Working with audio

Many video projects will make use of audio files, like pre-recorded narration, sound effects, background music, and more. Premiere Rush provides some basic tools for recording and editing audio — for example, you can record narration for a video without needing to leave Premiere Rush, and refine audio clips without needing an additional program for audio editing. Audio clips are edited on the timeline, using many of the same techniques used for editing video clips. Additionally, the Audio panel provides some tools for refining and enhancing audio clips used in your project.

Before getting started with the lesson

Before starting this lesson, you'll need to complete the following steps:

1. Download the exercise files for this lesson and extract them to your desktop, if you haven't already done so.
2. Create a new project named Working with Audio, and import the following exercise file from the RushBasics_Audio folder following the steps outlined in the lesson Starting a project and importing media:
   • catfacts_draft.mp4

Muting a clip's audio

We'll start out working with audio by exploring how to mute a clip. There are many reasons why you might want to mute the audio for an individual clip, or even an entire track. For example, you may want to add narration or background music to a sequence and not use a clip's original audio, or you might want to temporarily mute one track so you can focus on the audio contained on another. Thoere are two ways we can mute audio in Premiere Rush: we can mute an individual clip in the Audio panel, or we can mute an entire track using the track controls.

If we take a look at the timeline, we'll see that catfacts_draft.mp4 already has an audio track — however, we only want to have narration and background music for this sequence, so we'll mute the entire track using the track controls. 

Now that we've muted the audio for catfacts_draft.mp4, let's record the voiceover for the video.

Recording a voiceover

One of the benefits of using Premiere Rush to create a video is the ability to record a voiceover without needing to use a separate program for recording audio. We can start recording a voiceover in Premiere Rush using the Voiceover option in the Add New menu, and the audio we record will be added to the timeline.

Once we indicate we want to record a voiceover, the first audio track on the timeline will show a red Record button that we can click to start recording, as seen in the following image:

After recording a voiceover clip, we can perform some of the same edits to the recorded audio as we would for video clips, like splitting the clip and removing unwanted sections of audio.

Let's go ahead and record the narration for this video, which includes a series of facts about cats. After it's recorded, we'll listen to it to see how it turned out. 

Editing recorded audio

After recording audio, you might want to edit the recorded clip. This might include splitting up a recorded narration clip into multiple clips, as well as making adjustments to the recording so it sounds its best.

Enhancing the sound of recorded audio

Depending on the environment where you recorded your voiceover and the microphone you used, you may want to make some adjustments to the recording in order to eliminate background noise or enhance audio quality.

Let's make these adjustments to the voiceover we just recorded, to help it sound its best. The tools we can use to do this are located in the Advanced section of the Audio panel:

Premiere Rush will typically automatically detect what type of audio we're working with, and gives us adjustments we can use to help make that clip sound its best. When working with voice recordings, for example, we have options for automatically adjusting the volume, balancing sound, reducing background noise and echo, and enhancing the sound quality of recorded speech.

Let's go ahead and make some enhancements to the recorded voiceover. We'll reduce the background noise of the clip, and enhance the sound of the recorded speech.

Splitting an audio clip

Now that we've enhanced the sound quality of our narration, let's split it into three individual clips and position them appropriately on the timeline.

Adding pre-recorded audio

If we have background music or other audio files we want to add to a project, we can easily do that using the Media Browser. For this lesson, we'll add some background music to our project from Premiere Rush's music collection.

Music and Copyright Issues

Before incorporating music into a project, if you don't already have music to use, you'll want to think about where to find songs you can use in a project. Some video hosting providers may remove videos that make use of copyrighted music without permission, so you'll need to either purchase the rights to a song so you can use it, or find music that isn't protected under copyright.

If you can purchase the rights to use a song, there are many sources for royalty-free music — you'll pay a one-time fee for the ability to use a song in your projects without giving credit to the artist. However, if you're looking for music that's free to use, you'll want to look for music that's either in the public domain or covered under a Creative Commons license. Creative Commons allows for the free use of music (and other files) in various projects, so long as you follow the rules set out in each song's license — for example, some songs are free to use so long as you don't make use of them commercially, while others request that you credit the creator of the song.

Premiere Rush includes a library of music that is free to use in your projects without crediting the original creator, so for today's purposes, we'll be using music from the Soundtracks library in Premiere Rush.

Ducking background music

When adding background music to a video, in order for people to better hear any narration, it's typically a good idea to lower the volume of the background music. This technique is called ducking, and Premiere Rush provides the option to automatically duck music against any clips labeled as voice clips. This option is located in the Audio panel.

Let's go ahead and turn on auto ducking for the background music, so the volume will be automatically lowered whenever the voiceover plays.

At this point, we can close the project and move to the next lesson.