Add Music to a Video Online (and Keep the Original Sound)
Lay a music bed under a cut without losing your clips' own audio — per-clip volume, mute, and why a short track should never shorten your film.
Add Music to a Video Online (and Keep the Original Sound)
Adding music to a video usually means one of two annoyances: the tool replaces your original audio entirely, or it cuts your film short when the track runs out. Neither should happen. Here is how to lay music under a cut in Video Studio without losing anything.
Put the track in your workspace
The workspace holds video, photos and sound. Upload an MP3, WAV, M4A or AAC file (up to 100 MB) and it appears alongside your clips. Click it and choose Use as sound — it becomes the soundtrack for the whole cut rather than a clip on the picture track.
One track, running underneath everything. That is the thing people actually want when they say "add music": a bed under a montage.
Your clips keep their own audio
This is the part most online editors get wrong. In Video Studio the music is mixed with the clips, not swapped in for them. Dialogue, room tone and the sound of whatever you filmed all survive.
You control the balance:
- Select a clip to set its own volume, or mute it entirely with one button. A muted clip is marked on the timeline so you can see at a glance what is silent.
- Open Settings to set the soundtrack's volume against everything else.
Mute every clip and you get music only. Leave them at full and you get both. That is a decision, not a default.
Short track, long film — and the other way round
If your music is shorter than the film, it is padded with silence and the picture plays out to its full length. If the music is longer, it stops when the picture does.
This sounds obvious and is worth stating, because the naive way of doing it truncates the film to the length of the music. A ten-second track under a two-minute cut should not produce a ten-second video.
Sound across cuts and transitions
When two clips are joined by a crossfade, their audio crossfades with them. Hard cuts cut the sound too. Photos have no sound of their own, so silence of exactly the right length is generated for them — otherwise a single still would mute the whole export.
Where to get music
Anything you have the rights to use. If you need a voice rather than music, generate one with the Voice Generator and drop the result in as your soundtrack — narration works exactly the same way as a song.
FAQ
Does adding music remove my original audio? No. The music is mixed underneath. Mute individual clips if you want music only.
What audio formats can I upload? MP3, WAV, M4A and AAC, up to 100 MB.
Can I control how loud the music is? Yes — the soundtrack has its own volume, and every clip has its own level too.
Will a short song cut my video short? No. Short tracks are padded with silence; the picture decides the length.