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Chapter 40 Overview of Audio Mixing 563
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 Sound effects: Sound effects enhance the believability or mood of a scene. You can
purchase stock sound effects libraries for use in your projects, or you can create your
own sound effects. Sound effects are usually recorded during post-production, once
the picture is edited and it is clear what sounds are required. Examples include
mechanical sounds, explosions, vehicles, animals, a clock ticking, a telephone ringing,
and so on.
 Ambient sounds: These sound effects are added during post-production to establish
the sonic environment of a scene and to keep background noise levels consistent
from cut to cut. These are sometimes referred to as sound beds. For example, cricket
sounds are often added to night scenes; car and traffic noise for city scenes; crowd
sounds for a busy bar or restaurant scene; and so on.
 Music: Music has many different uses, depending on the type of project you are
working on. For example, in a music video, the music influences the picture by
establishing the rhythm of the editing, while narrative movies use music in the
background to influence the mood of a scene.
Creating Additional Tracks for Audio Sweetening
Final Cut Express HD sequences support up to 99 audio tracks, so you can create
discrete tracks, or groups of tracks, for each category of sound. For example, you can
use a separate track for each actor in a scene, or each character’s Foley track, such as
footsteps, clothing rustles, and so on. For more information, see “Working With Tracks
in the Timeline” on page 305.
Using Sequence Markers for Sound Effects and Musical Cues
It’s common for editors or directors to play through an edited sequence and locate, or
spot, places in the Timeline where sound effects should go. This is sometimes referred
to as a sound effects spotting session. You can add markers to your sequence to indicate
where the editor or sound designer should place sound effects. For more information
about adding markers, see “Using Markers” on page 235.
You can also add music scoring markers to indicate video frames where you want specific
musical cues to line up. Scoring markers can be exported along with a QuickTime
reference movie into Soundtrack to create original, synchronized musical scores.