Demoscene common ways to sync audio and visuals

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Published on November 6, 2023 12:00:00 AM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4jRRDqPaAM

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#demoscene #synchronizing #digitalart

:: what are the usual ways to sync audio and visuals on a demo?
- know the bpm and have something happening every 4 or 16 beats
- do it manually; a lot of if then's with hardcoded start and end times;
reading time signatures from a text file; export markers from DAW; spacebar trick
- you can use sync tools like gnurocket / rocket
- you can do your own timeline system; add variables to timeline, scrub time, zoom in and out to refine detail, add curves to modify the values
- you can use fft to finetune some things if you know what frequencies you want to sync to
- basic time scrubbing and binding variables to mousewheel or imgui

Depending on what platform you're targetting there are some stuff already available:
https://github.com/rocket/rocket
https://github.com/0b5vr/automaton

Interview with navis and deepr they were discussing using midi controllers to test different parameters and record the inputs somehow and custom versions of rocket to expose certain variables to the timeline editing
   • Interview with Navis and Deepr  

Ideally you want to be controlling these things with a realtime preview window so you can scrub back and forth and adjust things that are immediately saved.

Examples of demos with good syncs:

- orange (robot series, deesbab, secret life of mr black)
https://demozoo.org/groups/487/

- Haitta / Flo
https://demozoo.org/productions/68228/

- MFX (tripfish, within minutes, dose 2, universe series, ultimatum to the world)
https://demozoo.org/groups/404/

- Satori (incyber, metamorf)
https://demozoo.org/groups/3732/

- eL
https://demozoo.org/sceners/23261/

- visual approach to the aesthetics of techno
https://demozoo.org/productions/26624/

- glitch / kewlers
https://demozoo.org/productions/76207/

Autechre - Gantz Graf
   • Autechre - Gantz Graf (Official Music...  

Venetian Snares - Szamár Madár
   • Venetian Snares - Szamár Madár  

Chemical Brothers - Star Guitar
   • The Chemical Brothers - Star Guitar  

- kolonija / kosmoplovci
https://demozoo.org/productions/266751/

- dishes, ham, ketchup and kittens by LOBSTARRS & Matt Current
https://demozoo.org/productions/9120/

- chaos theory / conspiracy
https://demozoo.org/productions/10096/

https://demozoo.org/productions/tagge...

- Rainbow Clash series by Slyspy
https://demozoo.org/groups/3762/

- pixtur still
https://demozoo.org/groups/862/

- everyway / h0ffman
https://demozoo.org/productions/160452/

- prismbeings (absolute territory and waillee)
https://demozoo.org/groups/60547/

- Umlaut Design (Piledriver and The Box)
https://demozoo.org/groups/4216/

:: what's the advice to newcomers?
- keep it simple, less is usually much better then messy.
- first think of what direction and pace you want for your demo on the different scenes, once you know that the timmings on the syncs are a lot easier to figure out
- trust your instinct, it needs to look / sound good to you

:: common rookie mistakes in syncing?
- leaving music for last thing and then not having time to do any proper syncing at all
- once you learn how to sync it's easy to start wanting to sync every single sound and end up oversyncing things to a robotic degree, where it's just moving to sync but without any purpose or motive or direction
- not realizing they are too used to the demo and assuming the viewer will understand the logic of certain things by default
- just doing scene, another scene, another scene whenever the music changes section, without paying attention to the connection between the sections in the music; ending up with a narrative missmatch between audio and visuals.

:: is FFT essential for good sync?

- most of the times FFT is overkill and you don't need it for major syncs, a timeline will often suffice and allow you to control things more intuitively; FFT is mostly useful when you want something to react quantitatively to something that is not regular enough to just code or fake with random values (like an erratic percussion element or a crackling glitch sound or only triggering something when it reaches a certain threshold of activity accumulation). it can be cool for mapping the intensity and accuracy of a response but it can also be very hard to fine tune, you always need to know what frequencies you want to use it for and tweak the attenuation of it.

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