audio waveforms
Audio waveforms are visual representations of the actual sound. Audio waveforms appear in clips in the following ways:
As the bottom portion of a video clip
As a detached or audio-only clip
An audio waveform’s amplitude and length change according to the underlying sound’s volume and duration. A short, loud sound such as a drum beat has a sharp, peaked waveform, whereas low-level crowd noise has a lower, more uniform waveform. These properties make it easier to find specific edit points when trimming clips or keyframing effects.
![The timeline showing an audio clip and the audio portion of a video clip](http://222.178.203.72:19005/whst/63/=gdkozZookdzbnl//assets/6679A72E92E641B6D907CD0C/6679A72FE32D2BB3610F762B/en_US/f5af06ea4c84f1c26cefa4657092fa74.png)
You edit audio clips in the timeline by first listening to a clip’s audio through playback and skimming, and then applying changes to the clip, using the waveform as a reference.