Censoring Aduio in Quicktime

September 14, 2007 10:54 AM

How can I censor the audio in an .avi file using Quicktime Pro?

I've got this hilarious video of my wedding reception "after party." It's comedic gold and I wanted to post it online for some other friends and family to see except that in two separate sections someone says something totally inappropriate. Thus I just need to either cut the audio at those two points (for like 2 seconds each) or dub it over with a censoring *BEEP* (which might actually be funnier). Using Quicktime Pro I've figured out how to overlay the current audio with other audio (i.e. inserting a soundtrack), but this doesn't actually remove what was said and it can still be heard over the insert. Can what I want to do be accomplished with QT Pro?

Video was shot as .avi.

posted by Smarson to technology (6 comments total)

Have you tried just opening the QT video file in an audio editor like Audacity? I think it will just open the audio stream in the file and let you edit it. Bad things might happen though (desynching) if you change the overall length, so be careful. But that ought to make it trivial to paste a sine wave 'beep' over the part you need to censor.
posted by Kadin2048 at 11:13 AM on September 14, 2007

Audacity, you say. I'll have to look into that. Thanks.
posted by Smarson at 11:45 AM on September 14, 2007

Extract the audio from QT Pro (File -> Export) and open in Audacity or some sound editor. Blank out the bad bits and save. Open that new audio file in QT Pro, Edit -> Select All and Copy. Then open your video in QT Pro. Edit -> Delete Tracks... and remove the sound track. Then Edit -> Add

And you'll have new sound, and hopefully everything is still in sync.
posted by kamelhoecker at 12:06 PM on September 14, 2007

@ Kamekhoecker: Awesome. Thanks for the step by step. Follow-up question: Where should I look for a program that does all this?
posted by Smarson at 12:18 PM on September 14, 2007

Audacity The single best open source (free) audio editor available anywhere.
posted by worker_bee at 1:04 PM on September 14, 2007

Note: if you want the "beep" instead of silence, Audacity can do that too. Use Generate-->Tone, and plug in 1000 Hz to get the right pitch.
posted by O9scar at 9:53 PM on September 14, 2007