Make a fake crossfade in Womble and other valuable info

I use womble for virtually all of my edits. In my latest (in the works) edit I found a way to get around an audio glitch and around using a fade to connect two clips that may produce a hard audio cut

Womble has a cross fade option for audio only if you use special effects.

I kind of figured an easy way to get a cross fade without it (damn program should offer that as a regular option)

ok for this example we are going to have two clips named 1 and 2.

It also should be noted now that womble will allow you to extend a clip if you pull/drag at the end of it

so let us say clip 1 is 2 mins long, but for our project we had to cut it at 1 minute. Even though the clip is 1 min on the timeline, let us say we now need that clip to really be 1min 20 seconds. Drag the end side of the clip (like as if you are going to pull one end of it, womble will only highlight the end of the clip and not the whole thing) and the clips running time will extend for however long you drag it (which you can fine tune)

I mentioned that because it is a needed part

ok so on our timeline we have clip 1 joined with clip two. We have a fade out for clip 1's audio and a fade in for clip two to remove any hard audio cut. Though it would be better if it made a crossfade to blend these two audio sources together and giving you something much better than a fade

here is what we do. Right click on clip 1 and hit copy. Now go down two rows on womble's timeline to the extra audio line. Right click/paste

Womble will allow you if your video has audio to copy and paste the clip on the audio timeline

Match the durations so if your video starts at the 10min 04 second mark, your audio clip should start on this mark as well to sync them.

On the video line right click on clip 1 and select audio and Mute the track

Now clip 1 will be using the audio you copied from the video timeline to the audio timeline and
if you have it start in the same spot the sync should be fine.

here is the crossfade effect. On the video time line take a look where clip 1 and 2 meet. On the audio timeline drag/pull the end of clip 1 a second or two over into the start time of clip 2

this will work as a fake crossfade. You can still fade out the audio of clip 1 because the fade will occur after clip 2 has started. Likewise add a 1-2 second fade in on clip 2

In the end as clip 1 is fading out, clip 2 is fading in but at one point both sounds overlap in a nice mix

I am sure I made this much more confusing than it had to be, but I hope you get the idea

Nice guide. This is pretty much exactly what I do, but I work with separate audio and video files, so there's no need to copy the video file to the audio timeline and mute the video clip. This method won't always work if the part you're stretching the one or two seconds has dialogue or different music, but in most cases it produces a nice effect.

Another thing I've found that's very helpful is to export an ac3 file when you're finished your edit. Delete all the audio clips from the timeline and replace it with one ac3 file and save under a different name in case you need to make more changes later. Having one audio file to burn to disc I've found completely removes any audio issues created by womble. My biggest problem was that my receiver would "hiccup" (for lack of a better term) whenever a crossfade was made if I burned a disc without creating a single, separate ac3 file.

I do that as well. I do that for video. I add whatever effects I need and then frameserve this into something else.

Once done that becomes my new video clip. I then will remove the video from the timeline and the audio I layed out will now be easier to work with. This way I do not have to worry about womble screwing up a video if 900 edits and transitions are used on it.


For this edit I had to export both vid and aud and then combine them to one file just so I could use a fake multi track view in womble. Now I have my main film encoded, and a slightly modded audio file only now with the audio timeline free again for more changes

I do have better programs for that sort of thing, but they then add another
level of mess for the mpeg format that is not worth dealing with

if womble added at least two video and audio timelines they would truly have something here

Adabisi said:

Nice guide.

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Indeed it is! Thank you very much ofr putting it together, Tranzor. I too wish Womble had a crossfade option that could be used independently of FX. I'm avoiding using any FX because the quality hit is unacceptable to me. I tried it and the result wasn't pretty. Whoever said Womble had a poor encoder wasn't kidding!

When I'm fading audio in and out I leave a few frames in the audio clip sticking out beyond the first video clip after I split it. I also leave a few frames of the audio before the point where I cut the second video clip. If I fade out the first audio and fade in the second it tends to work. I find it easier to work in frames rather than seconds when adding a fade.

Adabisi said:

This is pretty much exactly what I do, but I work with separate audio and video files, so there's no need to copy the video file to the audio timeline and mute the video clip. Another thing I've found that's very helpful is to export an ac3 file when you're finished your edit. Delete all the audio clips from the timeline and replace it with one ac3 file and save under a different name in case you need to make more changes later.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I've been working with separate files too, as I've been following ADM's guide. I'll have to re-import an AC3 file I made as I have to change something in the first disc of my project. I hope Womble's AC3 encoder is better than its video one and I don't lose quality.

I wish Womble would let you group a load of clips on different channels and move them as one, because you have to move everything manually to change something, unless you re-import and work from your new file. You can only group clips in the same channel.

Womble's a nice program but it's annoyingly limited where it doesn't need to be. The audio shift function doesn't work for me. (I know how to do it). It's always greyed out no matter what I do.

if you just highlight the video line and right click and then hit select all, this will just select all of the items on the video timeline and leave the audio line alone

tranzor said:

if you just highlight the video line and right click and then hit select all, this will just select all of the items on the video timeline and leave the audio line alone

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Of course it will, but I'd like to be able to shift everything in the whole project, not just in one channel, otherwise everything will go out of sync if I change one thing, and I'll have to realign the whole project. -_-

Captain Khajiit said:

tranzor said:

if you just highlight the video line and right click and then hit select all, this will just select all of the items on the video timeline and leave the audio line alone

Click to expand...

