User Guide

Chapter 8: Sound Effects and Music 115
Chapter 8:
Sound Effects and Music
Video may be thought of as primarily a visual medium,
but the role of sound in your movies is often no less
important than the images on the screen.
Feature film and television productions include
numerous types of audio, beginning with the dialog and
other sounds created during live action. In your movies,
that raw soundtrack is brought in along with the video
during Capture Mode. It appears in the Movie Window
Timeline view on the Main Audio track below the
Video track.
Most productions also require sound effects –
slamming doors, crashing cars, barking dogs, etc. – and
incidental music, which may consist of music created
especially for the production, songs taken from
recordings, or both. Voice-overs and other specially-
recorded audio are also often needed.
You can use all these types of add-on sound in your
own movies. A good starter set of effects in wav format
is installed with Studio, and others are available from
many sources. The SmartSound tool automatically
creates a music track of any desired duration in a
variety of styles; you can also drop in mp3 files from
the Album or import CD audio tracks with the CD
audio tool. The Voice-over tool lets you add narration
or commentary as you preview your edited video.
All these types of audio are added to your production
as clips in the Movie Window, where they can be
moved around, trimmed and edited in much the same