Detach audio to give a clip's sound its own track

A video clip's sound and picture normally travel together. Detach audio lifts the sound onto the soundtrack as its own clip and mutes the video clip, so the two stay in sync but edit separately.

Detach the audio

1. Find a video clip on the main track of the timeline.
2. Press the three-dot Clip options button at the clip's top right.
3. Choose Detach audio.

The video clip goes silent. A new audio clip appears on the soundtrack, starting where the video clip starts and running as long as it does. It is selected, so the right panel now offers the audio clip's tabs: Trim, Move, Speed, Volume, Fade in, Fade out, Duck and Mute. DepCut also draws the new clip's waveform.

What carries over

• The same stretch of source. The audio clip uses the trim you had on the video clip, so it matches the picture frame for frame.
• The speed. If you changed the video clip's speed, the audio clip takes the same speed and stays aligned with the muted picture.
• A fresh volume. The audio clip starts at full volume, whatever the video clip's Volume tab said. If you had lowered the video clip, set the audio clip's Volume again.

Edit the sound on its own

Detached audio is easy to cut because the picture keeps playing while you remove a piece of sound. Here is how to cut a cough out of a take.

1. Detach the audio from the clip.
2. With the audio clip selected, point at the spot just before the cough, either with the pointer over the timeline or with the playhead there, and press S. The audio clip splits at that spot.
3. Point at the spot just after the cough and press S again.
4. Select the small middle piece and press Delete in the right panel.

The picture runs on, and the sound has a short gap where the cough was. Fill the gap with room tone from another part of the recording, or fade the pieces on either side with their Fade out and Fade in tabs so the join does not click.

You can also slide the sound against the picture. The audio clip has its own Move tab with a Starts at field. Type a new time, or drag the clip along the soundtrack. Moving the sound a little earlier lets a voice start before its picture appears, and moving it later holds a sound past the cut.

When Detach audio does nothing

• The menu item is greyed out when the clip is already muted, because it has no sound left to lift.
• A reversed clip, or a clip with a speed curve, does not detach. A soundtrack clip plays forward at one steady rate, so it could not follow that picture.
• Clips on upper tracks and photo clips have no Detach audio item. Upper-track video clips still offer Mute clip in the same menu.

Detach or Extract

Detach moves the sound off the clip. The Extract tab in the right panel copies the sound into Media and leaves the video clip's own sound playing. Choose Detach when the clip should go silent and the sound should take its place.

Detach one clip

Open a project in DepCut, detach the audio from one clip, and drag the new audio clip a half second earlier to hear how it changes the cut.