How to Add Background Music with Auto Ducking in Premiere Pro

5 years ago

Background Music with Auto Ducking in Premiere Pro

This tip adds background music to a tutorial video in Adobe Premiere Pro and makes the music fade down automatically whenever the voiceover speaks, then back up in the silent sections. Premiere generates the volume keyframes for you.

Steps

Select the voiceover clip and, in the Essential Sound panel, tag it as Dialogue. Any cleanup you have already applied stays.
Import the music, place it on a new audio track, and tag it as Music in Essential Sound.
Turn on Ducking in the Music settings. Leave the default values to start.
Click Generate Keyframes. Premiere analyses the dialogue and writes volume keyframes on the music track.
Play back: the music rises where nobody speaks and drops when the voice starts.

Fine tuning

Sensitivity controls how easily the voice triggers the duck.
Duck Amount sets how far the music drops; minus 18 dB is the default.
Fades sets the ramp length in milliseconds. Doubling it (for example to 1600 ms) gives a gentler transition. Regenerate the keyframes after changing settings.
If the music is still too loud overall, lower its clip level (about minus 5 dB in the video).