What application or applications should I use to mute the audio in an
MPEG-2?  In other words, what program would best "insert silence", or
mute or "fade out" the audio in an MPEG-2?  I have several MPEG-2
clips.  Each one is of a waterfall in North Carolina.  I am currently
using Ulead VideoStudio 7 to edit (add transitions, music, etc) my
waterfall project.  I also have Ulead MediaStudio 7 which has included
an audio editor.  When using the audio editor I mute the audio or
insert silence ( which I believe are the same thing) and then save the
file, however it plays, but there is no longer any video.  I would
assume that once I use the audio editor in MediaStudio it changes
something in both the audio and video file in the MPEG-2 and therefore
the video is gone.  I have done a google search on "extracting audio
MPEG-2" and found these webpages:
http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?s=9e20553f24b7274d3a4ac1ab3c88f179&threadid=4250&highlight=extracting+audio+mpeg

http://www.animemusicvideos.org/guides/avtech/audio3d.html

http://forums.macrumors.com/archive/topic/8637-1.html

This last page discusses converting the MPEG2 file to a .DV file then
loading it into iMovie, yet I don't have iMovie.  I am also not sure
that would work for my situation.

Another suggestion on that webpage is to try Cleaner 5.  Do you think
this will work?

Let me tell you what I understand.  The MPEG2 is made of a .mpa and a
.mpg.  And I want to extract the .mpa (and in my case, discard
it...others want to extract it to use it for sampling or further
editing, but not me).  Yet when I extract the .mpa it changes the
overall MPEG2 file and programs like RealOne don't play the video any
longer.  I have tried a test with the Ulead MediaStudio where I only
deleted part of the audio.  When I played the clip back I could here
the portion of the audio that remained, but there was still no video.
And the file extension for the clip after I had deleted some or all of
the audio was .mpa ( I am not sure what it is before I try to
delete/mute the audio, perhaps .mpg?).  So I understand this to mean
that once I edit the MPEG2 with the audio editor it only saves the
file as a .mpa.

The background information on this project is as follows.  I am a
nature photographer, and my specialty is waterfalls.  I have taken
alot of waterfall footage with my Hi8 tape Sony videocamera.  I
purchased a ADS instant DVD video capture device to convert the Hi8
video tapes to MPEG2 to be edited on my computer.  I captured the
video footage with the audio, however my final project will have music
set to the waterfall footage.  I have discovered that the sound of the
waterfall footage is terrible because it is just white noise (pleasant
to listen to in reality, but not so good when you want music instead.
also not so good to listen to for an hour long.)  So, instead of
trying to recapture all the waterfall footage without hooking up the
audio cable which is a final result and could take up to 50 more
hours, I was hoping to take the sound out of the MPEG2 clips that I
have created.

Here is the website to Ulead   www.ulead.com   check out the tutorial
pages.  I looked there, but didn't find any tricks that helped.

More pages for your research:
http://www.epinions.com/content_83967250052


http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0000630SR/ref=e_de_a_smtpd/103-1663973-5423025?v=glance&s=electronics&n=507846&vi=tech-data

jay0216,

The easiest way to edit the audio of an mpeg2 file is to first
de-multiplex the audio and video into seperate files. Then, decompress
the audio file from its original form (probably mpeg layer 2) into a
widely accepted format such as a '.wav' file. Make the changes to the
'.wav' file. Recompress the '.wav' back to its original format, and
then re-multiplex the audio and video together.

Now, while that sounds pretty difficult, it's not really so hard. I'll
walk you through the easiest way of doing it with some free tools.

Programs to download and install :

- Tmpgenc @ http://www.tmpgenc.net/
- Audactiy @ http://audacity.sourceforge.net/



Step One (De-Multiplex)

(Sorry, hit the post button on accident)


jay0216, 
 
The easiest way to edit the audio of an mpeg2 file is to first
de-multiplex the audio and video into seperate files. Then, decompress
the audio file from its original form (probably mpeg layer 2) into a
widely accepted format such as a '.wav' file. Make the changes to the
'.wav' file. Recompress the '.wav' back to its original format, and
then re-multiplex the audio and video together.
 
Now, while that sounds pretty difficult, it's not really so hard. I'll
walk you through the easiest way of doing it with some free tools.
 
Programs to download and install : 
 
- Tmpgenc @ http://www.tmpgenc.net/ 
- Audactiy @ http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ 


Step One (De-Multiplex)
 - Run Tmpgenc, Click "File", Click "MPEG Tools"
 - Under the "Simple De-multiplex" tab, load the Input with the
"Browse" button
 - (it should default an .m2v and .mp2 file in the audio/video outs)
 - Click Run. Wait
 - Now you should have a seperate video/audio file

Step Two (Decompress Audio)
 - Run Tmpeg, Start a New Project (CTRL-N)
 - Load the Audio Source with the browse button (bottom)
 - Select the newly created .mp2 file
 - Select "File", "Output To File", "WAV File"
 - Select a location, and click "Save"
 - You now have the raw audio to edit with a program of your choice

Step Three (Edit the audio)
  You can use any program you would like for this step, but to keep
the guide
  complete, I suggest audacity. It's free. It's simple. It's nice. I
won't go
  into the details of how to edit it, because, frankly, I don't know
exactly
  what you want, and it's pretty self explanitory. So, edit the .wav
file to
  your liking, and save it as another .wav file with a new name.

Step Four (Re-compress the audio)
  I'm not sure what format the audio was in originally, but I'm
assuming it
  was the DVD standard (as it IS an mpeg2 file), so I'll show you how
to
  compress it using that standard.

 - Start Tmpgenc. New Project (CTRL-N)
 - Load the new .wav file with Browse (at the bottom)
 - Click the "Load" button (this loads the settings)
 - Select "DVD (NTSC).mcf", click "OPEN"
 - Change the stream type to "ES (Audio Only)" (the radio buttons)
 - Verify the output file name is correct, and not overwriting
anything
 - Click Start. Wait.
 - You should now have a newly created .mp2 file.

Step Five (Multiplex The New Audio and Old Video)
 - Start Tmpgenc. Click "File", "MPEG Tools..."
 - On The Multiplex Tab, Select "MPEG-2 Program VBR" as the Type
 - Select the original m2v file with Browse under Video Input
 - Select the new .mp2 file with Browse under Audio Input
 - Select an appropriate output .mpg file
 - Click "Run". Wait. It's all over.

Seems like a lot of work, but really it shouldn't take too long with
smaller video clips like the ones you described. Hope that all works
out for ya.

- Slinker