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

<h2>Overview of Operations</h2>

<dl class="narrower-table">
	<dt>Session &gt; Open Video</dt><dd>Add/replace a video to/on the timeline</dd>
	<dt>Window &gt; View Monitor</dt><dd>Open/close external video monitor window</dd>
	<dt>View &gt; Video Monitor &gt; …</dt><dd>Various settings of the video monitor</dd>
	<dt>Session &gt; Export &gt; Video</dt><dd>Export session and multiplex with video-file</dd>
	<dt>Drag the video in the timeline</dt><dd>Re-align video and move 'locked' audio-regions along</dd>
	<dt>Context-menu on the video-timeline: &#039;lock&#039;</dt><dd>prevent accidental drags</dd>
	<dt>Audio-Region &gt; context-menu &gt; Position &gt; Lock to video</dt><dd>mark audio-region(s) to be moved along with the video.</dd>
</dl>


<h2>Adding Video</h2>

<p>
Adding video is a two-step process.
</p>
<ol>
<li>Select video file
</li>
<li>Choose import-mode and optionally select an audio-track to extract
</li>
</ol>

<p>
<br/>

</p>


<p>
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:
</p>

<p>
<img src="/files/a3/a3_video_open.png" alt="video-open-dialog" width="300" />
</p>

<p>
<br/>
</p>

<p>
The second step analyzes the video file in more detail and offers import options:
</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Import/Transcode to Session</strong>. This is the default. The video will be imported in a suitable video-format/codec for the timeline and video monitor and saved inside the session folder. A location other than the session folder can also be chosen (external disk, network storage of the video server on a different machine…).
</li>
<li><strong>Reference from Current Location</strong>. Only useful for opening files that were previously encoded (are already in a good format/codec) use with care.
</li>
<li><strong>Do not Import Video</strong> - useful for extracting audio only.
</li>
</ul>

<p>
<img src="/files/a3/a3_video_import.png" alt="Video Import Dialog" width="300" />
</p>

<p>
<br/>
</p>

<p>
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 <em>mpeg2</em> - a denser compression algorithm than the <em>mjpeg</em> codec used by ardour.)
</p>

<h2>Working with A/V</h2>

<p>
Well now,..
</p>

<p>
<img src="/files/a3/a3_videotimeline.png" alt="Video Timeline" width="600" />
</p>


<h2>Exporting Video</h2>

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

<p>
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.
</p>

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

<p>
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&#039;s session range is shorter the video will be cut accordingly.
</p>

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

<p>
<img src="/files/a3/a3_video_export.png" alt="Video Export Dialog" width="300" />
</p>