Today, we’re talking a look at three built in
Final Cut Pro audio effects
that fix some of the most common audio issues,
and are guaranteed to make your video sound better.
The first and most common audio issue
most people have in their videos is background noise.
This is very easy to fix using the amazing
Voice Isolation tool that comes pre-installed in Final Cut Pro.
This can be used to fix subtle noises like mic hiss,
or the sound of an air conditioner running in the background,
all the way to being able to remove annoying wind noise,
or even crowd noises in the background.
And it’s super simple to use.
Let’s take a look at a couple examples.
In this first example,
we have a subtle hiss in the background of our video.
It’s kind of hard to hear,
but if I turn the volume all the way up,
you can definitely hear it.
To fix tis, select your clip in the timeline,
and press Command 4 to open the inspector window.
Select the Audio inspector,
and click on the voice isolation checkbox.
Go back to your timeline,
press R to switch to the range selection tool,
and select a range in your timeline with just the background noise.
Press the forward slash key on your keyboard to loop the selected range,
and adjust the amount slider in the inspector
until your background noise is gone.
Don’t over do it here, because this will affect the rest of the audio
in your clip so set this as low as you can.
I usually find around 25 percent is the sweet spot here.
Let’s take a look at another example, this time,
with quite a bit of wind noise.
Same as before, with your clip selected in the timeline,
turn on the Voice Isolation effect.
Select a range in your timeline that has both wind noise and your dialogue,
loop the selected range with the forward slash key,
and adjust the Voice Isolation amount slider.
For wind noise,
the amount will have to be significantly higher,
but your audio will suffer a little bit.
In cases like this, the noise reduction and audio quality
will be a bit of a compromise,
and you might not be able to completely remove the noise,
but your clip will sound significantly better.
If you edit vlogs, interviews, or talking head videos like this one,
where you have to cut out certain parts ,
you’ll sometimes notice a click or a pop right at your cut.
Or, if you cut between two clips with audio,
where you cut from one clip to the next,
there’s that jarring sound change between two clips.
Final Cut Pro has a tool to fix it, and it’s called audio only crossfades.
In our first example, we have two clips with original audio.
Both the sound and the audio level are different in the two clips,
so we have that jarring hard cut between the two.
To fix this, select both clips,
go up to the menu bar,
select Modify, Adjust Audio Fades and select crossfade.
Let me show you what this does.
With both my clips still selected,
I’ll right click on either one, and Expand Audio.
If we zoom right in on our timeline,
and switch to waveform view,
you can see Final Cut Pro stretched out the audio
of both my clips beyond the cut,
and faded out the first clip,
while at the same time, fading in my second clip.
If we play this back,
the sound change isn’t nearly as jarring.
Let’s look at another example from one of my previous videos.
If I select a range around this cut,
turn the volume all the way up and loop this part of my timeline,
you can hear a very annoying click right at my cut.
Lets add an audio crossfade here and see if we can get rid of the click.
Once again, I’ll select both my clips,
and this time, instead us going to the menu bar,
let’s use a keyboard shortcut for this, which it Option T.
This is what the same cut sounds like with an audio crossfade.
Just like that, with a simple keyboard shortcut,
the click is completely gone.
Now, you can use this on individual clip,
or what I do most of the time,
is select all my clips in my timeline,
and press Option T to add an Audio Crossfade to every cut in my timeline.
Saves me a ton of time.
The last audio issue we’ll take a look at fixing today,
is inconsistent volume in your clips.
where some parts are way too loud,
and some are so quiet you can hardly hear them.
This is also useful if your entire timeline is too quiet,
and you need to normalize the volume,
without clipping any audio.
There’s a couple tools you can use for this.
The Audio Compressor,
or what I use majority of the time, is the Audio Limiter effect.
What this effect does, is it turns up the quiet parts in your timeline,
without clipping the loud parts.
This should be one of your last steps when editing a project,
and all your fine adjustments have all been made.
When you’re ready to normalize your audio,
select all your dialogue clips,
and combine them into a compound clip with Option G.
With the compound clip selected,
go to your effects browser,
scroll down to Audio Effects, and select the Levels category.
Grab the Limiter effect and add it to your clip.
Go up to the inspector window,
select the Audio Inspector,
and scroll down to the Limiter controls.
Click on this button to bring up the adjustment controls.
First thing we need to set here, is the output level.
Set this to negative 3dB if your dialogue is the only audio in your project,
or negative 6dB if there’s other audio,
like background music.
Next, set your release time to 250 milliseconds,
and your lookahead to 5.
Go to Legacy controls, and make sure soft knee is turned on.
The last thing we need to adjust is gain.
Play back your clip, and drag up on the Gain slider,
until your reduction meter of reading between 1.5 and 3 dB.
This will give you the most natural sound.
With just a couple easy adjustments,
your audio will be much more consistent
and pleasant to the viewer.
Another built in effect you can use for this,
with arguably better result is the Audio Compressor.
I made an entire video on how to normalize your audio with the Audio Compressor,
and I will link it up here.
Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you back here next week.