Wednesday, August 24, 2016

Waveform Animations


 
I remember a while back seeing a tutorial on how to analyze a song for amplitude data and then taking that data and parenting it data to scale, position, and/or rotation of other objects. I had in mind to get out and learn this skill when I came across a different one that caught my eye. I found this one on how to make a simple waveform animation of any song. This effect in AE simply takes an audio track, analyzes it and then animates a line to make it look like an EKG machine. The effect can be really sporadic with a high energy song. I'll need to try it with a slower song or even with a human voice some time. I can already picture it in my head. Right now, I see this effect useful for:
  1. Making waveform animations for spy scenes that have microphones listening in on conversations
  2. Music videos that require high visual energy
  3. Recreating EKG machines w/o actually having to turn a real one on
  4. Compositing blurry waveforms with other backgrounds to add emotion to a clip
Beyond that, I can't think of much, but it's nice to know that I can re-create a waveform of any audio track with just a few clicks. If you have any other ideas where it might be helpful to create a waveform of an audio track, post it in the comments. Special thanks to ECAbrams for the tutorial.