Audio Stream property suddenly disappeared.
Someone help me save my sanity. I am aware that this program cannot handle more than one audio track per media video track but the easy work around I was using was duplicating the video track in question in the imported asset bin and switching the audio stream source track. (ie if I was recording my Microphone to Track 1 and the game audio to Track 2, I would simply unlink and delete the duplicate video once placed onto the timeline and this would allow me two audio tracks that are synced.)
I recently used OBS' auto-detect for setting up my Youtube stream and now -- despite my OBS still recording separate audios to different tracks, when I attempt the workaround the property in the media clip "Audio Stream" no longer appears which means I can't add both the game audio and voice over.
I was using Hitfilm Express and have since uninstalled and reinstalled Hitfilm to no avail, the option is still missing even on media clips that previously had multiple audio tracks.
I tried switching my recording output file from mkv to mp4 and back with no results.
Any insight?
This is the option to which I refer;
Best Answer
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Hitfilm Express 2021.2/2021.3 and current Free Hitfilm both use the operating system demuxer+decoders for AVC+AAC MP4 media files. It would seem that the OS setup (Windows?) does not support multiple audio stream selection in an MP4 file.
Hitfilm Express less than version 2021.2(?), and paid Hitfilm licenses use a different setup to read media files that does support multiple audio streams in a MOV/MP4 file. FxHome is realistically using the OS setup so they lose less money on each Free license activated.
Answers
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Still occurring both in Hitfilm Express (2021.3 18.0.12014.44563) and regular Hitfilm (2022.3 19.2.3.0)
Very frustrating. -
Hmm, that gives me some information to play around with and try and hunt down the problem. Everything was working one day and the next it wasn't. No hardware changes, no software updates. The only thing I could possibly think of was deleting ffmpeg as it was a mismatch with my version of Audacity, but I reinstalled the version I was previously running and it did not solve the issue. Thanks for the insight, I will post when I am next at head-bashing-wall levels of frustration with an update haha!
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Welp, the issue is resolved but I am now left even more confused. I will highlight that media clips that absolutely did have 2 audio tracks (I know this for certain because I had already edited them into videos) now only have one, which is why importing them did not show the property. I verified the number of audio tracks using MediaInfo. I can't even begin to fathom what caused this change but I am now able to utilize the Audio Stream property on new recordings. I will provide my specs in the event it may help glean any information should someone come across this issue in the future.
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 4500 6-Core Processor 3.60 GHz
GPU(s): NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050ti
Operating System and version: Windows 10 Pro v.21H2, OS Build: 19044.2251
HitFilm Express version: 17, 2021.2 and 2021.3
Total RAM: 16GB
Any relevant steps or events that led to the issue:
1: Recorded gameplay with multiple audio tracks in OBS.
2: Edited the videos in Hitfilm with no problems, audio stream property intact.
3: Utilized OBS auto-config wizard to set up for Youtube streaming. (Selecting the Streaming priority, recording secondary option which does not ask about encoder preference, so it was not manually altered there. The summarized changes also do not show the encoder altered.)
4: (A few days later) Record gameplay with multiple audio tracks in OBS.
5: Attempt to edit the newly recorded gameplay in Hitfilm Express to find the media with no audio stream property missing.
6: Imported previously recorded gameplay to also find the audio stream property missing.
7: Verified that OBS audio recording properties were set to record audio to separate tracks.
8: Uninstalled FFMPEG v. 2.2.2
9: Installed FFMPEG v. 3.2
10: Updated Audacity to v. 3.2.1
11: Import both the previously recorded and newly recorded gameplay into Hitfilm, audio stream property still missing.
12: Record test media which still does not show audio stream property.
13: Uninstalled Hitfilm Express 2021.3
14: Install Hitfilm Express 2021.2
15: Repeat step 11, audio stream property still missing.
16: Uninstalled Hitfilm Express 2021.2
17: Installed Hitfilm Express 17
18: Repeat step 11, audio stream property still missing.
19: Reinstalled Hitfilm Express 2021.2
20: Verified OBS encoder settings had not changed. (I had not changed them from x264 to the NVIDIA NVENC encoder, and it was still set to x264 encoder.)
21: Record more test media.
22: Be completely dumbfounded as effectively no settings were changed across any of the programs between test recordings nor were there any OS updates, but the audio stream property is now visible.
23: Verified the new test media has multiple audio tracks with MediaInfo.
24: Verified that the media that previously had multiple audio tracks now only contain one with MediaInfo. -
FWIW. I created and tried a two audio track MP4 file. AVC video and AAC audio. Hitfilm Free 2022.3 let me select the second audio track.
Media File specs.
General Complete name : C:\Users\Norman\Documents\Video Projects\test Projects\play media\TwoAudioTrack_2nd.mp4 Format : MPEG-4 Format profile : Base Media Codec ID : isom (isom/iso2/avc1/mp41) File size : 26.1 MiB Duration : 11 s 712 ms Overall bit rate mode : Variable Overall bit rate : 18.7 Mb/s Writing application : Lavf58.12.100 Video ID : 1 Format : AVC Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec Format profile : [email protected] Format settings : 3 Ref Frames Format settings, CABAC : No Format settings, Reference frames : 3 frames Format settings, GOP : M=1, N=8 Codec ID : avc1 Codec ID/Info : Advanced Video Coding Duration : 11 s 712 ms Bit rate : 18.5 Mb/s Width : 1 920 pixels Height : 1 080 pixels Display aspect ratio : 16:9 Frame rate mode : Constant Frame rate : 29.970 (30000/1001) FPS Color space : YUV Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0 Bit depth : 8 bits Scan type : Progressive Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.297 Stream size : 25.8 MiB (99%) Writing library : x264 core 155 r2901 7d0ff22 Encoding settings : cabac=0 / ref=3 / deblock=0:0:0 / analyse=0x3:0x113 / me=hex / subme=7 / psy=1 / psy_rd=1.00:0.00 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=16 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=1 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / fast_pskip=1 / chroma_qp_offset=-2 / threads=12 / lookahead_threads=2 / sliced_threads=0 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / interlaced=0 / bluray_compat=0 / constrained_intra=0 / bframes=0 / weightp=0 / keyint=8 / keyint_min=1 / scenecut=40 / intra_refresh=0 / rc_lookahead=8 / rc=crf / mbtree=1 / crf=20.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=0 / qpmax=69 / qpstep=4 / ip_ratio=1.40 / aq=1:1.00 Language : English Color range : Full Color primaries : BT.709 Transfer characteristics : BT.709 Matrix coefficients : BT.709 Codec configuration box : avcC Audio #1 ID : 2 Format : AAC LC Format/Info : Advanced Audio Codec Low Complexity Codec ID : mp4a-40-2 Duration : 11 s 563 ms Bit rate mode : Constant Bit rate : 192 kb/s Channel(s) : 2 channels Channel layout : L R Sampling rate : 48.0 kHz Frame rate : 46.875 FPS (1024 SPF) Compression mode : Lossy Stream size : 275 KiB (1%) Language : English Default : Yes Alternate group : 1 Audio #2 ID : 3 Format : AAC LC Format/Info : Advanced Audio Codec Low Complexity Codec ID : mp4a-40-2 Duration : 3 s 65 ms Duration_LastFrame : -7 ms Bit rate mode : Variable Bit rate : 75.0 kb/s Maximum bit rate : 96.0 kb/s Channel(s) : 2 channels Channel layout : L R Sampling rate : 8 000 Hz Frame rate : 7.812 FPS (1024 SPF) Compression mode : Lossy Stream size : 28.1 KiB (0%) Default : No Alternate group : 1