Music for short film question...

Question

So I'm editing my first, and bad, short film. I'm wondering what's the best way to go about music, obtaining and dropping music tracks in? How does one go about putting, lets say, Mozart under some video? Thanks, I know this is a noob question but I'm still getting used to it!

Answer 1

I keep a folder on my hard drive that is just filled with music of different types that I import from music CDs: classics, rock, pop, etc. It all comes in handy for background music in one kind of video or another, and gives me lots of choices and raw material. In fact, as Hollywood knows, the background music can make or break the video. Can you imagine all the tear-jerker scenes in the Titanic without the theme music, or the Ken Burns special on the Civil War without that special theme song he used? It's the music that sets the mood.
Like the other guys said, use some program such as iTunes, SoundStudio, or QuickTime Player Pro to convert whatever comes off your music CDs into AIFF form (although I've found FCE will try to work with just about any kind of audio file, and usually can), and then just drag and drop the music file's icon into your Final Cut Express browser (remembering that what gets dropped into FCE is only a pointer back to the original audio file). Once it's in the Browser, you can double-click it into the Viewer, and there in the Viewer window listen to it and set IN and OUT points (with the I and O keys on the keyboard) to make the length of the audio clip approximately match the length of the video clip you want to put it under, and also to choose the most appropriate part of the music or song to fit the video. You can always override these IN and OUT points on the timeline, of course, just by dragging the edges of the audio clip left or right to make it longer or shorter, or slipping it around with FCE's tools, but setting the IN and OUT points in the viewer like that before you drag the audio clip down to the audio tracks from the Browser gives you a rough starting point. If you just drag the entire audio file down onto the timeline immediately, without such adjustments, you can get an awful long audio clip stretched way down your Timeline (and it might also accidentally run over, and move, or obliterate, some other clips on that audio track way downstream). Then you must whittle that overly long audio clip down with the razor blade or other editing tool to match the video clip above it, although I did it that way before learning that it's better to do it in the Viewer window.
Once the audio clip is in the timeline, use the pen tool on the red audio volume line running down the length of it, to adjust overall volume, and to raise and lower the volume at specific points in the video clip, and to fade it in and out at the beginning, end, and elsewhere as needed. To do this, just click on the red line with the pen tool to establish control points (keyframes) so you can pull the volume line up and down. Setting the audio clips to show the waveforms of the music while you do this can help with the precision of these adjustments.
Yeah, music is so important to the mood of a video that I'm amazed so many people neglect it, or choose the wrong music (see YouTube for just how bad it can get). Some time spent experimenting to get the right music, and the most effective use of it, really pays off. I've had tears running down peoples' eyes (OK, my own too sometimes) watching some of my sentimental family videos with the right music behind it.
Same goes for comedy: check out this video comedy I created in FCE and uploaded to YouTube, and see how the music absolutely makes the main scene, and how you can match the beat of the music to the action in the video. It takes time, sliding the video clips around to match the beat, but it pays off--I've seen people fall out of their chairs laughing while watching this one: <http://tinyurl.com/6xdymg>