Sound Strips

As well as images and movies the VSE can also edit audio tracks. You can add Waveform Audio format WAV, mp3 and other audio formats files from your drive, or from sound encoded within a movie, and mix them using an F-Curve as a volume control.

../../../../_images/editors_vse_sequencer_strips_sound_editing.png

Example of sound editing.

Options

Pack
This allows you to save the audio file into the blend-file.
Caching
Caching loads a file into RAM and plays it from there, instead of reading it for the hard drive.
Draw Waveform
Draws either the waveform or the strip name, file name, duration. This can be useful for syncing two or more sound strips.
Volume
Controls the volume of the strip. Typically values should be between 0 and 1. If you use higher values it’s possible that clipping happens, which drastically influences sound quality.
Pitch
Transposes the frequency of the audio. This basically changes the playback speed of the sound which also results in a pitch change. Unfortunately this leads to possible seeking errors and the length of the strip isn’t updated as well.
Pan
Used to pan the audio from left and right channels. Only works for mono sources. Values can be between -2 and 2, where 0 means front/center, -1 means to the left and 1 to the right. In case of multichannel audio (rear speakers) you can pan to those with the higher values: -2, 2 is back. So this value basically represents the angle at which it’s played.
Trim Duration
Offset the start and end of a sound strip.

Working with Audio Tracks

A sound strip is just like any other strip in the VSE. You can grab and move it, adjust its starting offset using RMB over the arrow end handles, and K cut it into pieces. A useful example is cutting out the “um’s” and dead voice time.

You can have as many sound strips as you wish and the result will be the mixing of all of them. You can give each strip its own name and volume via the properties region.

Overlapping strips are automatically mixed down during the rendering process. For example, you can have the announcer on channel 5, background music on channel 6, and Foley sound effects on channel 7.

See also

In the Playback Menu menu of the Timeline you will find some options concerning audio playback behavior.

Animating Audio Track Properties

To animate sound strips simply hit I over any of its values. Examples of animating an audio strip are to fade in/out background music or to adjust volume levels. Layered/crossed sound strips are added together; the lower channel does not override and cut out higher channels (unlike image and video strips). This makes Blender an audio mixer. By adding audio tracks and using the curves to adjust each tracks’ sound level, you have an automated dynamic multi-track audio mixer!

Output

There are two ways to render out your audio. You can either have it encoded with a video file or in its own audio file. To render your audio in a video file make sure to use a video format as the output with an audio codec and hit the render Animation button in the Properties editor. Read more on how to do this here. To render as an audio file simple use the Audio button. Read more on how to do this here.

Known Limitations

Hiss, Crackle and Pop

In some cases when Caching is disabled, playback noise/hiss is introduced.

If you hear pops and crackles, usually that is a sign that your hardware cannot keep up in real-time playback. They will not be present in your final rendered animation output.

Also, static hiss can occur whenever two or more sound strips are overlapping in the timeline.