General Concepts

Audio is an often over looked aspect of a final video project. But the audio in a presentation is as important as the video components. The normal person will be able to put up with bad video and good audio better than they will be able to put up with good video and bad audio. The human eye is just much better at filling in the gaps than the ear is. Paying attention to the audio components will go a long way in making a production look professional. Audio editing is a very complex process. FCP has relatively good basic editing tools, but a dedicated audio program may be needed for greater control of audio.

Objectives

• Gain an appreciation for the importance of audio
• Understand the basic use of Filters on audio
• Control Levels over time

Simply Audio Filters

Just as there are filters available for video clips, there are filters for the audio components of a composition as well. After an audio track is selected in the time line, and audio filter can be applied by selecting a filter from the audio filters collection under the Effects menu. There are filters available to clean up some basic audio problems (remove hum, clean up strong S sounds, etc) and several special effects (such as reverb). There is help inside of FCP for each filter. Once a filter is applied to a clip, it can be modified by double clicking on the clip to open it in the Viewer window. That window has an Filters tab that can be used to control all the filters on a clip. This Filters tab has a great deal of power in it, but is rather complex to use.

In addition to audio filters, audio transitions are also available when two audio clips butt up against each other. Not often of real use, but worth noting.

Changing Levels Over Time

Changing audio levels over time is one of the main tasks that people wish to perform. The basic example of this is that they want the sound track for a clip to come up from silent to full volume while another clip fades out (such as a voice over fading out while music starts up)

Changing audio levels over time involves setting key frames in the audio's time line, and then setting the audio level at each key frame.