Adjusting the Volume on Your Digital Video

Perhaps the most common thing anyone does to audio tracks is adjust the volume. As you preview your project, you may notice that the background music seems a little too loud or that the narration isn't loud enough. You may also have sounds in the main audio track that you want to eliminate, without affecting the rest of the audio clip. Virtually all video-editing programs let you adjust the overall volume of an entire clip or track.

To begin adjusting volume in iMovie, select the Edit Volume check box at the bottom of the timeline. In Studio, click the clip that you want to modify and then choose Toolbox --> Change Volume so that Studio's audio toolbox appears above the timeline.

Each program displays audio rubber bands across audio clips. Rubber bands (see Figure 1) don't just hold together rolled up newspapers or your ponytail. In video programs, they show you the volume for an audio clip.

You can modify the overall volume for an audio clip or a whole track pretty simply, but the procedure varies a bit depending on which program you use.

In Apple iMovie, follow these steps to adjust the overall volume:

1. Click a clip to select it. (To select and adjust multiple clips simultaneously, hold down Command as you click each clip.)

Be careful not to click the purple rubber band line. If you accidentally click the rubber band and a dot appears on the line, press Command+Z to undo the change.

2. With the desired clip(s) selected, adjust the Volume slider to the left to reduce volume or to the right to increase volume.

As you adjust the slider (as you can see in Figure 1), the rubber band lines move up or down.

Pinnacle Studio provides a variety of volume controls in the audio toolbox. To open this toolbox, click an audio clip on the timeline and choose Toolbox --> Change Volume. The toolbox contains a separate set of controls for each of the three audio tracks, as follows:

• Left: Main audio track

• Middle: Sound effects/narration track

• Right: Background music track

To adjust the overall volume for an entire track, turn the knob at the top of the track's volume controls. As you turn the knob, the blue audio rubber band line for the entire track moves up or down on the timeline. To adjust the volume for a specific clip, place the play head at the very beginning of that clip on the timeline and move the volume slider for that track up or down. Then place the play head at the end of the clip and adjust the volume slider back to the middle to restore the volume of subsequent clips on the timeline.

You can also mute whole tracks on the timeline. In iMovie, simply remove the check mark from the right side of the timeline next to the track that you want to mute. In Studio, click the icon at the top of the volume controls in the audio toolbox to mute a given track.