Welcome back to another episode of our HitFilm Basics Masterclass. In this
video we're going to show you how to edit audio inside of HitFilm. We'll be
going over how to adjust and keyframe the volume of your video, add sound
effects, and use the audio mixer panel. If you missed the other videos on how to
install HitFilm and get up and running with editing video, you can find those in
the card on-screen. Let's go ahead and get started. Here we are inside of
HitFilm Express and we've currently got a very simple edit on the timeline, it's
just some gameplay footage.
But it's also quite loud and I want to underlay a
clip of Oli talking, which is in the trimmer here. Today we're gonna be taking
a look at the first step, recording your footage. This clip actually comes from a
previous masterclass we did, called Game On, where we showed you how to create
your own YouTube gaming channel, so definitely check that out if you're
interested in starting one up for yourself. Now we've already talked about
the Controls panel inside of HitFilm which is active once you select a clip
on the timeline. If I come down here and select the audio for that clip you'll
notice that the Controls panel changes, and we only get one property, which is
the Level, this is the volume of the clip itself. You can also adjust the volume by
dragging this white line, here, and you can see that it gets updated in the
Controls panel. One big mistake that a lot of new people make with audio is
that it's not the right volume, it's either too quiet
or way too loud, we're gonna prevent that by paying attention to the Meters panel
over here on the right. If you don't see the Audio Meters panel, come up to Window
and then checkmark it in the list here. If I play the clip back you'll notice
that the audio is hitting zero but not going above. This is the rule, you really
shouldn't go above zero decibels. If you do, it means you're over blowing and
distorting the audio. At the same time, you don't really want to go quieter than
around -24 or -30 especially if there are people talking.
This means that people will have to raise the volume in order to hear them.
If I bring my mouse over to the trimmer, you'll notice that two buttons appear,
Use Video and Use Audio, I can click and drag to use just the audio from that
clip and place it in the timeline, here. This is Oli talking, and just by looking
at the waveform, I can see that it's gonna be very quiet. Let's take a listen.
We basically can't hear him at all so what we need to do is raise Oli's
volume while, at the same time, duck the audio of the gameplay. You'll also
notice that, because there are now two audio clips playing on the timeline, the
meters are hitting above zero, which is not what we want. So the first thing I'm
going to do is raise the audio of Oli all the way up, in this case, 12 decibels.
Again, you can do that either in the Controls panel or on the timeline itself.
The second thing I'm going to do is lower the audio of the gameplay. What
I'll do is hover my mouse over the volume and hold down the control key. My
mouse will change to a crosshair and then if I click, I'll create a point.
These points represent keyframes in the volume of the audio. If I click over here
again, I can then lower the volume quite a bit to something like -24.
Let's see how that sounds.
That's much better, and you can see that the audio meter is still below zero. You can create
as many points as you need to keyframe the audio to fit your scene. Here's an
example of a sound mix we did for a project based on Stranger Things a
couple months ago.
To show you the Audio Mixer panel, what I'll do is come up to Window and then select
Audio Mixer. This will just rearrange a few of the panels so that you can
optimize it for the function that you're wanting to do. As you can see, I've got a
number of audio tracks to fit all of the sound effects I wanted to include in
this short. A lot of the sound effects came from freesound.org which is a great
resource if you're looking for free sound effects. Once you have the actual
sound inside of HitFilm, you have a number of sound effects at your disposal.
Similar to the things we've looked at earlier, these can be found in the
effects panel. There's a folder called audio and you can see all of the effects
that we have here. You have things like Audio Reverse which does exactly what it says.
Cathedral, Echo, and Large Room to change the sort of ambiance of a sound.
The Pitch effect is a great way to quickly raise or lower the pitch of a
specific sound.
You'll notice that a couple of these have the word add-on
next to them. This is something that we haven't talked about yet in this masterclass
but add-ons are effects that you can purchase for HitFilm Express to
enhance the functionality or get things that you wouldn't have otherwise. If you
click the add-on button, you'll be taken to the FXhome store. This is where you
can purchase add-ons for different things like adding in color
functionality or adding a new visual effects. These packs are great if you
only need a few effects for a specific project. To apply an audio effect to a
sound, just click and drag it onto the layer itself. Depending on the effect, you
might have more control inside of the Controls panel. In this case, we have a
balance slider which adjusts how left or right the audio will sound.
As well as the audio effects we also have two transitions. If you come down to
Transitions: Audio, you can see we have Crossfade and Fade. You can apply these
by again clicking and dragging and placing them between two clips. As you
can see I've applied them to most of my sound effects at both the beginning and
end just because it helps smooth the transition a bit. A fade will decrease
the volume of one clip and then increase the volume of the next, so you get a
quieter space in between the two. The Audio Mixer panel here in the top left
allows me to have a visual of how loud each track is in my sequence. Each track
is laid out left to right and each one has the same controls. So they all have
an audio level which is the same as volume. They all have a left and right
balance if you want to put all the sounds on that track to one side. They
also have mute and solo buttons. Solo means it plays by itself. On the far
right you also have a master slider, this controls all of the volume all at once,
so it's a good way to quickly make adjustments to your entire sequence.
Thanks for joining us for another tutorial. In the next video, we're gonna
show you how to color correct and color grade in your video. Be sure to let us
know if you have any questions down below and we'll see you all in the next tutorial.