Sound clips

Sound clips put music and sound effects on the timeline, each on a track of its own: a bed of music under the whole piece, a whoosh on the camera move, a hit on the logo. You drag them into place against their waveforms, trim them, loop them and fade them, and every render mixes them in exactly where they sit.

Sound clips live on the Timeline tab of the Motion panel (M), below the parameter tracks and layers. A timeline holds up to 32 of them.

Adding a sound

1. Put the playhead where it should start

   Scrub the ruler to the moment the sound belongs to. For music under everything, go back to the start.

2. Click Sound

   The Sound button (with the plus) sits above the track names, beside Track. Its menu lists:

   • the music and sounds in your asset library;
   • Piece sound 1, 2 and so on: sounds Perlin made for this piece;
   • Make music or a sound, which opens Generate assets so you can make one from a description.

3. Pick one

   It goes in at the playhead, on a new track, and plays once through. The inspector on the right shows it, ready to change.

There are quicker ways too:

• Drag a sound from Assets onto the lanes. It lands at the moment you drop it; a line shows where, with the time.
• Drag a sound from Assets onto the stage. It plays under the whole piece: from the start, looping to the end, fading out over the last half second.
• Drag a file from your computer onto the lanes. It is uploaded to your assets first, then placed where you dropped it. This works for music, sounds, videos and images.

Using your asset library needs an account. To make sounds, see Generating assets; to have Perlin make them as it builds, switch on Sound FX (see Sound FX, Textures and 3D).

Moving, trimming and looping

Each clip is a bar with its waveform drawn in it.

The edges of a clip snap to the playhead, to keyframes and to the edges of other clips and layers, with a guide line where they meet. Hold Shift while dragging to place it without snapping.

The sound inspector

Select a clip to see it in the inspector.

Under the fields, the inspector says how long the sound itself runs.

The Sound tab

The Sound tab lists every clip under Sounds on the timeline, with where each starts and ends. Click one to find it on the timeline. Generate opens Generate assets.

Under In renders, Piece sounds decides whether the sounds the piece plays itself (clicks, hits, chimes it makes as you play it) go into renders as well as the clips on the timeline. Switch it off for a render with the timeline's sound alone.

Hearing it in the studio

Browsers only play sound after you have clicked a page, so click the piece once to let it play. From then on each clip keeps to the timeline: it starts as the playhead reaches it, picks up from the right moment of the sound after you scrub or the timeline loops, and stops at its end.

Sound in renders

When you render, every clip is mixed in where it sits, with its trims, loops, volumes and fades, together with the piece's own sounds (unless Piece sounds is off) and those of any pieces loaded onto it. If a render runs longer than a looping timeline, the clips play again on each lap. The Render dialog's Sound switch leaves sound out altogether. See Rendering video.

A piece that reacts to its own sound hears silence while it renders, so its visuals won't move to the music in the video.

An example

Hero Shot has a music bed and its effects (a ring pull, whooshes, a clink, pops and a hit), each on its own track. Open it and drag them around to hear the timing change.

Hero ShotWebGL 3DA product film with its own music and sound effects: lit out of the dark, features called out on the can, an end card that sells it.Open in the studio

Related

• Keyframes and tracks
• Generating assets
• Rendering video
• Your asset library