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How to mix the sound of a video

Open Sound → Mixer. Every clip and music bed has a strip with a fader, mute, solo and a meter; they feed three buses — Dialogue, Music and Effects — and a master with live loudness. Normalise brings a channel to a target, and the music can duck under speech by itself.

1. Open the mixer. Choose the Sound tool, then Mixer on its rail.
2. Balance the channels. Drag each fader; the meter beside it shows its level after the fader. Each strip also mutes and solos.
3. Set the loudness. Pick a channel and press Normalise with a target — −14 LUFS for online video, −16 for podcasts, −23 for broadcast. It is held back so the peaks stay under −1 dBFS.
4. Shape the buses. Click DIA, MUS or FX: each bus has its own EQ, compressor, a place in a 5.1 mix and an LFE send.
5. Duck the music. In Auto Edit → Music Ducking turn ducking on and choose how far; the music dips under speech and comes back after.
6. Fit the music to the film. Select a music strip and press Fit music: a long track is trimmed with a fade, a short one loops with soft crossfades.

Loudness at export

Export → Loudness levels the finished mix to −14, −16 or −23 LUFS on the way out, with a true-peak limiter, whatever the faders did.

Mix view

Shift+H folds the picture lanes and opens the sound lanes tall, so waveforms and level lines are easy to work on.

Undo is Ctrl+Z, and one history covers the whole project.

Open the editor

Questions

Last reviewed 22 October 2026.