Speaker 1: When it comes to video editing, the visual aspects often take center stage. However, the importance of sound design should not be underestimated. The right audio elements can greatly enhance the impact and emotional resonance of any video. In this filter grade video, I'll explore the use of sound design in video editing and give you some tips on creating an immersive audio experience that captivates your audience. Sound design is the process of creating and manipulating audio elements to enhance the storytelling and overall impact of a video. It involves careful selection, editing, and placement of sounds, such as dialogue, music, sound effects, and other ambient noise. When you do it effectively, sound design can create a rich and immersive experience for viewers, elevating the quality and emotional impact of all your videos. And it's often a lot more work than it might seem, requiring creative decisions and unconventional thinking that have a big impact, but go unnoticed. Let's look at the types of sounds that there are. There are many sound effects that editors can use in nearly every piece of media that feel so natural that many viewers and listeners don't even really notice them. They don't exist in real life, but they bring a sense of realism and impact to your edits. Here are a few common ones, although there are plenty more you can incorporate into your work. Hits are sudden and sharp sound effects that add impact to actions. They can be part of an actual physical impact, or feel more like they're part of the soundtrack. Drones are background ambiance that can add atmosphere to a scene without adding distracting music. Usually they are a simple sound with a minimal melody that's not distracting. Mooshes are sharp gusts of wind used to accentuate fast motion and give listeners a sense of sudden movement. They can make camera movements and quick movements stand out and feel more extreme. A rise compliments the music in the soundtrack and is a dramatic slow buildup of sound that abruptly cuts off and leaves editors space to take the scene in any direction they like. You'll find these mainly in horror or suspense media, but they have a place in every genre. Now of course there are a lot more sounds like footsteps, background music, and dialogue, but those are obvious and more natural, they exist in real life. It's the attention to detail that can be accomplished with these other artificial sound effects that really take an edit over the edge. Now here are some audio editing tips that should be kept in mind while working on a project to make sure you get the best audio possible. This is an obvious one. Ensure that sound elements synchronize seamlessly with all of your visuals. Precise timing and alignment between audio cues and visual cues enhance the impact and effectiveness of your video. If you mismatch your dialogue to your mouth movements or fail to hit a musical drop at the right moment, it could distract from the content itself and pull viewers out of the experience. And audio only really has to be out of sync by a matter of milliseconds to be off-putting. High quality audio capture. Before you even start editing, ensure that your audio recordings are of high quality. Use good microphones and recording equipment and pay attention to factors such as background noise. Clean and clear audio recordings provide a solid foundation for sound design. Nothing is more distracting than inserting a sound effect that has sudden white noise all around it. Layer in sound effects. Utilize a variety of sound effects to add depth and realism to your videos. Experiment with different layers of sound effects to create a multi-dimensional audio experience. For example, in an outdoor scene, consider adding wind rustling the leaves, distant traffic sounds, or chirping birds. The key to realism is not about what sounds are included, but rather what sounds are conspicuously missing. Balance audio elements. Maintain an audio balance between dialogue, music, and sound effects. Each audio element should be audible and clear without overpowering the others. You can separate frequencies so there isn't any annoying overlap and muddying of sound layers. You don't want to be like one of the many movies these days that gets complaints about the audio being unhearable over all the sound effects and music. Foley sounds. Foley is the art of creating and recording custom sound effects to replace or enhance sounds recorded during filming. Consider adding foley effects such as footsteps, door creaks, or object interactions to heighten the realism and detail of your videos. Creating your own can be fun, especially if you feel inspired by classic movies that used unusual objects to get iconic sounds. You can also download or buy sounds that other people have made. Regardless of how you get them, inserting sound effects that weren't recorded on set can enhance the ambience of your video. Just make sure things like volume, reverb, and directional audio all match the rest of the sounds in the scene so it doesn't seem jarring. Music selection. Music selection is an art all to its own. The song you use can completely change the mood of a scene, so be sure to keep in mind what you want an audience to feel. For example, a horror movie may be best served with a suspenseful or spooky sounding soundtrack, but you can subvert expectations and create an uncomfortable vibe by putting a happy song over gruesome horror visuals. Test before you commit. Audio sounds different on different devices like headphones, speakers, and theater sound systems. Listen to your audio mix on as many audio output devices as you can so that you can ensure it sounds as good as possible regardless of how someone is consuming your media. And when in doubt, try to appeal to the lowest common denominator and make sure it sounds good on the devices that viewers are most likely to consume it on, whether that's a full theater sound system or their mobile phones. Audio is as important, if not more important, than the video. Without sound, the visuals don't have the same emotion or impact. Make sure your audio is good and not distracting. It should add to the immersion, not take viewers out of it. And with these tips and ideas, you'll be able to create a video or movie that looks good and sounds good. If these tips were helpful to you, let us know by leaving a comment and liking the video, and don't forget to subscribe to FilterGrade for more audio, video, and editing tips just like this.