today I'm going to show you how I mix my videos in under two minutes in Final Cut Pro I am NOT
an audio professional by any means but I know what good sound is I know what it should sound like I
use this quick mix tip quick mix tips I use this quick technique to mix my entire video as quickly
as possible to get it out as fast as I can to make sure that dialogue punches through and the music
is heard very well so I'm going to show you how I get from the final edit into the final mix as
quickly as possible because I want to make sure that when I pass this on to clients push it onto
youtube I want it to sound as good as possible so this is a technique that I found that works
really well so let's jump in the computer and I want to show you the quick editing techniques
right off the bat the first thing that you need to do is finish your edit finish everything that
you want to do finish all your effects just have everything in a near finished place have all your
sound effects in have all your music and having all your dialogue or voiceover in at the same time
you want to make sure that your volume is set to zero for all your dialogue and also all your music
and sound effects just so you have a good starting point the audio is at zero and all the dialogue is
at zero and obviously this doesn't sound good because you can't hear any of the dialogue that
is being said you can bring down the music and try to bring up the dialogue but this overall
doesn't sound good so one of the things that I do is organize all the audio based on the roles and
Final Cut does this really really well so when I edit I put everything on the main timeline as my a
role or my dialogue so I make sure that is all set to dialogue then I go through and I select all the
music pieces and I know which ones those are so I just want to make sure that I only selected two
music and just press command and select all your music pieces and then go up into the inspector
make sure you click the I and then switch to music so I'm gonna do that wide so you can see
how it changes color so now it changes color and it drops everything down so music is usually the
lowest point now the next thing that I want to do is I want to make sure that I have all my sound
effects selected make sure that none of the music is selected get all these little stragglers out
here as well and then again back over here and switch it to effects so now if you notice zoom
in here so we have our dialogue which is blue we have our effects which is this deal and then we
have our music which is the green and if you want to further separate it out and you want to be able
to see it you can actually highlight them all here and it shows you what is what if you actually want
to go even deeper dives and you can separate it even further if you click on show audio lanes so
all the dialogue is here all the effects are here and all the music is down here so here's where the
speed can come in so I will collapse that back and close that out so what I do is I select everything
right click and create a new compound clip and I'm going to call this full mix that creates a
new compound clip if you right-click on the clip and go to expand audio components it will show
you all those lanes individually so you have your dialogue you have your sound effects and then you
have your music and again nothing has changed yet it's still too loud and you can do the same things
here but now you're affecting everything within the entire track once I have the compound clip
open I will select the effects and the music and I'll press V to disable them for now because I'm
going to be working just with the voice so one of the first things that I want to do is I'll
search for voice but I'm under video so it's not knowing where to look so then I scroll down to
audio and I click all and I search for voice and I want voiceover enhancement so I double click
on that it adds the effect and for me I tend to switch it over to smooth male voice I tend
to leave the compressor in the dsr alone I open up the channel EQ and at that point is it worth
migrating to a whole new camera system yes there are plenty of cameras and at that point I'll let
it play I'll also choose one of these points I'll bring in the frequency that it's affecting as I
let it play I'll pull this up and I'll listen for a frequency that I don't personally like and I'll
try to remove it so I'll show you how to do that experience amazing video quality and all-around
awesomeness however if you already have lenses and gear and accessories that complement your
camera is it worth migrating to a completely new camera system here's what I mean by that
not only are you going to be going into a new camera that's gonna give you a great cloth and
I just pull it down the frequency that I didn't like that I was just bothering my year this is
a very subjective thing you have to find that frequency that you find a little bit irritating
and by no means an audio professional this is one of those things where it's it's very much of
a subjective thing and the people that do this and do it well they're amazing after I add the
voice-over enhancement the next thing I look for is a limiter and I double click on that and what
a limiter does is that it will bring up lower volume parts of your dialogue and it'll bring
down the higher volume parts of your dialogue so as you let it play you want to push it typically
from my recording as I lift it to about + 8 + 9 I said they'll release to 260 roughly and I set
this to minus 3 output now leave a look at that as mode I will switch to legacy and have soft neon so
I want the bulk of it to be around minus 6 just above minus 6 tweak it until you find that a nice
comfortable spot and the output level should be cut off at minus 3 so once I have that set
the other thing I listen forced to see if there is any noise that needs to be removed if there
isn't then I typically leave this off however if there is I will turn it on and never leave it at
50 because the noise removal built into final cut is actually really robotic so if I they have to I
will set it to about 15 or 20 just to get rid of a little bit so then I will listen to the full mix
and it's way too hot the music can way too hot so first thing I'll do is I'll drop it down now
the music and the dialogue are still fighting so drop it a little bit more and then after I do a
trick that a friend taught me it calls it the the dj mix what he'll do is he'll you'll take all the
frequencies that are roughly around where the voice are and he'll drop them all down because
this is where the voice lives so you want to leave the bass and the highs but remove the frequencies
I would interrupt and interfere with the voice if I play this back punches through the music
feels nice and level the sound effects may be a little bit hot so I would just drop that down
but that's it that is my quick and dirty way to mix an entire video really effectively if I need
to get something out these are very simple things you can do to make your voice punch through a lot
quicker to have the music nicely in the background so you can actually push it up a little bit higher
without it affecting your voice and have the entire mix just sound good this is something
that you can do repeatedly especially if you have preset set for each one or just the previous one
that you have just copy the entire clip and then go to your next clip and then just you
can paste attributes which will paste everything that you did the volume all the effects all the
audio enhancements all the noise removal and these are just the effects that are built into final cut
there's a whole slew of effects that I use as my presets I use isotope for the noise removal when
there's heavy issues it doesn't feel as robotics one of my favorite plugins is a cue sonís that
I use and this is not sponsored by them I just think that they're really really simple to use
especially for normalizing I use voice liberal ER right now they have a sale on I use these effects
for audio all the time I want all the help I can get when it comes to audio especially
when it comes to making it sound better audio is one of the most important things you need to get
right in all your videos the better your audio the more likely people will watch all your videos use
these tips and tricks to make sure your dialogue punches through and the music in the background
plays it really nicely this is one of the best ways to make your audio sound amazing real mixing
is not is not fine that's it guys let me know what you think let me know if you found this
tip useful let me know if there's other tips and tricks you want to know to speed up your workflow
overall that's it guys give me a big thumbs up subscribe and I'll talk to you soon bye for now