AUDIO DUCKING - Reducing music volume in Final Cut Pro so you can hear talking
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 ก.ย. 2024
- Hi Friends, In this short video I'm talking about audio ducking - reducing the volume of music so talking can be heard. overly loud background music can be really annoying if people cant hear dialogue when watching a video so its really important to get level correct so talking can be heard.
Luckily it is really easy in Final Cut to edit music volume so talking can be heard clearly and Im showing you exactly how to do just that in todays video.
reducing volume of background music uses keyframes to reduce music volume and lets talking be heard over the top.
This quick easy way to do audio ducking in FCPX will have you serving up perfect audio in your videos in no time at all!
As always, thanks for watching and see you next time!
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Hey Friends! I hope you found that useful? If you have a different way of doing this that you think is better then let me know with a comment, also are there other tutorials you would like me to do? drop me a comment and tell me! 👍🙏😎
This was very helpful, thank you for sharing! I have always done it the first way you showed, cutting, fading, etc. This method you demonstrated is much smoother, thank you!
Better way is to export to logic and use side chain to frequencies, so there is music left on a frequencies where voice is absent, maintaining the volume.
I thought you’re going to tell how to use that in FCPX, honestly.
It’s pain in the ass to manually decrease music volume for long videos, films, etc.
new to your channel but it really is a bomb man, keep it up
Where there's a Will there's a way :). Thank you! That's been very helpful!
😂😉👍🙏
🙌🏾 so many of us “tubers” will benefit from this video.
Hi, thanks for watching! I aim to please!
BRAVO!!!! I have been pulling my hair out trying figure out why Apple has this volume attenuating feature in their free iMovie but it wasn't in Final Cut Pro. I like this feature better in FCP. Thank you so much my brother!!!
Ahhh finally haha! I knew this sort of thing had to be A Thing that I could do, but I couldn't figure it out myself. Thanks for the video!!
Glad I could help! 🙏👍😎
sub'd based on the intro quality/production/visuals. Very Awesome and quite promising of what I can expect from the channel in general. (and i need to know how to do this ducking too).
Thanks Gerald! Welcome to the channel! 👍🙏😎
This was SO helpful - thank you!! I've been doing the first technique and I knew there had to be a better way 🙈 This is one thing that makes me miss iMovie because this was automatically done for voice overs
Glad to help Veronica! Yeah iMovie does make this easy but it’s also a little unpredictable at times 👍🙏😎
You shot the duck bro and won a prize with this vid. Thanks man!
😂👍
just upgraded from imovie to final cut, this is so helpful!! thank you
Great! Enjoy the upgrade, you’ll love it! Thanks for watching 👍🙏😎
You're the first to show this to me....Thanks.....I needed this...
Glad i could help! 😄
Another regretful realization moment that it's always better to ask! haha thanks for the tip!
Glad to help! 👍🙏😎
thank you thank you thank you - months later...this video saved me!
Great to hear!
Thanks I just started editing my first video and I’m still very new to final cut.this help I pray to be this big someday
You got this! 💪
*Perfect thank you! Working on this new channel and now I need my work to improve!*
👍🙏😎
Thank you Will. I've just started using Final Cut and that was my main problem to solve.
Glad to help! 👍🙏😎
Best and easiest video on this I could find. Super simple
Fab! thank you
Thanks! So much better than the other way and I finally know what the range tool does. ✨
Glad it helped!
Thankyou, very helpful and this was exactly what I wanted!
Glad it was helpful!
Wish I'd known this at the start of the last project ... 😃👏 Great tip, thank you.
Glad it was helpful! 👍🙏😎
Cheers for teaching me how to do that! Simple and to the point. Love your green background accent lighting too, btw!
Glad you enjoyed it!
Dude, I hit like before you even started explaining. That intro was 👌
Ah thanks! 👍🙏😎
Thank you! Perfect how to on t his and straight forward.
