There you are, immersed in creating your next epic – Ghost King Arising – when you are struck by a thought. “What, exactly, does a ghost king sound like?”
Fortunately, Final Cut has two audio effects ready to ride to your rescue:
The difference? Alien is mostly intelligible, while Spectral Gate is flat-out weird. In either case after you add an audio clip to the timeline, apply an effect by dragging it from the Effects browser onto a timeline audio clip, or select a group of timeline clips, then double-click the effect you want to apply.
NOTE: Both these effects drastically reduce audio levels. So expect to boost them a lot once the effect is applied.
ALIEN
To adjust the effect, select a timeline clip containing the effect, then open the Audio Inspector.
While Alien is the default setting, you can also select Martian or Moon Cat, each providing a descending level of intelligibility.
NOTE: You can also tweak the four settings in the Inspector to create a custom effect.
Here’s the sound of Alien, though the level is a bit low.
SPECTRAL GATE
The Spectral Gate effect starts at “audio affected by sunspots” and quickly descends into “pure spectral energy.”
Click the Presets menu in the Audio Inspector (red arrow above) to choose from a variety of audio presets. The default is Arctic Radio Broadcast.
Or, click the small icon in the top right of the effect (red arrow) in the Audio Inspector to display the effect interface.
Here, you can dial, adjust and tweak to achieve exactly the ghostly effect you need. I could explain what each of these settings does, but, ah, why bother? It is far simpler – and better – to just change a setting and listen to what happens.
If you like it, keep it. If not, tweak again.
NOTE: A good shortcut is to select a preset, see how the settings change, then change them further to get the effect you want.
Here’s the sound of Arctic Radio Broadcast, again, the audio levels are a bit low.
