- Hello. I am Mike Russell from musicradiocreative.com.
In this video, I wanted to show you some Adobe Audition
simple multi-track audio editing tips.
(energetic upbeat music)
Okay. Let's get stuck in.
When we're editing away,
whether it be audio production or a podcast,
we really want to work quickly in the multi-track.
And that's what I'm about to show you.
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Right, here we are
inside a multi-track session already loaded up.
That's the multi-track selection here,
not the waveform.
I've created this multi-track session to work in.
And actually I've got some audio from a podcast.
I've got three different tracks recorded
on a zoom recorder,
and I'm gonna drag them in.
Now notice default behavior here
is to drag them all onto one track.
I do not want that.
I want them on three separate tracks.
So the first little multi-track editing tip
is to hold down the Alt or Option key,
if you're a Mac user.
And it will put them on three separate tracks.
And again, letting go puts it back to the same track.
And this behavior is always asked for
the first time you drag multiple clips into multi-track.
So you can actually say,
well, every time I drag clips in,
I want them to go into separate tracks,
or every time I drag clips in,
I want them to go on the same track.
So let's hold down Alter option
and make sure that happens.
There you go.
They're all on different tracks.
Now, there are different reasons
why you might want them on different tracks.
For instance, if you're an audio producer,
and you want lots of sound effects on the same track,
definitely select always bring them into the same track.
But if you're a podcast editor,
and you're working with multiple different recordings
that you need to mix together,
definitely select put them on different tracks.
That's the first step.
Secondly, we want to get rid of any unwanted tracks.
So if I right-click here,
and I go to the Track menu,
you can see there is actually Delete Empty Tracks,
or you just hit Shift and E on your keyboard.
And then you've got a much cleaner multi-track to work with.
Next thing,
I want to expand out these tracks
so I can see them better.
If you hit Control or Command and Backslash,
boom, you get a bird's eye view there.
It looks absolutely marvelous.
And you've got no dead space down here at the bottom.
So really easy to work with.
Okay.
Let's move on and do some more stuff in the multi-track.
Next thing I might do
is rename the tracks by clicking on them,
and say Guest 1,
Guest 2,
and Guest 3.
Okay.
Some quick shortcuts for working quickly in the multi-track,
if you ever need to isolate something
or make some cuts in the multi-track.
Now notice I'm using my scroll wheel to zoom in
on the time bar here.
Okay.
This is where I am using the scroll wheel on my mouse
up on the time bar to zoom in and out.
And you can also zoom in and out here
by selecting the individual tracks like that,
to get it to the right size.
But remember, if you really mess up,
just take Control or Command on a Mac,
Backslash, and you're back to a default view.
So I'm just gonna zoom in here
and say, I really wanted to isolate out
this chunk of audio here.
I can do that really quickly
by hitting Control or Command + K.
It makes a cut there,
and Control + Command + K, like that.
And there we go.
We've got a nicely trimmed piece of audio
that I can move around.
Notice also,
when I'm moving this audio left and right,
when I'm overlapping it with another piece of audio,
you're getting these yellow lines.
These are cross-fades.
So what it's doing
is it's fading out the initial piece of audio,
and fading in to your new piece of audio.
This is particularly handy,
if you make some edits
and you want those edits to sound smooth,
a cross-fade can really help.
I'm just gonna undo all of that now
by hitting Control or Command and Z or Z.
If you prefer, you've the other side of the pond.
Another thing I'm gonna show you in multi-track
that's really, really cool
is called ripple delete.
And if you're a podcast editor,
you're definitely going to thank me for this.
So all these tracks are in sync.
They're all separate speakers on separate tracks,
but sometimes we want to cut out from multiple tracks.
So this little tut here, that's going on here.
So I wanna get rid of all of that silence
and keep things nice and flowing.
Now usually,
I'd select that little piece, hit Delete.
Oh, it's only deleted one bit.
Okay, well, no worries.
I can just select all the tracks and hit Delete.
But now I have to like grab all these tracks
and budge them up. (chuckles)
So it's just not ideal, is it?
So ripple delete is your best friend.
All you have to do is select in one portion of track,
the amount of silence you want to delete,
then you right-click, you look for Ripple Delete.
You'll only have to do this once,
because then you can learn the shortcut.
Time Selection in All Tracks
is what we're going for.
Control + Shift and Backspace.
On a Mac that would be
Command + Shift and Backspace or Delete,
and then you'd delete it all.
So I'm gonna use the shortcut now.
Control + Shift and Backspace on my PC.
Boom. There you go.
Deleted the silence and budged everything up.
Control or Command + Backslash.
And we're back to a bird's eye view.
And I think in just a few minutes,
you've learned quite a lot about the multi-track.
Some great shortcuts and processes
you can use in your everyday audio editing.
One more bonus tip, by the way,
if you get to the end of recording like this,
and you zoom right in and you notice
there's a long tail of silence,
you can actually go ahead and drag that in
by just hovering over the end,
getting this red icon and trimming.
And if you wanna do it to all the tracks,
you can also do that
by selecting everything.
And look at that.
We can just bring all the tracks in like that.
So really handy.
Multi-track is the best.
If you're still editing in waveform,
what are you doing?
Move over to multi-track,
and let me know your aha moments,
and questions about multi-track
in the comments down below.
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