Audio-reactive animation
Motion that follows the music
Audio-reactive animation is motion timed or driven by sound: cuts on the beat, a logo that pulses with the kick, bars that follow the spectrum. Premation offers each of those as a separate tool, and most of them write ordinary keyframes you can see and edit.
Free · AGPL-3.0-only · macOS & Windows
The panel that does it
The editor’s own panel, rebuilt on its chrome. It works: drag, toggle, queue.
How to do it
- 01
Bring in the track
New Layer ▸ Audio, or drag the file onto the timeline. Press L L on the layer to see its waveform on the same time axis as the keyframes.
- 02
Mark the beats
Animation ▸ Audio ▸ Markers on Beats drops a marker on each beat of the composition's audio. Animate In on Beats then lands a selection's entrances on them.
- 03
Drive a property with the level
Convert Audio to Keyframes bakes the amplitude into keyframes, or apply the Audio Throb behaviour to a layer so a referenced audio layer's amplitude drives it without keyframing.
- 04
Draw the sound
The Audio Spectrum effect draws frequency bars from a real FFT, and Audio Waveform draws the envelope. Both can follow a path, including a circle around a logo.
Questions
- Can I react to only the bass?
- Audio Spectrum draws between a start and an end frequency you choose, so the bars can show only the low end. Audio Throb and Convert Audio to Keyframes follow the overall level.
- Does the audio in a video clip count?
- For Audio Throb, no: its level reading counts audio layers only, so adding footage does not change an existing animation. Put the sound on its own audio layer to drive with it.
- Will it export the same every time?
- Yes. Frame time is the frame index divided by the frame rate, never the clock, so the animation lands on the same frames in every render.