Topic: Video problem: how to get decent quality audio
With the Pianoteq Video Competition now running, I wonder how many people are thinking something like this: how on earth does anybody manage to get decent quality audio onto a video without having some sort of nervous breakdown? And I don't mean 'surround sound studio master quality', just 'acceptable stereo'.
OK, so I'm confident working with audio files and still images – been doing it for years, I know my way around the formats – but video editing is new to me. The issue of video soundtrack quality, and how to get any sort of control over it, seems to be utterly baffling.
Here's what I've been trying to do. In a video editor, I prepared a simple slide show. Then I made up a test wav file in Pianoteq to use as soundtrack (note, not mp3 – that would be just asking for trouble). The wav was free of any clipping and normalised to a cautious -3dB, and I assumed I wouldn't have any problems. But, oh boy, did I have problems! Goodness knows how many export formats I tried, even one with a 'pcm uncompressed' audio option (the resulting file size was huge). In every single one, the audio sounded horrible and was full of clipping. There always seems to be some sort of rubbishy auto level control kicking in, which just ruins the sound. It didn't seem to matter what program I used: I tried Shotcut, VideoPad and OpenShot, with equally terrible results. I am well aware that if I uploaded a file to YouTube they would squish the hell out of it anyway, but if I was starting with a file that already had distorted audio I just wouldn't stand a chance. Garbage in, garbage out. So, any ideas where I might be going wrong? How do I stop that dreadful auto level control in its tracks before it trashes my audio?