Tutorial: How to Manipulate the Basics of Audio in Adobe Premiere Pro
Adobe programs are some of the most useful and relevant tools to learn, particularly for future career paths. But how do you start? Adobe can be overwhelming at first glance and often requires sifting through a great deal of online tutorials to learn even the most basic skills, or even relearn what you once knew. In order to streamline this process, here is a tutorial for one of the most basic and most useful skills when learning Adobe Premiere Pro: manipulating audio and video separately.
Once you’ve chosen a clip, uploaded your media by dragging and dropping into the media section, and dragged said video into the middle area of the screen, you are ready to manipulate it. To separate the sound of the clip from the video, begin by right clicking your mouse over the clip itself. Scroll until you see “Unlink”, then select this setting. Once you’ve clicked “Unlink”, the audio component should no longer be highlighted on your screen. You can now freely alter the audio or video components separately.
You can now layer different non-diegetic audio components and manipulate the speed and sound of the original.
Let’s start by layering. Add another clip beneath your first audio. In order to make these two match, let’s manipulate the speed/duration of the second clip to coincide with the first. Right click on the clip you want to change, then scroll until you find speed/duration.
Once you’ve selected speed/duration, it will give you the option to enter your own percentage, meaning a percentage of the original speed. Play around with this speed until you’ve found one that fits what you’re looking for.
Next, let’s manipulate the volume of each clip. For these two, I want the first audio clip to be quieter in order to give more effect to the second clip. Select the audio you want to change, then select “Audio” at the top of your toolbar. The main view will shift to an audio section with separate levels for each clip.
To lower the volume for a clip, slide the bar on the left-hand side down. To increase the volume, slide up. For this particular video, I lowered the first audio clip’s volume and increased the second. Now, the diegetic sound doesn’t overpower the non-diegetic sound I layered on.
And finally, I want both of my audio clips to be the length of my video. There are several ways to trim the additional audio. Firstly, if the audio within the length of my video is what I want, I can simply cut off the access using the Razor Tool on the left-hand toolbar.
Hold the Razor Tool in alignment with the other clips and click. There should now be two sections of the clip you are trimming. To get rid of the excess, simply click it and delete it.
If you want to use a different section of the audio, simply hold your mouse over the edge of the beginning of the clip. A red bracket with an arrow will appear, then drag this bracket until you reach the section of the clip you want to use. Once you’ve done this, drag the entire clip so that it aligns with the beginning of the other two. You can use this same technique of dragging the bracket on the end of the clip to trim off excess once all of the clips align, or you can use the trimming method as well. Once you have trimmed and aligned all of the clips with the sounds you want, they should look something like this.
Now, click play and see what you’ve created!
These are just some basic of how to manipulate and separate the audio using volume control, trimming, and unlinking. It’s enough to get you started! And show that, while Adobe can be overwhelming, it becomes much more attainable once you learn the basics.
To find free stock photos and videos: pexels.com
To find free, downloadable sounds: freesound.org
