Editing Audio
In terms of sound editing, it seems like Audacity is still the best choice. It is a free, open-source project available for both PC and Mac:
Here’s some tutorials for working with Audacity. I’m sure you can go to YouTube to find some screencast tutorials as well.
If you have a Mac, then you also have the choice of Garage Band, which (if I remember correctly) is still included for free with any Mac computer. Here’s a few screenshots:
The image shows a project in Garageband. I created this project from the new project screen, using “vocal” as my input choice. I can easily adjust the volume of the piece. Using the “browse” tab on the right, I can find a number of filters. I can then double click on the small selection in the top section to open the audio region area on the bottom. This lets me manipulate the sound track (cutting parts out, stretching them, adjusting volume, etc).
One more image:
Notice the blue button in the bottom right corner? That opens my media browser. So here’s the really cool part: Garage Band will open the audio file for any movie you have in your media browser. You can edit (and layer, if you want background tracks!) in GarageBand, and it will make the changes automatically in iMovie. Like a God Damned Professional! Here’s a tutorial for creating voiceovers in Garageband for iMovies (5 minutes). Here’s a link that walks through this a bit on an iPad.
And, while it doesn’t have anything to do with the project, this “create your own ringtone” demo is pretty cool.
Unfortunately, if you are using a PC, you don’t have free access to a program that can emulate iMovie/Garage Band. You can use the USF Apps portal to connect to Adobe Premier and Adobe Soundbooth, but I don’t recommend it (definitely not if you use Brighthouse Cable for your Internet provider, you might be able to swing it with Verizon). While the USF Apps portal gives you free access to any program, Premier is incredibly large and taxing; past students report that it crashes frequently when you try to access it online.
You can still edit movie audio in audacity. The Audacity project site has some information on how to do this. It requires you install and additional download, called the FFmpeg library.
File Formats
A final word on video file formats: there is a variety of them, but it is helpful to know which ones are the most agnostic and compatible. Generally speaking, if you have the option, then you should save/convert/export (whatever) using the .mpg (or .mp4) extension. This is the universal standard.
iMovie, if I remember correctly, will by default use the .mov extension. This is less universal, and unless someone has a video converter program or quicktime on their computer, they may not be able to view the video (almost every computer has one of those things, but not *every* computer).
MovieMaker, if I remember correctly, will by default use the .wmv extension. This extension is no longer supported by Mac, so unless they have downloaded FlipForMac converter, Mac users will be unable to watch your video.
Here is an obnoxiously long list of video file formats.
