First released in Adobe Audition, then moving to the beta version of Premiere Pro last November, Remix is now a part of the v22.2 update to Premiere. Remix takes an existing music clip and shortens it to whatever length you need. How? Adobe Sensei magic.
NOTE: Remix can shorten longer tracks, but it can ‘t make shorter tracks longer.
Rather than laboriously editing music clips manually – and frequently missing the beat or melody – Remix handles all that trimming automatically. Here’s how it works.
Edit the audio clip who’s duration you want to adjust into a sequence, then select it.
NOTE: This clip could be located anywhere in the timeline, on any track.
Choose Clip > Remix > Enable Remix.
The Essential Sound panel appears on the right, with the Duration option checked and Remix selected (red arrows).
NOTE: The Duration portion of the panel is what’s new with Remix.
Enter the approximate duration for your new music. Remix is good, but it can only reedit music ±5 seconds of your selected duration, simply due to fact that music has beats and melodic themes that can’t be arbitrarily cut.
My source music was 2:54. I wanted to shorten it for a 30 second promo, so I entered 00:00:30:00. Instantly, Premiere re-edited it to 29:18.
As well, Premiere shows you in the timeline where it made edits to the music, though you can’t adjust these edits directly. As you play the clip, it should sound smooth, with the edits inaudible.
If you don’t like the sound of the clip, there are two sliders you can adjust, both in the Customize section:
While both of these are set to a default midpoint, if you don’t like the sound of the newly-edited clip, slide each of these around a bit. then listen again. Each time you change a slider, Premiere will re-edit the music until you find an option that you like.
The best way to use both these sliders is to adjust one, then listen to the music. If you like it, it’s good. If you don’t, adjust a slider again.
SUMMARY
While Remix works fine on instrumental music, I don’t recommend you use it for any music that has lyrics. Why? Because Remix slices-and-dices music, it doesn’t pay any attention to the content or structure of the lyrics.
While Remix doesn’t have the same level of musical manipulation that SmartSound provides today, for editors who need a really fast way to adjust the duration of an existing musical clip, Remix is a very handy tool.
