Handy Promo: Adjusting Audio Keyframes in Premiere Pro

Topics covered in this Premiere Pro tutorial:

Editing Music, Converting Mono Audio to Stereo, Using Audio Keyframes

Exercise Preview

Exercise Overview

In a series of exercises, we’ll create a promo video for Handy (a cleaning and handyman services company). We’ll time footage to a voice-over, and learn how to dynamically link to an After Effects project. In this exercise, we’ll import two audio tracks and learn to adjust audio levels using keyframes.

Previewing the Final Video

1. Let’s see a preview of what you’ll be making. It has sound, so make sure your speakers are turned on, or your headphones are plugged in.

2. On the Desktop, navigate to Class Files > Premiere Pro Class > Handy GFX Video > Finished Movie and double–click Handy-Promo.mp4.

3. Play the video and notice the following (watch it as many times as you need):

   • At the beginning the Handy logo rotates 180º. Conveniently, the logo is designed to read both right-side up and upside down.
   • The text and images/videos appear in sync with the voice-over script.
   • A music track plays in the background throughout the video.
   • Periodically, the Handy logo wipes over the footage to reveal the next clip.
   • The video ends with another rotation of the logo.
   • The first and last frame look exactly the same so that the video can loop perfectly.

Getting Started

1. In Premiere Pro, go to File > Close All Projects to close any open projects.

2. Go to File > New > Project.

3. In the New Project window, next to Name, type yourname-Handy-GFX.

4. To the right of Location, click the Browse button.

5. Navigate to Desktop > Class Files > Premiere Pro Class > Handy GFX Video and click Choose (Mac) or Select Folder (Windows).

6. At the bottom of the New Project window, click OK.

7. Make sure you’re in the Editing workspace by going to Window > Workspaces > Editing.

8. To make sure we’re all using the same factory preset (not customized), go to Window > Workspaces > Reset to Saved Layout.

9. Let’s import the files we need for this project. Switch to the Desktop and navigate to Class Files > Premiere Pro Class > Handy GFX Video > Capture.

10. Select all 4 folders (audio, gfx, photos, and videos), and drag them to the Project panel in Premiere Pro.

11. Let’s create a new sequence. Go to File > New > Sequence.

12. On the left side of the New Sequence window, under Sequence Presets, expand into Digital SLR > 1080p and click DSLR 1080p30 so that it’s highlighted.

13. At the bottom of the window next to Sequence Name, type HandyPromo-v1 but don’t click OK yet!

14. At the top of the New Sequence window, switch to the Settings tab.

15. Change the Frame Size to 1080 horizontal. This is the appropriate size for Instagram.

16. Click OK.

17. In the Sequence menu, make sure Selection Follows Playhead is turned OFF.

Editing Music

For this promo video, we’ll have two audio tracks. One will contain the voice-over and the other will be the music track. We’ll start with placing the music track.

1. In the Project panel, expand the audio folder, and double–click Carpe Diem.mp3 to open it in the Source Monitor.

2. Notice in the Source Monitor that this music clip is almost 5 minutes long. Our promo is going to be under 20 seconds so we need to do some editing!

3. We like the first 18 or so seconds, so move the playhead to 17;25.

4. Click the Mark Out button to set the out point here.

5. Drag from the Drag Audio Only icon down to the Timeline and drop it at the beginning of track A1.

6. In the Timeline, play through the ending (from around 14;24). It’s ending very abruptly right now which doesn’t sound great, so let’s see if there’s another section we can use for the end.

7. Click into the Source Monitor to focus on it.

8. Go to Markers > Clear In and Out.

9. Move to the end of the audio and play back from around 4;48;13 to listen to the ending of the music. That last strum would sound great for the ending of our video.

10. To grab that ending, zoom in on the Source Monitor and move the playhead to the beginning of that ending “flourish.” It should be at 4;49;29.

11. Hit i to set the in point.

12. Move the playhead to 4;51;26, after it’s done resonating.

13. Hit o to set the out point.

14. Drag from the Drag Audio Only icon down to the Timeline and drop it on track A1, aligning it with the end of the first section of music we added.

15. We want to align the last “flourish” with the last beat of the music section we’re using. Play back from around 17;05 hear what it sounds like so far.

16. The ending is coming in just a little bit late so drag the clip down to A2, and move the entire clip over to the left so it begins a bit earlier. You will probably want to disable snapping by hitting the letter S key.

    

17. We want to line up the two beats. Play around with moving the section back in time and listening for where the beats align. (You may need to zoom into the Timeline and turn on snapping)

18. We found that 17;14 works well: move your playhead to 17;14
19. Re-enable snapping by hitting S again.

20. Move the 2nd clip to start at the playhead–it should snap there.

    Don’t worry about the glitch, we’ll fix this next.

21. Drag the end section straight up to A1, overlapping the end of the first section.

22. To smooth out the glitch, Ctrl–click (Mac) or Right–click (Windows) on the seam between the two sections, and select Apply Default Transitions.

23. The default transition is 1 second long which is too long. Double–click the transition, enter 11 and click OK so that the transition will just be 11 frames long.

24. Let’s adjust the transition a little more. At the top of the Source Monitor, click on Effect Controls to switch over to the panel.

25. Change the Alignment to Start at Cut.

26. In the Timeline, play back from a little before the transition. The music should be sounding seamless!

27. We actually want the music edit to be on the second track, so select the Track Select Forward tool .

28. Click once at the beginning of the audio clips (far left of the timeline) to select everything.

29. Switch back to the Selection tool .

30. Drag the selected audio clips down to A2.

31. If it isn’t already, change the target track to A1 by clicking in the empty space to the left of the A1 track. The left of the Timeline should look as shown below:

    

Converting Mono Audio to Stereo

1. We’ll now drop in our voice-over. From the Project panel, drag HandyVO.wav to the beginning of A1.

2. Increase the height of both the A1 and A2 tracks so you can see them better. Remember, you can do this by dragging down the line on the left-hand side of the Timeline between A1 and A2, and then A2 and A3.

