Audio and music

An audience will forgive a bad shot; they will not forgive bad sound. A slightly murky picture is watchable, but if the speech is buried or the music blasts, they're gone in the first second. So give audio at least as much time as you give the picture.

The good news: you don't need deep audio knowledge here. Three things are enough — level, fades, and (if you need it) a single effect.

Volume, mute and solo

There are two places to set a level: the clip's (in the properties panel on the right, affecting only that piece) and the track's (in the track head on the left of the timeline, affecting everything on it). Normally you pull the music down once at track level, and fix a single clip that came out too loud at clip level.

Fades — easing in and out

Music that starts abruptly or gets chopped off sounds crude. A fade in brings the sound up from nothing, a fade out takes it back down. Select the clip and type the seconds in the fade section: 1–2 s is typical for music.

What a fade actually does depends on the KIND of clip — one setting, three meanings.

• On an audio clip — the volume rises or falls.
• On an image or text clip — the opacity, so the layer appears or dissolves away.
• On a video clip — both at once: the picture fades and the sound goes with it. A one-second fade out at the end of a video is the cheapest, most reliable way to say “that's the end”.

The 61 audio effects

Select a clip and pick one from the “Audio effect” section. Among them you'll find reverb (a sense of space), EQ (the balance of low, mid and high frequencies), echo, distortion, modulation (chorus, flanger and friends) and a compressor — thirty in all.

The music library and your microphone

The “Music” tab in the media panel holds a set of ready tracks — cleanly licensed and royalty-free, meaning you can use them and post the video anywhere without anyone coming after you. Preview a track, then drag it onto the timeline or hit +.

Recording your own voice lives here too: the “Record” button captures straight from the microphone and drops the result at the playhead. The browser will ask for mic permission the first time — say yes, or nothing will be recorded. It's the shortest path to a voice-over.

What the waveform tells you

That jagged shape drawn on an audio clip is the waveform. Its height is the loudness: tall peaks are loud sound, a flat line is silence. Learn to read it and you'll start editing sound without even listening to it.

• A flat line at the start or the end — dead air. Trim the clip edge up to where the sound actually begins.
• Evenly repeating peaks — the beat of the music. Land your cuts right on those peaks and the edit sits in the groove.
• Peaks filling the whole height — the level is too hot and may distort. Pull the volume down.

Simple mixing: music under a voice

The most common job of all: someone talking, with music behind them. The secret is simple: they cannot both be loud. One leads, the other supports — and at every moment it's you who decides which is which.

1. 1

   Set the voice first

   Mute the music track for a moment and listen to the voice alone. Get it to a comfortable level and, if it needs it, put a compressor on the track.

2. 2

   Duck the music

   Now unmute it and bring the music track down until the words come through effortlessly and the music is merely felt. It's usually much lower than you'd think — everyone leaves it too loud on the first try.

3. 3

   Lift it where nobody is talking

   There's no speech over the intro and the outro — let the music be loud there. Split the music clip with S, give the pieces different levels and put a short fade at the joins.

4. 4

   Leave some headroom

   Don't push everything to the ceiling: the waveform should not fill the clip to the brim, leave a bit of space. That gap is headroom — it keeps the sound from distorting and makes it hold up on a phone speaker.

Common questions