Using the Audio View workspace

- [Instructor] Relatively new to Premier Elements is the new Audio View Workspace. A workspace where you can focus on the audio aspect of your project. This workspace also has a couple of tools that aren't available anywhere else in the program, kinda cool to check it out. Now this is the regular timeline, but if you go to the top left of the timeline and click on the little wave form, you'll be in audio view. And it looks slightly different then the standard timeline. You'll notice along the left-hand side on the track headers, there are a couple of buttons that didn't appear otherwise, but in both the standard timeline and the audio view timeline, you can mute or disable any tracks simply by clicking on the little icons there on the left.

You can do this even in the regular timeline, but let's look at what's specific to the audio view timeline. For one thing you've got this little headphone icon. And the headphone icon will solo attract. Soloing attract means that if I click on this, you'll notice the program automatically disables all other audio tracks. So it will solo it. It will allow me to hear only this audio track, so I can focus on this audio track only for now. Unsolo it.

Also have a little red dot on here, this little red dot will activate the narration tool. We saw earlier the narration tool could be found in the tool kit, and it will record to the voice track on the timeline. However, if you prefer to record to any other track here in audio view, you simply click on the red dot and it will open up the narration track. We'll close those. Finally, the most visible difference in audio view is over to the right there's a master audio level tool.

And this will show you the audio levels for your movie as you play it. And it's a dynamic tool so you can actually change it. I'm gonna set the playhead back here toward the beginning, and then play the movie. And you can watch on the master levels where the audio is peaking. Always, always, always when you're mixing your movie or when you're setting up the audio for your movie, always use meters. Never trust what you hear in your headphones. Never trust what you hear in your speakers. You need to know what the actual audio level is and you want it to peak between negative six and zero.

Not too little, not too much. Let's see where we are with this movie. I'll play it. (guitar music) - [Man in video] I do my mixture of a cream with a sugar. - [Instructor] That is just about perfect at that level. But if your movie is too loud, you could lower the movie's audio overall by using this little slider on the right hand side of the master VU meter. So watch as I play the movie, I'm just going to lower the audio overall by using the slider. (guitar music fading) - [Man In Video] My avocado, I mix all this, then I-- - [Instructor] So that's very nice.

Now if you wanna check out the levels of each individual track, I always encourage you to open up, go to tools and open up the audio mixer. This I keep open in the final phases of my movie ever time. Because I can look at each individual track of audio and in fact, because this movie has several tracks of audio I can widen this out. There we go. Every single track that has audio on it is represented here in the mixer. And I can play my movie, let me position my playhead, I can play my movie and then I can actually watch the audio registering here, and making sure that every single beat of audio in my whole movie stays within an acceptable range.

All of it has to stay at no more than zero. If your audio peaks above zero, it's going to be overmodulated. It's gonna sound staticy. It's gonna sound fuzzy. You don't want that. You want it nice and reach, peaking between negative six and zero. So let's see what this one peaks at. Select the timeline by clicking on it, and just use the spacebar to play. (guitar music) - [Man in video] I do my mixture of a cream with a sugar.

- [Instructor] Very, very nice. So watch your audio, and the Audio View Workspace lets you focus on your audio alone. It gives you the options of working on your audio one track at a time, it keeps you aware of your audio's level, and these are all critical aspects of your movie's production. Something you definitely want to pay attention to in the final mix down of your movie.