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Work with Adobe's programs

After Effects and Premiere Pro

Sonic Weaver makes the visualizer; After Effects and Premiere Pro finish it. One file turns your export and its song into a composition with a marker on every beat, phrase and section, made on your own computer.

Make the script

Choose a video you exported from Sonic Weaver (any workspace) and the song it plays. Your browser reads the video's size and length and Sonic Weaver's own analysis finds the song's beats, its phrases of 8 bars and its sections, the same analysis the editors move your visualizer to. Nothing is uploaded.

Markers

Run it in After Effects

  1. Save the script in the same folder as your export and the song.
  2. In After Effects choose File, Scripts, Run Script File, and pick the script. No plugin is needed.
  3. A folder named for your project appears in the Project panel with a composition at your export's size, frame rate and length, the export on top and the song under it, lined up to the moment your export starts. The export's own sound is switched off so the song plays once, at its own quality.
  4. Every beat, phrase and section is a composition marker with its name ("Bar 3 beat 2", "Phrase 2 (bars 9 to 16)", the section's name), and from After Effects 16.0 each kind has its own colour. If a file is not beside the script, After Effects asks where it is.
  5. It is one step to undo: Edit, Undo.

A composition can be up to 3 hours long and a script carries up to 20,000 markers; for a long mix, choose phrases and sections only.

What you can do with it

  • Cut titles, lyrics and logos on the beat: the markers are where each cut snaps.
  • Start an effect, a camera move or a colour change at a phrase or at the drop, so the edit follows the song's shape.
  • Drive an animation from the markers with an expression that reads the composition's markers, so it moves on every beat by itself.
  • Add your own footage, photos and type around the visualizer, grade it, and render with your usual settings.
  • Make the short versions for each platform: duplicate the composition, change its size, and keep every marker.

From Classic and SW Agent

In Classic, every export has an After Effects script beside it: press After Effects script under the finished video and it is made for that export, its size, frame rate, length and the part of the song it holds. Or ask SW Agent: "make an after effects script with beat markers for this export", with the export and the song attached, or in Classic after an export. It makes the same file. Studio renders its video in Classic, where the script is beside the export.

The Sonic Weaver panel for After Effects

A free Sonic Weaver panel for After Effects is in testing. Docked beside your project, it opens SW Agent in your browser, reads a script you saved, checks it calls only what Sonic Weaver scripts may call, shows what it will make, and runs it in the open project only when you press Run. It runs on your computer. When it is listed on Adobe Exchange, this page will say so.

Premiere Pro

Premiere Pro runs plugins rather than script files, so the maker above also saves a Premiere Pro plan: plain data naming your export, the song and every marker. The free Sonic Weaver plugin for Premiere Pro (in testing) reads it, makes a sequence from your export at its size and frame rate, puts a marker on every beat, phrase and section, and sets the song to start where your export does. Today, Classic's Timeline can also export its cut as an EDL or FCPXML that Premiere Pro opens (files from and for other programs).

What a script may call

Every script is written from Sonic Weaver's own template: your names and the song's words go in as text that can never become code, and it calls only these, each checked against Adobe's published scripting reference. It never runs a program, deletes, renames or writes a file, or reaches the internet.

  • app
  • alert
  • File
  • Folder
  • ImportOptions
  • MarkerValue
  • $
  • parseFloat
  • Application.project
  • Application.version
  • Application.beginUndoGroup
  • Application.endUndoGroup
  • Project.items
  • Project.importFile
  • ItemCollection.addComp
  • ItemCollection.addFolder
  • Item.parentFolder
  • CompItem.layers
  • CompItem.markerProperty
  • CompItem.openInViewer
  • LayerCollection.add
  • AVLayer.startTime
  • AVLayer.property
  • AVLayer.audioEnabled
  • Property.setValuesAtTimes
  • MarkerValue.label
  • File.openDialog
  • File.exists
  • File.parent
  • Folder.fsName
  • $.fileName
  • Array.length
  • Array.push

Adobe, After Effects and Premiere Pro are trademarks of Adobe. Sonic Weaver is not made by or affiliated with Adobe. More in the After Effects help article.