How to keep only the sounds that matter from your own footage
Tell Vizard Agent which sounds in your footage are worth keeping and what should happen everywhere else. It listens through the source for those moments, measures your voiceover against the natural sound underneath it, and lowers or drops the original track wherever the thing you named is not happening.
What do you type into Vizard Agent?
Name the action rather than the feeling it gives you. "Keep the unboxing sounds" identifies a set of moments at particular times in the file; "keep the good bits of audio" is a judgement nobody, including Vizard Agent, can apply consistently across a long clip. Then say what the rest of the track should do.
Prompt
What does Vizard Agent actually do?
Listening comes before any level is set. A track can be searched for the moments you named, and listened to for texture you didn't think to ask for, like a zip or a lid. The voiceover and the sound beneath it are measured against each other, not each against a target, so a loud packaging sound doesn't bury the voice. In the session behind this article it:
- Mapped the shots across an unboxing reel, checked the source waveform end to end and measured the source speech and room audio separately.
- Listened through the footage for usable speech and audio texture, and found the moments where the named action actually happened.
- Transcribed and measured the voiceover the user supplied, then compared its level against the natural sound underneath.
- Built the mix with the kept moments and the rest lowered, and rendered versions with and without the narration.
- Checked the waveform of each delivered version and confirmed the final levels on both copies.
When does this not work well?
The sounds have to be separable in time. If the action you want happens under continuous talking, or the room noise is as loud as the thing you're keeping, lowering the track around it removes the thing as well. Music playing during filming is part of the recording, and a single unbroken take has no empty stretches to lower.
Common questions
Can it keep only certain sounds? Yes. Name them by the action and Vizard Agent finds them.
Will my voiceover be touched? No, not if you say so. Vizard Agent only sets its level.
Do I get a version without narration? Yes. Vizard Agent builds both from the same assembly.