Audio

A composition has sound: audio clips on up to eight lanes under its scenes, mixed together, played with the transport and exported with the video.

1. 1.Click the audio clip0:00
2. 2.Detect onsets: every hit becomes a marker0:01
3. 3.Cut to the beat: each cut moves onto a hit0:02
4. 4.Click Play0:03

Description

A beat-drop promo in Animate with its composition open: four scenes and a music loop on the audio lane. The clip is selected and Detect onsets marks every hit as a marker. Cut to the beat trims each scene so its cut lands on the nearest hit. Play shows the cuts landing in time with the music.

How to

Cut scenes to the beat

1. Open the composition (the clapperboard in the transport bar, then its name) and add a music file with Audio. The recording's template, Beat drop promo, already has a loop on its lane.
2. Click the audio clip to select it.
3. Click Detect onsets in the clip's inspector. PopCraft listens for the hits and marks each one as a marker labelled onsets along the strip.
4. Click Cut to the beat. Each cut between scenes moves onto the onset nearest it, and later scenes ripple along. A transition starts on its beat. Undo puts the cuts back.
5. Click Play.

Cut to the beat needs onsets and at least two scenes; until then it says so. The agent's cut_to_beat can also cut on every nth onset and keep scenes a minimum length.

Duck the music under a voice-over

Put the voice-over on a second lane. On the music clip, double-click its level line just before the voice starts and again where it starts, and drag the second gain key down (to around −12 dB). Add two more keys where the voice ends to bring it back up.

Reference

Adding sound

Click Audio in the composition's header to add MP3, WAV, M4A / AAC, Ogg, Opus or FLAC files at the playhead, or drag files onto the lanes. A file is kept in the file's own media store, like an imported image, so it works offline and syncs with the file. A file this browser cannot decode is refused with the reason, and nothing half-imported is left.

Generating sound

Generate in the composition's header makes sound with AI and drops it at the playhead as an ordinary clip:

Music beds are instrumental. Generation takes from a few seconds (a sound effect) to a minute or two (a long music bed); the result is stored in the file like an imported file, so it plays offline and exports with the video. It needs a connection and a signed-in account, and uses AI credits. Voice-over is rolling out: where it is not available yet, the dialog says so.

Editing a clip

• Drag a clip to move it in time (it snaps to cuts and markers) or up and down to another lane. Clips on one lane never overlap; a clip dropped onto another moves to the next free lane.
• Drag its edges to trim what part of the file plays.
• Drag the dots at its top corners to fade it in and out.
• The line across it is its level: double-click it to add a gain key, drag a key to move it, Alt-click to remove it.

Click a clip for its inspector:

Sound plays with the transport — the audio clock leads, so picture follows sound. Scrub audio in the header plays a snippet as you drag the playhead.

Beats

Detect onsets listens to a clip and marks its hits — drums, plucks, note starts — as composition markers labelled onsets, replacing earlier ones, and estimates the tempo. Clips, keys and scene edges snap to them.

Cut to the beat then trims the scenes so each cut lands on the onset nearest where it is now (later scenes ripple; a transition starts on its beat). Undo puts the cuts back.

The mix

Lanes add together at 48 kHz stereo. The export adds the mix to MP4 (AAC) or WebM (Opus) video; if it is too loud in places the export tells you how many samples clipped, so you can lower a clip's gain.