Adding Audio to the Timeline

Polishing up your Cutscene with Audio

After getting all of your precise camera angles and have align them in the Timeline accordingly, it is time to add some Voice over Audio and background music to finish up the cutscene.

Creating Audio Components

Before we start dragging and dropping audio elements into the timeline, we first need to create handles for them in the Hierarchy using empty game objects. I did one object per audio source, so one for Voice overs and one for Background Music. In each handler, I added an Audio Source component. I don’t need an Audio clip because I will be linking the source within the Timeline.

Adding Audio Source

In the timeline, we are going click the plus icon and add an Audio Track component. Within each Audio track added, we are going to drag and drop the game object into the slot. Then we are going to Left click the 3 dots icon and select “Add From Audio Clip” and select the desired file. OR we can simply drag and drop the file into the Timeline from the Project window.

Within Unity version 2020 and onward, we should be able to preview the entire cutscene via the Timeline with audio input without playing the whole scene. Therefore matching and fixing the audio to the visual is a lot more easier.

A final tip is, when the Timeline has become too cluttered, we can add a Track Group element to file everything into one selection.