Goal

Make an object bounce to the beat of the music.

Example

Instructions

This tutorial assumes you are comfortable with basic editing in After Effects.

You should also know enough about Photoshop to create your bouncing image. If you can do the Frankenface project, you have enough knowledge to complete this project.

Control-click (or right-click if enabled) audio file.
On the pop-up menu, choose Keyframe Assistant > Convert Audio to Keyframes.
A new layer named Audio Amplitude will appear.
Select the triangle on the Audio Amplitude layer to show the keyframe layers.
Select the triangle on the Effects layer to open the Channel keyframe layers.
Select the triangle on the Both Channels layer.
Select the triangle on the layer with the object you want to bounce.
Select the triangle on the Transform layer of the object you want to bounce.
Select the Scale layer.
Press option-shift-= (option, shift and the equal sign) (on a WIndows machine alt-shift-=). A layer will appear that says “Expression:Scale” with four icons. The one that looks like a spiral is called the pick whip.
select the pick whip and drag it to the word “Slider” under “Both Channels” on the Audio Amplitude Layer. The text next to “Slider” will change to:

temp = thisComp.layer(“Audio Amplitude”).effect(“Both Channels”)(“Slider”);
[temp, temp]

This works, but the object will probably be smaller than you want. To make it larger, edit the line so it reads

temp = thisComp.layer(“Audio Amplitude”).effect(“Both Channels”)(“Slider”);
[temp+90, temp+90]

The larger you make the number the larger the minimum size of your object will be.

NOTE: Encoding this project can take a long time. This six minute song took TEN minutes to encode as an H.264 file!

Want to make a fancier effect? Try this tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzAbmW09Zv4

This video and set of instructions originally comes from CrAcKiNg WiZaRd. I just wrote out the steps with some details. His version has no text, but screen captures the entire process. It’s at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBKAWNEnFj0

MUSIC
“EDM Detection Mode” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/