Audio and mixing

For music, see Music. For effects, narration and dubbing, see Sound effects and voices.

Set up for sound work

Press ⌥ 3 on Mac, or Alt 3 on Windows and Linux, to switch to the Audio workspace. It opens the Library on Audio, the Inspector on its Audio tab and gives the timeline more height, with the Sound panel one tab behind it. You can also pick the workspace from the top bar.

Sound lives on sound lanes (a new project has Voice and Music) and on the Main lane, which carries the sound of your footage. To silence a whole lane, click Mute lane in its header.

To trim a clip's sound apart from its picture (for a J-cut or L-cut), right-click the clip and choose Detach sound. To tie them together again, select both clips, right-click and choose Link.

Set volume, pan and fades

Select a sound or video clip and open the Audio section of the Inspector.

Volume and Pan have a keyframe diamond, so you can ride a level over time: move the playhead, click the diamond to add a keyframe there, and set the value. Add another keyframe further along with a different value, and the level moves between them. Use this to dip music under a line or swell it into a big moment, rather than settling on one level for the whole clip.

Zornov puts a very short ramp on every hard sound edit, so cuts don't click.

Add effects to a clip

The Inspector's Sound effects section holds the clip's effect chain. Choose an effect from Add to put it on the clip. Each effect has an on/off switch and a button to remove it.

Reverb has room presets: Booth (nearly dry), Car interior, Small room, Living room, Bathroom (tiled), Office, Corridor, Concert hall, Church / cathedral, Warehouse, Cave / tunnel and Outdoors (slap off buildings).

The same section sets the Fade-in curve and Fade-out curve (Linear, Equal power, S-curve, Slow start, Fast start) and Keep pitch, which keeps a voice at its own pitch when you change a clip's speed.

Clean up a voice

Voice cleanup reduces background noise and room echo in speech. It runs on your computer.

1. Select the clip with the voice.
2. In the Library, open AI.
3. On the Voice cleanup card, click Run.

If no clip is selected, it works on the first clip with sound. If the button says Needs model, install the model in Settings > Models first.

Record a voice-over

1. Move the playhead to where the voice-over should start.
2. Click the microphone button on the player toolbar (Record, voice-over, prompter and live) and open the Voice-over tab.
3. Choose your Microphone. The first time, Zornov asks your system for access.
4. Set the Count-in (none, 3 beats or 4 beats), the tempo of the count and the input level.
5. Click Record voice-over at the playhead. The timeline plays while you speak, so wear headphones.
6. Click Stop and place on the timeline when you finish.

Mix in the Sound panel

Click the faders button in the timeline bar, or press ⇧ X on Mac (Shift X on Windows and Linux), to show the Sound panel in the timeline's place. Press it again, or click Back to the timeline, to return. The panel has four tabs: Mixer, Delivery, Dialogue & ADR and Subtitles & dubs. Choose Stereo, 5.1 or 7.1 at the top right to set the mix layout.

The mixer

Each lane has a channel strip:

• The role button: click it to step through dialogue, music, effects and ambience. Zornov guesses the role from the lane's name until you set it.
• The bus menu: By role sends the lane to the bus for its role, or pick a bus.
• A fader with a meter beside it. Double-click the fader to return it to 0 dB.
• A send to the reverb return, and Pan.
• M (mute) and S (solo).
• In 5.1 and 7.1, a small room pad: drag where the lane sits (front is up).

Until you add buses, lanes play straight into the master. Click Add film buses to add DX (dialogue, lightly compressed and de-essed), MX (music), FX (effects), BG (ambience) and a Reverb return. Each bus has its own strip with mute and solo. The master strip shows the meters for each channel and the momentary, short-term and integrated loudness and true peak as the film plays.

Every change in the Sound panel is a normal edit you can undo.

Dialogue levels and ADR

On the Dialogue & ADR tab:

• Select dialogue clips, set Target level (in LUFS) and click Level dialogue to bring each phrase to that level, so a whisper and a shout both read.
• Select two or more clips and click Match to first selected to make the others sound like the first (EQ, level and room). Use it for a pickup line that has to sit next to the original.
• Under ADR cues, click Add at playhead or From subtitles to list lines to re-record. For each cue, Record plays the picture from 4 seconds before the line with a 3-2-1 countdown and records your microphone. Take… brings in a take recorded elsewhere, lined up with the original line and matched to it. Cue sheet… saves the list as a CSV file with timecodes.

Hit a loudness target

1. Open the Delivery tab.
2. Choose a Spec.
3. Click Measure to see the integrated loudness, short-term and momentary maximums, loudness range and true peak, and whether the mix passes.
4. Click Normalise to set the master so the mix meets the spec in one step.

Normalise once the mix is finished, not before.

To deliver stems, click Export stems… and choose a folder. Zornov writes 24-bit Broadcast WAV files: DX, MX, FX, M&E and the full mix, plus each dubbed language. Tick BG apart to keep ambience in its own stem, and ADM objects to also write an ADM file for immersive mastering.

Good levels to aim for

• Keep the voice on top and always clear: about −16 LUFS for speech-led online video.
• Sit music about 10 to 14 dB under speech, and let it come up in the gaps.
• Keep effects short and under the music.
• Peaks under −1 dB true peak.

Related pages

• Music
• Sound effects and voices
• Captions and subtitles
• Export