Overlapping Audio Tracks

One of the most powerful things about audio in StarZero Agents is that multiple tracks can play at the same time. This lets you build rich, layered soundscapes — dialogue playing over background music, sound effects landing on top of narration, and more.

How Overlapping Audio Works

When you add multiple audio clips to your project, they can overlap in time. StarZero Agents doesn't limit you to one sound playing at any given moment. If two (or more) audio clips cover the same point on the timeline, they'll all play together.

This also applies to video clip audio. If your video clips have their audio enabled, that sound will play alongside any separate audio clips you've added.

Virtual Sub-Tracks

To keep things organized, StarZero Agents arranges your audio clips on virtual sub-tracks. When clips overlap in time, they stack on separate rows so you can visually see what's playing when. This makes it easy to understand your audio layout at a glance, even when you have lots of layers going on.

A Common Workflow

Here's a typical example of how overlapping audio comes together:

1. Keep the dialogue — Your video clips have interview audio. Leave that audio enabled.
2. Add a music bed — Bring in a background music track that runs the full length of the project.
3. Lower the music — Set the music volume to 20-25% so it sits quietly behind the dialogue.
4. Add a narration intro — Place a voiceover clip at the beginning that plays over the music.

The result: your video starts with narration over music, then transitions into interview dialogue with music still playing softly underneath. Professional and polished.

What Gets Mixed Together

When you render your final video, all overlapping audio is mixed together into a single audio stream. Everything you hear during preview is what you'll get in the rendered output.

This means:

• Video clip audio (if enabled) is included
• All separate audio clips at their set volumes are included
• Everything playing at the same time blends together

Overlapping Speech Detection

While overlapping music behind dialogue is intentional, having two people speaking at the same time is usually a problem — it makes both hard to understand. StarZero Agents automatically detects this during quality checks.

When you run a QC lint on your project, StarZero Agents will warn you about any moments where multiple non-muted audio tracks have speech playing simultaneously. Each warning tells you exactly where the overlap occurs so you can fix it by:

• Muting one track's audio during the overlap
• Adjusting volume so one voice is clearly dominant
• Trimming clip boundaries to avoid the overlap entirely

This is especially useful in multi-speaker projects like podcasts or interview compilations where separate audio clips might unintentionally overlap with video clip dialogue.

Tips for Working with Overlapping Audio

Balance your levels. When multiple tracks play together, things can get loud. Use volume controls to make sure no single track overpowers the others. A good rule of thumb: if you have dialogue or narration, that should be the loudest element. Music and ambient sound should support, not compete.

Mute what you don't need. If a video clip has noisy or distracting audio, mute it and let your separate audio clips carry the sound instead.

Think in layers. The best audio mixes usually have 2-3 layers: a primary layer (dialogue or narration), a secondary layer (music), and occasionally a third layer (sound effects or ambient sound). More than that can start to feel cluttered.

Preview often. After adding or adjusting overlapping audio, play back that section to hear how everything sounds together before rendering.