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Activity Forums Adobe After Effects Tips on Animating to Audio?

  • Tips on Animating to Audio?

    Posted by Phillr on November 26, 2005 at 3:04 am

    I’m mainly a Final Cut editor, semi-new to using After Effects, but have skimmed through the manual. One thing I like about FCP is that I’m able to scrub the audio. So if i view the next frame of video, the audio plays along too. And I’m also able to view my timeline along with audio.

    I’m not too familiar with the various ‘preview’ methods out there. To my knowledge, i’m just using a standard RAM preview. One thing i’d like to be able to do is when I render (the bar above my timeline goes green), I’d like to see the audio playback as well. I’m able to scan through my audio using ctrl+click. I’ve looked into my time control panel, followed what the manual told me to do, but my preview still doesn’t have audio attached. How do i do this?

    Derrick replied 20 years, 9 months ago 3 Members · 4 Replies
  • 4 Replies
  • John Dickinson

    November 26, 2005 at 9:49 am

    You can see the audio waveform by selecting the layer with the audio and hitting the L key twice. You can scrub the audio by holding down the command key (control on PC) and dragging the time indicator back and forth. You can preview just the audio (from the time indicator forward) by hitting the period (.) key on the keypad, while listening you can hit the asterisk (*) key on the keypad to set layer markers to the beat (they will appear when the preview stops). Make sure you have the layer you want the markers to appear on selected first. You can increase the length of your audio preview in the Preferences, look in the Preview section. If you hit Option (Alt on PC) )Period on the keypad you’ll preview the work area. Hope that helps a little 🙂

    JD

    John Dickinson
    Motionworks
    https://www.motionworks.com.au

  • Phillr

    November 26, 2005 at 6:08 pm

    Thanks John for those tips. Anyway to preview video and audio at the same time? Also, when I control+click and hold, After Effects plays around maybe 1/2 a second of audio from my playhead and loops it until I let go of the buttons. Anyway to extend this looping period?

    In the preview section it mentions audio preview for base 30. I tried increasing it but it has no effect on this looping part. Does it even relate? If so, maybe I somehow need to adjust it for base 30 drop frame? How do I do so?

  • John Dickinson

    November 26, 2005 at 11:18 pm

    RAM previewing plays back audio and video, if you’re not hearing audio check the Time Controls palette, the audio icon should be UNCHECKED, if it’s checked you won’t hear audio. There’s no way to extend the control click and hold loop that I know of. Base 30 just means that’s the timecode base you have selected in your project settings, it doesn’t relate to the loop. Why do you need to increase that loop anyway? One thing to keep in mind is that if you zoom in on the timeline then try control dragging the time indicator you’ll more easily be able to hear the audio as it is scrubbed (it won’t skip like it does when you’re zoomed out).

    JD

    John Dickinson
    Motionworks
    https://www.motionworks.com.au

  • Derrick

    November 27, 2005 at 5:15 pm

    Check Out Trapcode’s SoundKeys, http://www.trapcode.com

    – Derrick

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