How to Add Music to a Video (and Edit the Music Without Leaving)

To add music to a video, drag the audio file onto the timeline underneath your footage. In VideoCraft, ClipCraft's free browser video editor, that is the entire import step: the song lands as a clip with a real waveform, and from there you trim it to length, set its level, and keyframe it down under anything the viewer needs to hear. Nothing to install, no watermark, and the waveform decodes right in your browser.

This post covers that basic job first. Then it covers the thing I haven't found in any other browser editor: right-click the music clip and open it in a full DAW in a second tab, EQ it, cut a verse, and send it back. The clip in your video updates in place, and your edit never went anywhere.

Add music to a video in four steps

1. Create a free account. The editors are free for everyone; no card, no trial clock.
2. Open VideoCraft and drag your video anywhere onto the timeline. It arrives as two linked clips: the picture on V1 and the video's own sound on A1, joined so they move and cut together.
3. Drag your music file (MP3, WAV, whatever you have) onto the A2 lane. It lands as a green clip and grows a waveform a moment later.
4. Press space. The music plays under your footage. That's the core of it.

Here's my test project: two short AI-generated clips (about seven seconds together) and a 46-second Suno track. The song being far longer than the video is the normal case, which is why trimming comes next.

Trim the song and set its level

Park the playhead at the end of your last video clip, click the music clip, and press S. The clip splits at the playhead; click the leftover tail and press Delete. The razor tool (C) does the same thing with a click if you prefer cutting by hand. Snapping is on by default, so clip edges and the playhead pull toward each other within about 8 pixels, and the cut lines up without pixel hunting.

For a fade-out, hover the clip and drag the small dot at its top-right corner inward. A shaded triangle shows the ramp, and on audio clips the ramp is volume. The matching dot on the left corner is the fade-in.

The overall level lives in Clip Settings on the right, and it goes further than you'd expect: the Volume slider runs 0 to 400%. Browsers cap a media element's own volume at 100%, so past that point VideoCraft quietly routes the clip through a Web Audio gain node to get real boost. A detail I like: the clip's waveform redraws to match the slider, so a quiet clip looks quiet on the timeline.

Duck the music under speech with keyframes

A music bed at full volume fights every word of dialogue or voiceover. The fix is ducking: drop the music to a fraction of its level while someone talks, bring it back after. In VideoCraft the Volume slider takes keyframes like every other clip parameter. Click the diamond next to Volume just before the speech starts (that pins the current 100%), move the playhead a second forward, and pull the slider down. With animation on, value edits write keyframes at the playhead, same semantics as Premiere.

I keyframed a duck from 100% down to 30% and back up near the end. Four keyframes total. The Show Keyframes button opens a floating Keyframe Editor where you can drag them around, and each keyframe takes its own interpolation (linear, ease, bezier, or hold) from the right-click menu.

One thing worth knowing: keyframes are stored in the clip's source time, not timeline time. Move the clip, trim it, or split it and the keyframes ride along. As for the ducked level, 30% works for most music beds under speech; if the track has a busy midrange you may need 20%.

Edit the music without leaving your video

Level changes only go so far. Sometimes the track itself needs work: the intro is too long, the bass is muddy against the footage, or you want a verse gone entirely. Most editors make you round-trip through a separate audio app and re-import by hand. Here you right-click the music clip and pick Edit in SoundCraft.

The song opens in SoundCraft, our full browser DAW, in a new tab. Your video edit keeps waiting in the first tab, untouched. Over there you get a real multitrack timeline, 15 effects including a parametric EQ and Auto-Tune, and automation. Cut the verse, EQ out the mud, layer a second track under the first if you want.

When it sounds right, open Export. Because this session came from VideoCraft, the dialog grows a violet panel at the top with one button: Send back to VideoCraft.

Click it and the mix renders, hops back to the waiting tab, and replaces the music clip's audio in place. The clip keeps its start point, its fades, its volume, and every keyframe you set, so the duck you built earlier still lands on the new audio. The original file stays in the Media bin as a manual undo, and if you deleted the clip while you were away, the mix drops at the playhead instead of vanishing.

Where to get music you can actually use

The honest part of "add music to a video" is the rights question. Commercial tracks will get flagged: YouTube's Content ID mutes or demonetizes videos over a recognized song, and TikTok outside its licensed library works the same way. A famous track on a client video or an ad is a takedown waiting to happen, so clear it or skip it.

Safer sources: music you made yourself (SoundCraft exports WAV or MP3, and AI-generated songs you created in a tool like Suno are yours to use, subject to that tool's terms), or a licensed library where you keep the receipt. There's also the ClipCraft music feed, where creators post finished tracks; those belong to their makers, so treat it as a place to find someone to ask, not a free-for-all. Plenty of collaborations have started with less.

The whole workflow costs nothing to try: drop footage, drop a song, trim, duck, and round-trip the track if it needs surgery. Sign up free and build one edit; the send-back button is the part that tends to convince people. If you edit AI-generated clips, our AI-video editing walkthrough picks up where this post leaves off.