Mixing Volume

I'm gonna bring my playhead all the way back

to the beginning and before I begin to preview

what we have right now, you're probably already wagering

that this is gonna be too loud.

Look at how big the waveforms are compared to our voice.

If I were gonna play this, the music is gonna come in so

stinking strong

and loud that we're not gonna be able to hear anything.

So again, I have my audio over here lowered a little bit so

that I don't blow out my eardrums,

but I'm gonna go ahead and hit play.

Let's talk about some editing mistakes

that a lot of beginners make.

So a mistake that a lot of beginning editors make is

that they focus on and wow, can you sure hear the song now?

Okay, so

what volume level should our audio be

with my music track selected?

I'm gonna go ahead and look to the upright here

to our inspector tab.

Now remember the inspector tab is what controls the video

and audio properties.

So if I were to click on a video track, go over

to the inspector tab and if yours isn't open,

it's this upper right icon over here

that says inspector on it.

On one of our video clips, I can go over to the video tab

and we have all of our video properties, right?

So we've got the zoom, we've got the

position, et cetera, et cetera.

I click these little reset icons to reset that.

When I click the audio track here, we don't have a video tab

because there, well there's no video,

but we do have this very big

and important slide over here called volume.

We're not gonna worry about any

of these other intimidating looking things down here.

We're just gonna look at the volume.

Now you see here how it says zero.

Well that might not quite make sense

because obviously we, we have sound,

our volume is not at uh, zero.

Well, what I'd like you to do is this up in the upper right

hand corner over here, click the mixer icon.

Now I can't remember what the default opener is,

but you might have one of two things.

It might say mixer or meters.

I would like us to just look at the meters.

So if you have the mixer on first open, go

to these three dots right next to it and turn it on meters.

Now we have one single bar over here to the right.

Now, it might be a bit hard to see,

but you, at the very, very tip top of this bar,

you see how it says zero.

Most of the time when we're talking about audio, the way

that it is produced is it's normalized on a tippy

top max of zero.

Anything that goes past zero peaks the audio.

And it's when you get that like real crunchy squeal noise.

And so what that basically means is that when we're working

with audio, zero is the max.

If we wanna lower audio, we need to subtract

and bring the audio down.

So if I were to bring my playhead all the way to the left

and play this, let's talk about some editing mistakes

that a lot of you see how we clip this zero mark,

which means our music is going

past the zero point, which is bad.

We do not want that. So again, how lad do we make our music?

Well, let me open up my handy dandy,

very official whiteboard. There are gonna be

Three very general volume ranges

that we can sit in depending on what we'd like to do.

If we want our audio to be the prider driver

of the video, meaning music video, a montage,

the audio is the thing that is making the video happen.

We can go anywhere from, I would say minus three

decibels, two minus 10 decibels.

What's decibel? Well a decibel is the unit

of measurement here for our audio.

So when we're subtracting volume here,

we are doing it in terms of decibel.

So it's, it's not just a random floating number here.

These are decibels.

If we would like our audio to be complimentary,

meaning something that is heard

but isn't quite as loud as our primary audio,

we're gonna go anywhere from minus 12 to

I will go minus 21 db.

This volume range is definitely still gonna be heard

by the viewer, but it's not gonna be in a way as much

as when we're up in this range.

If we want back round music.

So something that is not in the way

but can still fill in some of the dead spaces of our video,

we're gonna shoot for the minus 30 DB range.

We can go a little above and below this,

but minus 30 DB is gonna be our happy space.

So what I would like you guys to do is

with our volume track selected,

you can either type in in the inspector tab minus 30

or hit Ctrl z click and hold this property.

So again, I am left clicking and holding

and drag this to the left until you hit minus 30

or what you can do hit control Z once is go over

to the music track itself in the timeline

and it's gonna be a bit tricky to see,

but there's this little floating white line right here

and when your mouse hovers over it, the icon changes

to two up and down arrows

and you can drag the volume down directly on the timeline.

Now it's pretty fast when you do so.

So if you'd like to slow down how much it changes,

we can hold down the shift key

to add a little granularity when we're changing the volume.

And now our music is gonna sound like this

and I would recommend having headphones on.

'cause if you're on speakers, it might be a little difficult

to hear the music.

Hey, let's talk about some editing mistakes

that a lot of beginners make.

So a mistake that a lot of beginning editors make is

that they focus on the spectacle

of the edit over the story of the edit.

So see how in moments like this where there's just little,

little pauses between the things that are being said,

the music kind of fills that gap.

That's what we want. The music isn't the focus here.

What I'm saying is the focus,

and we wanna make sure we're hearing what I'm saying.

What I suggest doing in your own time is changing the audio

level of the music track here

and seeing how it affects your, the understandability

of what I'm saying.

I'd also suggest changing where the music starts.

'cause if you remember this

Section right in here is where the main beat

of the song kicks in.

When I say kicks in, I I, I all, I mean is

that it's starting right there, right where a lot of more

of the instruments are coming into play.

I increase the volume level a little bit.

So I make sure I can, I can hear the, the song editors do.

Opt-in is the overuse, right? It's right in here.

Optin is the overuse of, so

what I can do is I can make a cut here on the music track

exactly where the beat kicks in

and then I can shift this point around

to see how it affects the video.

So if I wanted to, I could actually have the beat kick in

much closer to the the beginning portion.

So I could drag this over to the left, grab the left handle,

pull it over, grab the right handle, extend it,

and then let's what happens if I were

to leave this at minus 18, right?

So somewhere in between this minus 12 and minus 21 range.

Hey, let's talk about some editing mistakes

that a lot of beginners make.

So a mistake that a lot of beginning editors make is

that they focus on the spectacle

of the edit over the story of the edit.

So you can still hear what's being said,

but the music becomes a much bigger presence of the video.

So again, experiment, play with these things,

see what makes sense to you.

Remember the whole point of this section in particular,

this course is to just experiment

and figure out how things affect one another.

So with that said, what I am gonna do is I'm gonna bring

this down back to minus 30.

'cause I would like this to be backing audio.

Again, I'm holding down the shift key to fine tune.

It doesn't have to be exact. Minus 30.27 is just fine.

And now we're ready to move on.