Integrating Audio Files into After Effects

So I'd like to bring in an audio file so I can hear some music. This is the music in this, OK? Now, the first thing is that After Effects is weak when it comes to audio. This is not an audio editing program.

Its most concept for audio is basically add audio as the background. Maybe if you're animating something to go along with audio, it's just a reference. So mostly it can do a handful of audio.

OK, that's it. Now, but it does let you add it to a timeline. It comes in as a layer, it'll just be an audio layer.

You'll hear it when we preview, that sort of thing. But there's no visual representation other than the layer name. OK, it's just there's like no like icon or something that pops up.

It's just like the layer, OK? The instructions have you drag it to the bottom. There is no reason for that other than that's where I like to put it. OK, someone put it at the top all the time, it varies, OK? So I should do that.

That's what I should do, OK? Now, I'm going to rename that layer background audio for no other reason than I want to rename it background audio, BG audio, OK? Notice that its buttons to the left are a little different. It has a little speaker icon that would turn off the audio from playing, OK? The visual layers have a little eye icon that hides them. That's mute, OK? The other layers don't have it because they don't have any audio.

OK, it was kind of cool, by the way. The other two buttons, by the way, this one is solo. It would only let that layer play.

The last one is a lock. It would lock that layer so you can't make changes to it or mess it up, OK? One other note, this layer, the name is on the left. You got some switches on the left and on the right is where the layer exists in time.

This is called the time ruler. It measures time. The layers themselves are represented by colored bars.

And by the way, the color is the color over there. You can change it if you want, OK? The length of the bar is the duration of the layer. OK, if the bar has a little black corner at the beginning, this is the physical beginning of the file.

You get that for video files and you get that for audio files usually, OK? The images don't have real beginnings and ends because they're just images. So they don't have those, OK? Now, here's my thing. If I play this, which I can do by pressing spacebar or locating the preview window and pressing the play button, but I'm going to do spacebar, by the way, I don't hear anything for about four and a half seconds.

Then I hear something. OK, the beginning of this audio file has no sound. And then it starts around four seconds or so.

I'd like to see that, OK? The arrow for the audio layer, if I click on it, will reveal audio properties. The arrow next to audio will reveal audio levels and waveform. The arrow next to waveform will reveal that.

The waveform is a representation of the volume of the layer. OK, so in the timeline, any layer to its left, if you go past the little label color, should have a little arrow next to it. Clicking on the arrow expands it down, so when it's down, it's open.

And then you can basically just keep drilling. They call it drilling down into it, by the way, like this. OK, for the record, that's annoying.

It is. OK, here's a keyboard shortcut. This will work for any layer that has audio.

If I just want to reveal that waveform and not arrow, arrow, arrow, arrow thing, L twice on the keyboard, LL will reveal the audio waveform of the layer. So if you're doing a layer without audio, it'll do nothing. OK, now by the way, L once reveals just the audio levels property.

Properties are the qualities of a layer. So for example, a visual layer has a position, an anchor point, a rotation, a scale, and an opacity property. An audio layer has an audio levels property, which is basically its volume.

OK, properties are what you animate. So as I said, LL reveals just the waveform. It tells you that in the book, by the way, so it's cool.

Now, here's my thing. So first of all, if I didn't care to be exact, I could take my selection tool, hello selection tool, and I could grab the middle of my layer and drag it over there. Notice how the waveform is sliding.

Now when I go back to the beginning, I'll drag the, this is the current time indicator, by the way, back to the beginning. And I press space bar, I'll have sound at the beginning. So if I didn't care to be exact, I could do that.

Now the problem is in a book, you'd never be able to match the same thing. And you could argue it doesn't matter, OK? OK, so yeah, so by the way, one other note, if you're trying to move something, the only tool that actually moves layers is the selection tool. If you have any other tool active, it won't let you do what I just did.

Select as a hand tool, by the way, it doesn't do that. It's like very annoying. OK, so let me go back.

But I'm going to do this precisely. So let's say I want to cut off the first, like, four and a half seconds, OK? So I'm going to go to four and a half seconds, OK? In the blue numbers to the left side of the timeline, right up here, this is the position of the current time indicator. That's the current time indicator, the little wedge.

When you drag it, by the way, notice you don't hear any sound when you drag it. When you drag it, you're looking at different parts of your time. If you type a number in here, four, one, five, and then return, it'll move to that time, four, one, five, four seconds, 15 frames, OK? I want to cut the layer down to here, and I want to cut it.

So I'm going to hover at the beginning of the layer, the far left side of the layer, and I get a double-headed arrow. That arrow shortens or lengthens the layer. It doesn't move it.

It shortens it. You can't lengthen it past its beginning point. Notice that it literally hid the waveform when I did that.

Waveform, it's hiding it. If I hold down Shift, by the way, it'll snap to the current time indicator. So this allows me to trim a layer.

I'm literally hiding that part of the layer. So the bright color is the active part of the layer. The dark color is just the empty space it could extend into, OK? There's a keyboard shortcut for that, but I did it manually.

Now, with my black arrow, I can drag the layer over. So notice I'm not at the beginning because that would trim. I'm in the middle part of the layer.

I get a black arrow, not the double-headed arrow. That drags, OK? And if I press and hold Shift as I get to the edge, it'll snap. Now, here's what you've got to be careful about.

Nothing prevented me from dragging it before the beginning. So it's not the beginning of the timeline. It's not a physical wall.

You could literally drag a layer so it starts way before the beginning of the timeline. There are practical reasons for that, by the way, with animation. OK, but drag it over.

It's fine. Now I get that. But like I said, if you didn't care about being precise, you could just grab the entire layer, drag it so it starts early, which is nice.

So that was adding audio.