Editing audio

Cutting audio clips works in the same way as video clips. 

• You'll often have a bit of dead air at the start and end of your footage; you'll be able to remove these bits of unengaging content by using the trim tool, which can remove footage from either the start or an end of a clip.
• If you have one clip that you need to split into two because you want to remove a mistake, cut out some background noise or any filler words like "um" and "ah", you can use the splitting tool. This allows you to drag your cursor to any point in the clip and cut it in two at that point. 

Hopefully you got the volume right when you initially recorded your audio, but sometimes you need to make some changes to your volume levels post-recording.

• Try to keep your levels consistent throughout the whole video. If one audio clip is significantly louder than another it can be quite jarring.
• Background music can be useful if creating a video that has large sections of visuals without narration, but should be avoided in strictly instructional videos that are almost entirely narration, as it can add to cognitive overload.

• The best way to remove background noise is to not have it get recorded at all. Be aware of your surroundings when recording to try and make sure you don't pick up any unwanted background noise.
• If you do have some unwanted background noise, see if you can simply cut it out. Depending on where in your recording the noise happens you may be able to isolate the unwanted noise and remove it by cutting and deleting the clip.
• If you can't cut out the noise, follow the steps in the video below to try and fix the noise problem.

Captions are essential to ensure that your videos are accessible for hard-of-hearing and deaf viewers, those that have issues with audio-processing, and English Additional Language viewers.

• Captions need to include all words spoken in the audio, identification of off camera speakers, words to any songs used and descriptions of sound events that impact the meaning of the video. 
• Captions should be a white text on a black background to increase visibility. 
• Captions should coincide with the relevant audio to retain the relationship between the sound and the visuals.
• Any sound effect being described should be shown in square brackets, e.g. [car engine revving]
• Any speaker should be identified in round brackets, e.g. (Jane)
• Any time you switch between speakers you need to start a new line.