A Program to Mute (or replace) Audio in a Video

[Sir Topham Hatt]

I have a video file (mp4) that I want to delete or replace the audio from a little section of it.

 

Programs like Video Re-Do are great but there's no simple option to delete the audio.

 

Downloaded Lightworks but I don't have a clue what I am doing.  I seem to have made a section of the video with no audio but it's only that section and I can't get it to replicate on the main video, so useless.

 

Gave Adobe After Effects a go.  Managed to figure the way out to make a selection of the audio I want removing.  Then managed to mute it - great!  But now I can't save it.  Why Adobe in particular has to make things difficult I don't know.  MS Word, click Save As and you can save it as anything.  Adobe gives me a chance to save the project file - okay, that's good.  But I can't save the video?  I'll try export.  No options there.  I can add it to some queue but now I have to waste life trying to find a "go" button to export it.  Why not just make it easy? FFS.

Turns out I muted the whole video so back to the beginning with that then.  Why can't you just click on the selected IN-OUT portion, then on the top right hand side, turn the audio down?

 

A simple task that is anything but simple.

 

Any ideas?

Edited July 6, 2017 by Sir Topham Hatt

[+BudMan MVC]

handbrake will do this easy!

 

Just add what ever audio track you want, pull the audio track out and then put in the audio track you want.

 

If you want to get fancier check out

http://www.openshot.org/

 

Free opensource video editor with lots of features.

 

 

[Sir Topham Hatt]

Hmm, you say "easy"... I call easy "File > Save As" or "File > Export > Audio" or anything similar.

Installed handbrake, opened the file but there appears to be no way to export ONLY the audio so I can mess about editing it, then re-ad it.

 

I don't really understand why there's a huge amount of video editors but when you want to change the audio, the options are non-existent within the same programs.

 

I'll need a couple of pointers for handbrake - Google has not been my friend in this case.  Just full of old info that doesn't exist anymore.

[+BudMan MVC]

Guess that was my bad.

 

Just clear the audio with handbrake.  encode it to the video format container you want mp4 or mkv.  Now the audio is gone. 

 

To add audio to your now no audio mp4/mkv file.. Handbrake is not good for this - guess I should of been more clear.  Handbrake is fine for deleting tracks or selecting just the tracks from the original you want in your new output.  But yeah for adding some external audio or audio you have manipulated back in.  It is not a good choice - sorry.  I zero'd in on your delete statement and kind of overlooked the replace part.  Use the other tool I linked to for such complicated edits of your file.

 

Here I took the video file I removed the audio from with handbrake, and then will add this audio m4a file. 

 

The software has tutorials that should get you going fairly quickly.  This sort of editing is bit more in depth then just point and click sort thing But it if fairly easy to pick up.

 

[dragontology]

People often overlook VLC, but it's pretty good at converting formats.

 

Media → Convert/Save

 

Add → browse to the video in question. Click Convert/Save at the bottom.

 

Choose a profile. For the sample video I chose (Netflix's Death Note trailer, downloaded from YouTube) "Video - H.264 + MP3 (MP4)" is selected. That might be what the input file is. MP4 and MKV are 'container' files that contain mixed media that is muxed (mixed) together. H.264 is the video and MP3 is the audio. You can choose another one, but I wouldn't worry too much.

 

Click the tools/setting icon to the immediate right (wrench and screwdriver in an X formation). Leave encapsulation alone (this is the container you're producing, and it's probably fine. Leave the Video codec tab alone, though you may have cause to change it for another job. For the Audio codec tab, un-check Audio. Do with the Subtitles tab as you wish. Now hit Save below.

 

Click Browse. Type in the name of your new file. Press Save. Press Start. VLC will look like it's speeding through the file (depending on the speed of your PC) but no video will play. When it's done, open your new file in VLC (or whatever, really) and see that it does not have audio.

 

Handbrake is a great program and I use it, but a lot of people don't have it, and they might have VLC. I've replaced VLC with MPC-BE as my media player, but I keep VLC (and MPC-HE and SMPlayer) as a backup, and also it can do this thing and some other cool things.

 

Also, if you want to get to a faster PC, you can get VLC on PortableApps and run it off a flash drive, for example if your work PC is faster, you can do the job there. I may, or may not, have done something similar when the work computer got Ivy Bridge and I had a lowly Phenom II X2 at home. Now I have a Xeon and it's a beast so if I hypothetically did this thing, I absolutely don't now.