Of course it will, but I'd like to be able to shift everything in the whole project, not just in one channel, otherwise everything will go out of sync if I change one thing, and I'll have to realign the whole project. -_-

Click to expand...

if you are just dragging the whole video timeline as one clip (highlight the first or last clip on the timeline. Now hold down the shift key and highlight the opposite clip (so if you highlighted the last clip first, now click on the first clip). This will highlight everything but more importantly you can drag everything as if it were one clip (if you still have an issue, open womble's help guide and do a search for the word "shift" and then check out the timeline category it list)

My point is this, where ever you move it to, right click on the first clip and select location and duration. It will now tell you exactly where on the timeline your stuff starts. Doing the same method above for your audio timeline you can easily re-sync up your stuff without a problem

tranzor said:

My point is this, where ever you move it to, right click on the first clip and select location and duration. It will now tell you exactly where on the timeline your stuff starts. Doing the same method above for your audio timeline you can easily re-sync up your stuff without a problem

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Yes; I do understand your point. Actually, I didn't realize that you can group all files and move them as one in a channel, even if there are gaps between them, because my guide said that they have to be neighbouring clips to group select them. Bear in mind, I'm using an old .pdf downloaded from Womble's website because the Womble's help guide crashes every time I load it up. :-( I don't know why, but the website does say the .pdf is not as up to date.

I do think it becomes more difficult with more than one audio timeline, because if one file overlaps another part way through the file and you move that file I don't see how you can sync the second audio track, unless you count frame by frame, which is tedious. I still think Womble should have the option of moving clips in different time lines all together. It seems an obvious feature to include really.

Am I missing something here? Ctrl + left click until everything (video and audio) is selected, then move them all at once.

No; I'm missing something! You're absolutely right: it does work. I tried to use the select all feature in one channel and then tried to select all in another, which you can't do,as it deselects the first channel. I then tried to group them in different channels, which you also cannot do. It never occurred to me to select everything individually. Thanks, Adabisi! :grin:

Adabisi said:

Am I missing something here? Ctrl + left click until everything (video and audio) is selected, then move them all at once.

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Is that piece of info something you found out or in the guide? If it is in the guide please let me know where because I did not see that listed

tranzor said:

Adabisi said:

Am I missing something here? Ctrl + left click until everything (video and audio) is selected, then move them all at once.

Click to expand...

Is that piece of info something you found out or in the guide? If it is in the guide please let me know where because I did not see that listed

Click to expand...

Isn't Ctrl + left click something that's common to pretty much every windows program out there for selecting multiple "things"? Like in Explorer, you do that to select more than one file (say, for deletion). Or in WMP to select more than one mp3 file. Or Foobar to select more than one FLAC file. Or... pretty much any program to select more than one anything. It just makes sense that Womble would operate the same way.

Is this really not common info?

no the more common method is using ctrl +A to highlight everything at once. I tried that initially, but doing it with ctrl A it would not let you move anything as one

never heard of ctrl left click until you mentioned it

It's not in the guide and it does work. You're right: it is common knowledge. I just overlooked the obvious. Sorry for being an idiot, and causing all of this!

it may be common knowedge for you guys, but I never heard of it until now.

Also you did not cause a mess. At some point newer womble users might have similar questions and now they can have some answers to them

Okay, Tranzor! No worries, pal! As an example of a program in which you use control left click to select items after using shift to highlight many ... windows explorer! :smile:

ahh see in that I still use ctrl +a for all and if i want to just highlight a few I hold down the ctrl key and left click on the ones I want to highlight

So, Tranzor, when you say you work with a file that's both audio and video, I take it you're using an .mpg. Do you rip it as separate streams as ADM suggests and multiplex it in Womble, or do you do it another way?

Also, when you drag an audio clip to stretch it, doesn't that make the audio sound stretched too? Just wondering!

Captain Khajiit said:

So, Tranzor, when you say you work with a file that's both audio and video, I take it you're using an .mpg. Do you rip it as separate streams as ADM suggests and multiplex it in Womble, or do you do it another way?

Also, when you drag an audio clip to stretch it, doesn't that make the audio sound stretched too? Just wondering!

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Adm's guide is a little outdated, but depending on the disc I either

a: rip it as a dvd on the hard drive and use pgcdemux to get my clips
B: use dvd decrypter to rip it to a full vob/mpg one file format (one clip)

Either way I then use womble and run it's gop fixer on it (98% of the time it is just fixing audio pts time code problems) which is mainly to fix gop time code problems. You can run the gop fix on a full stream with audio, it does not just
have to be an elementary video clip only

I like working with my clips as a whole if I can (multiplxed). If I use the pgcdemux method and after I run a gop fix (if it was even needed). I then have womble quickly mutliplex the two streams back together as one clip

If I have it already as one clip and after the gop run, well I am set.

Dragging the audio will only affect the time duration of the clip, not the speed.

Cool! I'll have to try pgcdemux some time.