
Perhaps the most common thing anyone does to audio tracks is adjust the volume. As you preview your project, you may notice that the background music seems a little too loud or the narration isn’t loud enough. You may also have sounds in the main audio track that you want to get rid of altogether, without affecting the rest of the audio clip. Virtually all video-editing programs allow you to adjust volume in two different ways:
- You can adjust the overall volume of an entire clip or track.
- You can adjust volume dynamically within a clip, making some parts of the same clip louder and some parts quieter.
To begin adjusting volume in iMovie, place a check mark in the Edit Volume check box at the bottom of the timeline. In Studio, click the clip you want to modify and then choose Toolbox>Change Volume so that Studio’s audio toolbox appears above the timeline.
Each program displays audio rubberbands across audio clips. Rubberbands aren’t just for holding together rolled up newspapers or your hairdo; in video programs, they show you the volume for an audio clip, and they allow you to make dynamic adjustments to the volume throughout the clip.
A movie program can play several sources of audio at once. For example, while you hear the audio that was recorded with a video clip, you may also hear a musical soundtrack and some narration that was recorded later. When you’re working on a movie project in your editing software, each of these unique bits of audio would go on its own separate audio track in the timeline. Most editing programs provide audio tracks for main audio (the audio that was recorded with a video clip), music, and narration. More advanced editing programs offer you many more audio tracks that you can use any way you see fit. Adobe Premiere, for example, can provide up to 99 separate audio tracks in the timeline. Although it’s difficult to imagine anyone actually needing that many audio tracks, having too many is better than not having enough. Pinnacle Studio provides three separate audio tracks. To lock a track in Studio, click the track header on the left side of the timeline.