How to add sound effects in Premiere Pro

1. Import the sound. Choose File > Import (Ctrl+I on Windows, Cmd+I on Mac) and pick the WAV or MP3, or open the Media Browser panel (Shift+8) and import from there. Adobe recommends uncompressed audio such as WAV: compressed files like MP3 are decompressed and conformed when you import them.
2. Give it its own audio track. Right click a track header in the Timeline and choose Add Track. In the Add Tracks dialog you can set how many, where they go and the track type. An audio track only takes clips with a matching channel type, so a stereo sound needs a stereo track.
3. Mark the frame where the sound lands. Move the playhead to the frame of the action, such as the door meeting its frame or the cut a whoosh should carry, and press M to add a marker. Shift+M jumps to the next marker when you have several hits to place.
4. Drag it in with snapping on. Turn on Snap in Timeline with the button at the top left of the Timeline, or press S. Drag the sound from the Project panel onto your new track; its edge snaps to the marker or the playhead, and a vertical line shows the alignment.
5. Nudge it a frame at a time. With the clip selected, press Alt+Left or Alt+Right on Windows, or Cmd+Left or Cmd+Right on Mac, to move it one frame. Add Shift to move five frames. Line up the loudest point of the waveform with the action, not the start of the file.
6. Tag it as a sound effect. Open the Essential Sound panel, select the clip and choose the audio type Adobe labels "SFX" (the others are Dialogue, Music and Ambience). Once it is tagged, the panel’s Creative section offers Reverb, with presets plus Amount and Clip Volume sliders, useful for placing a dry sound in the room on screen.
7. Set the level. Right click the clip and choose Audio Gain (G) to raise or lower it as a whole. To change the level over time, show Clip Keyframes on the expanded track and Ctrl+click (Cmd+click on Mac) the volume line to add keyframes, then drag them.
8. Fade it in or out. Drag the fade handle at the clip’s edge, or select the edit and press Ctrl+Shift+D (Shift+Cmd+D on Mac) to apply the default audio transition. Constant Power is the default crossfade; Exponential Fade is more gradual. A short fade on the tail stops the sound ending with a click.

A sound effect that is placed right but sits on top of the voice still sounds added. Two Premiere features help:

• Dynamic Audio Waveforms. Turn on View > Dynamic Audio Waveforms and the waveform redraws as you change gain, volume or keyframes, so you can see a hit getting louder than the dialogue around it.
• Auto Ducking. In the Essential Sound panel, Auto Ducking lowers clips tagged Music or Ambience under other clips, and Sound Effects is one of the choices it can duck against. It does not duck the sound effects themselves; for those, use keyframes. Running Generate Keyframes again overwrites keyframes you changed by hand.

Any WAV or MP3 works in Premiere Pro. Three ways to get one from Sonilo:

• Download it free. The sound effects library has thousands of sounds by category, in MP3 and WAV, free for personal and commercial projects with no account and no credit needed. Take the WAV if you will edit or layer it.
• Describe it. If the library does not have the exact sound, describe it (the material, the action, how it ends) and the sound effects generator makes it in seconds. New accounts get free credits.
• Start from the video. Upload the clip and Sonilo generates sound effects timed to what happens on screen, so most of the placement in the steps above is done before the file reaches your timeline.

Commercial use of audio you generate on Sonilo needs Pro or above; library downloads are free for commercial use on any plan. See licensing for the details.