Premiere Pro lets you edit audio tracks and audio files. You can add background music, add a narrative track, and clean up background noise to enhance the overall quality of your project.
What you’ll learn in this lesson:
- Animating the audio level of a file to change volume over time
- Removing audio from a video file to create an independent audio file for editing
- Improving and cleaning up audio files in Premiere Pro
Premiere Pro lets you edit audio tracks and audio files. You can add background music, add a narrative track, and clean up background noise to enhance the overall quality of your project.
Starting up
In this lesson, you will work with the project files from the pr07lessons folder. Make sure that you have loaded the prlessons folder onto your hard drive from www.digitalclassroombooks.com/epub/premierecs6. The Starting up section at the beginning of this book provides detailed information about loading lesson files, resetting your workspace, locating missing media, and opening the files in CS6. If you have not already done so, please review these instructions before starting this lesson.
When opening the Premiere Pro project files used in this lesson, you may experience a missing media message. You must locate any missing media before trying to proceed through the lessons. Please refer to “Locating missing media” in the Starting up section of this book.
Understanding digital audio
Digital audio is composed of analog sound waves that are captured and converted into a digital file, and its quality is determined by sample rate and bit depth.
The process that converts analog sound into a digital file doesn’t actually capture the entirety of the analog source verbatim. Instead it samples the original signal in order to create a digital representation of it. The sample rate is the number of samples that are made in a given time span; usually a second. The higher the sampling rate of a digital file, the greater the quality and clarity. A commercially available audio CD has a sample rate of 44 kHz or 44,100 samples per second.
The bit depth of a file measures the amount of data each sample contains. The greater the bit depth of a digital audio file, the greater its possible dynamic range will be. For example, recordings with a limited dynamic range sound hollow and of low quality, while those with a higher range can better reproduce the natural sound of a range of musical instruments and other audio sources. A commercially available audio CD has a bit depth of 16 bits.
A standard digital camera usually records audio at 48 kHz, or 48,000 samples per second at 16 bits.
Understanding audio tracks
In Premiere Pro you can add audio to your sequences, edit it and also add effects to it. In this application, there are three types of audio files you can come into contact with; mono, stereo and 5.1 surround.
Stereo audio
Most on-camera and studio microphones record stereo sound.
A Stereo sound file contains a left and right audio track. In true stereo applications, these two tracks contain different audio signals to create the illusion of directionality; in many cases, the same sounds are duplicated on both channels. Most stock audio, along with audio captured from a camcorder’s onboard microphone, as well as audio ripped from compact disks, will be stereo.
Mono audio
Many external mics that can be attached to cameras, record mono audio.
A Mono audio signal contains a single audio track. Many external microphones that you can attach to video camcorders record mono sound.
5.1 audio
5.1 audio is one of the surround sound types used to enhance the movie going experience.
5.1 Surround Sound uses multiple speakers to surround listeners in a 360º bubble of sound to better simulate the way we perceive sound in a live environment. The 5.1 system uses five speakers and one sub-woofer to achieve this effect and it is the only type of Surround Sound currently supported on the Premiere Pro Timeline.
In Premiere Pro sequences, you can add as many tracks as your computer system’s configuration will allow.
Premiere Pro can automatically detect and interact with the audio devices connected to your computer, but occasionally you might need to manually adjust the application’s preferences to use a specific audio device. Set up the default audio device to use for input or output by choosing Edit > Preferences > Audio Hardware (Windows) or Premiere Pro > Preferences > Audio Hardware (Mac OS).
As there are different types of audio you can work with in a project, there are also different types of audio tracks you can create in your Premiere Pro sequence. The Standard audio track type can accommodate both Mono and Stereo audio clips, and it is the default track type in the application. The Mono track type only contains a single audio channel rather than the two available with Stereo tracks. If you add a stereo clip to a mono track it is automatically converted into a mono clip. The Adaptive track type can contain both mono and stereo tracks much like the Standard type can, but with adaptive tracks, you can map source audio to different output audio channels. And finally, 5.1 tracks can contain only 5.1 audio clips.
