User guide

Everything the app does, panel by panel. Keyboard shortcuts: press ? in the app (Space play/pause, [/] switch mode, G settings, T timeline, B batch, Q library, L loop, F fullscreen, Ctrl+Z undo).

Visual modes

Sixteen modes on the strip: Spectrum Bars, Radial Burst, Oscilloscope, Particles, Tunnel, Kaleido Nebula, Metaballs, LED Matrix, Voice Orb, Echo Trails, Particle Flow (120k GPU particles), Spectrum Scape (3D), Aurora, Synthwave, Bass Circle, and Builder (a six-layer compositor you assemble yourself). Each mode has curated styles (one-click looks), main parameters, and an Advanced drawer exposing every internal constant worth touching. Hover any control for a plain-language hint.

Sync — what drives the motion

Settings → Sync routes ONE source to every mode: Kicks (default), Energy, Bass, Melody, Voice, Treble, Snare, or Hats. Smoothing has a macro slider plus independent Attack/Release for punchy-in, ease-out reactions.

Two kinds of beat reaction work together:

• Onset pulses fire on actual hits in the selected band.
• Beat-grid pulses ride the track’s detected tempo grid (BPM shown in the panel footer), landing on every metronome beat — Synthwave’s grid scrolls exactly one line per beat, Tunnel launches a light ring per beat that arrives as the next one lands, Bass Circle pumps on the grid. Tracks without a detectable grid fall back to onset pulses automatically.

Motion masters scale rotation, pulse strength, element count, and spectrum smoothing globally — dial the whole app calmer or wilder from one place.

Layers

Text (with {title} / {artist} filled from the track’s tags), logo images, or the track’s embedded album art. Nine-point anchoring, fractional sizing. Layers render identically in preview and export.

Timeline

Press T: scenes switch visual modes at beats (drag snaps to the grid), automation lanes keyframe any parameter, and each scene picks a Transition for its incoming fade — crossfade, wipe, iris, zoom, glitch, or hard cut. Click a keyframe dot to cycle its curve (linear/smooth/hold); right-click removes it. ✦ Auto-arrange builds a scene arrangement from the song’s detected sections in one click.

Library and live input (desktop)

• Q opens the music library: pick your folder once, every track appears with real tags; click to play; finished tracks flow into the next near-gaplessly.
• The broadcast icon visualizes whatever Windows is playing — Spotify, a browser, a DAW — via native loopback. Analysis-only: nothing echoes back out. Play/pause stops listening.

Lyrics

Drop an .lrc file (any lyrics site exports them) or .srt subtitles onto the window — the current line follows the music, karaoke-style, live and in every export. Position/size/color/fade in the panel’s Lyrics section. Drop the lyrics together with the track or after it; they attach to the loaded track like stems do.

Stems

Import a stem (drums/bass/vocals bounced from 0:00) in the panel’s Modulation section — it’s analyzed once, never played, and its bands become modulation sources. Hit the ✦ on a stem chip to auto-wire its kick/bass/snare/hats/mids to the best-matching knobs of the current visual; tweak the amounts from there.

Audiogram

The panel’s Audiogram section adds track-driven overlay elements — a progress bar, an elapsed/total time readout, and a mini-waveform strip with a moving playhead (the podcast/reel look). Position and accent color are yours; everything renders identically in exports.

Export

• MP4 — H.264 everywhere; HEVC/AV1 where your GPU supports them (probed automatically; identical pixels, smaller files). 720p→4K, 30/60 fps, auto or manual bitrate. Optional loudness normalization to −14 / −16 / −23 LUFS with a −1 dBTP true-peak ceiling (audio only — pixels unchanged).
• Video — pick a short local clip to loop behind the visualization (desktop): cover-fit, dimmable, deterministic (the frame for each moment is a pure function of track time, so exports match the preview). Decoded to a fixed loop of the first seconds.
• WebM VP9 + alpha — pick the VP9 + alpha codec to write a transparent .webm (color + alpha planes, Opus audio) for OBS overlays and web embeds. Set Background to Transparent.
• PNG frames — numbered stills with alpha (set Background to Transparent) for compositing.
• ProRes 4444 — one .mov with alpha + untouched PCM audio, straight into Premiere/Resolve/AE. Encoded by the bundled LGPL ffmpeg.
• GIF / animated WebP — loop files via the bundled ffmpeg, no audio. Pair with Canvas loop mode for a seamless loop; WebP keeps alpha.
• Canvas loop — a 3–8 s seamless loop at 1080×1920/30 for Spotify Canvas; the tail crossfades into the head.
• Batch (B) — one video per dropped track, titled from each file’s own tags. A failed file costs that one video, never the night.

Exports render offline in a worker: the UI stays live, sync is sample-exact, and on desktop the file streams to disk so hour-long renders hold flat memory.

Projects, looks, templates

• Ctrl+S / Ctrl+O — .avproj project files (everything, portable).
• Save look — a named parameter set for one mode (.avpreset).
• Templates — a complete setup as one shareable .avtheme file; see Templates.