Open Paraplex

Syncing to audio

Motion that lands on the beat feels deliberate. Paraplex finds the beats in your music and marks them on the timeline. Then you snap clips to them, set keyframes on them, or have a layer pulse on every hit.

The word Pulse growing and settling on every beat

Where to find it: markers on the timeline, Detect beats in Menu › Audio and the quick-actions strip, and the assistant.

Mark the beats

  1. Add your music. See Audio.
  2. Select the audio clip, and choose Menu › Audio › Detect beats….

A thin amber marker appears on each beat. To mark a moment by hand, such as a cymbal crash or a word in a voiceover, put the playhead on it and press M with the timeline expanded.

No music yet? Ask the assistant for a beat bed: a simple rhythmic track at 120 beats a minute, with a marker on every beat already. See Meet the assistant.

Land clips on the beat

Drag or trim a clip near a marker, and it snaps to it. Use it to start a title on the downbeat, or cut to a new layer on the drop. See Clips and transitions.

Key on the beat

Keyframes don't snap to markers, so move the playhead onto the marker first:

  1. Click in the timeline's rows.
  2. Press Shift+→ to jump to the next marker, or Shift+← to the one before.
  3. Set the keyframe. See Animation basics.
The timeline: eight amber beat markers across the ruler, and the Scale row's keyframes clustered on each one

Tip

Land a move's end on the beat, not its start. A pop that peaks on the hit reads as in time. One that starts on the hit feels late.

Pulse to the beat

A glass tube has a Pulse to the beat button. It finds the beat of the music in your scene and keys the tube's Pulse to swell on every hit. See Blobs and glass tubes.

Have the assistant key it for you

The assistant can key any number to the beat: a word that pops, a light that flashes, a glass tube that swells. Ask in plain words, such as:

  • "Make the title pop on every beat."
  • "Flash the spot light on every other beat."
  • "Pulse the logo on the first beat of each bar from 4 seconds on."

It listens to the music in your scene, finds the tempo, and keys the setting to jump on each beat and settle back before the next. Without music, tell it a tempo, such as "at 128 beats a minute". The keys are ordinary keyframes, so you can move or delete them afterwards.