Thanks Roddy! 👍🙏😎
I finally know how to do it and I know what the feature is called. Thanks so much :)
Happy to help Shadey! 🙏👍😎
Brilliant exactly what I was looking for and explained very well, you've earned my subscription
Thank Ian and welcome! 👍🙏😎
Oh my gosh I've been making my life so much harder doing the blade technique and fading in and out the music. THANK YOU! I subbed :D
Awesome! Thanks for watching 👍🙏😎
THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I NEEDED
Glad it helped! 👍🙏😎
For the first method - if you do the cuts, you can simply put a crossfade transition on the audio and it will be very smooth. Probably the quickest way to duck in FCP, actually. I used to use the range selector but it honestly takes longer and half the time, especially if you're zoomed out, you end up taking way too much time just trying to click the key point. With a crossfade on the audio slice you can easily drag the length of the transition to decide how smooth you want it to be. Happy editing, friends. :)
Thats a good shout too, thanks for sharing 🙏👍😎
This is exactly what I was trying to figure out, thanks!
Awesome to hear, thanks Tom! 👍🙏😎
brilliant, well that was easier than what I thought it would be, thank you.
Glad it helped
thanks a lot man , exactly the video title i was searching for
Glad it helps! thanks
OMG thank you so much for making this tutorial. I've been racking my brain trying to figure this out.
Happy to help!
finally, a video that is actually doing what I m looking for. geeez, thank you.
Glad I could help! 👍🙏😎
most iconic tutorial ever. THANK YOU!!!!
You're welcome! Thanks Daniel
2021 and this video is still GOLD!!Thank You
Awesome to hear, thanks for watching
OMG so easy haha I've been doing it like your first method all the time. Thanks!
Glad I could help! 👍🙏😎
Just an FYI, this is not ducking. This is mix automation and while they accomplish the same thing, they are completely different in practice. Ducking is done with a compressor and a side chain input. You apply the compressor to the music background track, and then you patch the output from the track you want to hear (usually a voiceover) to the input of the compressor's sidechain (and in this case the compressor plugin would be assigned to the music track). When that audio (from the VO) passes the threshold set on the compressor, it will compress or in this case "duck" the audio (in this case a music track) by a ratio set on the compressor whenever it sees audio on the input of the sidechain. You'll want a fast attack (10 to 15 milliseconds) and a slow release (80 milliseconds or more). The settings for the threshold, and your compression ratio (these two things interact with one another) will determine how much the audio (in this case the music track) gets cut.
Unfortunately, in Apple's infinite wisdom, they neglected to make it possible to actually set up a signal path that allows for ducking (which is baffling as it's simple to do this using the EXACT same plugin in Logic Pro X). They do give you the sidechain input monitor on their AU compressors, but... the dropdown that is normally there to select the input channel is gone. The only way you can do proper ducking in FCPX is to use the Export XML feature, open up the project in Logic Pro X do your mixing an ducking there, bounce down to a stem and then import that back in to FCPX. Pretty friggin' lame considering ducking is probably one of the most common patches someone would setup for mixing audio for video.
You can of course manually automate it like you've done here, and if it's just a short clip... not a big deal, but if it's a long clip it's going to get REALLY tedious AND, if any of your VO clips move in time relative to the music clip, you're screwed, you have to start from scratch. With a proper compressor and sidechain signal path, you literally have to do nothing.
Whoa, this is a lot of great info, thanks for sharing 👍
Thanks for this. I was just trying to figure out if one could properly duck in FCPX similar to logic. Saved me a pile of time.
@@aaronbazil I’m going to nitpick on calling it ducking. While it accomplishes the same end result, it is mixing, not ducking, and to understand why you need to know the history, as well as the analog roots which have been the foundation for how DAWs are laid out. All of it predates DAWs. The history of the sidechain input and ducking goes back to the 1930's when audio engineers in the film industry needed to tame sibilance from an actor's dialogue. They were able to do this by multing the dialogue signal, EQing the multed signal to accentuate the esses with a bandpass filter (sibilance frequencies vary for male vs. female voices), and then using that EQed signal to trigger the compressor's detector circuit (which is known as a side chain input, in most compressors the detector circuit is normalized to the audio input, the side chain input bypasses that signal path allowing an alternative source to trigger the actual compression). This allowed them to "duck" the signal whenever a sibilant 's' was present in the dialogue.
It's also worth noting that mix automation didn't exist in 1930 (the first automation systems were VCA-based and showed up in the 70's but VCAs degraded the signal quality so Neve came up with NECAM which had a motor that physically moved the actual fader itself thus getting around the signal degradation issue). Ducking quickly became adopted in the broadcast industry. The music mix would go through a compressor, and it was triggered via the side chain input by the DJ's voice. This allowed the DJ to talk over a track without having to ride a fader.
