Sound Effects
 | This article is a work in progress! Not all important information is present yet. Come back soon! Reason: some better notable examples would be nice. |
Sound Effects are a video production technique where a sound, relevant or irrelevant, is added to a piece of footage. The difference between "music" and "sound effects" is in the semantics; usually sound effects are not to add a musical component to the source. Instead, sound effects supplement the a certain aspect of the video in some way. For example, adding a "hit" sound when someone punches someone else for emphasis.
Usage
The addition of sound effects is a relatively simple process. Simply open your program of choice, import the sound, and add it to the timeline/etc.
Attaining Sound Effects
Sound effects can be found easily on YouTube and dedicated websites, both in free and proprietary form. "SFX Packs" also exist, usually for purchase, that provide you with thousands of professional-grade sounds. Sound effects can also be easily be generated by a variety of computer programs. This has the added benefit of being copyright-free, as you created them!
Generation
A computer can be used to easily create sounds in a variety of ways.
Almost all "modern" sound effect generators use AI in some way, such as Adobe Firefly. Whether or not you use one of these is based on your own convictions.
sfxr/bfxr
sfxr, and its improved fork bfxr is a chiptune sound effect generator, specialized for video games. It has a large variety of waveforms and parameters to make anything you can imagine. Try randomizing and see what you get!
Sound Effect Packs
There are dozens of commercial "sound effect packs" available on the internet that contain professional-grade sounds for use in video and audio. A famous contemporary example are the "Bahh"s in New Super Mario Bros., which came off Track 53 of Best Service's Voice Spectral Vol. 1 (1995) sound pack. [1][2]
Creating Your Own
Creating your own sound effects can also be the way to go if you want to completely work in-house or need something a computer cannot generate. It can be as easy as recording something with your smartphone, or setting up an entire studio - the choice is up to you.
Notable Examples
A sound effect can be used in countless ways, so examples are practically endless. A recent, "raw" comedic example can be seen in the serve of Slabsten vs. BortLoco vs. RaymanChrome from the 3-Way Tennis Tournament 2, where random sounds are added on top of a mostly unedited TV music video.