Final Cut Pro X Essentials - Audio Video Lecture | Final Cut Pro Essentials: A Complete Guide - Video & Sound Editing

up till now we've gone over how to
navigate in the Final Cut Pro 10
environment working in the timeline with
tools transitions titles and graphics as
well as how to apply effects in this
lesson we're talking about audio
everything audio from using your meters
how to view your waveforms plus we'll
cover audio controls leveling practices
audio keyframes and how to sync audio
from two or more sources so you worked
really hard on your edit you've got
everything going and well it would be a
shame if you didn't work on your audio
so let's take a look at how to work with
the audio parameters within Final Cut
Pro 10 where are all the tools and what
are some quick ways to get there so
right off the bat you need audio meters
if you're going to be working with your
audio it's going to help you level
things out and get you the desired
levels that you want to pull up the
meters is really simple and they're
already here in the middle of the screen
right next to your timecode they don't
have any numbers or levels or decibels
or anything on them so if you just click
on them if they show up over here on the
right of the screen and let's watch this
video and listen to the audio because
we're going to change the level of some
of these audio clips as well as doing
some ducking and other changes so that
they work best and are not distracting
all right so you can tell that wasn't
very well balanced there was definitely
clips with background sounds that or
louder or maybe even unnecessary so
let's talk a little bit about where
level should be as a whole your audio
doesn't want to be going above zero at
any time above zero you get digital
distortion and digital distortion does
not sound good it's not pleasant and
there's no purpose for it so stay below
zero you don't want to hit the red you
want to make sure all of your audio is
down below that now depending on what
you're doing voiceovers and narratives
probably want to live between negative
six and negative 12 so when you're
playing them listen to that and as well
your music if you're mixing those two
should be around negative 22 negative 30
that you can put voice over with music
below it but like in this case it's a
video montage so the primary is the
music and the natural sound from each
clip or NAT sound is secondary so you
don't want that to be distracting from
what you're doing like the cut beat or
have any Peaks that pop out and we'll
make it digital store it because you
don't want that because on the final
product even a peak of digital
distortion will not sound right now
let's start off with the appearance so
we can get into editing these so you can
really see what's going on you could
already see that you can see the
waveform you can see each one of these
clips in fact it's even visually easy to
see which clips are louder than others
and let's take a look at the different
viewing options you can have in the
timeline for this kind of editing so we
come down here next to the magnifying
glass and the slider there I can click
on this and it'll change the appearance
of these clips and so I can change it to
here which has no thumbnails here really
tiny thumbnails within a timeline a
little bit bigger and here's even bigger
larger now view of the waves disappear
and here is just the simplest I like to
choose this view here and if you want
you can actually change the clip height
so it's even easier to see or you can
just zoom in next let's take a look at
where you can have some controls so say
you want to do any kind of sweetening or
any kind of work on the audio that's not
going to be in the timeline you're going
to want to look in the audio tab of your
inspector now right now I don't have the
inspector open so to open up the
inspector you press command 4 and
brings it up now it's already on the
audio tab so awesome so you have the
video tab where we did color correction
and those kinds of adjustments and the
audio tab now you can see here that you
have your volume so I can raise and
lower the volume from here I can also do
it down here at the clip level and
there's a black line here and you can
see that it turns into two little arrows
and tells me negative 9 DB and that is
also if you look up the inspector what
it says and as I raise and lower those
you can see that they correlate with
each other now say you want to enable or
disable something so to enable or
disable its
keyboard shortcut V I click V and it
will disable it and I can press it again
to enable it again very simple so if you
are just turning things off want to hear
things that without pressing solo or you
want to just see what something is like
without it there you can enable or
disable it so if you want to change your
audio volume by just one decibel and you
don't want to get in there with the
mouse you don't want to go up to the
inspector and type it in there you can
press ctrl+
to go up 1 DB or ctrl - to go down one
DB every time you press the plus or
minus it goes up one decibel now here's
