Skip to content

Home How to add music and sound effects to a video

Anything new to read? Let's see!

How to add music and sound effects to a video

Add tracks from the free music and sound-effects library, duck music under speech automatically and cut to the beat. With licence notes.

Music sets the mood of a video and sound effects add emphasis. A song grabbed at random from the internet can bring copyright trouble, though. With the free library inside Weditra you can handle it all in one place. The library only holds content whose licence allows shipping it with the app, and more tracks are added over time.

Add music from the library

  1. Open the Audio panel on the left. It has two sections: Music and Sound effects.
  2. Type a name or tag in the search box.
  3. Preview a track with Listen (▶).
  4. When you like one, add it at the playhead with +; double-clicking the track adds it too.
  5. The track appears on the timeline as an audio clip. Move, trim or split it like any clip.

Licence and credit: don’t skip this

Under each track you’ll see its Licence and Source. Some tracks need no credit (“No credit required”); for others the panel gives you a line to copy, saying “When you post, credit in the description”. When you publish the video, add that line to the description. Rather than trusting the word “royalty-free”, read the licence note shown in the panel.

Duck the music under speech

Music shouldn’t fight the person talking. In Smart tools choose Duck music under speech:

  1. Select the music clip.
  2. Set the Speech source to the clip that has the talking, or to All other sounds.
  3. Adjust Duck amount, Fade down and Fade back up.
  4. Apply. The tool lowers the music with volume keyframes wherever there’s speech, and you can edit them by hand afterwards.

Cut to the beat

To fit several clips to a song’s beats, look at Auto draft in Smart tools or the Snap to beats option on the timeline. You can find the beats by picking the music and using Beats in the Audio tab. If no beats are found, it works at 120 BPM. More on the Beat sync page. Text and picture can also bounce on the beat: under Loop in the Motion tab (text) or the Animation tab (picture) you’ll find Beat pulse and Beat hop.

Where sound effects help

  • A whoosh on transitions.
  • A short click when a title or sticker appears.
  • A light thump on a moment you want to stress.

Keep effects short and below the speech in level.

Level and cleanliness

Select the music clip and set its level; keep it low enough to sit under the speech. Use Balance the level to bring the speech clip to a steady loudness. When you export, Prevent clipping stops the mix from passing 0 dB and distorting.

Your own music

You can also drag your own file (MP3, WAV, AAC, M4A, FLAC) into the window. It’s up to you to check that you have the right to use it in a video you publish.

FAQ

Are the tracks in the library free? Yes, they’re offered as free content. Still, read each track’s licence and credit note.

What if the music makes the speech hard to hear? Lower the music level or use Duck music under speech.

Does the library need a connection? The library ships with the app; listening and adding happen on your computer.

Weditra is free and puts no watermark on anything. See the Download page for the Windows version.

← All posts