When creating audio tracks in a sequence you can either create a new regular audio track or a sub-mix track. Regular audio tracks are the standard, mono, adaptive and 5.1 options mentioned previously, while sub-mix tracks can be set as the output destination for multiple regular tracks. Sub-mix tracks are useful for managing audio mixes and effects. In this lesson, you will be working primarily with stereo audio files and the standard track type.
Stripping audio from a video file
Occasionally, you might choose to use your camera to record environmental or ambient sound, a particular sound effect, or voiceover because you don’t have access to dedicated recording equipment. In such cases, you will need to separate the audio track from the video file you are working with. After you strip the audio from its associated video file, the audio track becomes a separate file that you can add to the Timeline independently or use it in other applications, such as Adobe Audition.
In this part of the lesson, you will extract the audio track from a video file so you can add it to an existing sequence. The file you will work with is a scenic shot from New York’s Central Park. You will add it to a still image montage to incorporate environmental ambient sound and help establish a location and emotional feel. You can find the media for this project in the Travelogue-New York folder located in the Media Library folder, in their respective images and video sub-folders.
1 From the Premiere Pro welcome screen, click the Open Project button, or with Premiere Pro already open, choose File > Open Project. Navigate to the pr07lessons folder that you copied to your hard drive and locate the pr0701.prproj file. Double-click the file to open it.
This project contains a single video file called Central Park-NYC-Fountain Scene.AVI and a series of still images.
2 Choose File > Save As. In the Save Project dialog box that appears, confirm that you are still in the pr07lessons folder, rename your file to pr0701-working, and then click Save.
3 Click the reveal triangle to the left of the Video bin in the project panel to display the Central Park-NYC-Fountain Scene.AVI clip in the Project panel. Click this video clip to highlight it.
To strip the audio track from a video file, you must first select that file in the Project panel.
4 With the video clip highlighted, choose Clip > Audio Options > Extract Audio to strip the audio track from the file. You do not need to specify any settings with this command. Premiere Pro creates a separate and independent audio file by ripping the audio from the original video clip, just as you would rip audio from a music CD. The new file is created in the same directory that contains your Premiere Pro project file, and then immediately imported into your project.
The new audio file is saved in the same bin as the video file from which it was extracted.
Recall that the original video clip stored in your hard drive remains intact. Premiere Pro creates the new audio file by copying the audio data from the original video file.
5 Click the new audio file to select it, then drag and drop it into the audio bin in the Project panel.
6 Right-click (Windows) or Ctrl+click (Mac OS) the new audio file and choose Rename from the menu that appears. Change the file name to Environmental Sound and press the Enter (Windows) or Return (Mac OS) key on your keyboard to exit the text editing mode.
You can also rename a piece of footage by clicking on it when it is already highlighted.
7 Click the Environmental Sound audio file to select it. Drag the audio file to the Timeline panel and drop it onto the Audio 1 track.
When adding a file to the timeline by dragging and dropping it, always be aware of where you are placing it on the Timeline.
8 Press the Enter (Windows) or Return (Mac OS) key on your keyboard to render all areas of the Timeline that need rendering. Premiere Pro automatically previews the Timeline after rendering; you’ll hear the audio playing along with the still images.
9 Choose File > Save or press Ctrl+S (Windows) or Command+S (Mac OS) to save your changes to this file.
Close this file. You have completed this section of the lesson.
Audio channel mapping
Premiere Pro sequences require that you specify the type of track you want to create for audio. Some track types, such as Mono, only accept that type of audio clip while others, such as standard, allow you to mix different clip types together. Since video files could contain a single stereo or mono track, or dual mono tracks, it may sometimes be necessary to adjust how the application is treating an audio clip. Audio channel mapping is the feature in Premiere Pro that helps you perform the desired conversion.
In this part of the lesson, you will change the mapping of a mono audio clip to interpret it as a stereo clip and place it onto a stereo track on the Timeline.
1 From the Premiere Pro welcome screen, click the Open Project button, or with Premiere Pro already open, choose File > Open Project. Navigate to the pr07lessons folder that you copied to your hard drive and double-click the pr0702.prproj file to open it.
This file contains a series of audio and video clips already placed on the Timeline, so it does not need much work to complete the project. You can find the media for this project in the Media Library folder. The majority of the media in this project is located in Travelogue-Boston. The background music track called Classical Background Music.mp3 is located in the Audio folder in Media Library.
