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How To Add Music To A Video Without Ruining The Audio Of The Video By Alwyn Nienaber

February 21, 2021by Grant0 comments
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So, you are educated in Sound Engineering… And when it comes to mixing – you really know what you are doing. But what happens when you get a new client that sends you a video and asks you to add music to the background without ruining their voice over?

In this article I will be going through a step-by-step guide of the process I use to add background music to videos. The software that I will be referring to in this article is called Davinci Resolve (which is a free video editing software with a fully kitted DAW built-in), and we will be talking only about the “Fairlight” section (audio editing section) of the software. However, all of the steps below as well as the plugins used can be applied to any video editing software or DAW with a built-in video player (such as Mixcraft).

Step 1: Improve the original audio of the video.

Whether your client asked you to work on the original audio of their video or not, it is always a good idea to check for errors in the sound. Take the initiative and go the extra mile – doing this will surprise your client and more likely than not end up being the reason that they prefer you over the other engineer that they have been using. Besides, if they don’t like it – you can always go back and remove what you’ve done.

Balance audio levels.

A lot of video creators and editors have no idea what they are doing when it comes to audio. Sure, they might have learned about compressors during their studies – but this doesn’t mean that they know how to use it. The first step to improve the audio of a video is to balance the levels of each element. Especially if the video contains a voice over, there is nothing worse than watching a video of someone speaking with inconsistent audio levels.

I like to start off with a soft clipper. This is essentially a compressor with a very low ratio. Get the threshold to a stage where it just-just tickles the audio. You want the soft clipper to simply reduce the peaks of the audio file.

Next, I’ll add a multiband compressor. This will help you balance the different ranges of the frequency spectrum.

Improve the quality of the sound.

Now that the audio levels are more controlled and balanced, let’s add what Resolve calls a Dialogue Processor. The Dialogue Processor plugin is probably the plugin in Resolve that I use the most. It’s got the following settings: De-Rumble, De-Pop, De-Ess, Compressor, Expander, and Excite. If you are working with voice overs in Davinci Resolve, then this plugin will be your best friend. I often use it to remove unwanted noise in the backgrounds of videos.

The Expander setting is my favorite, and it acts as a very easy to use noise-gate.

Please note that you should be careful not to over compress the sound at this stage of the process as we’ve already compressed it twice.

Make the audio louder.

The last plugin we will be adding is the Limiter. Now that you have the audio sounding great, let’s work on the loudness. I like to mix my voice levels in videos to -6dB. This gives us enough headroom to make sure that the voice won’t clip when we add our master limiter. Set your threshold to the level that you want the voice to be at, and then play around with the input level on the limiter. Again, you want the reduction to just-just tickle the audio so as to calm down the peaks in the sound file.

Finish off with an EQ.

The final step I like to take when improving the original audio of a video is to use the built-in EQ on the digital mixer inside of Resolve. I like to remove mud and boxiness in people’s voices – especially when it comes to voice overs. I also remove everything below 80Hz so as to remove any unwanted rumble and/ or plosives. If the room in which the recording was done had a fan or aircon going, then it’s generally a good idea to also remove some of the higher frequencies.

Dummy-Check.

Now that you are happy with the sound of the video, it’s time to check your work. In this stage of the process, I like to go back to each of the previous plugins – and turn them off. This allows me to hear the audio without them. I will then slowly turn each of them on again to hear what difference it made to the audio. This is a good way to make sure that the audio does infact sound better after everything that you have done to it.

Remember guys, only dummies don’t double check their work. That is why this part of the process is called the Dummy-Check!

Step 2: Add music to the video.

So, you’ve gotten the video’s audio to sound great, and you’ve selected the best songs for the video and the playlist is ready to go. You drag and drop the first song into the software and press play. Oh no! The music is way too loud, and now the voices in the video are super unclear. You drag the fader of the music track down – but now you can barely hear the music… What do you do? I use a simple three-step process to solve this issue.

Finding the right balance between the original audio and the music.

More often than not, especially when working with videos, you will need to spend a considerable amount of time finding the right balance between the loudness of each individual song and the video’s audio, but don’t worry – I have a quick and easy way to do this.

As mentioned before, I like to mix the levels of the voice to -6dB, and I have found (through a painful process of trial-and-error) that the optimal level for background music is -11dB (give or take). I use a Soft Clipper (yes, the same one that we used before) with a very soft knee. I then move the threshold around until I see that it is very slightly affecting the audio. Here you want to compress the sound a tiny bit, so make sure that it is not only affecting the music on the peaks, but also in the quiet parts. Once I’m happy with the location of my threshold, I will play around with the Output Level on the Soft Clipper and look at the “Output” bar. I then try to get the level to sit more-or-less on -11dB. Make sure that you are happy with the level at which the music is sitting respective to the level of the video audio. Use this article as a guideline, not a set of rules!

Balancing the individual songs.

You drag the next song into the project, and now this song is too loud… Or too quiet… You play around with the threshold on the Soft Clipper again, but now the first song is clipping. There is an easy fix to this. Simply click on each of the songs and adjust their gain. Open the Soft Clipper, and keep an eye on the “Reduction” bar as you adjust the gain of each track. Again, make sure that they are just-just being affected by the Soft Clipper. Doing things this way essentially gives you an “input gain” control of each individual song as they go into the Soft Clipper, and it’s an easy way to make sure that all of the songs will be at the same level. Alternatively, you could put each song on their own track and give each track its own Soft Clipper. This way you can simply adjust the threshold on the Soft Clipper on each track.

Making sure you can hear the video above the music.

You are happy with how the video is sounding now. You can hear both the original audio, as well as the music – but for some reason the music is masking (taking away from) the audio of the video.

This happens when frequencies in the music clashes with whatever sound the video has going on. To fix this, I like to use the built-in EQ and simply remove some of the mids in the music so that the voices in the video stand out more. You will have to play around with the frequencies and see what works best for you! In my case, I try to EQ out frequencies in the music between 500Hz and 2kHz. This is because most of the distinguishable frequencies in the human voice sits around this area. Don’t go crazy here as removing too many mids in the song will distort the sound and can reduce the quality of the experience for the listeners.

Step 3: Limiting the master bus.

The third and final step is to make sure that the combined audio of the video is at an optimal level. For this purpose, I use a Brick Wall Limiter with a threshold of -3dB. This allows for enough headroom space. I use -3dB as my clients upload their videos to their own website, after adjusting the volume of each video to the same level before uploading. So I want the video to be loud enough for them to work with, but not so loud that they have to turn it down a lot. However, different platforms use different levels for their audio. For Instance, the optimal level for audio on YouTube is -14 LUFS, whereas Spotify uses -11 LUFS. Davinci Resolve actually has a built-in LUFS meter, so do research on the platform onto which your video is going – and then adjust the threshold on the Limiter on the master track until the audio levels are sitting at the optimal position.

When you add a limiter to the master track, make sure that the audio is not clipping, but sitting very close to the threshold line. Please note that if the audio does clip once or twice in a 10 minute video, then most of the time that is alright. Just make sure that it does not get distorted.

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