Edit videos to the beat of songs with Adobe Stock audio

In Adobe Premiere, select the Audio Workspace preset, or choose Workspace > Essential Sound to reveal the all new Essential Sound panel with Adobe Stock audio built right in. Make sure you click Browse at the top of the panel so you can explore the extensive library.

You’ll notice that the Browse tab in the Essential Sound panel has a search bar, as well as three options to help limit your results: Mood, Genre, and Filters.

Use the search bar to search for keywords, or simply just start limiting your results by Mood, Genre, Tempo, Vocals, etc. 

In our example, we’re editing a short, high intensity sizzle reel for a skateboard company. We’d like to find an Adobe Stock audio cue with a great beat that we can cut to.

We’re looking for something a bit quirky, so we’ll filter by the Hip-Hop genre, then further sub-filter it by clicking the arrow icon next to Hip-Hop to reveal sub-categories. We’ll choose Rap, and add the keyword “orchestra” to see what that reveals.

Adobe Premiere Pro’s powerful Timeline Sync lets you preview any Adobe Stock audio cue, in perfect time with your video - even before you import the asset to your project!

Note that there’s a checked box at the bottom of the Essential Sound Panel next to Timeline Sync. 

With that enabled, park your timeline’s playhead anywhere in your timeline where you anticipate starting the music cue. In our case, we’ll be playing from the first frame so we’ll start there. 

Identify a music cue in your search results you’d like to preview and click the play button next to the cue name.

When you decide to preview a different track, all you have to do is click the play button next to the new track name and the playhead in your timeline will jump back to your initial starting point for a fresh preview.

We like a track called “Orchestra Hip-Hop” that we’ll use for this video.

Once you find a track that you want to cut into your timeline, you can add it to your project by right clicking on it and selecting “Add to project.” Note that you also have the option to save the track to a local folder on your hard drive or add it to an Adobe Stock library. Also, you can simply drag and drop the cue from the Essential Sound panel, directly into your timeline or into a bin in your project if you prefer.

This unlicensed version of the Adobe Stock audio track is an m4a. It has no audio watermarks to interrupt the experience of your edit. You can export these versions as part of your project, completely watermark free, to share privately with clients and collaborators. 

When you license a track for inclusion in your final edit, Adobe Premiere Pro will seamlessly replace the m4a version with a high quality wav file.

Select the Adobe Stock audio cue in the timeline and expand it so you can see the waveforms clearly, then tap the spacebar to play.

Using a four-count, tap the M key on your keyboard every time you return to the 1. I like to count it out like: “M, 2, 3, 4, M, 2, 3, 4”

If you mark the entire track, you’ll notice that the markers appear on all the downbeats. Each marker is a great potential edit point for this cue.

Now that you’ve got the beat marked out on your Adobe Stock audio clip, you can start to get creative with your cuts. Making a visual cut at any one of your markers will give your audience a feeling of rhythmic pacing. 

If you want an edgy feeling to one or more of your edits, try jump cutting on the same clip, offsetting the incoming clip by a few frames or even a few seconds.

Now that you’ve made your edits and you’re sure that you like the track you’ve cut into place, you can license the Adobe Stock audio track right from your timeline.

Simply right click on the Adobe Stock audio clip you’d like to license, and click License… in the pop-up menu. You’ll need to have credits in your account, which you can pre-purchase at www.stock.adobe.com.

Export your video with an Adobe Premiere Pro preset.

We’re using a 1080p HD Facebook preset that outputs a video we can use on any social media platform.

You’ve edited your video to the beat of an Adobe Stock audio track.