Audio MixingJames Evans

Adobe Premiere Elements does not assume that the user wants the audio clip of the video clip over the top of the video when it is imported in, so it places it after the video clip. However, we would need it over the video clip. To do this very easily you could click on quick mode and simply drag it underneath. You can also trim, split and change the audio in quick mode, however you can get much more out of the audio if you are in the expert view.

A benefit of expert mode is that you can actually see the waveform of the audio, therefore you can see where something is happening by the peaks of the audio waves. However, another soundtrack has been added here but you cannot see the waveforms due to the fact it is collapsed. To expand the soundtrack, click on the arrow by the side of it, as shown to the left. Now we can see the waveforms of the soundtrack, as indicated below.

A main issue regarding audio is that it cannot be too loud otherwise it will crackle and sound ineffective. To edit this, click on the “Windows” tab at the top to bring up a drop down menu and select “Audio Meters”. This will bring up the audio meters for the clip and when you play the clip, you will be able to se how much sound is being emitted. If the sound reaches the “zero” line then the squares at the top of the meters go red and then the audio is much too loud. This is shown by the meter to the left. This will have to be edited.

To split the clip, right click on the main click and select “Unlink Audio and Video”. This makes the audio and video now two separate objects which can be moved around and changed and so on. To cut the audio at a specific point, move the slider to the designated point and click the small scissor button. Now you can edit the audio even more independently.

To change the volume of the first audio clip, drag the yellow bar up and down to change the volume. In this case the volume needs to be lowered, so the bar was dragged to the bottom of the audio.

To also lower the audio, click on the tools button on the bottom right of the screen and scroll up to the “Audio Mixer” button. This brings up a box which has Audio 1, Narration and Soundtrack mixers to enable you to change the sound. You can reduce the sound of each part of audio by dragging the slider down to the intended volume.

Click on the audio and then click on “Adjustments” in the top right corner. This brings up this menu which can adjust the volume. To reduce the higher pitched tones, click on “Treble” and bring the slider to the left.

This concludes how to mix the audio in a clip in a number of different ways.