2 In the Project panel, double-click the Shawmut Tours-Booking.wav file to make it active and open it in the Source Monitor. You will find this file in the Voice Overs bin inside the Audio bin. You may have to enlarge the width of the Name column in the Project panel to make the full file names visible.
This file has a single waveform, indicating it is a mono file. You will remap this file into a stereo file before you can add it to the Audio 1 track on the Timeline.
Many external microphones do not record audio as a stereo signal; instead, they create a single mono track.
3 With the Shawmut Tours-Booking.wav clip still selected in the Project panel, choose Clip > Modify > Audio Channels to open the Modify Clip dialog box.
4 In the Channel Format drop-down menu choose stereo. In the Source Channel drop-down that appears choose Channel 1. This will become the right channel when added to an audio track.
You do not affect the original clip when you modify its audio options; you change the way Premiere Pro interprets it.
You can save your setting in the Modify Clip dialog box by clicking the Save Preset As button and setting a preset name.
5 Click OK to close the dialog box and change the interpretation of the audio clip. The clip’s display in the Source Monitor changes: it now has two audio channels, each an exact copy of the other.
Remapping a tracks audio channels does not affect the original clip that resides on your hard drive.
6 If necessary, click the Source Monitor to make it active, and then press the spacebar on your keyboard to play the clip. The file contains three distinct sets of waveforms, each separated by a short pause.
You should always include multiple takes when recording voiceovers so the editor can choose the take to use. For this lesson, you will use the second take.
You must modify the audio channels of a clip before adding a clip to the Timeline.
7 In the Source Monitor, click the Playhead Position field, type 1303 and press the Enter (Windows) or Return (Mac OS) key on the keyboard to move the playhead to the 13-second and 3–frame mark (00;00;13;03) on the Timeline. This is just before the speaker begins the second voiceover. Press the I key on the keyboard or click the Mark In Point button on the lower-right of the panel to set the clip’s In Point to the current position of the playhead.
A. Playhead Position. B. Mark In Point Button. C. Mark Out Point Button.
8 Click the Playhead Position field, type 2213 and press the Enter (Windows) or Return (Mac OS) key on your keyboard to move the playhead to the 22-second and 13-frame mark (00;00;22;13) on the Timeline. This is just after the speaker finishes the second voiceover.
Press the O key on the keyboard or click the Mark Out Point button on the lower-right of the panel to set the clip’s Out Point to the current position of the playhead.
Remember that In and Out points are always set to the current position of the playhead.
9 Click and drag the Drag Audio Only button located below the Source Monitor’s visual display to drag the clip onto the Audio 1 track on the Timeline, and position it so it is adjacent to Shawmut Tours-Locations.wav clip on the Timeline.
The Drag Audio Only button makes it very convenient to add an audio file to the timeline.
10 Press the Enter (Windows) or Return (Mac OS) key on your keyboard to render all areas of the Timeline that need rendering. Premiere Pro automatically previews the Timeline after rendering.
Choose File > Save As. In the Save Project dialog box that appears, confirm that you are still in the pr07lessons folder, rename your file to pr0702-working, and then click the Save button.
Don’t close this file; you’ll need it in the next part of the lesson.
Adding audio tracks to the Timeline
You can define the number of audio and video tracks a sequence contains when you create a new one in Premiere Pro. In the process of working with your sequences, you might need to create additional audio tracks for voiceovers, sound effects, background music, or other types of incidental audio not linked to specific video clips. This is a situation where you need to create additional audio tracks.
In this section of the lesson, you will create a new audio track to hold background music for the Shawmut Tours Travelogue project.
1 With the pr0702-working.prproj project still open, locate the Classical Background Music.mp3 clip in the Project panel, and then double-click it to make it active and open it in the Source Monitor. Press the spacebar on your keyboard to preview this file.
This is a two-minute audio clip created to be used as incidental or background music. In this lesson, you will use 25 seconds of this footage as a background audio track for the Travelogue.
2 In the Timeline panel, right-click (Windows) or Ctrl+click (Mac OS) the Audio 1 track header and choose Add Tracks from the menu that appears to open the Add Tracks dialog box.
