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Participant
October 6, 2011
Answered

Make picture bounce in sync with music

  • October 6, 2011
  • 1 reply
  • 35626 views

http://www.5min.com/Video/How-to-Make-Stuff-Bounce-to-Music---Motion-3-162040947

I need a step-by-step instruction on how to do this with After Effects or any Adobe software that you might recommend.

I've been browsing around the net and can't find a clear answer. The keyframes thingy are too complicated for me so I need a simple solution like the one in the video. I am using Windows 7 so I can't buy the Apple software. Can After Effects do this or should I use Premiere Pro? I'm relatively new at video and audio editing. I want the picture to bounce in sync with the drum beat or cymbals like every 4 seconds or so. Not only that, I want to control the direction to where it bounces to - upper left, upper right, center, etc.

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Correct answer Rick Gerard

If keyframes are too complex for you After Effects isn't your tool of choice. I've got 10 year old cub scouts that can use AE. I'd take the bull by the horns and dive into the basics by following this link. 

Once you have a little more confidence you can run through a tutorial, any tutorial, on using Audio Keyframes. The procedure is very easy. It goes something like this:

  1. Put the audio in the timeline.
  2. Use Animate>Keyframe Assistant>Convert Audio to Keyframes to create a null named Audio Amplitude and effects sliders named Left, Right and Both
  3. Put the image you want to control in the timeline and press S to reveal the scale property.
  4. Alt click or Option click on the stopwatch to begin an expression.
  5. Use the pickwhip to connect scale to the Both Channels slider.
  6. Open up the graph editor, select the Audio Amplitude Both Channels Slider property to reveal he range of the levels you want to use for your animation.
  7. In this case I want to use 25 to 60 so anything below 25 is 50% scale and anything above 40 is 100% scale
  8. Modify the expression created in step 5 to look like this:
  9. temp = thisComp.layer("Audio Amplitude").effect("Both Channels")("Slider");

    s = ease(temp, 25, 40, 50, 100);

    [s, s]

You're done.

Do a Google Search for Controlling a layer with audio in After Effects and you'll find dozens of tutorials.

1 reply

Rick GerardCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
Community Expert
October 6, 2011

If keyframes are too complex for you After Effects isn't your tool of choice. I've got 10 year old cub scouts that can use AE. I'd take the bull by the horns and dive into the basics by following this link. 

Once you have a little more confidence you can run through a tutorial, any tutorial, on using Audio Keyframes. The procedure is very easy. It goes something like this:

  1. Put the audio in the timeline.
  2. Use Animate>Keyframe Assistant>Convert Audio to Keyframes to create a null named Audio Amplitude and effects sliders named Left, Right and Both
  3. Put the image you want to control in the timeline and press S to reveal the scale property.
  4. Alt click or Option click on the stopwatch to begin an expression.
  5. Use the pickwhip to connect scale to the Both Channels slider.
  6. Open up the graph editor, select the Audio Amplitude Both Channels Slider property to reveal he range of the levels you want to use for your animation.
  7. In this case I want to use 25 to 60 so anything below 25 is 50% scale and anything above 40 is 100% scale
  8. Modify the expression created in step 5 to look like this:
  9. temp = thisComp.layer("Audio Amplitude").effect("Both Channels")("Slider");

    s = ease(temp, 25, 40, 50, 100);

    [s, s]

You're done.

Do a Google Search for Controlling a layer with audio in After Effects and you'll find dozens of tutorials.

JChrisGAuthor
Participant
October 6, 2011

Sorry about that. I'm not very familiar with the terminology and don't even know what a layer is. My video editting experience is very limited because I only used MovieMaker. Thanks for your instructive response and link to get me started. I'm sure to read the material you provided me. I really appreciate it. Cheers!