Trying to add an image overlay to a mp3 file and then export to mp4

[lennartk35255361]

Hi all,

I'm trying to convert about 500 mp3 files to mp4 videos with a logo in the embedded. I can do this with Premiere Pro, just add the mp3 to my audio track and add the image to my video track. However, all mp3 files differ in length and there's an awful lot of them so this is a lot of work. I tried doing the same process in Adobe Media Encoder: I add an mp3 file, AME can convert it to a mp4 video just fine. In the export settings I add the Image overlay option and add my image. In the preview window it shows up just how I want it, but when I convert the video nothing shows up in the screen. Am I doing something wrong or is this just not supported? If so, does anyone have a suggestion on how to solve this? I think ffmpeg can do it, but I have no idea how that works and a lot of answers on the internet about that seem to be outdated or don't work. Letting someone else do it isn't an option either because new mp3 files get added weekly.

Thanks a lot!

[Byron Cortez · Accepted solution]

First read the link that I'm attach or the image and then export it to a codec of what AME is suitable for.

Dropped support for QuickTime 7 era formats and codecs

[lennartk35255361]

Hi Byroncortezh,

Thanks for your swift reply! I tried all of the output formats that I could find in AME and AS-10 & AS-11 finally produced videos with my image instead of just videos with black screens. However, the filesize of an AS-11 exported video is 820MB, while the MP4 videos that I manually export with Premiere are just around 10MB. Do you think there's another option? Or would it be best to export all videos to AS-11 formats (.mxf) first and then transcode those to mp4?

Thanks a lot!

Lennart.

[Byron Cortez]

Many times we have to do what we do not want and if this is the case, do it! Any solution is valid.

[lennartk35255361]

You're absolutely right. What I did in the end is encode all mp3 files to mxf files using the AS-11 preset and then adding the image overlay to that. After that, I encoded the mxf files to mp4 using the default settings and without the image overlay. This did the job magnificently. Thanks so much for your help! You've saved me a lot of time .

[Byron Cortez]

You're welcome!

[ivansull]

Hi, this is a known issue with exports from audio-only sources in AME, see this related thread: Adding visual timecode to audio-only media

One workaround mentioned in the link above is to add the exported file from the 1st job (with no effects) back to AME's queue and apply the same preset with overlay effects and re-encode.  The overlay effects should be added with the 2nd export, although this will process the audio twice so there may be a slight loss in audio quality depending on the format.

You could even automate this process by creating two Watch Folders, each with the same overlay effects preset applied.  Set the output of the 1st watch folder to the 2nd watch folder, then when you add audio files to the 1st folder they will automatically get exported again by the 2nd folder.

[Peter38623544clx9]

If anyone stumbles across this thread- a simpler way to do this is just to run the MP4 video conversion twice; this solves the disk-usage problem the original poster had by two-stepping through MXF.

Just run an MP4 conversion on your audio, then take the resulting file and run the same MP4 conversion with the effect options -> Image Overlay.  The second time through the file will pick up the image overlay.

(This makes sense, because the second time around it's no longer an audio-only source, it's a video source with just black filler).

This works with the watch folder workflow as well.