Save 80% and get all your credits upfront with the new yearly subscription! See details

5 Shopping Cart
Your cart has been updated
checkout
Categories

Cover image via

Quick Fix: Video Clip Audio Not Appearing in Premiere Pro Timeline

Logan Baker
Published: Last Updated:

Have a video clip with audio, but the audio track doesn’t show up in the timeline? Here’s the quick fix.

I ran into this infuriating issue that has an embarrassingly simple fix. While editing, I was trying to drag a clip into my timeline, but the audio was not showing up in any of the audio lanes. I scrolled from A1 all the way to the bottom, and there was no audio to be found. As I shot the video myself, I knew full well I had recorded audio with the shot.

Premiere Pro Quick Fix: Video Clip Audio Not Appearing in the Timeline Problem

I’m sure plenty of others out there are running into this problem, so here is the one-click fix.

If your clip doesn’t show the accompanying audio, go ahead and delete the clip from the timeline. Now, in the timeline — hover over the first A1 on the left side. You’ll see the right A1 is already highlighted blue. Click on A1 to enable it (it will turn blue).

Premiere Pro Quick Fix: Video Clip Audio Not Appearing in the Timeline Fix A1

Now drag your video clip into the sequence, and voilà! Missing audio has instantly appeared.

Premiere Pro Quick Fix: Video Clip Audio Not Appearing in the Timeline Result

See? It’s so simple, but sometimes it’s easy not to notice the most obvious solutions, especially when it comes to the interface that you stare out for hours on end being slightly changed. Note that this fix only works if the original clip actually has audio attached to it. I hope this helps.


How to Recover Deleted Audio Clip in Your Timeline

Image via Javier Mercedes.

Now let’s say you are in the middle of your edit, and once again, you’re working with video clips that have audio clips attached to the file. For the sake of this article, let’s also say that while editing the video, you happen to accidentally delete one of the specific audio tracks underneath the video clip. Instead of looking through your bin for the clip or even worrying about deleting the video clip from the video track, all you have to do is hit the keyboard shortcut “F” (or you can go to Sequence>Match Frame).

This will match your frame in the source monitor with the clip’s In and Out point already set. From here, all you have to do is drag the audio down onto your timeline in the original spot that you had it in, and because the “In and Out” points were already set, the clip will be the correct length, and you can just drop it down onto your timeline in the same place. Pretty simple, right?? Javier Mercedes published a 1 minute long tutorial on this that you can watch below.


How to Find Missing Waveforms and Files in Your Timeline

For all of our experience and know-hows for these editing programs, sometimes things just don’t work. It’s inevitable. Sometimes Premiere does this weird thing where your audio files are on your timeline, but the clip isn’t playing, and there is no waveform. YouTuber lopal is here to save us.

The fix is relatively simple so let’s get started. First, go to Edit>Preferences>Media Cache. Then you’ll want to find the file’s location so look up “Location” and then navigate to that file path wherever it is on your computer. It might look like C:\Users\Your Name\AppData\. So you’ll need to follow that information to the Media Cache file location. Then, you should see a folder called “Peak Files” double click to open this file. Then once you’ve done this, highlight all of the folders in Peak Files, and delete them.

Once you’ve done this, restart Premiere Pro, and your audio waveforms should be working properly on your timeline. Voila!


Practice with Audio Clips

One technique I’ve found is practicing with audio in any form, whether it be sound effects, songs, or dialogue, there’s always a lesson you can learn by just playing around with audio for 10 minutes. If you want some audio to play around with, we’ve offered many free sound effect packs over the years that you can download and add to your library of video editing assets!

There are endless opportunities to bring audio clips in Premiere so you can get comfortable editing these types of files. I’ve listed a few resources below for finding free clips! You can also download a preview of one of the thousands and thousands of songs we offer in our library. Check them out, and good luck out there!

Cover image via DC Studio


Need more filmmaking gear inspo, we’ve got you covered:

A