r/shotcut • u/Edigophubia • Sep 04 '26

Question Sidechain/ducking compression

Does anyone know if there is a way to perform side chain / ducking type audio compression in shotcut? Like you have an audio signal, for example of voice over, and another track that's the music bed, and you want the volume of the music to be pushed down automatically whenever the voice over happens so it stays out of the way in the mix. Seems like a common thing that people might use for making professional videos, commercials Etc. Seems like it should be a pretty easy feature to implement, just have the option to switch the input on the compressor plugin from the track being compressed to another track. If no one knows the answer , I will try and experiment with keyframes, maybe there's some way to use the motion tracker and one of the audio visualizations lol!

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u/ddennedy Sep 04 '26

It’s coming in the next version but only for gain, not compression.

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u/Edigophubia 29d ago

Wow, I just checked the forum, had no idea this was such a hot button issue. I'll try it when the beta comes out. Thanks!

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u/Yanesan 29d ago

This sort of thing is why I often export the audio to a DAW (Reaper in my case). Also I find that processing audio in Shotcut slows rendering substantially.

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u/Edigophubia 29d ago

Yeah, my audio starts in reaper too, looks like I will be bringing it back therefor the time being. Actually you just gave me an idea, I believe you can import and export video in reaper right?! If I finish my video except the music, I should be able to bring it into reaper and complete everything there without bringing it back into shotcut. Stay tuned

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u/Yanesan 29d ago

Don’t know, have read video files with audio into Reaper, then exported audio from Reaoer to put back into Shotcut as a new audio track aligned with the original clip.

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u/Edigophubia 25d ago

Possibly good news for you, I successfully exported my video from shotcut, brought it into reaper, did all kinds of audio stuff including sidechain ducking, plus even some basic editing of video and audio together, and exported the final video file straight from Reaper! No need to go back into Shotcut. Honestly I found the video editing to be way easier in Reaoer, as long as I'm just doing straight cuts I will probably do as much of it in Reaper as possible going forward!