Australian PC World - Swap sounds in .AVI files

Swap sounds in .AVI files

Tip
Got an .AVI video clip with a nice soundtrack you'd like to use elsewhere -- as the Windows startup sound, for example? Or found a clip that would be great in a presentation -- once you replace the soundtrack with one of your own?
Free- and shareware video editors are nonexistent as far as I know, with one exception: Microsoft's free VidEdit utility, part of the developers' edition of Video for Windows. You may be able to find this software on the Multimedia Jumpstart CD-ROM (although that product is officially discontinued) or in Sirius Publishing's 10 Pak. You might have better luck checking on Microsoft's FTP site for a developer's version of Video for Windows that includes VidEdit (ftp://ftp .microsoft.com/developr/drg/ multimedia/jumpstart/vfw11e/odk/ winvideo/). Download the directory's contents to a temporary directory, run the setup program, then restart Windows. The program will install and run under Windows 3.1 and Win95.
To extract the .WAV file soundtrack from an .AVI clip and save it as a separate file, open the clip in VidEdit, select the beginning and end of the audio section you'd like to copy using the Mark In and Mark Out buttons, choose File--Extract, select Microsoft Waveform as the file type, enter a path and file name for the new file, then click OK.
To see the new sound file in Windows 95's Control Panel Sound applet's default list, save it to the \windows\media directory. Select File--Insert to add audio to .AVI clips, but note that the new material will replace the existing soundtrack in the area selected by Mark In and Mark Out. To mix new and existing audio, first extract the soundtrack, use Windows' Sound Recorder's Edit--Mix with File command to blend new audio with old, then insert the new soundtrack into the .avi clip.
- Scott Spanbauer

Category: Multimedia, Win95
Issue: Nov 1996
Pages: 182