What differentiates mixing and ducking is that mixing (at least in this example where the "fader" is being automated) is *timecode based* and ducking is *audio based*. The mix level depends upon specific fader moves recorded in a database at a specific timecode stamp. That is how automated mixing works (I used to be a software engineer for a major console manufacturer). Ducking by contrast responds in realtime to whatever the audio stream is doing. It works independently of the timecode (timecode doesn't even need to be present). This is advantageous in this particular application where you want dialogue to duck an audio track because you don't have to worry about the integrity of the automation database and a ducker takes about 10 seconds to setup vs. what FCPX requires due to their lack of a ducker which requires a lot of manual labor.
This might be a viable solution. There’s a video in the link that explains everything. This is not a free tool BUT, if you do a lot of editing that requires ducking and you don’t want to do the Logic Pro workaround, this may be a time-saver.
www.pro-tools-expert.com/production-expert-1/2018/7/21/if-you-want-to-auto-duck-audio-fast-in-final-cut-pro-x-now-its-possible-using-this-great-new-plug-in?format=amp
Oh this was perfect! Thank you. Came across you as was looking for how to adjusrment layer - so just watched that vid and downloaded it - thanks for the free download. And am now bingeing on all your other videos. This use of the range tool just makes it so much quicker sorting out sound - so a great little tip. Right....off to watch more haha. Cheers 👍🏼👍🏼 Stuart
You're very welcome!
Hey Will, from the debt of my heart, I thank and appreciate you and your intelligence. With this short and concise lesson, I was able to surprise my boss at work. Take it, you are a genius! Thank you, thank you, thank you!
I appreciate that! Thanks for watching
@@WillChidlow may I have your email address please?
Thank you! Just what I needed to know. Great video.
Glad it was helpful!
omggg thank you so much for this quick and straight-to-the-point video! i've been looking for a short tutorial for this~
Glad it was helpful!
And once again Will saves the day! Thanks for the amazing tutorial and keep up the great work! Love from Miami
Thanks Gustavo! Glad to help! 👍🙏😎
Very helpful. Thank you!
Thank You! Was looking for this for a long time, time to take my editing to the next level!
Nice one 👍👍😎
Awesome video! You made it so easy to understand and follow along. Thank you so much.
New subscriber!
I love your energy, way of explaining, editing and how amazing your videos are.
Thanks so much for being you and your epic creations.
ah thank you, thats made my day!
Thank you, great tutorial. Directly to the point with prime examples where a cut could go wrong
Thanks very much, glad you found it helpful! 👍🙏😎
Thank you, Will. This video helped me a lot. Have a good day.
This is great. I actually didn’t know about this option in FCPX. Thank you!!
Great to hear Myles, glad I could help 👍🙏😎
Thanks for the help! its so simple
Good god! Thank you. I’ve been doing it wrong all along. I did it how you did it first, plus some other thing... not as good, definitely
Thank you ! Great video, straight to the point.
Thanks Moe!
This is gold for me. Thank you sooooo much!!
You are very welcome! 👍🙏😎
Thanks Will, great tutorial
Cheers Dave 👍🙏😎
Awesome video, straight to the point.
Glad you found it useful! 👍🙏😎
Just the tutorial I was looking for! Perfectly explained!
Great to hear! 👍🙏😎
That video was AWESOME!
AWESOME TO HEAR!! 👍🙏😎
This was so helpful. Thank you Will! 👍
Glad it was helpful!
Will, since FCP X was introduced I always wondered why it doesn't have audio mixer like FCP Studio 7 had, where you used sliders for individual tracks and could edit levels on the fly. Audio ducking was so easy.
I agree, it’s a shame they don’t have side chaining like other programmes 👍😎🙏
Awesome thank you i was looking for this for a while.
Glad to help! 👍🙏😎
Great video by the way.
Thanks! 😎
Thank you! Very helpful! :)
Ahhhh so helpful. Thank you so much!!!
Thanks for the great, easy way to do it!
