Today you start editing sound. Sound changes how a video feels, even when the picture stays exactly the same.
Watch the same ten seconds of video three times. What changes each time?
1. No sound
2. With music
3. With music and a voice
The video "Dublin snow benburb st" is from Wikimedia Commons. It is CC0, so anyone can use it for free. The narrator is invented. That is the voice in the third version.
Nothing on screen moved. The picture was identical every time. What changed was the sound, and with it the whole meaning.
Version 2 adds music and version 3 adds a voice over the music. Today you will cut and fade a piece of music. Next lesson you will record your own voice over music, like version 3.
Download the practice audio file. It starts with a creaking door, which you will cut first.
The music is "horror drama song" by BurnerGRap, from Freesound. It is CC0, so anyone can use it for free.
Most digital media uses three kinds of sound. You heard two of them on the first step: music in version 2, and music with a voiceover in version 3.
In the table, a loop is music that repeats and a promo is an advert.
| Kind | What it does | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Voiceover | Carries the information. | Someone explaining what you are looking at. |
| Sound effects | Make actions feel real. | A door creak, a notification ping, footsteps. |
| Music | Sets the mood before anyone has said a word. | Slow strings under bad news; a bright loop under a promo. |
The green shape you will edit is a waveform, a picture of the sound. Tall parts are loud and flat parts are quiet, and you edit by selecting part of it.
AudioMass runs in your browser, so there is nothing to install and no account to make. Open it at audiomass.co. Make sure it ends in .co, because audiomass.com is a different site full of adverts.
You will make two cuts. First take the creak off the start, and then cut the end so the whole clip is about thirty seconds long.
| Cut | Target |
|---|---|
| From the start | Remove the creaking door, about the first 8 seconds |
| Final length | About 30 seconds |
A clip that starts at full volume sounds like a mistake. A fade makes the sound slowly get louder or quieter, so it starts and stops on purpose.
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