Overlaying narration and music tracks

[Guest]

What is the easiest way to put both narration and music tracks onto the
audio/music track in MM2 when I want them both to play at the same time?

At the moment I have five or so separate narration tracks that I want to
play at different points in the video, and a music track to go over the lot,
continuously. It is being a total pain because I have to keep splitting the
music track and then dragging it back across the narration, but it won't go
all the way back to the start of the narration track and I have annoying
little gaps in the music.

Surely there must be an easier way?

Also, because I want the music to quieten down when the narration comes on,
but still keep playing, I have to edit the volume of it separately. Is there
any way to do this at a certain point in an audio track without splitting it
and treating it separately?

 

[Bob [MVP]]

Movie Maker only supports one additional audio track overlay.
So if you want both music and narration, you need to do that
in a two-step process in Movie Maker.

1. Create a project where you do all your video editing,
and overlay your music track. Save that movie.

2. Create a new project where the only video imported is
the one you created in Step 1. Now overlay your narration
track, and save that movie.

The other alternative is you use another video editing
program that supports multiple audio tracks.

--
-Bob
_______________________________
Microsoft MVP
Windows XP Media Center Edition
http://www.microsoft.com/ehome

 

[Guest]

I imported the music track to the audio timeline, then played it while I
recorded my narration so both my voice and the background music ended up on
the narration. Then I replaced the music track with the narration track. As
long as I took a bit of time getting the music balance right so it didn't
either overpower my voice or sound too quiet in the bits I wasn't talking, it
worked really well.