avidemux and kino - picture-in-picture syncing

this was my struggle yesterday: to take two videos, cut out the crap from both, fix a non-uniform audio shift, and then connect the two as a picture-in-picture.

step 1) shift and splice
i used avidemux, because project-x has the most incomprehensible interface i've ever come across. seriously, i don't know what the hell it's for.

to edit out with avidemux is fairly intuitive - mark a, mark b, cut... but only appending seems to work properly. so to move or insert, the video needs to be split into two segments, the first one opened, and then file - append used to add the second. no "cut & paste".

the problem with my videos was a non-uniform audio shift, so some of the video was in sync with the audio, most of it shifted, and some in opposite directions. again, splitting the video into multiple segments was necessary.

that couldn't be done first, though. not for me, at any rate. first item on the agenda was to save multiple copies of the full video, then shift the audio [the shift checkbox on the left side, both positive and negative numbers], and then splice according to a combination of sound / picture (i did the best i could).

again, it would be better to have a program like project-x with a usable interface to do all of that for you.

step 2 - picture-in-picture
kino is a nasty program. particularly because it tends to crash all the frikkin' time. it's also a bummer that it needs to convert your files to dv format, and then refuses to use ffmpeg for export - this meant that i could only produce huge mpeg-2 files instead of relatively tidy avis :(

also, by default "cleanup" (export - mpeg - advanced options) is selected: this "removes temporary files", but in essence removes your main output files too. that's remarkably dumb. it's advisable to uncheck the option.

to create a picture-in-picture, i loaded both the videos and used the composite function(fx - video transition). it's not complicated to play with the position and size settings to get the desired result, but what isn't clear is that the right slider bar (marked "end") needs to be moved all the way to the left in order to prevent the second image from taking over the screen by the end of the video...

and pay attention to the audio (fx - audio transition) - the default selection is "crossfade", not necessarily desirable.

step 3 - export
i got nothin'. but i will repeat everyone else's advice and make sure to enter the full path and not just the output filename.

so that's my "for complete morons" tutorial. if nothing else, i've gained a bit of confidence for next time :P