The audio visual pack for HitFilm 4 Express includes a variety of effects that allow you
to generate visuals based on your soundtrack.
Today, we're going to take a look at these effects and the possibilities that they open
up for HitFilm 4 Express.
Because all three of these effects can be linked to an audio layer to create audio-driven
visuals, they must be used on a Layer-based timeline.
So to use them, we need to be in a composite shot, with one layer to apply the effect to,
and another layer containing our audio.
So here I have my audio track, which is the music from our channel ident, and a simple
black plane, but you could use an image or video instead.
I also have a background video, which isn’t necessary, but allows me to include a space
shot in this tutorial.
Any time you can include the Sombrero Galaxy in your video, do it.
Any time you install a new add-on pack into HitFilm 4 Express, if you aren’t sure which
folder to find the effects in, you can just type the name of the effect you need into
this search box to find it.
Let’s drag the Audio Spectrum onto our plane.
The layer containing the effect immediately disappears, but since this effect creates
its visuals based on a specific audio file, the Spectrum won’t actually show up until
we link it to some audio.
Open the Audio Input controls and next to Audio Layer, select your audio layer from
the menu.
Immediately the spectrum updates to reflect the audio frequencies present at the playhead
position, with low frequencies on the left and high frequencies on the right.
You can control the range of frequencies that is displayed in the visual spectrum, as well
as how many samples are represented.
The Start and End position controls let you manually position the start and end of the
spectrum, or link them to points or other layers which can be used to control their
position.
You have full control over the colors of your effect, including a variety of gradients that
can be used as starting points, and individual controls over each color.
Then below, we can adjust the height of the graph, and the width of the rendered lines.
The Render Mode menu gives us four different types of graph to choose from, for some nice
variety.
Amplitude Transform lets you flip the graph to below the center line, or mirror it on
both sides of center.
A popular application of this effect is to create a circular spectrum, which is as simple
as finding the Polar Warp and dragging it onto our layer below the audio spectrum.
You can also use multiple instances of the Spectrum effect for more interesting results.
Lets duplicate the effect we have, so we have two copies already linked to our audio.
On the lower copy, let’s Flip the Amplitude Transform, and set the Blender Mode to Normal,
so we can see both of the spectrum effects.
Now set the render mode to lines.
Lower the height to around 100, and increase the Thickness to 10.
Let’s use just one color, and set the color for this spectrum based on our background
footage, then play back the timeline and check it out.
Now, let’s take a look at the Audio Waveform.
Turn off all the effects we have added, then drag Audio Waveform onto our plane, above
the Polar Warp.
For the most part, the controls here will look very familiar, having just looked at
the Audio Spectrum.
Let’s link the waveform to our audio file again, and look at a few of the key differences.
So the biggest difference between these two effects is what is actually displayed.
While the Audio Spectrum shows a representation of all the frequencies present at a given
moment in the audio file, the Audio Waveform shows the waveform of the audio between two
points in time.
This becomes obvious if we increase the duration.
As we move past 10,000 milliseconds, our entire 10 second audio clip becomes visible.
Using a much lower duration, like the 100 ms default, shows a small slice of the total
file, and will introduce a lot more movement as the waveform cycles through.
As with the spectrum, we can select either the right or left channel, or an average of
both, if we are using a stereo source file.
If you prefer a more balanced waveform, without seeing the phasing, set the Amplitude Transform
to Mirror, and the Render Mode to Fill.
Let’s turn our Polar Warp back on, and notice that we have a bit of a gap on this effect.
This is due to the Start and End positions.
Move the Start and end to the edges of the frame to close the gap.
Moving them higher on the Y axis will increase the radius of our effect, and moving them
lower will decrease it.
The third effect in the Audio-Visual pack is Atomic Particles.
This effect is a bit different, in that it can also be quite useful without being linked
to an audio file.
But it is also a great tool for creating audio-driven visuals, like this.
We have a number of tutorials focusing on this specific effect already, including the
one linked on screen right now, which details how to set up the audio interaction, so please
do check those out if you want to learn more about Atomic Particles.
Incidentally, this example is based on a tutorial one of our users created, which you can view
at this link.
Because these effects are so customizable, we can’t show everything that is possible
with them in this video, but hopefully this has given you a sense of what they are capable
of, and how to adjust their controls to get whatever results you want.
Thanks very much for watching, and I’ll see you next time.