When editing a video package, it is important to remember to make a few key adjustments before finishing. First, the audio levels throughout your package should be uniform, and not too loud or soft. Often, when editing together multiple clips from different locations and audio scenarios, the levels can vary greatly. Before exporting your video, watch the whole thing and make note of which individual clips are too loud or too soft. Adjusting the levels is a simple process. First, double click on the individual audio clips in your timeline.

Once you have selected the clip, it will load in the viewer, which is located in the top center of the FCP screen. In the viewer, the essential controls are located at the top of the window: Level and Pan.

You can adjust the audio level either by adjusting the slider left and right (quieter and louder, respectively), or by dragging the thin pink line up or down. This process applies to every audio clip in your package, and must be done individually for each one.

Similarly, you should always make sure to adjust the panning in each of your audio clips. Our Sony cameras record with the left audio channel panned left, and the right audio channel panned right. In order to make sure your clips sound natural, you should pan everything to the center. The process is similar to adjusting the levels, but you will need to do so for each individual track of audio, left and right. In order to select the individual audio channel, you will likely have to unlink the clips. The default in FCP upon importing is for the video and both tracks of audio to be linked together, so you can easily move them as a whole through your timeline. In order to delink these pieces, you simply select the clip, and hit Command + L. This will separate the video from the audio, but leave the two audio tracks linked. Next, select the audio tracks, and hit Option + L. Now, you will have one independent video clip, and two separate audio tracks. Double click on each audio track, and move the Pan slider to the center in the Viewer window. The number value in the field next to the slider should be zero. Make sure to verify that all of your individual audio tracks are panned to the center, and you are ready to move on to compressing and exporting.

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