How best to do this?

[Armistice]

Hi

I'm making a short movie of 4 people sitting round a square table, talking. There are two people on each of two edges, so no-one round the other two sides. Two camera angles. There's also microphone in front of each pair of people recording the conversation, so I don't need to rely upon the camera audio.

Three scenes. Three takes of each scene. Two cameras. I stopped the cameras and audio recording between each take.. in hindsight perhaps I should have let it roll, but too late now.

Thus I have 18 separate movies and 18 separate audio tracks - I need to edit this into a movie, and I'll need to add additional sound (music track / background noise track) in as well.

I haven't listened to any of the audio yet but I'm assuming I'll at least have to HPF it as there was a large commercial fridge nearby that hopefully I can rumble filter out. There will also be a need to adjust volumes of both microphone tracks against each other, and also individual voices on the same track as people weren't speaking at the same volume.

Generally I'll cut from camera to camera depending upon who's speaking at the time. I'm hoping I can use complete takes but may need to splice from different takes together.

How to proceed? The audio was recorded in Reaper, the movie will be assembled in Sony Vegas.

My main issue is how to keep it all together given I have to use two different programs?

I'm thinking I get absolutely everything together in a long line in Vegas and using one of the camera audio tracks as a guide, line up the mic audio tracks underneath, then render the audio only, one mic track at a time, via Vegas - so I now have a continuous audio track comprising the 9 scenes - dump them in Reaper, do whatever processing and volume adjustments I need to in Reaper, then render each track separately and bring back into Vegas and re-line them up with the audio.

Thus I would have two camera tracks and two audio tracks all lined up in Vegas, I can disard the camera audio and I can then edit the movie together, discarding the footage I don't need, so long as I'm careful to keep the various audio tracks and video tracks together.

Once I've done that I can chuck in the music and background noise and add additional video effects, titles, credits etc. and done.

But is this the way to do it or am I overcomplicating things and there's some other, simpler way that I'm not aware of...

All suggestions greatly appreciated. I have not much time so I'm after the quickest solution...

Thanks in advance..

 

[Chili]

Don't forget, Vegas can use VST plugs, so maybe you can do everything in Vegas.

Two cameras, so two video tracks with associated audio. Then two more audio tracks for your mics.

GROUP (or LINK or whatever they call it) the mic audio tracks to their associated camera/camera audio track.
Line them up on the timeline in sequence as you need.
Use video envelopes to cue from one camera or the other. Same with audio. Mute the camera audio like you said.
Apply video and audio effects/processing as needed.
Render.

 

[Armistice]

Don't forget, Vegas can use VST plugs, so maybe you can do everything in Vegas.

Two cameras, so two video tracks with associated audio. Then two more audio tracks for your mics.

GROUP (or LINK or whatever they call it) the mic audio tracks to their associated camera/camera audio track.
Line them up on the timeline in sequence as you need.
Use video envelopes to cue from one camera or the other. Same with audio. Mute the camera audio like you said.
Apply video and audio effects/processing as needed.
Render.

Hmmm... didn't know that about the VSTs...

I think I'm going to have to decide upon the relevant footage first and go from there, was going to leave that to later.

I have some file renaming to do so I can work out what's what later.

Onwards.... thanks Chili...

 

[Armistice]

Additional theoretical question about audio..

This film is meant to simulate being somewhere having drinks whilst the four people chat amongst themselves. I'm going to add a background noise track that doesn't have music, and some generic thumpy thumpy music such as you'd find at a bar....

I'm thinking that my best bet regarding adding the music is to shelve off a lot of the high frequencies and keep the volume low, so you're getting the thumpy thumpy bit and can vaguely work out what it might be but it's all a bit nondescript and you can focus on what's being said, which is the point of the video...

Sound reasonable?

Cheers