I recently started making some let’s plays from some wise advice about monetizing your dopamine addiction.
As a big proponent of “do it poorly, then get better” I started just doing very, very basic videos. Cheap microphone, no transitions or graphics, just gameplay with some commentary. Well the audio was not great. In some videos you can’t hear me at all almost. Part of that is these are often done late at night or early in the morning and I don’t want to wake any one else in the house.
So time to start doing some minor video editing as part of “getting better.”
Step One: Switch OBS to record to multiple audio tracks
I made a major mistake when I first tried this.
I set my microphone to record on a different track than my game input. This is the right thing to do. However, I did not go into OBS’s recording settings and set the audio to advanced -> multi track recording.
Result was I have a 45 minute video with just gameplay sounds, none of my commentary was recorded.
Both steps are required to get multiple audio tracks in your recording.
Step Two: Choose a video editing software (or audio) that can do what you want
I knew about OpenShot as a free video editor so decided to give it a try.
It can almost do what I want, but not quite. While I was googling how to do things in OpenShot, I came across another opensource video editor called ShotCut that ended up being able to do exactly what I wanted.
Step Three: How to separate your audio tracks in ShotCut and increase the volume of the quiet one.
- Load your video into ShotCut
- Drag it down into the timeline
- Right click in the timeline and choose detach audio
- In the video part of the timeline, right click and select “Properties”
- On the audio tab, set the audio to track 1 (or whatever track you want)
- In the new audio only part of the timeline, right click and select “Properties”
- Set the audio to track 2 (or whichever track your second audio stream is coming in on
- To increase the volume of a given track, with the track selected click the Filters button at the top
- Add a “Volume/Gain” filter to the track
- Slide the volume adjust bar left for lower volume and right for higher volume as needed
- Voila!
Hope this helps
Keep getting wiser, stronger, and better.