Audio playback while moving frame by frame?

[rmthompson902]

Hello,

Is there a way in After Effects to play audio when moving frame by frame? I am trying to keyframe text to a narration, and no audio plays while I move frame by frame. I don't know how else I am supposed animate the text, while being accurate and consistent, without the audio playback.

Thank you!

Ryan Thompson.

[Rick Gerard]

Hold down the Ctrl/Cmnd key. It's in the help section.

EDIT: There are almost no instances when a cut should fall on exactly the same frame as the start of an audio event. Depending on the audio, the position of the element on the screen, and the dramatic effect you are trying to achieve you'll want the cut to be one or two frames ahead of the audio or behind the audio. The best way to get a feel for this kind of thing is to use the keyboard to add markers to your layer while listening to the audio. This is especially important with music.

If you have a ton of narration to sync up with the action it's usually a big time saver if you open up the sound file in Audition and add markers. You can even name them. This will speed up your editing a great deal.

One more tip from someone that has been making films for a nearly half a century. Edit to audio in an NLE. AE is a compositing app and you should limit the length of your comps to a single phrase or sentence. Trying to cut a 5-minute dynamic text animation (lyric video) in a single AE comp is not only going to be frustrating, it's going to take you longer than it would to create a new comp for each phrase or sentence in the project then cut the phrases together in an NLE and make your final audio adjustments there.

[Jose Panadero]

You have to hold CTRL(PC) or COMMAND (MAC) while moving the playhead to get audio scrubbing. But I'm not sure if this works when using the keyboard shortcuts while moving frame by frame.

[rmthompson902]

Thank you for your replies, I do appreciate them. I did know about using the Ctrl key to enable playback while scrubbing. However, it is a shame that this does not work (and rightfully so as it is a modifier key) while going frame by frame. I am very disappointed that there is not a way to enable this. I was trying to switch over to industry standard software for my work, but if I cannot easily complete my main usage for the software, I may decide to revert back to my other software.

Thank you.

Ryan.

[Rick Gerard]

It just takes a bit of getting used to. I cut accurately to audio all the time. I create motion graphics sequences times to audio all the time in AE without any problems. You just have to learn to work with it. 90% of the time, if it's narration, the fastest way to get things to happen when you want them to happen is to look at the waveform.

[Mike_Abbott · Accepted solution]

One other tip just in case you're not aware of it: If you 'press and hold' the Ctrl key - and pause for a second or so, you'll get a short loop of audio at the playhead position. Very useful IMO if you want to mark or check animation timing against audio.

[rmthompson902]

I did not know about the “press and hold wile still” loop. That is ver helful. I think I will just have to do with that feature and seperate narration and background audio clips for the purpose of viewing the narration waveform.