The Art of Sound Manipulation: Creating Engaging Audio Timelines Using Keyframes in Adobe Premiere Pro (Mac)

How to Create Audio Keyframes in Adobe Premiere Pro on Mac

Benjamin Arango

Aug 18, 2022• Proven solutions

Keyframing is one of the most vital components in post-production that can be applied to video and audio tracks. For instance, by adding keyframes in Premiere Pro, you can easily apply properties and values to a specific segment. To do this, you can set up an audio keyframe at the start and another one at the ending of the selected part.

Therefore, with the Premiere Pro keyframe options, you can achieve a gradual flow in your tracks. Without much ado, I’m going to help you set up audio keyframes in Premiere Pro with their vital operations in this post.

Part 1: How to Add Audio Keyframes in Adobe Premiere Pro on Mac?

As I have mentioned, to apply adjustments or properties to a specific point in the audio track, we can use Adobe Premiere keyframes. As of now, there are two kinds of keyframes in Adobe Premiere – Clip Keyframe and Track Keyframe. Before you start adding keyframes in Premiere Pro, you should know their difference.

• Clip Keyframes: This would apply audio effects for the selected clip (like adjusting the volume level). The audio keyframe will only apply to the clip that you have selected and not the entire track.
• Track Keyframes: These audio keyframes in Premiere are applied to the entire audio track (they have values like Volume and Mute).

Now when we have covered the basics, let’s learn how to set up audio keyframes in Premiere on your Mac.

Step 1: Add the Audio Track on Adobe Premiere Pro

To start with, you can launch Adobe Premiere Pro, go to your Project > Import, and simply load any audio track. You can also drag and drop any audio file to the project as well.

Once the audio track is added to the project, you can further drag and drop it to the sequence section (timelines) at the bottom.

Step 2: Show Keyframes for the Track

The application would automatically render different keyframes already present in the track. For this, you need to first select the ribbon of your audio track from the timeline. Now, just right-click on the working area and click on the “Show Audio Keyframes” button from the context menu.

If you want, you can also click on the “Show Keyframes” button that is depicted by a radio/circle icon on the timeline.

Step 3: Work on Audio Keyframes in Premiere Pro

Now, you can view either clip or track keyframes for the track. For this, you can just right-click the keyframe button on the timeline to get different options. Here, you can choose to get Clip or Track keyframes in Premiere Pro. There are options to mute the entire audio or set up its volume under the track option.

Once you have enabled the audio keyframe options in Premiere Pro, you can view keyframes in a highlighted color. You can now take the assistance of the Pen tool or press the CMD key on your Mac to select keyframes. This will let you select the starting and ending keyframes in Premiere Pro so that you can easily apply the desired effect to the selected segment.

Part 2: How to Fade Audio In/Out with Keyframes in Adobe Premiere Pro on Mac?

Once you have learned how to use the Adobe Premiere keyframe feature, you can apply all kinds of transitions and effects to a segment. Let’s suppose you wish to implement fade-in or out features for any segment. In this case, we will use the Clip Keyframing option in Premiere Pro to achieve these transitions the way we like.

Step 1: Get Clip Keyframes in Premiere Pro

Firstly, you can just add any audio track to your Premiere Pro project and drag it to the timeline. You can just click on the show keyframes button to start adding keyframes in Premiere Pro.

If you want, you can just right-click the track, go to the Show Clip Keyframes > Volume > Level option. This will show the level of the volume for different keyframes, letting you pick the right segments to fade in and out.

Step 2: Apply Fade-in or Out options

Once you have clip keyframes in your track, you can easily do whatever you like. You can use the Pen tool or press the CMD key on your Mac to select the starting and the ending of the clip.

Now, go to the audio segment from the timeline and simply place the audio level up (to fade-in) or down (to fade-out). You can set the audio levels for different segments the way you like to customize these operations in your audio track.

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Pro Tip: Use Inbuilt Fade In/Out Transitions

With keyframes in Premiere Pro, you can certainly customize the fade in/out options. Though, if you are running short on time, then you can use its inbuilt features for audio adjustments.

For this, you can just go to its Effects > Audio Transitions option. To fade-out any clip, select the Crossfade > Exponential Fade and simply drag and drop to the location of your choice.

In the same way, you can also go to Effects > Audio Transitions > Crossfade and choose the “Constant Gain” feature. You can drag and drop the Contact Gain effect on any segment to implement the fade-in effect.

That’s a wrap, everyone! I’m sure that after reading this post, you would be able to set up audio keyframes in Adobe Premiere Pro. Since adding keyframes in Premiere can be done automatically, it would save your time in audio editing and post-production. Mostly, the clip audio keyframing is used in Adobe to customize the sound at any desired segment. Apart from fade-in or out, there are tons of other effects that you can apply to your audio tracks with the help of keyframes. Go ahead and try the Adobe Premiere Pro keyframing feature and let us know about your experience in the comments.

Benjamin Arango

Benjamin Arango is a writer and a lover of all things video.

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