Here’s the video that I created in REAPER in the process of the tutorial. When I think of the hours I’ve spent calculating frames in Avidemux, or waiting for Premiere Elements to redraw, or being told by Windows Movie Maker that it can’t deal with my file … Drag and drop, drag and drop, trim, drag and drop, trim, and render. The whole process is so easy that instead of writing detailed instructions I decided to simply shoot a video of shooting a video and demonstrate the syncing process. If I’m shooting on location it’s a snap to bring the recordings back to the PC and drop them into REAPER. If I’m shooting video around my studio, I’m all ready to record audio into REAPER, so there’s another step out of the way. mts files from my Panasonic Lumix TS2 failed to open, and I was able to convert them to an AVI that REAPER liked. I’ve tried clips from three camcorders so far, the Kodak Zi8, the Flip Ultra HD, and the Sanyo Xacti HD2000. Once the FFmpeg libraries are in place, just open the video file like any audio file, or drag and drop from your file browser into the REAPER track window.

First, go to the CockosWiki Video Support page for instructions on adding the FFmpeg libraries to the REAPER program directory. Now with REAPER we can create our videos just like they do it in the movies – recording the sound on a high quality audio system positioned for the best audio quality while capturing the video at the distance needed for framing and perspective. Many of us also have a fairly high quality recording system of some kind. We use inexpensive pocket video cameras, and they have at best mediocre sound quality. Many of us like to post simple performance videos on YouTube – not big production numbers but simple clips showing off our latest tune or instrument or technique. I’m totally happy with my video editing system since I moved to Edius Neo 2.5, but when I played around with video in REAPER I realized that this is a tool many musicians want and need. Now for the icing on the cake – the development team has linked in the FFmpeg video libraries and given REAPER the ability to do simple video editing.

All these factors make it a real pleasure to use. It’s a powerful and reliable program in a fast moving package, with a very active and helpful user community. I’ve been moving my audio processing to REAPER over the last year or so.

Ffmpeg cut video sync audio