How to edit an audio track for short form video?

Short Form Video is the New Black

In today's digital landscape, short form video has become the dominant medium for content consumption across all industries and verticals. From corporate communications to marketing campaigns and social media engagement, the demand for short, attention-grabbing videos is at an all-time high. Formats like Facebook Stories, Instagram Reels, and TikTok by nature have revolutionized the way we consume and interact with content, creating new opportunities for businesses and creators alike.
However, while there's no shortage of solutions catering to visual editing, the same cannot be said for audio. While sleek transitions, eye-catching effects, and seamless editing are essential for creating engaging videos, audio editing features often lag behind, leaving a gap in the quest for professional-grade content creation.

Why sound matters?

When it comes to creating impactful content, sound is a game-changer. It taps into the emotional core of the audience, transforming good content into something truly remarkable, with three benefits:

• Emotional engagement: It fosters emotional connections and makes the content more memorable and shareable.
• Enhanced retention: Perfectly synced audio track keeps viewers engaged till the end, reducing the likelihood of them clicking away prematurely.
• Professional quality: The perception of professionalism and brand quality is significantly influenced by the audio production.

Consider the diverse landscape of social media platforms, each with its own unique user behavior and preferences regarding audio. On the biggest by the numbers, Facebook, despite most of users watching videos with sound off, 80% of stories with voiceovers or music drive better results¹. On the professional network LinkedIn, 56% of desktop or laptop viewers typically have sound on². Going on mobile will increase the preference for audio. While sound-off scrolling is common on Instagram, 60% of people turn on sound for Instagram Stories³. As YouTube is concerned, on a global scale 60-65% of users watch ads with sound⁴. And to cap it off 88% of TikTok users consider sound essential to their experience on the app⁵.

Audio features are still left behind

Despite the importance of audio, many of the existing tools and platforms for video editing fall short in addressing the complexities of audio processing and editing. While basic trimming options, adjusting volume levels and adding fade in/fade out may be available, more advanced features for re-editing audio tracks, adjusting volume levels, and perfectly synchronizing audio with video content are lacking.
This results in music fundamentals of the trimmed track being lost and synchronization issues, ultimately leading to a disconnect between the audio and visual components.
As a consequence, the message becomes blurred, and viewers' attention is diverted away from the intended content. It's clear that there's a pressing need for seamless audio editing tools that can streamline the process without adding extra workload, ensuring that the audio matches the story being told and enhances the overall viewer experience.

How to automatically generate a musically-coherent shortened version

While generative AI is making the buzz, for the good and the bad, in the audio scene, artifial intelligence can be as efficient and useful in the re-editing field, and to specifically to shorten a track. With as little input as the target duration. The AI will act as a real composer, taking into account time and song structure constraints to make a shorten version as if it was composed and produced with that intention in mind in the first place.
At Ircam Amplify, by combining different algorithms to analyze the structure, evaluate the sections similarities, classify, and re-arrange them, we end up with this powerful artifical intelligence able to shorten any track while preserving the artistic intention and song dynamic.
With the click of a single button content creators could be offered an authentic shorten version like it was specifically composed to match the short form video. By eliminating the technical barrier and combining the different editing steps into one, this audio processing and editing AI would enable every creator to reinforce the story and perfectly complement the message they want to convey.

Want to offer this ability to your users?

👉 Simply sign up and follow the API doc to integrate AI Re-editor into your platform.

(1) Facebook international data

(2) LinkedIn members survey

(3) Instagram Creator Insights

(4) Teads impact of sound on mobile research

(5) TikTok importance of audio in brand marketing insights