A range of audio effects are included to adjust your audio.
Audio Reverse
Plays the selected clip backwards.
Balance
Pan the audio from left to right within the stereo field of your project.
- Balance: Negative values pan the audio farther to the left channel, and positive values pan it to the right channel. Zero sends the audio in equal amounts to both channels.
Cathedral
Simulate the acoustics of a cathedral/large cavernous space.
- Gain: Reduces or increases the overall volume of the processed audio signal.
Channel Levels
Used to adjust the volume of each audio channel individually.
- Left: Adjusts the overall level of the Left channel, in a dB scale. 0.0 dB is the original source volume.
- Right: Adjusts the overall level of the Right channel, in a dB scale. 0.0 dB is the original source volume.
Doppler Shift
When combined with an animated layer, this effect introduces realistic Doppler Shift to an audio layer.
The effect should be added directly to your audio layer. In the effect’s properties you can link it to a separate layer, which can then be animated. For example, if a point layer is created and animated to move towards camera, the audio will receive a Doppler Shift as if the sound is approaching camera.
A practical example would be to use a constant audio recording of a helicopter, which is then linked via the Doppler Shift effect to an animated 3D helicopter in your scene. The helicopter audio will be shifted automatically as the vehicle moves.
- Sound Position: Use this menu to select any layer on your timeline. The selected layer’s position will be used to calculate the Doppler Shift.
- Speed of Sound: Defined in meters per second. Works in conjunction with the Scene Size, which defines how many pixels are equal to a meter within your specific scene.
- Scene Size: Defines how many pixels in the scene correspond to a real meter. This makes it possible to get accurate Doppler Shifting for a variety of scene setups.
- Distance Falloff: When activated, the audio will diminish in volume the farther away it is from the position set in the Volume Distance.
- Volume Distance is the distance from the camera at which audio will be at 100% volume. As audio gets farther away it will become quieter. At the default of 1000px, if the audio moves closer to camera it will become louder than 100%.
Echo
Generates echoes from the original audio. You can adjust the number of echoes, and how delayed they are from the original. The falloff determines how much of the echo is heard before it diminishes and becomes inaudible.
- Delay: The time in milliseconds between the original audio signal, and the start of the echo. When the Number of Echoes is set higher than one, this value is also used to set the amount of time between the start of each echo.
- Falloff: Defines how much the Level of each echo will be reduced from the previous instance. At the default setting of 50%, the first echo will be half the level of the original signal, the second echo will be 25% of the original level, etc.
- Number of Echoes: The number of times the original audio will be repeated in echo.
Equalizer
The equalizer is used to adjust the strength of specific frequencies in an audio clip. This can be used to selectively adjust the bass and treble, for example, depending on the intent.
The presets menu provides quick access to common equalization tasks, such as high pass, low pass and bass boost.
The Master Gain control is used to control the volume of the clip. This operates separately to the volume property of the clip and should be used to set the base volume of an audio clip. The volume property can then be used to fine tune volume and mix clips over time.
Recorded audio will often have a low gain when imported. To set your gain to a satisfactory volume for standard playback on typical equipment, you can observe the default gain using the audio meters. Playback the clip and note the peak audio level, as displayed in the peak boxes. You can then make the appropriate adjustment to the Master Gain. For example, if you have a dialogue track which has been recorded with a peak of -18dB, making it rather quiet in the mix, you can set the Master Gain to 9.00dB in order to raise the overall gain to -9dB. This results in louder audio while still leaving headroom to adjust the volume if required.
Large Room
Simulates the ambient reverb of a large room. A longer reverb than the Medium Room effect.
- Gain: Reduces or increases the overall volume of the processed audio signal.
Medium Room
Simulates the ambient reverb of a medium sized room.
- Gain: Reduces or increases the overall volume of the processed audio signal.
Noise Reduction
This is a quick way to clean up audio which is suffering from unwanted background noise.
After applying the effect, move the playhead to a frame containing the noise you wish to remove, and no other audio. This should be a frame where there is no other interfering noises. For this reason when recording audio is is always worth recording a section of ‘clean’ audio before recording your actual subject. Clicking the Capture Noise Print button samples the audio contained in frame, so that HitFilm can recognise the noise.
- Capture Noise Print: Clicking this button records whatever audio is present at the current playhead location. The effect will then use this Noise Print to remove the noise from all other frames of the video.
Once you have Captured a Noise Print, some additional controls will appear. In many cases the noise will be immediately removed. The controls also allow you to fine tune how the noise removal is handled.
- Reset Noise Print: Removes the noise print, so you can select a different frame.
- Add to Noise Print: Allows you to select additional frames of noise, and add them to the noise print.
- Threshold Level: On frames where the noise print overlaps with your dialog or other desired audio, removing all of the noise can sometimes create unnatural results. Reducing the Threshold Level restores a bit of the noise, can can be effective for getting a more natural result, while still retaining significant Noise Reduction.
- Reduce By: Defines, in dB, how much the noise print will be reduced in each frame of your video. If the results of the reduction are sounding unnatural, try lowering the Reduce By value, so the noise is not removed entirely.
Pitch
Adjusting the pitch can be useful for particular effects, or to counter the natural pitch change caused by adjusting playback speed of a clip.
- Semitone Shift: Sets, in semitones, how far the audio is shifted. Moving the slider to the left will shift the pitch lower, and moving to the right will shift the pitch higher. A semitone is equal to the pitch change between one key and the next on the piano. From C to C#, for example, is a semitone. 12 semitones is an octave.
Shortwave Radio
Simulates the sound of a shortwave radio.
- Gain: Reduces or increases the overall volume of the processed audio signal.
Small Room
Simulates the ambient reverb of a small room. A shorter reverb than the Medium Room effect.
- Gain: Reduces or increases the overall volume of the processed audio signal.
Telephone
Simulates the sound of telephone audio.
- Gain: Reduces or increases the overall volume of the processed audio signal.
Tone
Generates a continuous tone of a defined frequency. The Type you select makes a bigger difference at lower Frequencies. The higher the Frequency, the harder it is to distinguish between the Types.
- Type
- Sine: A Sine wave gives a smooth, rounded sound.
- Square: A Square wave gives a harsh, cutting sound
- Frequency: Sets the number of waves per second, which defines the pitch of the tone that is generated.