If you are using a single-button mouse device on the Mac OS platform, hold the Control key on your keyboard and click the mouse device to display the Context menu.
3 In the dialog box, set the number of video tracks to add to zero, confirm that the number of Audio Tracks to add is set to 1, and that the track type is set to Standard. You should also confirm that the placement of the track is set to After Audio 1.
You can create additional Audio, Video, and Sub-Mix tracks in the sequence using the Add Tracks dialog box.
Click OK to close the dialog box and create the new stereo audio track.
4 Choose File > Save or press Ctrl+S (Windows) or Command+S (Mac OS) to save these changes to your project. Do not close this file; you will need it in the next part of the lesson.
Making a Three-Point edit on the Timeline
In this exercise, you only need to add a section of the music clip to the Timeline, rather than the entire clip. For such a case, you can effectively use the Three-Point edit. This type of edit adds a portion of the clip in the Source Monitor to the Timeline by setting two markers on the Timeline that define the duration of the clip you want to add, and a single marker in the Source Monitor that defines the starting point of the source. When you add this clip to the Timeline, the two In Points become aligned, and you can then add footage to fill the destination area defined on the Timeline.
In this section of the lesson, you will add the Classical Background Music.mp3 clip to the Timeline using a Three-Point edit.
1 With the pr0702-working.prproj project still open, click the Timeline panel to activate it and if necessary, move the playhead to the beginning (00;00;00;00) of the sequence.
Press the Home button on your computer’s extended keyboard to automatically move the playhead to the beginning of the Timeline.
2 With the Timeline panel still active, press the I key on your keyboard or click the Mark In Point button on the Program Monitor to add an In Point to the Timeline.
3 Press and hold the Shift key on the keyboard and drag the playhead to the end of the last clip on the Timeline, this will be at the 25 second (00:00:25:00) mark. Press the O key on your keyboard or press the Mark Out button in the Program monitor to insert an Out Point at the end of the Timeline.
Holding down the Shift key while dragging the playhead forces it to snap to the beginning and end of clips on the Timeline. Press the End key on your computer’s extended keyboard to automatically move the playhead to the end of the Timeline.
This completes the first part of the preparation for a three-point edit; the Timeline is now ready to receive the clip. Next you will prepare the source clip.
The area of the sequence inside the In and Out points you created is highlighted darker on the time ruler at the top of the Timeline.
4 If necessary, locate the Classical Background Music.mp3 in the Project panel and double-click it to make it active and open it in the Source Monitor. This is the clip you will add to the sequence, but first you must create an In point in the clip to sync with the In Point already on the Timeline.
In the Source Monitor, click in the Playhead Position field, type 2824 and press the Enter (Windows) or Return (Mac OS) key on the keyboard to move the playhead to the 28-second and 24-frame mark (00;00;28;24) on the Timeline.
5 Press the I key on the keyboard or click the Mark In Point button on the lower-left of the Source Monitor panel to set the clips In Point to the current position of the playhead.
In and Out Points can be marked in both the Source and Program monitors.
6 In the Timeline panel, click and drag the A1 Source Track Indicator to move it to the Audio 2 track and then click the Audio 2 Track Header (the area where you see the track’s name) to highlight this track and make it active.
If necessary, click the Audio 1 and Video 1 track headers to deactivate them. This ensures that the edit does not affect any of the other tracks in the Timeline.
The Track headers of highlighted and active tracks appear lighter in the Timeline than those that are not active.
We strongly recommend you notice the tracks that are active and the position of the Source Track Indicator before you make a Three-Point edit.
7 Press the period key (.) on your keyboard or click the Overwrite button on the bottom-right of the Source monitor to make a Three-Point Overwrite edit. Unlike an Insert edit, an Overwrite edit adds a clip to the Timeline on the selected track without increasing the overall duration of the sequence.
The In and Out Point markers are automatically removed from the Timeline after using an Insert or Overlay edit to add the source clip.
8 Click the Timeline panel to make it active, and then move the playhead to the beginning of the sequence. Press the spacebar on your keyboard to play the Timeline. You can no longer hear the voiceovers because the music is loud; you will correct this in the next few steps.
