Welcome back to another episode of our
HitFilm Basics Masterclass. In this video we're going to show you how to
edit audio inside of HitFilm. We'll be going over how to adjust and keyframe
the volume of your video, add sound effects, and use the audio mixer panel. If
you missed the other videos on how to install HitFilm and get up and running
with editing video, you can find those in the card on-screen. Let's go ahead and
get started. Here we are inside of HitFilm Express and we've currently got
a very simple edit on the timeline, it's just some gameplay footage. But it's also quite loud and I want to underlay a clip of Oli talking, which is in the
trimmer here. Today we're gonna be taking a look at the first step, recording your
footage. This clip actually comes from a previous masterclass we did, called Game
On, where we showed you how to create your own YouTube gaming channel, so
definitely check that out if you're interested in starting one up for
yourself. Now we've already talked about the Controls panel inside of HitFilm
which is active once you select a clip on the timeline. If I come down here and
select the audio for that clip you'll notice that the Controls panel changes,
and we only get one property, which is the Level, this is the volume of the clip
itself. You can also adjust the volume by dragging this white line, here, and you
can see that it gets updated in the Controls panel. One big mistake that a
lot of new people make with audio is that it's not the right volume, it's
either too quiet or way too loud, we're gonna prevent that
by paying attention to the Meters panel over here on the right. If you don't see
the Audio Meters panel, come up to Window and then checkmark it in the list here. If I play the clip back you'll notice that the audio is hitting zero but not
going above. This is the rule, you really shouldn't go above zero decibels. If you
do, it means you're over blowing and distorting the audio. At the same time,
you don't really want to go quieter than around -24 or -30
especially if there are people talking. This means that people will have to
raise the volume in order to hear them. If I bring my mouse over to the trimmer,
you'll notice that two buttons appear, Use Video and Use Audio, I can click and
drag to use just the audio from that clip and place it in the timeline, here.
This is Oli talking, and just by looking at the waveform, I can see that it's
gonna be very quiet. Let's take a listen. We basically can't hear him at
all so what we need to do is raise Oli's volume while, at the same time, duck
the audio of the gameplay. You'll also notice that, because there are now two
audio clips playing on the timeline, the meters are hitting above zero, which is
not what we want. So the first thing I'm going to do is raise the audio of Oli
all the way up, in this case, 12 decibels. Again, you can do that either in the
Controls panel or on the timeline itself. The second thing I'm going to do is
lower the audio of the gameplay. What I'll do is hover my mouse over the
volume and hold down the control key. My mouse will change to a crosshair and
then if I click, I'll create a point. These points represent keyframes in the
volume of the audio. If I click over here again, I can then lower the volume quite
a bit to something like -24. Let's see how that sounds. That's much better, and you can see that the audio meter is still below zero. You can create as many points as you need to keyframe
the audio to fit your scene. Here's an example of a sound mix we did for a
project based on Stranger Things a couple months ago. To show you the Audio Mixer panel, what I'll do is come up to Window and then select Audio Mixer. This will just rearrange a
few of the panels so that you can optimize it for the function that you're
wanting to do. As you can see, I've got a number of audio tracks to fit all of the
sound effects I wanted to include in this short. A lot of the sound effects
came from freesound.org which is a great resource if you're looking for free
sound effects. Once you have the actual sound inside of HitFilm, you have a
number of sound effects at your disposal. Similar to the things we've looked at
earlier, these can be found in the effects panel. There's a folder called
audio and you can see all of the effects that we have here. You have things like
Audio Reverse which does exactly what it says. Cathedral, Echo, and Large Room to change the sort of ambiance of a sound. The Pitch effect is a great way to
quickly raise or lower the pitch of a specific sound. You'll notice that a couple of these have the word add-on next to them. This is something that we
haven't talked about yet in this masterclass but add-ons are effects that you
can purchase for HitFilm Express to enhance the functionality or get things
that you wouldn't have otherwise. If you click the add-on button, you'll be taken
to the FXhome store. This is where you can purchase add-ons for different
things like adding in color functionality or adding a new visual
effects. These packs are great if you only need a few effects for a specific
project. To apply an audio effect to a sound, just click and drag it onto the
layer itself. Depending on the effect, you might have more control inside of the
Controls panel. In this case, we have a balance slider which adjusts how left or
right the audio will sound. As well as the audio effects we also have two
transitions. If you come down to Transitions: Audio, you can see we have
Crossfade and Fade. You can apply these by again clicking and dragging and
placing them between two clips. As you can see I've applied them to most of my
sound effects at both the beginning and end just because it helps smooth the
transition a bit. A fade will decrease the volume of one clip and then increase
the volume of the next, so you get a quieter space in between the two. The
Audio Mixer panel here in the top left allows me to have a visual of how loud
each track is in my sequence. Each track is laid out left to right and each one
has the same controls. So they all have an audio level which is the same as
volume. They all have a left and right balance if you want to put all the
sounds on that track to one side. They also have mute and solo buttons. Solo
means it plays by itself. On the far right you also have a master slider, this
controls all of the volume all at once, so it's a good way to quickly make
adjustments to your entire sequence. Thanks for joining us for another
tutorial. In the next video, we're gonna show you how to color correct and color
grade in your video. Be sure to let us know if you have any questions down
below and we'll see you all in the next tutorial.
