Sound Effects on a Budget: Finding and Adding Free Resources in Final Cut Pro

How to Find Free Sound Effect and Add Them in Final Cut Pro

Liza Brown

Mar 27, 2024• Proven solutions

Suppose you have recorded a cinematic video of a beach in the evening visualizing the sunset and a few birds flying in the sky. Everything looks perfect except the audio, which seems to be fluctuating and breaking at some points. How would you address this challenge?

The best solution to this problem is adding sound effects, which can make your video more interesting and adorable. Setting the frequency of audio with on-screen visuals will invoke the viewers’ emotions and attach them to the scene.

Read this article to learn how to add sound effects to your video with Final Cut Pro.

Part 1: What are Different Types of Sound Effects?

Sound effects have four major types:

1. Ambiance SFX

These sounds fill the screen space to create a virtual sense of an environment or location such as the clattering sound of dishes in a restaurant or the sound of engines on a highway.

1. Foley SFX

A mixture of live performance and digital sound editing, these sounds are produced by the artists of Foley studio to match their sounds to the on-screen visuals.

1. Hard and Soft SFX

Hard SFX synchronizes a visual to what’s happening in the picture while SFX indicates the location to the audience.

1. Electronic SFX

These sounds are generated by instruments that create electronic-sounding effects like electronic keyboards, synthesizers, or plug-ins.

Part 2: How to Add Sound Effects in Final Cut Pro?

Cinematographic productions need well-balanced music and sound effects. Luckily, Final Cut Pro comes with built-in audio enhancement features and third-party Audio Units (AU) effects that allow users to add sound effects to their videos and manage all audio processing tasks.

You can add sound effects in your video with Final Cut Pro. Wonder how? Follow these steps:

Step 1: Open Photos and Audio Sound Bar

• In the top-left corner, there is a Photos and Audio Click on this button as shown in the figure below:
• Select the Window and Go To Either press Shift + Command + 1 or tap Photos and Audio from the dropdown menu

Step 2: Select the Sound Category

• Choose a sound category or app from the Photos and Audio sidebar
• A list will appear contacting the audio clips in that specific category as shown in the figure below:
• You can find multiple music and sound clips in the Sound Effects category. The list also contains various apps you use on your Mac such as GarageBand, Music, and Logic Pro, etc.

Step 3: Select the Music or Sound to be added

• Filter the items in the browser by using the pop-up menu. Go to Music > Purchased or select Sound Effects > Final Cut Pro Sound Effects > Impacts & Crashes.
• Preview your selected audio file by selecting it from the list and clicking the Play
• If you want to select multiple items, command-click each item individually.

Step 4: Use the Selected Music or Audio

• Drag your selected sound clip to the timeline or the sidebar
• Once the Photos and Audio sidebar has been replaced by the Libraries sidebar, you can add the selected audio or music files to an event. The Photos and Audio sidebar will reappear as you drag those files.
• Play the video to make sure sound effects have been successfully added

For enhanced playback experiences, all MP audio files are automatically transcoded to MOV audio files. However, you can also find the original MP3 files in the source media files section of Final Cut Pro. Besides, by adding mono audio clips to a stereo project, only the single mono audio will be plated in both left and right channels. You can view them in the stereo audio meters of your project.

Surely you don’t want to see your sound effect missing in your footage, but that happens a lot in FCPX. Just in case, you may want to see this article: Proven Ways to Get Missing Sound Effects Back in Final Cut Pro .

Part 3: How to Improve Your Video with Sound Effects?

In addition to Final Cut Pro, you can also use advanced video-editing software like Wondershare Filmora to improve your video by adding special sound effects. Here’s how you can do this:

Add the original video to Filmora by clicking the Import button or directly dragging the file to the primary window

Tap Sound to open a box listing different sound effects. Select your favorite sound effect and drag it down to the soundtrack below the video clip. Now, move the sound icon and the playhead to set the beginning and ending points. Press the Play button to ensure the newly added sound effect sounds well.

Once you’ve done the final review, tap the Create button and Format tab. Then, choose your preferred format and location where the file needs to be exported. You can also upload this video on YouTube or Facebook, play it on different iOS devices, or burn it to DVD.

Part 4: Where to Find Sound Effects?

Both Final Cut Pro and Wondershare Filmora have a variety of built-in sound effects. You can select and drop these effects to directly add them to your video. However, if you are searching for sound effects, given below are two methods:

1. Self-recording

Professional filmmakers and sound experts often record sound effects by themselves according to their requirements. For example, if they want to visualize some scene from school, they can go to an educational institution and record audio. After proper editing, these sound effects are added to the video.

1. Online Resources

Different websites also allow their users to download their favorite sound effects. Given below are some of the top-rated websites for downloading sound effects based on their quality, variety, and usefulness:

1. Filmostock
2. Adobe Audition Sound Effects
3. Freesound
4. Partners In Rhyme
5. AudioMicro
6. 99Sounds
7. Sounds Crate
8. Zapsplat
9. BBC Sound Effects
10. FreeSFX
11. GameSounds
12. SoundEffects+
13. SoundGator
14. PacDV
15. Sound Effects for Free

For more details, please check this article: 9 Great Websites To Download Royalty-Free Sound Effects.

Part 5: Extensive Reading: What are Sound Effects and Why are they Important?

Sound is the most important aspect of video editing that engages audiences, evokes emotional responses, and connects people to what they’re seeing. A melodious sound helps the video editors deliver information and creatively and define the tone of their narrative.

Sound effects (SFX) refer to audio clips or sounds that are not part of the recoded video. They are added to movies, documentaries, video games, and even reality shows to invoke the viewers’ emotions and increase their interest in the video.

Similarly, the addition of sound effects increases the production value and creates a complete audience experience. If you want to elevate your video dramatically and make it magnetic, have to balance sound effects, silence, and music in such a way that they support each visual and every cut. Although audio cannot fix slipshod editing or amateur camera work, it becomes more crucial than video quality while you are trying to deliver a specific message in your video.

Professional video editors and filmmakers consider sound effects crucial to their video quality. A clear, melodious, and well-balanced audio adds depth to the visuals, evokes more emotions than the picture, and paints the audio picture of a particular setting.

Even silence, a powerful tool of the audio arsenal, speaks louder than the picture itself. Hence, balancing audio by adding sound effects can make your video stimulating, captivating, and emotional.

That’s why a good editing tool always stocks a great number of sound effects for users, like Filmora. Click to download and take a look at all the effects in Filmora

Conclusion

Sound effects are external audio files added to the videos to make them look interesting and worth watching. A perfect balance of sound, music, and silence allows the filmmakers to define the tone of their narrative and deliver their message creatively.

You can create sound effects through self-recording or by downloading them from external resources. To add sound effects to your video, use professional video-editing software like Final Cut Pro or Filmora. Both these applications are user-friendly and possess a huge library of a variety of sound effects and music files. Besides, their advanced features allow you to naturally add sound effects without affecting the video quality.

Liza Brown

Liza Brown is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Liza Brown

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