Adding audio to a sequence

Many video projects will involve working with audio clips of some sort, such as background music, voice-overs, sound effects, and more. In this exercise, we'll be adding pre-recorded voice-over clips to a sequence, then learn how to adjust the volume of individual audio tracks in a sequence.

In Premiere Pro, you can work with audio recorded in stereo, mono, and surround sound. The individual audio clips on the timeline will show multiple sub-tracks on a track if the clip was recorded in stereo, or a single track if it was recorded in mono. The voice-over clips we're working with were recorded in stereo, so we'll see two sub-tracks on the timeline for these clips, one each for the left and right audio channels.

We'll start by adding the voice-over clips to the Audio 2 (A2) track on the timeline. Before we do this, let’s make sure the Selection tool is the active tool, and zoom out on the timeline so we can see all the video clips at once. To zoom out, we’ll try a new technique that involves using the scroll wheel on the mouse in combination with the Alt key on the keyboard to zoom in and out quickly.

At this point, the sequence should look like the following image:

Now that the voice-over clips have been added, let’s adjust when each audio file starts in relation to its accompanying video clip.

Using the Track Select tool to select and adjust multiple clips at once

We want the voice-over clips to start playing 3 seconds after the start of the accompanying video clip. While we could reposition each clip individually, there’s a quicker and easier way to do this: by using the Track Select tool to select and manipulate multiple clips at once. When selecting a clip with the Track Select tool, all of the clips to the right of the selected clip will also be selected, making it easy to select and move all of our voice-over clips at once.

By default, the Track Select tool will select the contents of all the active tracks in a sequence — to focus on just the content in the A2 track, we’ll lock the V1 and A1 tracks to prevent them from being edited accidentally. Once we’re done repositioning the voice-over clips with the Track Select tool, we can unlock the other tracks.

Let’s go ahead and position the playhead where we want the first audio clip on the A2 track to start playing, then lock the other tracks so we don't accidentally move their contents with the Track Select tool. Finally, we'll use the Track Select tool to select and move all the clips on track A2. Once we’re finished, we’ll preview the sequence so we can hear the voice-over clips.

When playing back the sequence, you may have noticed that the music in the video clips makes it hard to hear the voice-over audio clips. We’ll fix this by adjusting the volume of the video clips separately from the voice-over clips.

Using the Audio Track Mixer to adjust the volume of an audio track

In Premiere Pro, we can adjust the volume of audio tracks and clips individually using the Audio Mixer panels. This can be useful when we want to adjust the volume of one audio source to hear another one better. Today, we’ll use the Audio Track Mixer panel to adjust the volume of the audio on track A1, which contains the audio from the dance video clips. To do this, we’ll need to switch over to the Audio workspace, then switch to the Audio Track Mixer panel in the panel group near the upper left side of the screen.

We now see the Audio Track Mixer panel:

This panel looks and functions like a sound mixer board that you’d see in a recording studio, and allows us to work with the audio tracks in the active sequence. For today, we’ll only focus on changing the volume of the Audio 1 and Audio 2 tracks, but the Audio Track Mixer has many other features available for editing audio. To learn more about the Audio Track Mixer, view the Adobe Help document Use the Audio Track Mixer in Premiere Pro.

With the Audio Track Mixer, we can adjust the volume of individual tracks while the sequence plays in the Program Monitor. This can be helpful when trying to determine the ideal volume of a track.

Let’s go ahead and adjust the volume of the Audio 1 and Audio 2 tracks so the voice-over can be heard better over the background music. Once we’re done, we’ll save our work.