In this video,
we’ll take a look at how you can boost
and level out audio levels
using Final Cut Pro’s built in Audio Compressor effect.
Hey guys.
whats up.
This is Serge, and welcome back to my channel.
Down in my timeline,
I have a voiceover clip,
edited to take out all the dead air,
and awkward pauses.
When I play it back,
if you look at the audio levels,
you can see majority of my audio
is around negative 12 decibels,
with a few peaks spiking up to around minus six decibels,
and every once in a while even higher.
We want to boost the volume of the entire timeline,
so first thing we’ll do
is combine everything into one compound clip.
Select the first clip in your timeline,
and shift click the last clip to select them all.
Press Option G to combine all these clips
into one compound clip.
This video will be meant for online distribution,
so we want the average volume
to fall between minus six to minus three decibels.
If we simply adjust the volume of this clip to that level,
as you can see in the audio meters,
the louder parts start to peak over zero db and clip.
This is not something we want.
You never want your audio levels
to reach or go over 0 db.
Lets press command Z to undo that.
To boost the quieter parts of your audio,
without clipping the louder parts,
Final Cut Pro’s built in audio compressor
is a very useful tool.
We can use it to compress the louder parts of our audio,
then bring up the overall gain to increase the volume.
Open your effects browser,
scroll down to the Audio Effects,
and select the Levels category.
Click and drag the compressor effect
to apply it to your clip.
This instantly improves our volume levels.
As you can see by the waveforms,
and the audio levels,
our audio is significantly improved.
The average volume is now sitting around negative six decibels,
but nothing comes even close to peaking.
Right off the bat, this is much better,
but we can fine tune it even more.
With your audio clip selected,
head up to the inspector window,
and select the Audio Inspector.
Scroll down to the compressor effect,
and click this button to open up the advanced user interface.
First adjustment we’ll make here is the compressor threshold.
This adjusts how loud the signal
has to be before compressor is applied.
Anything below this level will stay the same,
and anything above will be compressed.
For dialogue, set this around six decibels lower
than your average level.
Our original audio level averaged around -12 decibels,
so lets set this to -18.
You can either click and drag this control up and down,
or double click on the number above
it to manually enter it.
Next up is Compressor Ratio.
This decides the rate at which
audio above your threshold is compressed.
So, if your audio peaks 6 decibels above your threshold,
a 2 to 1 compression ratio will bring this down to three.
For voiceovers and dialogue,
set the compression to anywhere
between 2 to 1 to 4 to 1,
depending on how much dynamic range
you want in your voice.
I usually set mine at about 2.5:1 to 3:1.
After this, we have our Makeup Gain control.
With this set to zero,
everything under the selected threshold
remains the same volume,
and the parts above are compressed,
so the overall volume level is lower.
To compensate for this,
we’ll turn up the makeup gain.
There’s two options here.
You can either set the makeup gain manually,
or use one of the Auto Gain presets.
If you’re posting your video online,
use the 0 dB Auto Gain preset.
This boosts your overall volume after compression,
with your loudest part getting close to zero.
Next, let’s set our Knee, Attack and Release times.
The Knee setting,
sets how the compressor reacts
to the audio thats over your threshold.
Setting this to zero, known as Hard Knee,
compresses your signal right away.
If we switch to the graph display,
you can see the sharp point
at which your audio gets compressed.
Turning this up, known as Soft Knee,
compresses your audio more gradually.
For voice, I recommend turning this all the way up.
Attack time is the amount of time
after the volume level crosses your
set threshold to start compressing audio.
For voice, set this value to between one and five milliseconds.
Setting this number higher will make
your voice sound unnatural.
Release time is the amount of time
it takes compressor to stop reducing gain.
I find around 10-15 milliseconds
seems to be the sweet spot here.
Let’s take a listen to our audio before,
and after applying the compressor effect.
The volume is considerably louder
and much more consistent,
without any peaking at all.
If you do videos with lots of dialogue,
such as vlogging or voiceover type videos,
the Audio Compressor can be a very valuable tool.
It lets your viewers hear everything you say,
without having to adjust volume levels.
And like they say,
audio quality is much more important than video quality.
If you found this video helpful,
let me know in the comments below,
or by hitting the like button.
Thanks for watching,
and I’ll see you back here next week.