Importing video

Before you can start working with video, you first need to import a video file. Let’s try this out with a new project.

1.	On the File menu, click New to open the New Project File dialog box.

2.	Select the Normal template, give your project a name and then click OK.

If you are having trouble with this, please refer to Tutorial 1 – Creating, playing, and saving projects.

3.	On the File menu, point to Import and select Video.

The Import Video dialog box appears.

Let’s explore some of the options in the Import Video dialog box.

The first thing you will notice is that this dialog box is very similar to the Open dialog box that was discussed in Tutorial 1. The Import Video dialog box functions in very much the same way with the exception of two sections.

First, outlined in the preceding image is the drop-down box Files of type. Making a selection here will determine which video formats are displayed in the dialog box. SONAR supports the following digital video formats:

Windows Media (.wmv and .asf)

Video For Windows (.avi)

MPEG Video (.mpg)

QuickTime Video (.mov)

The file we are interested in for this tutorial is a Windows Media file, so let’s select Windows Media (*.wmv, *.asf) in the Files of type list.

Next, outlined in the above image you will see the File info area on the left and three options on the right. Let’s review what each of these options do.

Table 9.  

Option	What it does
Show file info	When selected, this tells SONAR to display video information about the selected file in the File info area of the dialog box.
Import Audio Stream	Select this option if you want to import the video file’s embedded audio into a new audio track in SONAR.
Import as mono tracks	Select this option if you want to import the video file's embedded audio data as one or more mono tracks.

For now, let’s leave the Import Audio Stream and Show file info check boxes selected.

Just as you would with the Open dialog box, navigate to the following location: C:\Cakewalk Content\SONAR X3 [Producer or Studio]\Tutorial Projects\Video Tutorial

Locate and import the file named Boarding.wmv. You can open it by either double-clicking on it or highlighting it and then clicking the Open button.

Notice that SONAR imported any audio that is a part of the video as well. If the video does not have any audio already associated with it, then SONAR will create a silent audio track like in our example. You should now see the Boarding video in the Video view as well as the Video Thumbnail pane in the Track view.

 

Note: If you do not see any video frames in the Video Thumbnails pane, click the Show/Hide Video Thumbnails button in the Video Thumbnails track strip.