9 Double-click the Classical Background Music.mp3 clip on the Timeline to make it active and load it into the Source Monitor. This allows you to edit the clip’s audio effects in the Effect Controls panel. Click the Effect Controls panel located behind the Source Monitor to make it active and visible.
10 In the Effect Controls panel, click the reveal triangle to the left of the Volume effect to display the Bypass and Levels properties. Changing the Levels property lets you control the volume of the clip.
Use the Levels property to increase or decrease the clip’s loudness from a baseline value of zero.
You can animate the Audio Levels of a clip in Premiere Pro using the Effect Controls panel. Unlike most other properties, the toggle animation stopwatch is automatically enabled for all the Volume properties.
11 Click the Levels property Toggle Animation stopwatch to disable animation so you can set a global value that lasts for the entire duration of this clip. Click the Level’s property value and change it to –40 to reduce the volume of the clip.
The volume of a clip is measured in decibels.
12 Click the Timeline panel to make it active and if necessary move the playhead to the beginning of the sequence. Press the spacebar on your keyboard to play the Timeline. The background music volume is now at a more manageable level.
13 Choose File > Save or press Ctrl+S (Windows) or Command+S (Mac OS) to save these changes to your project. Do not close this file; you will need it in the next part of the lesson.
Setting volume keyframes
When adding incidental audio to your Premiere Pro sequences, you may obscure other audio that is also on the timeline. Unlike when working with the video in your sequence, where only the top video layer is visible at any time, all audio files play simultaneously. This can make the sound in your video difficult to understand because the background music would play over the dialogue, or the sound effect would overpower the voiceover. This relationship between audio clips makes it extremely important that you are aware of the relative volume of each clip you are using. Premiere Pro can help you solve this issue by animating the volume of any audio clip on the Timeline.
In this section of the lesson, you will add keyframes to the volume property of an audio clip to animate a change in volume over time.
1 With the pr0702-working.prproj project still open, click the Timeline panel to activate it and if necessary move the playhead to the beginning (00;00;00;00) of the sequence.
In the previous lesson, you lowered the volume of the Classical Background Music.mp3 clip to hear the narration over it; now you will animate the end of the clip so the music fades.
2 In the Timeline panel, click the reveal triangle to the left of the track labeled Audio 2 to enlarge the track height and make the clip’s audio waveforms visible.
You must first expand a track to see the audio waveform of clips on that track.
3 Click the Playhead Position field located at the upper-left of the Timeline panel, type 2315 and press the Enter (Windows) or Return (Mac OS) key on the keyboard to move the playhead to the 23-second and 15-frame mark (00;00;23;15) on the timeline.
4 If it isn’t currently selected, double-click the Classical Background Music.mp3 clip on the Timeline to make it active, and then if necessary click the Effect Controls panel to reveal it. Notice that the right part of the panel contains a mini-Timeline view to help you animate clip effects.
The playhead in the Effect Controls panels Timeline view is a mirror of the one on the Timeline.
5 Click the Toggle Animation stopwatch to the left of the Level property to enable animation. A keyframe is created at the current position of the playhead.
New keyframes are always created at the current position of the playhead when creating animation.
6 In the Timeline panel, press and hold the Shift key on the keyboard and drag the playhead to the end of the last clip, this will be at the 25 second (00:00:25:00) mark. You can also press the End key on your keyboard while the Timeline panel is active.
7 In the Effect Controls panel, change the value of the Level property to –100. This creates a new keyframe at the current position of the playhead on the Timeline, and the audio volume fades out toward the end of the clip.
Premiere Pro automatically animates changes when it detects a difference in the values of your keyframes.
8 Click the Timeline panel to make it active and move the playhead to the beginning of the sequence. Press the spacebar on your keyboard to play the Timeline.
9 Choose File > Save or press Ctrl+S (Windows) or Command+S (Mac OS) to save these changes to your project. Do not close this file; you will need it in the next part of the lesson.
Improving audio in Premiere Pro
You might often record audio that has extraneous sounds. For example, you might record voiceovers with background noise from your surroundings; or you might record a scene in a crowded room and pick up some of the surrounding conversations. Your audio could also be too low in volume due to your microphone settings or the speaker being far from the microphone.