Glad to help! 👍🙏😎
Thank you for this! I died laughing at first because I did it EXACTLY the way you did not recommend we do this lol
Awesome! Thanks for watching 👍🙏😎
This is super helpful! Thank you so much.
You're so welcome!
Thank you. Great video and very helpful!
👍🙏😎
This helped me! Subscribed! Thanks mate!
Great video. I'm surprised you're not more popular. Well done.
Thanks so much! Haha I’m working on it 👍🙏😎
Will, you're a star! Thank you so much for this video!!!!!
My pleasure! YOU are a star!
This is excellent. Thx for posting!
Glad you enjoyed it!
nice exactly what i needed to learn!
Glad I could help!
Thanks Will. Much respect bro
Any time!
Thanks. You've saved me hours.
Glad to help
Your intro to this video had me LOLLing
Haha thanks! 👍🙏😎
range tool is a magic tool
Great intro and info! Keep up the amazing work!
Thanks Stephanie! 👍🙏😎
Too bad I didn't come across this video before I uploaded my latest video!! smh, I needed some music in it but didn't know how to do this, but I know, THANK YOU SO MUCH for this helpful video!
Awesome! Thanks for watching 👍🙏😎
GREAT VIDEO! EXACTLY THE INFO I NEEDED!!
Thank you for this video! Going to put this in my saved folders and sub to this channel. I'm learning FCP. Do you record your screen when you are doing tutorials?
Hey Phillip, thanks for watching, glad you found it helpful. Yeah I record my screen for tutorials using QuickTime. Here’s a whole video of how I make my tutorials: th-cam.com/video/Crs6gcJp_Lc/w-d-xo.html
@@WillChidlow thank you for replying! Going to check it out!
This was great! Thank you so much
You're so welcome! Thanks Wesley
Thank you for this video! I found it extremely useful; concise.
Glad it was helpful!
Very helpful. Thank you. No more Command B for me. :)
Glad to help 👍🙏😎
Great explanation. Very useful! Thank you!!
Awesome to hear, thanks 👍🙏😎
It'd be great if FCPX supported actual "auto ducking" meaning that you can use the chat channel and the volume of the music adapts to when you are taking, sort of like a compressor would do. Filmora has this feature, although I really hate Filmora now, but was hopping FCPX would have offered the same pro feature, but it doesn't. Using keyframes is definitely not auto ducking, but I guess is a compromise. Filmora is damn slow on my Mac m1, on my iMac i7 and on my windows using a gaming card 1080TI, tons of ram, fast drive, etc.
yeah I really wish FCPX had this feature too, I believe there are a few plugins which offer this via side chaining but on looking last they all seemed a bit clunky to me. fingers crossed Apple add this in a future update 🙏👍😎
Very strange FCPX has no ducking feature, as I remember even the iMovie had this many years ago.
Thanks!
What if the voice audio and the music are in the same track? How would you be able to lower the music and still hear the voice audio?
Perfect! Thank you!
Glad to help! 👍🙏😎
Nice one Willy
Cheers Timmy 👍🙏😎
This is life saver :D Thank you!
You're welcome!
Great video, thank so much for this! Very useful! Now... how can I get captioning in the video?!
Adding captions/subtitles is really easy in FCPX. Edit > Captions > Add caption. Just make sure you define the type of caption you want to use before you add them all (Modify > Assign caption roles > edit roles) I generally use SRT as they play well for most platforms. Adding and editing captions is much like adding titles once you get the hang of it. Hope that helps, thanks for watching
@@WillChidlow I figured out the captioning and typing it myself, works a great! Appreciate your “like” and the reply as well. Great to know you’re active on here.
I should have said this is a “Ducking Cool” video! 😂 🦆
Thanks for the direct thought. Helped me!
Glad to help! 👍🙏😎
Thanks for this tutorial!
Thanks Chris 👍🙏😎
That's gonna be helpful. Cheers.
Glad to help! 👍🙏😎
Mate, thank you so much for that!
No worries! 👍🙏😎
legend thank you so much!!!
This was so useful. Really appreciated.
Glad to hear! 👍🙏😎
What if the talking is intermittent and part of the main clip, can the background music get quieter automatically like in i-movie?
Focus focus focus........ 😉
Sweet! Thank you 👍👍
Any time!
Thank you so much!
thank you for this one!
You’re very welcome 👍🙏😎