Apple Final Cut Pro 7 - Manual (Page 661)

This chapter covers the following:
• The Goals of Audio Editing (p. 661)
• Using Waveform Displays to Help You Edit Audio (p. 662)
• Learning About the Audio Controls in the Viewer (p. 664)
• Editing Audio in the Viewer (p. 668)
• Editing Audio in the Timeline (p. 676)
• Creating or Separating Stereo Pairs (p. 680)
• Working with Audio at the Subframe Level (p. 682)
• Examples of Ways to Easily Edit Audio (p. 684)
Good audio edits are usually subtle and go unnoticed by the listening audience. After
you assemble your video and audio, you can edit your audio independently in the Timeline.
The Goals of Audio Editing
Most viewers are quite good at distinguishing audio changes from one clip to the next,
as well as incorrect audio/video synchronization. As you work on refining the audio in
your project, your edits will focus on eliminating these major distractions to the audience.
In particular, keep in mind three important goals.
Make sure your audio edit points aren’t noticeable
Editing audio clips in a sequence mainly involves finding good edit points that sound
natural. Audio edit points are often more effective when they are offset from the
corresponding video edits. Although you may set your initial audio and video edit points
in the same place to create a quick rough cut, editing your audio more finely may involve
changing many of your edit points to split edits. Some of those split edits may have only
a few frames offset between the audio and video edit points, but those frames will turn
an otherwise obvious cut into a much smoother transition.
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Audio Editing Basics 43