#FINAL CUT PRO AUDIO KEYFRAME MANUAL#

The theater turns up their (high-quality) speakers so that dialogue plays at a comfortable level, and when those explosions occur, they can be so loud they knock your socks off-without ever touching 0 dB! To this last point, sound mixers working on theatrical films typically set the average dialogue levels even lower (–24 dB or –31 dB). This average audio level also provides a little headroom if you want to make a specific sound deliberately louder than the dialogue (such as a music swell or explosion).

Most audio mixers set the dialogue, interview, or narration to an average audio level of –12 dB, which allows plenty of room for adding sound effects, music, and other elements without risking over-modulating. Also, lower-quality speakers (such as the built-in speaker on a cell phone or a consumer television) can magnify problems that aren’t apparent when monitoring your project on studio-quality speakers or headphones.īecause of this, a general guideline is that you want your levels as loud as possible, as long as they never touch 0 dB (at which point they overmodulate and distortion occurs).Īlso, audio is additive, so if you play a sound effect, ambiance, and music along with your main dialogue, the volumes of each item are added together, pushing the final result ever closer to that dreaded 0 dB. So, a project that sounds OK during editing can reveal problems when you upload the result to YouTube or burn the video to a Blu-ray disk. High- and low-level audio problems may be exaggerated when your video is converted to play on other platforms. Furthermore, when sounds are too loud in a high-level clip, the sound can distort, making an unpleasant grating sound and rendering the audio unintelligible, even if the volume is decreased. On the other hand, if your levels are high, your listener will have to turn the volume down, which can make quiet passages nearly inaudible. However, if your levels are low, she will have to turn the playback volume up very loud, which can expose background noise and lower the overall sound quality. Whatever level you choose, your viewer can always adjust the volume of the playback device to make the overall sound louder or quieter. There is no hard and fast rule about what defines a proper audio level.

Click the tiny Audio meters in the toolbar, or press Command-Shift-8 to display large Audio meters to the right of the Timeline.

In the Project Library, double-click the Sound editing project inside the Lesson_04 folder in the APTS FCP X ADV Part 1 disk. Tiny meters are always visible to the right of the current timecode in the center of the toolbar, but you can also display large meters with a single click. Understanding Audio Metersįinal Cut Pro has highly accurate, easy-to-read Audio meters to monitor audio levels and ensure that they are correct and uniform. And if the overall level is too quiet or too loud, other problems arise such as increased background noise or distortion. If one scene is too loud and the next is too soft, it’s very hard for viewers to stay engaged in your program. One of the most basic and fundamental aspects of good audio is ensuring that the volume level is consistent across your project.

#FINAL CUT PRO AUDIO KEYFRAME MANUAL#

This lesson picks up where those lessons left off and delves into a more manual approach to improving your sound.

It has tools to set the audio levels to a uniform, accurate volume multiple methods to create audio fades and four fade styles intuitive controls for panning sound between speakers, in both stereo and surround sound environments and much more.Īpple Pro Training Series: Final Cut Pro X by Diana Weynand (Peachpit Press) described the automatic audio enhancements you can apply to your clips to remove background noise, adjust levels, and remove silent audio channels. If seeing is believing, then hearing is feeling.įortunately, Final Cut Pro X contains an impressive number of ways to improve your video’s sound. And while the images carry the basic information of a scene, the sound invariably carries the emotional content. You can always close your eyes, but closing your ears is far more difficult. Audiences will tolerate shockingly poor quality video (see Paranormal Activity, Cloverfield, or Blair Witch Project for proof), but no one will sit through even three minutes on YouTube if the audio is hard to hear. It cannot be said often enough: Audio is more important than video. Manage audio channels for multichannel clipsīreak apart audio channels for independent editing This lesson takes approximately 85 minutes to complete.

Final cut pro audio keyframe