From the course: Media Composer 2019 Essential Training: 110 Fundamentals 2

Quickview of the Audio Mixer - Media Composer Tutorial

From the course: Media Composer 2019 Essential Training: 110 Fundamentals 2

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Quickview of the Audio Mixer

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- Let's take a look over the main controls in the audio mixer window. This is a surprisingly deep part of the media composer application. And I say, surprisingly, because when you first look at it, seems like it has a few buttons and some repetition, but it's not a complex part of the interface, but actually there's a lot going on in this window. Starting up at the top, you can modify the audio mix for your project. We're working on a stereo mix here so we can keep this setting. But notice if I choose one of these surround settings, our master fader control becomes much more complex and you can target specific audio channels in your mix using the various puck controllers available in the interface. So when you choose your mastering option in this menu, you're effectively choosing the controls that you get in your audio channels in the mixer. Here we can also specify if this really is a stereo project or a mono project, in which case there is no pan control. Anyway, speaking of pan controls, these allow you to specify whether a particular piece of audio is output through the left or right speakers. You can click and drag on this control, or you can type in a number. If I click type in a zero and enter, it resets that control. Let's do the same here and reset it back to mid. We have a loop play button. We have an effect render button because within the audio mixer, it's quite possible you'll add audio effects. And to improve playback performance, you might decide to render them just as you might decide to render visual effects. We also have a fast menu and these options are largely to apply adjustments that you've made to multiple clips within a range or across a track, or to remove the changes that you've made. As we saw briefly earlier, you can have up to five audio effects applied in the audio mixer, and we have an audio track effect tool to manage the settings for those effects. If I scroll down a little so we can see these faders, we've got access to the mute and solo options. Notice these update the timeline window as well. We also have track selection buttons that we can turn off and on. Although the adjustments of the gray is pretty subtle in this window. And you're probably already familiar with the fader control, which allows you to change the amplitude of a clip by dragging this control up and down. The default is zero. And if you drag the fader down, you diminish the audio level. If you drag it up, you boost it. I should mention importantly as well at the top of the audio mixer, we have a bypass button which will ignore any adjustments that have been made in the audio mixer. So you can just toggle this off and on. And we also have a mode button, which is an interesting design and media composer. Right now we're in the clip mode, which means that adjustments will be made to hold clips. If I click on this button, we're now in auto mode. And while in auto mode, the adjustments can be recorded over time, generating key frames. We'll look at how to do that in another tutorial. And then we've got live mode, which allows you to adjust the audio level right at the point of playback. And this is used primarily if you're absolutely in an emergency and it's the last moment and you're going to air, and there are some circumstances in which editors will play their timeline straight from the edit system out to broadcast television. And in that situation, you may feel that it's just possible your audio mixer isn't right, so you can switch to live mode and adjust the audio levels for tracks during the broadcast. This really is a last minute adjustment. What's important about this though, is it's a separate adjustment to the other clip and automation gain adjustments as they're called available in the mixer. You toggle through all three of these just by clicking the button at the top. On the left, notice that we have these collapse and expand buttons. So you can hide parts of the audio mixer if you don't intend to use them. There's also an expansion triangle here that gives access to groups of tracks that you can select together. So that's an overview of the audio mixer in Media Composer.

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