a good way of getting macro into your
edit if you are trying to work on some
audio and it's in this little range and
you're just trying to get it perfect you
want to get the timing of a fade or
whatever you're doing perfect you're
going to want to create a loop to create
a loop you want to enable looping and
you can either do that by pressing
command l or you can go up to to view
click on view then go playback and you
can select loop playback so loop
playback is already on so I can come
back here and if I press shift question
mark
it will give you a 4 second loop with
your playhead being in the middle of
that loop so if I move my playhead over
here I press shift question
and that will help you get a little
context on whatever area you're working
on so move the playhead to the area
you're working on and then loop it now
there's a real easy way if you want to
just level all of your clips so they're
all about the same level and it's just
visually so I can come back to this back
clip and I can lower it down so that the
levels appear the same on these
waveforms and I can then lower this one
down and it looks like this one needs to
go up a little bit and here goes down
and I can go up well looks like there's
no sound on that clip and go up here it
looks like I got a peak on there so I
should pay attention to that and I have
one here and then I want to lower this
so let's take a listen to this now that
I kind of normalized all of the audio
tracks so they should be about
relatively the same volume let's go to
the beginning and listen
sound pretty good but some of the noises
are distracting or they are so constant
that when they start over their abrupt
and then we have a couple peak areas
here let's start off with how to copy
attributes from one audio segment or
another so you can copy the leveling so
say I have multiple Clips here that are
the same scene and the same set up so no
mic levels have been changed between
them so they should get the same
treatment if you have a desired level
for one clip you can apply it to the
other and it's easy as clicking on that
clip pressing command C and then I can
go over to the next clip click on it and
then I can go up to edit paste
attributes and it brings up this window
so you can also do this with video so it
should work no matter what you're
working on and we can see here that all
the audio attributes
I want volume and if I done any other
things that I want to paste I can do
that maybe color correction or something
in the future but right now so I just
want to paste just the volume controls
I'm going to go paste and it pasted the
audio control volume the volume and pan
but the volume part onto this channel
here now you might want to make a couple
enhancements some things that you want
to change and if you go up into your
audio inspector here and you want to go
and change and do different things so
like you can add some equalization or
whatever you'd like here you can analyze
your audio if you'd like so now you can
change loudness and room do background
noise removal or hum removal and then if
you want to add any audio effects you
can go down to the effects browser here
and you can scroll down to audio and
there's lots of different presets that
you can add here depending on what your
needs are we won't go into each one of
those there's lots of options so you can
choose what is closest to what you're
doing and make adjustments from there
now what if we have these peaks and
valleys here and I want to get rid of
these little peaks it looks like a
little pop center here in in certain
areas I want to get rid of those so I
don't have those well you're going to
have to now jump into key 4
keyframes are just points of interest
that you can then manipulate so you can
use keyframes for every type of
manipulation from changing color to what
we're going to do which is adjusting
volume keyframes are good for ducking so
if you have some music you want to bring
down as someone's starting speaking or
someone just finished speaking and you
want to bring the music back up you can
use keyframes for that it's good to turn
down hot spots like we're going to do
now or just to increase dynamics
depending on what you're doing and we'll
also show you that so right off the bat
let's take a look at these couple little
Peaks let's go to this one here and I'm
going to go command + so I can zoom in
and you can see it actually shows me
that this is peaking so what I want to
do to add a keyframe I can press option
click to my black line here and I can
put it over here I can if I want to put
four keyframes and then I can just grab
that too by holding shift I can choose
them both and I can bring them down so
now if we listen to this you don't hear
that pop it's not there let's get a
little bit more context let's try our
question mark so it's not there anymore
it's brought down to a level that it's
not distracting now we had one more that
was over here and I want to show you a
different way of doing this one so
command + to zoom in and you can see
there's this little area right here if I