In this part of the lesson, you will adjust the voiceover clips to raise the volume and remove the increased background noise created by doing so.
1 With the pr0702-working.prproj project still open, double-click the voiceover clip named Shawmut Tours-Introduction.wav on the Timeline to make it active.
If necessary, click the Effect Controls panel tab located next to the Source Monitor to reveal it and make it active.
2 In the Effect Controls panel, locate the Level property in the Volume property group and click the Toggle Animation stopwatch to disable animation for this property. Click the value for Level and change it to 6. This is the highest value to which you can raise the volume.
Always remember that 0dB is the baseline audio volume.
3 Press the spacebar on your keyboard to play the Timeline. Notice that the voiceover is now louder than before. Let the preview play into the second voiceover clip to really notice the difference in volume. Notice also that the background noise of the clip has also been increased by the volume change; we will adjust this in a later step.
4 You can add a Volume effect to the clip to increase it further if the initial volume change is not enough. Click the Effects panel to activate it and make it visible; locate the Volume effect by clicking Audio Effects > Volume. Once located, click the effect, then drag and drop it onto the Shawmut Tours-Introduction.wav clip on the Timeline.
You can add audio effects in much the same way as you add video effects.
You can also locate effects by typing either a full or partial name into the Effect panel’s search field.
5 A new effect called Volume appears in the Effect Controls panel. If necessary, click the reveal triangle to the left of the new effect to reveal its properties. Change the value of the Level property to 6.
Remember that increasing the volume of a clip also increases the background noise of the clip.
6 Press the spacebar on your keyboard to play the Timeline. Again the voiceover’s volume has been increased. Let the preview play into the second voiceover clip to really notice the difference in volume. Notice also that the background noise of the clip has also been increased by the volume change and is even more distracting than it was originally.
7 You can fix the increased noise by applying another filter: DeNoiser.
In the Effects panel, locate the DeNoiser effect in the Audio Effects folder or by typing any part of the effect’s name into the panel’s search field. Drag this effect onto the Shawmut Tours-Introduction.wav clip on the Timeline.
8 If necessary, click the reveal triangle to the left of the DeNoiser, and then click the reveal triangle next to Individual Parameters to reveal the Reduction property.
The Reduction parameter is used to set the volume of the sounds that are reduced in the clip.
9 Click the reveal triangle to the left of the Reduction property, and move the slider to the left until the property value reads –10dB.
Your own clips will require you to adjust different properties.
10 If necessary, move the playhead to the beginning of the timeline (00:00:00:00) and press the spacebar on your keyboard to play the Timeline. Notice that the voiceover’s noise has been significantly reduced. Depending on the specifics of your own clip, you may have to adjust different values.
Effects can be copied and pasted onto other clips by selecting them on your source clip; you can use the Control (Windows) or Command (Mac OS) key to select multiple effects and choosing Edit > Copy. Then select the destination clip or clips and choosing Edit > Paste.
11 Choose File > Save or press Ctrl+S (Windows) or Command+S (Mac OS) to save these changes to your project. Close the project; you have completed this lesson.
Self study
1 Add your own background music track to one of your projects.
2 Add keyframes to it to create multiple fade in and fade out effects.
Review
Questions
1 What are the four types of audio tracks that can be created in a Premiere Pro sequence?
2 How does a Three-Point Edit work?
3 What are the three Individual Parameters available in the DeNoiser effect and what do they do?
Answers
1 The four types of audio tracks that can be created in a Premiere Pro sequence are: Mono, Standard, Adaptive, and 5.1.
2 A Three-Point Edit works by adding a portion of the clip currently loaded into the Source Monitor to the Timeline. The editor then sets two markers on the Timeline to define the duration of the clip to add, and a single marker in the Source Monitor to define the starting point of the source.
3 Reduction: Since the DeNoiser removes sound that is at a certain volume, use this property to set the amount of noise to remove within a range of –20 and 0 dB.
Offset: Sets an offset value between the automatically detected noise level and a value defined by the user. This is limited to a range between –10 and +10 dB. The Offset property allows greater control when the automatic noise detection is not enough.
Freeze: Stops the noise floor interpretation at the currently established value.
