Adjusting a clip’s audio before cutting into timeline

[Paul Neumann]

Select the clip in the Project Panel and hit G (for gain). Actually pretty much anywhere you select a clip and hit G you should be able to change the volume.

[David Dean]

Every time I hit “G,” even with the clip selected, it brings up the Essential Graphics panel. I right-clicked on the clip in the browser and it did allow me to access the gain controls, but shouldn’t I be able to hear the increase in volume using a slider rather than having to keep changing a gain number multiple times until it gets to what I want?

Thanks for the quick response!

[David Dean]

Okay, let me give you another example, beyond the volume of a clip, which I now know I can manually raise by using the gain controls. Here’s a b-roll clip that I’ve double-clicked into the source monitor. I know that there are four audio tracks on this, but I want to isolate one track of it before cutting it into the timeline.

Now, when I click on the “Audio Clip Mixer” tab for this specific clip, I want to be able to tell from the VU meters which track I want to cut in. But again, clicking on that tab brings me to the audio of the active timeline and NOT the clip in the source monitor. The name on the tab is even the name of the clip, not the name of the timeline. (A1 is dimmed because I put VO on that track of my timeline and I’ve locked it, which also proves that I am not looking at the clip’s audio, because I know there’s sound on its A1.)

This seems so simple, and yet I can’t figure out how to make the audio meters of the selected clip show up. Thanks, everyone…

[Paul Neumann]

What exactly to you mean by you want to isolate that track? You only want the audio from that one track? And if so, how many tracks in your timeline do you want to have that audio?

[Greg Janza]

[David Dean] “Now, when I click on the “Audio Clip Mixer” tab for this specific clip, I want to be able to tell from the VU meters which track I want to cut in. But again, clicking on that tab brings me to the audio of the active timeline and NOT the clip in the source monitor.”

You need to load your source clip into the source monitor window and then play it. By playing the source monitor window the Audio Clip mixer will witch to playing back the audio of the source clip.

Likewise, clicking your mouse on the Program monitor window or clicking in the timeline will cause the Audio clip mixer to show the audio of the timeline.

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[David Dean]

If there are four channels of audio on the clip, and I only want the one with the lav mic, I want to be able to see which of the four channels has the audio I want, so I can just cut, say, A3 of the clip onto A1 of the timeline. Right now I don’t have that option, and I have to cut in the clip and remove the unwanted tracks in the timeline. That can’t be right.

In answer to Greg, that’s exactly what I’ve been doing. Double-clicking on a clip in the browser opens it in the source monitor, and clicking on the Audio Clip Mixer tab, even after I’ve played it a bit in Source, only brings up the timeline’s 12 tracks. I even tried dragging a clip into Source rather than double-clicking, and I still cannot reveal the audio mixer of the single clip I’ve opened. I’ve actually just made a small screen recording of me demonstrating that, but it doesn’t look like I can upload a video.

I’m very grateful for the responses, gentlemen. Thank you.

[David Dean]

Okay, now I’m really thrown. It’s working now. Match-framing a clip from the timeline, and/or double-clicking on a clip in the browser, lets me see the audio tracks of the individual clip. The exact same procedure that I used 20 minutes ago when I made the screen recording – which called up the timeline’s mixer and not the clip’s – is now working as I expect.

I have no idea. Thanks for your time.
David