Hey everyone,
First post here! I’m an intermediate user of Audacity (I know enough about audacity to edit and make things sound nice, but not enough that I’d know how to solve this on my own), so I’m hoping you all can help me with the issue I’m having. I’ll be willing to provide any information you folks would need, so feel free to ask.
I am editing a podcast, part of which is a discussion portion with a host and 2 participants. The only files I have to go off of for the discussion portion are:
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A track, recorded off a Discord bot called Pawa, containing the voices of all discussion participants, split into 2 parts because the bot could only record about 2 hours of audio at a time (I’ll call the first half “1a” and the second have “1b” on further reference), and
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A track containing just the voice of the host. This was recorded through audacity.
We tried to get files of each individual participant, recorded through Audacity, but for various reasons those were lost. One of the participants closed their Audacity without saving, and I think the other just never recorded in the first place. I did my best to coach all of them through how to make sure that they recorded and saved these tracks, but apparently that didn’t take. I tried to get the host to use a bot that recorded all participant’s voice tracks separately, but they used Pawa without notifying or consulting me first. These two tracks are all I’m working with. Re-recording is not going to be an option, as much as I would like it to be.
When I got track #1, I prayed that it would be usable, and unfortunately, it is not. The host cuts out very, very badly every single time they talk. My plan to work around this was to make sure tracks #1 and #2 sync up exactly, slowly go through the discussion, and silence all instances of the host talking on their own (with no cross-talk). It would take a long time, but that’s all I can think to do to salvage the audio.
Unfortunately, tracks #1a and #2 do not sync up exactly through the entirety of the project. They sync up perfectly at the beginning, but by the time #1a ends, it’s about a quarter of a second behind track #2. This is just long enough to be jarring and noticeable if I do what I planned to do above without trying to do some kind of tweak or adjustment. The same thing happens with #1b and #2, but to a lesser degree because #1b is shorter than #1a.
So, how should I go about fixing this in the most efficient way? I really don’t know where to start with this.
Any and all input is appreciated, and I’m sorry if this is a dumb question.