Volume and ducking
A sound's volume can change over time. Dip the music for a line, swell it at the end, or move a whoosh from left to right. You draw it on the timeline, under the sound.
Ducking turns one group of sounds down while another plays. The usual case is music under a voiceover: the music dips while the voice speaks and comes back up between lines, and it follows the voice when you move it.
The Volume lane
Select a sound. Under its row on the timeline, the Volume lane shows its volume over time as a line, drawn over its waveform.
The top of the lane is the sound's own Volume, from the Sound panel. Lower is quieter, in dB: a little way down is -6 dB, about half as loud, and the bottom is silence. The stretch outside the sound's clip is shaded.
A point is a level at a moment. Between two points the volume slides from one level to the other, as smoothly as a fade.
Drawing on the lane
- Drag across the lane to draw a block: a stretch at another level, with a short ramp at each end back to where the line was. The block's level is where you let go.
- Drag a block up or down to change its level.
- Drag the ramp at either end of a block to make the block longer or shorter.
- Drag a point to move it. Hold Shift to move it up or down only.
- Double-click the line to add a point on it, without changing the sound.
- Select a point or a block and press Delete to remove it.
A selected point moves with the arrow keys: up and down by half a dB (3 dB with Shift), left and right by a hundredth of a second (a tenth with Shift).
Each drag is one step to undo.
A block is four points, so after you draw one you can drag any of its points on its own, for a slower ramp in or a level that drifts.
Tip
To dip music under one line of a voiceover, drag across the music's Volume lane from just before the line to just after it, and let go about a fifth of the way down (around -12 dB).
Points stay with the sound. Move its clip, trim it or split it, and the points stay on the same moments of the sound.
The lane works together with the rest of the sound's settings. Volume in the Sound panel sets the top of the lane, and the fades still fade in and out.
Pan over time
The Pan lane works the same way, from left at the top to right at the bottom, with the center marked. Turn it on in the Sound panel (see below). It opens by itself on a sound that already has pan points.
While a sound has pan points, they decide where it sits, and the Pan setting in the Sound panel waits until you clear them.
Showing and clearing lanes
In the Sound panel, Automation has:
- Lanes: which lanes show under a selected sound on the timeline, Volume and Pan.
- Clear: removes every point on a lane. It shows how many points each lane has.
Ducking
Ducking lives in the Mixer. Each bus row has a Duck chip (on Music always, and on every bus in Full). Click it to open the bus's duck settings:
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Duck under | Turns ducking on, and picks the bus to duck under. Voice by default. |
| Depth | How far down it goes while the other bus plays. -12 dB by default. |
| Down | How long it takes to go down, in seconds. It starts going down just before the voice starts. |
| Back | How long it takes to come back up after the voice stops. |
| Bridge | A pause shorter than this stays down, so the music doesn't bob up and down between phrases. 1 second by default. |
The Duck chip turns amber while the bus is ducking.
A voiceover from the Voice panel or the assistant knows when each word is spoken, so the music starts down a moment before the first word, not after it. A voice you recorded or added as a file is measured by how loud it is, once it has loaded.
You can see the duck. On a ducking sound's Volume lane, a shaded curve hangs from the top where the duck turns it down, and the lane's label says which bus it ducks under. The line is still your own volume. The two work together.
If the bus it ducks under is muted, nothing ducks.
On by default
When you add a voiceover to a piece that already has music, the music starts ducking under it. A message says so, with Undo to turn it off. Once you turn ducking off, it stays off, even when you add another voiceover.
Pieces made before ducking existed open as they sounded.
Bake into volume
Bake into volume writes the duck into each of the bus's sounds as volume points, and turns the duck off. It sounds the same, and now you can drag each dip by hand. It's one step to undo.
Baked points don't follow the voice anymore. Bake when the voice is finished.
Hear sound while scrubbing
To hear the sound as you drag the playhead, open Preferences and turn on Scrubbing › Hear sound. Short pieces of the mix play as you drag, which helps you find a beat or the start of a word by ear. It's off until you turn it on.
Ask the assistant
The assistant can draw on these lanes and set ducking. Try:
- "Dip the music by 12 dB from 4 to 6 seconds."
- "Pan the whoosh from left to right as the card slides across."
- "Duck the music a bit deeper under the voice, and bring it back slower."
- "Bake the duck so I can adjust it by hand."