was really help full
Thanks Larry, that was helpful. Edit > Add to movie was the one step I was not doing right and it solved my problem. Thanks again!
I find this technique essential to producing every video, since I export the audio separately, then master it, using mainly volume maximisation (compression) in Logic. I then add it back to the video stream as shown here.
That’s my workflow.
I’ve tried others – like creating a compound clip for all audio and mastering it from there – but this tends to make it difficult to make further editing changes, since you can no longer “snap” to or even see the audio anymore, unless you dive into the compound clip.
I can’t stress this enough that it’s very important that you choose Save As and not just Save as Larry points out! If you just save it, it will just reference the audio file not save it in the QT. I had issues int the past where I deleted the Wav/aiff because I thought it was in the QT and found out later when I tried to open it that it want’s to go searching for the audio file.
You can confirm that the audio file is contained in the QT by going to Window>Show Movie Properties. Then click on the sound track and select the Resources tab. If it shows the name of the Qt your good.
Great tutorial, Larry! Thanks! As AaronV emphasizes above, using Save As is key to making sure the changes you’ve made get saved. Also, be sure to use Add instead Add to Selection and Scale if you want to maintain sound quality.
Thank you so much!!!! This just saved me so much re-rendering!!!!!
“However, with many of my webinars, I’ve discovered that the audio sync tends to slowly slip out of sync. I suspect this has to do with the frame rate that I record the webinars, which is 30 fps. I’ve tried a lot of different things to fix it, but haven’t found a solution.”
Slow your audio down to 99.9%. This makes the audio run nicely in sync.
this is a video 29.97fps and audio 30fps problem.
this was extremely helpful! Thank you so much.
Hey, I was just wondering if it was possible to save the movie file without changing the format to .mov?
Great.