Fade audio in and out

How long should a fade be?

Each slider goes up to 3 seconds. On a short sound the limit is half its length, so the fade in and the fade out never run into each other: a 4-second sound effect can fade for 2 seconds at most on each side. The fade itself is a straight, even ramp from silence up to the Volume you set, and back down again.

Fades where you cut

When you split a sound with S, Octoolo takes the fade out off the left piece and the fade in off the right one. That is deliberate: if you only split to change something in the middle, the two halves still play as one, without a dip at the join.

When you delete a piece from the middle, though, the parts on either side meet edge to edge, and music cut mid-note can click. Give the piece before the gap a short Out and the piece after it a short In, a tenth of a second or two, and the click disappears. The same trick tidies up a cut MP3 or the joins of an audio joiner project.

Fade lengths are measured on the timeline, after any change of speed, so a 2-second fade on a sound played at 1.5× still lasts 2 seconds.

A crossfade by hand

Octoolo does not crossfade between sounds automatically, but its four tracks give you everything needed to make one:

• Put the first song on Track 1 and the second on Track 2.
• Drag the second song left until it starts about three seconds before the first one ends.
• Set the first song's Out and the second song's In to 3 seconds.
• Play the overlap and slide the second song until the beats or the mood line up.

The two fades cross in the middle, one song handing over to the next the way a radio DJ does it. Work down the list for a party mix or a workout playlist, switching between Track 1 and Track 2, then export the whole thing as one file. A limiter in the export keeps the overlaps from clipping.

Background music that fits its slot

A slideshow, a presentation or a video rarely lasts exactly as long as a song. Rather than letting the music stop mid-phrase, make it fit:

• Too long: drag the end of the song in to the length you need, then give it a 2 or 3 second Out. The Lasts box under When takes an exact number of seconds.
• Too short: click the song and press Ctrl D to Duplicate it. The copy lands right after the original on the same track; trim the last copy and fade it out.
• Too loud for a voice: drop the music's Volume and keep the speech on another track.

Export as MP3 or WAV and the file is ready for any slideshow program. When the music is going into a video made in Octoolo, sounds on the Video Editor's Music lane have the same Fade sliders, so you can do it right there.