Enhance Your Video Soundtracks
WORRIED THAT YOUR VIDEOS SOUND AMATEURISH? Is the sound dull, or the background noisy? Perhaps you’re a YouTuber who wants to give your videos an edge, or a DIY film-maker seeking enhanced audio and sound effects. Before sinking time or money into big editing suites, check out what can be done on the easiest editor of them all: Audacity. It’s available on Windows, Linux, and macOS, with a mature codebase and intuitive interface that has become something of a standard among audio enthusiasts.
If you want to tweak your video’s sound, you need to extract it first, then put it back in the video when you’re done, so we’ve included a short guide to this—see the box on the opposite page. We picked Kdenlive for our video editor, because it’s by far the best known on Linux. For those just wanting some fun stuff to play with, we’ll cover the sillier effects first, then move on to practical effects to help polish your audio.
1 GETTING STARTED
In its default form, Audacity comes with a limited number of plugins under the “Effect” menu, which we’ll examine first. Scroll down to the bottom of the list, and you will probably discover some “Plugin” submenus containing a list of extra effects. These were available on most installations we tried, but we can’t guarantee their presence, so we’ll cover these extra effects later.
⟫ Most of the effects here follow the same flow of highlighting some audio, opening the “Effect” menu from the main menu, then choosing your effect. Usually, a new window opens with numerous settings and a “Preview” button, enabling you to adjust any necessary values before you change your audio. However, not all effects follow this workflow, and some require a little more explanation.
2 PITCH SHIFTING
Changing pitch enables you to tune audio up or down, so you can make someone sound like either a chipmunk
