Track inserts, submixes and sends in Video by Zaweba
How track inserts, submix strips, output routing and post-fader sends in Video by Zaweba let you treat groups of sound tracks together.
As a project grows, the sound side starts to look like a small recording studio. Two or three dialogue tracks, a music track, effects, ambience. Treating each clip separately becomes slow, and keeping the balance between groups gets hard. Video by Zaweba borrows the answer studios use: inserts on tracks, submixes, output routing and sends.
Inserts: effects on a whole track
An insert is a sound effect placed on a track rather than on a clip. Everything on that track passes through it. If all your interview answers sit on one track and they all need the same EQ and compressor, put those effects on the track once instead of on every clip.
Inserts also keep working when you add new clips. Drop another answer onto the track and it's treated the same as the rest, with nothing extra to remember. Any of the 53 sound effects can be used this way, and the EQs and compressors open in the same visual editors as clip effects.
Submixes: groups with their own strip
A submix gathers several tracks into one group. Each submix gets its own strip in the sound mixer, with its own fader. Route your three dialogue tracks into a dialogue submix, and one fader now raises or lowers all the speech together, while the balance between the three stays as you set it.
You can put inserts on a submix too, which is a tidy way to give the whole dialogue group a final polish, say a gentle compressor or a limiter, after the per-track work is done.
Output routing
Track output routing decides where each track's sound goes. By default tracks feed the main mix. Routing lets you send a track into a submix instead, which is how the groups above are built. Planning it is simple: decide which tracks belong together, make a submix for each group, and route the tracks to it.
Post-fader sends
A send copies some of a track's sound to another destination while the original carries on as normal. Post-fader means the copy follows the track's fader, so if you turn the track down, the amount sent drops too, keeping things in proportion.
The usual use is shared effects. Make a submix with a reverb on it and send a little of several tracks to it. They now share one room sound, which makes them feel like they belong in the same space, and you control the amount of reverb per track with its send.
When this structure is worth it
For a short clip with one voice and a music bed, you don't need any of this. Clip effects and a couple of faders will do.
It pays off on longer, busier projects: a documentary with several interviews, a short drama with dialogue, effects and score, or a podcast filmed with multiple microphones. Grouping by type, dialogue, music, effects and ambience, also lines up with the sound types tools, which tag clips the same way.
Keeping it understandable
Name your tracks and submixes clearly, so the mixer reads like a plan rather than a row of numbers. Keep the structure shallow, tracks into a few submixes into the main mix, rather than chains of groups inside groups. And check the meters on each submix as well as the master, so you can see which group is driving the level. Set up once in Video by Zaweba, a sensible routing plan can carry over to every similar project.
