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Automatically duck audio in Premiere Pro

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Enable Ducking in the Essential Sound panel to automatically add audio keyframes that lower volume during dialogue

Auto Ducking allows for automatic computation of keyframes that lower the volume of a background sound against a foreground sound.

Want to follow along with the instructions? Open a project in Premiere Pro and get started!

Try Auto Ducking now

  1. Open or create a multitrack session containing the audio clip.

  2. Use the Essential Sound panel to tag the content to its specific type. You can duck clips tagged as music and ambience.

  3. Select the background (for example, music) clip in the timeline, then assign it the Music audio type in the Essential Sound panel.

  4. Click the checkbox next to Ducking to enable auto-ducking.

    When you enable ducking, Premiere Pro adds an Amplify Effect to the clip. Keyframes that are computed by the Auto Ducking algorithm are added to this effect's gain parameter so that they can easily be changed or removed without interfering with your other sound design. 

    Make sure that you assign audio types to the other audio tracks so that Premiere Pro knows what track to use to drive the ducking.  

    The Essential Sound panel is open and the Ducking option is enabled.
    Adjust audio levels with auto-ducking.

  5. Set the following auto-ducking options:

    • Duck Against: Select the icons for the audio content types you wish to duck against - Dialogue, Music, Sound Effects, Ambience, or un-tagged clips.
    • Sensitivity: This parameter adjusts the threshold at which the ducking triggers.  Higher or Lower sensitivity settings result in fewer adjustments, but focus on maintaining a lower or louder music track, respectively.  Middle-range sensitivity values trigger more adjustments where the music comes in and out quickly between pauses in speech.
    • Duck Amount: This parameter selects how much to reduce the volume of your music clip.  Adjusting this setting to the right reduces the volume more dramatically, towards the left for more subtle volume adjustments.
    • Fade Duration: This parameter controls how quickly the volume adjustment occurs when triggered.  Faster fades are ideal when mixing fast music with fast speech while slower fades are more appropriate when ducking background music behind voiceover tracks.
    • Fade Position: Choose where you want the background audio fade to land in relation to the dialog – outside the dialog, inside, or in the middle.

  6. Click Generate Keyframes to compute and set keyframes for the Amplify effect that has been added to the clip.

    Note:

    You can manually change the keyframes after generation - however, clicking the Generate Keyframes button again overwrites all manual changes to the keyframes. 

Premiere Pro automatically adds keyframes and ducking adjustments to the effect's rubberband. The Timeline clip's audio keyframe display also automatically switches to display the keyframes on the Amplify effect.

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