3. Notice that our voice-over only has one audio track, compared to our music track which has two.

   This means our voice-over is mono and only uses a single channel. Premiere does seem to be playing it back fine, but just to be safe we’ll convert it into stereo.

   We can’t do this in the Timeline, so Delete the clip from A1.

4. In the Project panel, Ctrl–click (Mac) or Right–click (Windows) on HandyVO.wav and select Modify > Audio Channels.

5. In the window that opens, change Preset to Stereo.

6. Under Media Source Channel, check on R so that both Left (L) and Right (R) channels are checked on.

7. You may have noticed that adding the Right channel will change the Preset to Custom. That’s fine, so just click OK.

8. Once again, drag in HandyVO.wav to the Timeline dropping it on A1.

   Notice in the Timeline that we now have a more familiar 2-track audio clip with two identical tracks. This can prevent issues while working with the audio, such as when sending OMF files to a sound mix.

9. Play the audio back from the beginning, taking special notice of the Audio Levels on the far right of the Timeline.

   Very quickly, you’ll notice that it’s way too loud! Our target is –9 decibels so we’ll adjust our audio levels next.

Using Audio Keyframes

1. Press the plus (+) key on the number line at the top of your keyboard, to zoom in on the Timeline so we can see the waveforms better.

2. We’ll need to adjust the audio levels of the voice-over and music separately. We’ll start off with the voice-over so select the clip on A1.

3. Make sure the Effect Controls panel is showing in the top left.

4. Expand the Volume section so you can see what we can control here.

5. The Effect Controls panel allows us to adjust the levels of audio clips, and add keyframes if needed. For the VO, we want to overall decrease the Level but we don’t want to keyframe it.

   To the left of Level, click the blue stopwatch to turn it off.

6. Change the Level to –3.8dB.

7. In the Timeline, we want to move to where it starts to get loud. Move the playhead to 6;24 and play through a bit. It’s quite loud!

8. Move the playhead back to 6;24.

9. Select the Razor tool .

10. Make sure snapping is turned on.

11. Click on the A1 track at the playhead to cut the voiceover clip.

12. Move the playhead to 12;08 and make a cut there too.

13. With the Selection tool , click on the middle section we just cut to select it.

14. It’s possible to also adjust audio levels in the Timeline, but we need to make sure our audio keyframes are showing. At the top of the Timeline, click on the Timeline Display Settings button and select Show Audio Keyframes, if it wasn’t already.

    Having audio keyframes turned on allows you to manually adjust volume directly in the Timeline. You should now see a white line indicating the current audio level.

15. In the Timeline, hover over the vertical middle of the selected audio clip until you see a slider .

16. Drag the line down a little in the Timeline. After you stop dragging, notice that the change you made appears in the Level value in the Effect Controls panel.

17. Use either the slider or the Effect Controls panel to set the Level to –7.3dB. This will reduce the volume of just that middle section.

18. Our music is also loud overall, so we’ll adjust that next. Select the first clip on A2.

19. In Effect Controls, click on the Level stopwatch to switch it off.

20. Set the Level to –2dB.

21. Play through from the beginning. It sounds fine at this level, but once the VO begins, it makes sense to reduce the volume of the music.

22. Move the playhead to 1;28. We’ll adjust different sections of the audio by using keyframes.

23. We can either add a keyframe in the Effect Controls panel like we’ve seen previously, or use the Pen tool. In the Tools panel, select the Pen tool .

24. With the Pen tool , click at the playhead on the audio level to add a keyframe.

    

    You should see a blue keyframe appear on the waveform.

25. Move the playhead to 2;09.

26. Click on the waveform at the playhead to add a second keyframe .

27. Switch to the Selection tool .

28. Drag the second keyframe downwards, adding the Shift key to keep the keyframe in line, and lower the volume to around –13.4. A tool tip will show the level as you drag.

29. If it isn’t already, set the Level to –13.4 in the Effect Controls panel. It’s easier to be precise here.

30. Play through to hear all the audio. Actually, that third section of the voice-over is still quite loud.

31. Select the third section of voice-over on A1.

32. Set the Level to –4.2dB.

33. Around 10 seconds the music gets louder again with the clarinet solo. We’ll add another keyframe and adjust the rest of the clip’s volume. Move the playhead to 9;17.

34. Select the clip again on A2.

35. Switch to the Pen tool .

36. Click on the music track on A2 to add a keyframe at the playhead.

37. Move the playhead to 10;03.

38. Click here again to add another keyframe.

39. Switch back to the Selection tool .

40. With the keyframe still selected (blue), drop the audio Level down a little lower to -21.7dB.

41. Right after the voice-over is done talking, we’ll raise the audio once more. Move the playhead to 16;26.

42. We want to add an identical keyframe to the previous one so that we don’t have a gradual raising of volume through this whole section. In Effect Controls, click on the Add/Remove Keyframe button to add a keyframe .

43. Move the playhead to 17;02.

44. In the Effect Controls, set the Level a little higher to –8.5dB. You’ll notice a new keyframe was created in the Timeline as well as on the right-hand side of the Effect Controls window.

45. In the Timeline, use the Selection tool to select the last clip of audio.

46. Switch off the Level stopwatch in Effect Controls. That last bit of audio doesn’t need any keyframes.

47. Set the Level to –8.5dB here as well.

48. Play the whole thing back one more time from the beginning, keeping an eye on the audio levels on the far right. The levels should be looking good, and the audio should be sounding even better!

49. Do a File > Save and leave this project open to use in the next exercise.