Keyframing volume and pan with rubber bands in Video by Zaweba

The level of a sound rarely needs to stay fixed for a whole clip. Music dips under a sentence, a crowd swells as a goal goes in, a car moves from left to right across the frame. In Video by Zaweba you draw those changes right on the clip with a rubber band, a line across the clip that you shape with keyframes.

Volume with a rubber band

A sound clip on the timeline shows a line for its volume. Add keyframes to that line and drag them up or down, and the volume follows the shape you've drawn. Two keyframes close together make a quick dip; two far apart make a slow ramp.

The classic use is a dip under speech. Put a pair of keyframes just before a line of dialogue, drag the second down, then another pair after the line to bring the level back up. The music drops while the voice talks and returns after. Video by Zaweba's automatic ducking handles most of this for you, so the rubber band is for the moments where you want something particular.

Other jobs include taming one loud word in an otherwise even recording, pulling down a sudden noise for a moment, and bringing up a quiet answer from someone off-microphone.

Pan with a rubber band

Pan can be keyframed the same way, moving a sound between left and right. Follow a car across the picture, place a voice to match where the speaker stands in a wide shot, or slowly drift a sound effect from one side to the other. Keep it subtle for dialogue, because voices that wander around distract more than they help.

Other clip and track controls

Several related controls sit alongside these. You can solo a track to hear it alone, and pan a whole track rather than a single clip. A single clip can be muted without deleting it, which is handy when you're not sure you'll want it back.

For a video clip's sound, you can unlink it from the picture so you can move or trim it separately, for example to start a line slightly before the cut, or delete it entirely if you'll replace it with music or narration.

And you can play sound backwards. It has creative uses: a reversed cymbal swell leading into a cut, a strange voice for a dream scene, or a rewind effect paired with reversed picture.

Keeping keyframes under control

Use as few keyframes as you can. Each one is a decision you'll have to revisit if the edit changes. A handful of well placed points sounds smoother than dozens of tiny jiggles.

Make your gain and fades right first. Keyframes work best as changes on top of a clip that already sits at a sensible level.

If you'd rather perform a level change than draw it, open the sound mixer and record the fader with automation. Those moves land as the same keyframes on the clip, which you can then tidy by hand. In Video by Zaweba, drawing and performing are two routes to the same result.