In today's video,
I want to talk about one very important part of video editing,
that’s often overlooked, especially by beginners.
But, before I tell you what it is,
I want you to watch this short clip
and think about what you notice.
Hey guys, what's up.
My name is Serge,
and if you're new here welcome to my channel.
I believe everyone has a story to tell,
and I'm here to help you with the visual aspect of it,
by helping you make better videos.
When you watched the clip at the start of this video,
did you notice all the sounds in it?
This is what's known as sound design,
and when done properly,
sound design is only noticeable when it’s not there.
When it is there, it should just blend right into your video,
and just feel like it should be there.
That's because, in everyday life,
we are constantly hearing all sorts of sounds.
These everyday noises often get lost when filming video,
for a variety of reasons.
You may have no audio at all in your video,
the background noises might be too quiet or too loud,
or maybe you used a mic
specifically designed to reject these noises.
To replace these lost sounds,
instead of trying to record every sound they need,
video editors often use foley or sound effects.
Final Cut Pro does come with some
built-in sound effects, but they’re fairly limited.
For a better selection of professional sound effects,
you may have to look elsewhere.
I get all mine from Envato Elements, who is today’s sponsor.
With Envato Elements, for one low monthly fee,
you get access to almost 500 thousand,
high-quality, royalty-free sounds effects.
But that’s not all.
You also get unlimited downloads of royalty-free music,
stock video, custom video templates, web templates, fonts,
and so much more.
All included in one subscription, a must-have for any type of creative.
When adding sound design to your project,
even though you could,
you don’t need to go over the top with whooshes,
bangs, and explosions.
For natural sound design,
that doesn’t draw attention away from the story,
you need to give the viewer what they expect to hear.
This is exactly what we’re going to do in this video,
with the clip you watched at the start.
This was a stock media clip,
downloaded from Envato Elements,
with no sound at all, so everything was added in post.
I’ll link it in the description below
in case you want to follow along.
Let’s jump into Final Cut Pro and add some sound design to this clip.
When we play this clip back,
the first, and most obvious sound our viewer
might expect to hear is the punches.
I’ll head over to Envato Elements,
select Sound Effects from the search dropdown menu,
and search for punching bag.
This gives us 316 results,
and we can preview them
right in the web browser before downloading.
This pack here is what we’re looking for,
so let’s download it and import it into Final Cut Pro.
We want to add one of these sounds
every time she hits the bag,
so to make it easier, you can skim the clip
and add markers on every punch.
Move your playhead back to the first marker,
grab a punch sound effect,
and drop it down into your timeline,
lining up the peak in the waveform with the marker.
Press Control Apostrophe to move your playhead to the next marker,
and add another sound effect.
To make it sound a bit more realistic,
I used different sounds for right and left hands,
adding the more forceful sound to the dominant hand.
Add a sound effect for every punch you marked.
Another thing we can do,
is place these sound effects in a surround sound environment
for even more realism.
First, we need to set the audio of our project to surround,
so select the project in the media browser,
make sure info is selected,
click modify
and change the Audio setting to surround.
Next, select your Sound Effect clip,
and in the audio inspector,
change the Pan mode to Create Space.
Click and drag the circle in the middle
to where you would expect to hear the sound come from.
Next, there’s a good chance the fighter in our clip
is not the only one in the gym,
so we should add gym background noise.
Let’s go back to Envato Elements,
and search for Boxing Gym in sound effects.
This one sounds good,
so let’s download it and import it into Final Cut Pro.
Add this clip to your timeline,
bring the down volume so it’s just background noise,
and set it coming from behind the viewer.
Another thing you might expect to hear in a boxing gym
is music playing in the background,
usually something heavy.
Let’s go back to Envato Elements,
select music,
and filter out the results to show only metal and rock songs.
Press the play button to preview the track.
This one sounds like something you might hear at a boxing gym,
so let’s download it and add it to our project.
Once again, we need to sell this to the viewers,
so to be more realistic,
we should probably make it sound like it’s playing
on a crappy stereo system in the background.
First, turn down the volume,
just so it’s not overwhelming the other sounds.
Next, press Command 5 to open the effects browser,
and scroll down to audio effects.
Select the distortion category,
and let’s add the telephone effect.
To hear what it sounds like without the other sounds,
select the music track
and press Option S to isolate it.
Press Option S again to hear your full mix.
Back when I was younger,
I took boxing lessons for a few years,
and one of the first things you learn
is to breathe out when throwing punches.
This way, if you get hit while trying to throw a punch,
it doesn’t hurt nearly as bad.
So let’s add some breathing sounds to our project.
In Envato Elements and search for Female Breath.
Let’s download this pack and add it to our project.
Select the sound that best suits the action in your project,
add it to your timeline, and adjust the volume.
If needed, you can always speed up or slow down your sound clips,
and stack these sound effects for more choices.
This was the original clip we started with,
and here’s the same clip after adding just a few sound effects.
Makes a lot of difference, doesn’t it?
If you enjoyed this video,
I’ve put together a short little playlist
that focuses on the audio part of your videos.
Make sure to check it out, I’ll link it in the description below.
Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you back here next week.