Sync TimeLine to Audio Track

TimVukman

Hopefully this is fairly straight forward and I am just overlooking something simple.

I am trying to line up the seconds timeline in aniMate2 with my audio track so that my frames lie on the beat of the audio track.

I don't seem to be able to adjust this in aniMate2. Can it be adjusted in Daz or Carrara, or do I have to do this post render?

Thanks

Tim

Dartanbeck

I've only imported a sound file into Carrara once, when I experimented using Using Mimic Pro for Carrara on my V4-based Hero (5 sec. YouTube)

If I recall correctly (that was done years ago) the sound file shows up as a waveform image, so you'll have peaks and valleys to help you see where the sound starts, where the louder values are, etc., enabling you to drag (though I've never actually done this step) either the sound file or all of your keyframes to line up where you need them to be.

I'm not familiar with much in DAZ Studio, though. Wendy might know....

Further, member: joeping has a whole thread: url=http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/37225/]Cararra and Mimic Pro Experiment and Question , which goes vastly beyong his original question, leading to many tips, ideas, answers, more questions, etc., that might be helpful.

You may have already seen: Audio-Driven Animation, by Fractal Dimensia... but that goes in another direction entirely, I think.

evilproducer

Carrara's time code can be either FPS or SMPTE. I'm not entirely sure what you want to do? From the question I'm going to assume this is a music track?

Maybe you can choose a different fps? The most common fps for video is either 24 fps or 30 fps. There are a couple ways to set the fps for the animation and how it is displayed in the timeline/sequencer.

As Dart says, the audio track displays a waveform, but I don't know if it will display other data like BPM. I also don't know if it's possible to compress the length of the audio file.

This next bit is for people new to animation and video: I mentioned above that Carrara has the choice to display two time code schemes. One is FPS (Frames Per Second) and the other is SMPTE (can't remember the full acronym meaning). FPS is fairly straightforward. If you want a 10 second animation at 30 FPS, you'll need 300 frames, and the timeline will show it as 300 frames.

If you're using the SMPT time code for a 10 second animation at 30 fps, it would look like 00:10:00. The first two digits would be minutes, the second two digits would be seconds and the third two digits are frames. So if you if you wanted to add a half second to the 10 second animation at 30 FPS, it would look like 00:10:15. If you changed it to 24 FPS, it would look like, 00:10:12. Either way, it's still the FPS you set that matters for the frame rate of the animation. Most video editors use the SMPTE scheme for the time, and video cameras use the SMPTE code for the embedded time code in the video they record.

One is not really better than the other. I'm used to a pro-level video editing package, so I'm used to working with SMPTE, but ultimately in Carrara it really boils down to a display preference.

Dartanbeck

I Love You, evilproducer.... can I say that out loud? :ahhh:

evilproducer

Gah! I forgot to set the scene time range to 10 seconds, so the numbers in my description don't jibe with the screen shots. Sorry!

Dartanbeck

evilproducer said:

Gah! I forgot to set the scene time range to 10 seconds, so the numbers in my description don't jibe with the screen shots. Sorry!

To tell the truth, your nice explanation really didn't need the backup screen grabs - as cool as those are! So thanks for them anyways! So they don't jibe... big hairy deal! ;)

bigh

timandjan said:

Hopefully this is fairly straight forward and I am just overlooking something simple.

I am trying to line up the seconds timeline in aniMate2 with my audio track so that my frames lie on the beat of the audio track.

I don't seem to be able to adjust this in aniMate2. Can it be adjusted in Daz or Carrara, or do I have to do this post render?

Thanks

Tim

in DS 32 bit - you can load your audio file using lip sync

TimVukman

Many thanks for all of the suggestions.

In Carrara, there is a Soundtrack channel and the audio track does indeed show the sound track visuals, so it is very easy to see exactly where the beats fall. I can view the timeline of the animation either as time or frames per second. I can also adjust the frames per second in fixed increments. What I can't seem to do is adjust the frames per second in non-fixed increments which is what I believe I need to do to line it up to the music.

I am essentially building a music video inside my animation project as part of what the animation includes.

As Dartanbeck has suggested, I can line up the keyframes, I guess, and turn off snap, but this got really messy with all the tweeners, so I'd have to remove all of them.

I will look into bigh's suggestion (thanks for your input) on loading the audio using lipsync is DS. Maybe I can get my animation on track (pun intended), bake it and export it.

Thanks to all for all the suggestions

Tim

3DAGE

What I can’t seem to do is adjust the frames per second in non-fixed increments which is what I believe I need to do to line it up to the music.

I am essentially building a music video inside my animation project as part of what the animation includes.

You should adjust the length of the animation (Keyframes) to fit your Audio clip

Click and drag in the timeline to select all the keyframes,. then hold CTRL and drag (any keyframe near the end of your animation)
this allows you to Expand or contract tthe animation into a longer or shorter area of time.

It's often better to use a Video editor, such as Premiere, After effects etc to add audio to video, nince the timing can be adjusted more easlly.
especially for larger compositions (several minutes)

hope it helps

Dartanbeck

3DAGE said:

It's often better to use a Video editor, such as Premiere, After effects etc to add audio to video, nince the timing can be adjusted more easlly.
especially for larger compositions (several minutes)

hope it helps

I prefer to keep all of my animations void of sound within Carrara, with the exception of using Mimic Pro for lip syncing, which I haven't started doing yet - but soon (?)

I use the less expensive version of Sony Vegas to add sound. The thing is, I try to keep my animation renders short and to the point. Stitching them together with sound in them would add a step of removing the audio track, so that the sound can be blended across all of the many renders it takes to complete an entire sound. It's the sound that melds all of those clips, including fade-outs and ins, together into a unified piece.

WendyLuvsCatz

you want your figure to dance in time to the music?
you can convert the imported aniblock
(or however you got it into carrara, bake to studio keyframes and save animated pose also works or PFE)
to an NLA clip
the NLA clip can be adjusted then looped to fit the music
select the figure and make length of animation on timeline the same as your animated pose and go to NLA tab
create master clip
drag the clip from clips back onto the timeline in the NLA track and make you animation as long as your music
with clip selected drag its length to match a section of music beat then choose loop in righthand NLA editor and then drag it to loop