press R for the range selection tool I
can then highlight this area and if I
want to now just grab the volume bar
here I can just grab it and it'll bring
it down together and it won't affect
everything outside it now the one thing
I'm going to now select outside the you
can see that it added four keyframes the
problem is sometimes this ramp is too
much so be careful with that and maybe
change your time that you have on it and
so now if we listen to it so my shift
question mark
there's no pop no issue and it's not
distracting at all now say you want to
select in a different way without a key
you can actually go down to your
timeline you can press I for in and over
out and it'll select the area just like
the range selection tool and you can
make adjustments based on that I'm going
to done do that so then if you want to
do a fade in and fade out of a clip
let's go I'm going to press shift-z to
zoom out to fit and I want to take a
listen to these clips right here these
three clips now they all have a constant
sound going on with them but they are
pretty intense and when you but those
two up you can really hear the
difference in the cuts on them so let's
take a listen I'm going to go right here
shift question mark
so it works alright because the cuts are
kind of masked by the beat of the song
but say we wanted to add a fade because
it was distracting so you wanted to
gradually come up and like in this clip
I want it to gradually come up because
the song ends so let's zoom in command+
and let's take a look at here I have my
volume bar right here in its negative 19
dB and you can see just at the cut
there's this little like teardrop and if
I get close to it it'll change my tool
to this which is two arrows going left
and right and that's the fade in tool
and it automatically goes there from the
select tool and if I go up a little bit
it changes my tool so it's got to be
right over that teardrop and if I click
and hold and then I pull back it will
add a fade there now if I right click or
press ctrl click you can see it'll
actually change the type of curve or the
type of fade that it'll offer to it so
right now it's on s-curve I can do plus
three DB and you'll see yeah it looks a
little different you have this great
area and this transition is going to be
a little bit smoother shift question
mark
see it's just not as edgy and you're not
as noticeable that the clip changed it's
not making an auditory difference when
the clip and the cut happens now one
last thing about audio that we're going
to want to show you because it's very
strong and it's super nice because
syncing audio can be such a pain it's
real easy now and you can do it only
though with one clip at a time and I
happen to have two clips that I want to
listen to so let's just listen to this
try to thing I'm doing this kind of
thing so look like I'm doing a big so I
have me talking there and that's just
right off the camera but then right here
this clip is actually the recorded
microphone for 99.99 we're going to dive
into three main categories and it sounds
a lot better so I want to use the audio
from my external recorder and not the
camera microphone now what I'm going to
do is I'm going to highlight both of
them and I'm going to control click or
right click and I'm going to go to
synchronize clips now I get to rename
the file because it's now making a third
clip that's synchronized so I'm going to
want to say this is stand-up sy NC
stand-up sync and I want to take a look
at the custom settings so if I open this
up it gives me it goes what event and
that's the only event to choose from and
it wants to know what kind of
synchronization so you can do it from
time code so if you have timecode sync
on there it can do it from there it can
do it from the content created you can
do it from start a first clip so just
sync it right off the bat or from the
back of the clip if you wanted to if
they maybe ended at the same time but
automatic works really well and use
audio for the synchronization and we're
going to go OK and it's made a new clip
and that's it right here so if I want to
open up this clip and bring it to the
end here you can now I can zoom out you
can hear when this kind of thing so
looks like me talking well let's pull up
the inspector and I want to show you
something what it is it actually has
both audio now on both of them audio
from the camera and the one from my
external device well the camera one's
going to have a lot of echo from the
room so I just want to turn it off so
you do that inspector here and you just
uncheck it and now it's only come off of
where you were
for it so let's go to a place where I'm
talking put a read through it pretty
well the back end might need so you can
see that you can turn off one or the
other and that way you have just the one
audio because when you sync it it's
keeping the original one and the one you
want to sync it to and now you know how
to navigate all of the audio preferences
within Final Cut Pro 10 in our next
segment we're going to be covering
rendering and the export window