--- layout: default title: Workflow & Operations ---

Overview of Operations

Session > Open Video
Add/replace a video to/on the timeline
Window > View Monitor
Open/close external video monitor window
View > Video Monitor > …
Various settings of the video monitor
Session > Export > Video
Export session and multiplex with video-file
Drag the video in the timeline
Re-align video and move 'locked' audio-regions along
Context-menu on the video-timeline: 'lock'
prevent accidental drags
Audio-Region > context-menu > Position > Lock to video
mark audio-region(s) to be moved along with the video.

Adding Video

Adding video is a two-step process.

  1. Select video file
  2. Choose import-mode and optionally select an audio-track to extract


The first step is rather straight forward: The panel on the right side allows to seek through the video and displays basic file information. It is also useful to check if the video format/codec is supported:

video-open-dialog


The second step analyzes the video file in more detail and offers import options:

Video Import Dialog


By default the video is imported using the original width/height. If it is a large video (e.g. full-HD) it makes sense to scale it down to decrease the CPU load and disk I/O which required to decode and play the file. A small, low-quality representation of the image is usually sufficient for editing sound-tracks. The default bitrate in kbit/sec is set to use 0.7 bits per pixel. (compare: the average DVD medium uses 5000kbit/sec; at PAL resolution this is about 0.5 bits per pixel - but the DVD is using the mpeg2 - a denser compression algorithm than the mjpeg codec used by ardour.)

Working with A/V

Well now,..

Video Timeline

Exporting Video

The video-export will take audio from the current Ardour session and multiplex it with a video-file.

By default the video file that is displayed on the timeline is used as video-source. This may not be the best option but is usually sufficient for dailies and demo snapshots. For high quality exports the original file (before it was imported in the timeline) should be used. Any existing audio tracks on the video-file are stripped.

The soundtrack of the video is taken from an audio-export of Ardour's master bus.

The range selection allows to cut or extend the video. If the session is longer than the video duration, black frames are prefixed or appended to the video. If Ardour's session range is shorter the video will be cut accordingly.

Audio-samplerate and normalize-audio are options for Ardour's audio exporter. The remaining settings are options that are directly passed on to ffmpeg.

Video Export Dialog