• Adobe After Effects

  Adding sfx to typewriter animation

  Posted by Douglas Filiak on January 24, 2019 at 8:18 pm

  I have a very long animation of a document being typed out on a typewriter. The cadence of the typing is looking natural using a simple expression on the source text to vary the pace of the reveal on each letter. Now I am wondering if I can add a sound effect of a keystroke to each letter without doing it manually as there are thousands of characters being typed.

  Any suggestions?
  Can Sound Keys work in this way?
  Maybe an expression on a levels range to trigger an audio file when letter appears?

  Bonus if I can vary the sfx between a few audio files that are the same length but slightly different pitch to seem natural.

  Thank you!

  Douglas Filiak replied 7 years, 6 months ago 2 Members · 5 Replies
• 5 Replies

• 

  Walter Soyka

  January 24, 2019 at 9:17 pm

  Ooh, that’s an interesting challenge. Can you post a stripped down project so we can see the expression?

  Walter Soyka
  Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
  Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
  @keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]
• 

  Douglas Filiak

  January 24, 2019 at 9:28 pm

  Here is a link to an ae project with one stripped page and a couple sfx:
  https://www.dropbox.com/sh/t6q3uwvrgsu1ex5/AABsq_AYIRJHBPiJBWsg13pSa?dl=0

  There are about 60 pre comps like this.
  I could redo the typing if there is a more compatible way of doing it, but bottom line is that there are many many pages.

  Thanks for taking a look!
• 

  Douglas Filiak

  January 24, 2019 at 9:38 pm

  Thanks, I agree that adding audio in Premiere is much more user friendly, but I’m looking for an automated way of doing it as the document is very long with thousands of letters being typed at somewhat random rate (between 1- 6 frames per letter) so there is no regular pattern in the type writing on. Manually adding a sound effect of a key strike for each character will take ages and it’s not certain if it will be used with audio in the final version.

  Unless you are saying that Premiere has an automated way of adding a sfx each time a character is typed.
• 

  Douglas Filiak

  January 24, 2019 at 10:03 pm

  There is an alternate way to configure the expression at the end of this thread if that would make linking up the audio easier: https://www.reddit.com/r/AfterEffects/comments/5c80uk/help_with_typewriter_expression_with_a_delay_on/
• 

  Douglas Filiak

  January 24, 2019 at 11:10 pm

  Gotcha! Cool, I’ll test it out.

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