Creating and editing a video can be a daunting process, filled with endless important decisions and separate processes to consider. Not everyone is the pro in making the video editing; you should require professional knowledge and skills for the same. It’s arguably enough to make anyone pull their hair out – and that’s without consider the audio. After all, you need to pay attention to the lighting, the subject, the equipment itself, and a hundred other things. In that sense, audio can sometimes end up being an afterthought, which is a gross oversight. Lazy audio mixing can end up ruining an otherwise solid project.

It’s never a good idea to underestimate the importance of audio. The audio mixing plays an important role in the right process of video editing. It’s worthy of your focus and attention because getting it right can make all the difference to the final product. There are various plugins used for video editing through audio mixing processes. Like, those who use Final Cut Pro for editing can take advance of a unique plugin for creating fully customisable music that will take your project to the next level. This plugin is available from FCP Audio, and is the only one of the many other plugins available that is specifically used for audio, rather than visual and transitional effects. Whatever software you using, here are a few things to watch out for when it comes to mixing audio techniques during the process of video editing-

Watching out for audio gain

While audio gain might be common knowledge to those experienced in producing videos, it’s still essential to give it a lot of attention – especially at the beginning. When you’ve first importing the audio for your video project, you’ll need to check the audio gain to make sure that nothing is peaking too high. For example, anything that goes above zero or even hits zero can be quite bad because that’s where distortion comes in. Keeping it between -6 and -24 is the average range. Dialogue can vary between these, but it’s essential that they never peak. Peaking is very bad for videos; it might damage the overall quality of the videos. In this case, you can take help from the professional to find out the peak of the audio files.

Depending on the video, it would be wise to pre-record the environment

For example, your video might feature a scene at the office. That is all well and good, but certain things such as the air conditioner can cause the audio to be uneven depending on when you film. You could have parts of the video where the air conditioner was either off or adjusted to a different level, which means the level of audio isn’t balanced. A pre-recorded sample of the room tone could be used as a layer to muffle and balance the audio overall. The same goes for any other environment.

Make sure to adjust secondary audio

Secondary audio is usually the accompanying music track of your video. While there are plenty of different ways to go about this, remember that subtlety can accomplish a lot for minimal effort. Adjust the secondary audio’s gain and listen in for any inconsistencies. It might be obvious to point out, but the dialogue needs to be completely clear even with music in the background.

To conclude, audio mixing can be just as much work as the rest of the project. However, don’t allow yourself to be overwhelmed into making a half-hearted effort thinking that your video is good enough either way. The audio can indeed make or break any and every project, and it deserves your focus.

Author Bio:

Simon Hopes is a reputed author and he writes various articles on audio and video editing. He suggests the users to implement Final Cut Pro Plugins for video editing like a pro.