Your music, moving on screen. Audio Effector: Equalizer is an animated EQ that reacts to your song, right inside Final Cut Pro and Motion. Bars, waveforms, radial rings, colors, and a rack of stackable effects. No song in the project? It dances to a beat you set.
The short version
Add it as a generator, drop your footage or a color on the track below, and you have got an equalizer bouncing to your music on screen. Load a song and the bars ride the real audio: they jump on the bass, the waveform tracks the melody, the color moves with it. Ten styles, from tall spectrum bars to radial rings and an oscilloscope, plus a whole rack of animation effects you can stack two deep. Fifteen presets get you a finished look in one click.
One thing to know up front: Final Cut does not let a generator listen to your timeline audio, so the Equalizer reads the song from a file you choose. Point it at the same track you cut to and the bars land on the same beats. No song at all? It runs on a beat you set instead, so you always get movement. This manual covers the whole workflow, every control, and the presets.
First run
From download to a clean export. Here is the whole path.
The Equalizer does all its work on your Mac. Your video and your song never leave your computer. The only thing that ever goes out is the quick check that confirms your license key when you activate.
Where it goes
This is the one thing that trips people up, so here it is clearly. A generator makes its own picture from nothing, so it does not sit on your footage. It sits on its own layer, above it.
Generator on top, background below, song picked in the plugin. That is the whole setup. It works exactly the same in Motion, where you add it as a generator layer with your footage underneath. And it fills whatever shape your project is, vertical for a reel, square for a feed post, or widescreen, so it fills the frame either way with no black bars.
The layout
Everything lives in one inspector. It reads top to bottom, and the controls that don't apply to your setup hide themselves, so it stays tidy. Here's the map.
No song loaded
Song loaded
The same panel, two states. Controls that don't apply hide themselves: with no song you set BPM and Dance Pattern to drive the dance; load a song and those give way to Song BPM, the tempo multiplier. Everything from Beat Nudge down stays put.
The audio engine
Give it the song once and the bars know where every beat is. This is the part that makes the Equalizer tick.
With a song loaded, Song BPM is the tempo dial. The Detected setting runs at the tempo it found; the others lock the animation to an exact double, half, triplet, or quarter of it, so it stays on the beat and never drifts.
No music in the project, or you just want a vibe? With no song loaded, the Equalizer dances on its own. Set BPM to your track's tempo, pick a Dance Pattern, and the bars groove along. Beat Nudge slides the beat: 0 is right on it, 0.5 is the off-beat, 1 is a full beat late. Beat Nudge works with a song too, for when you want the hits to fall on the snare instead of the kick.
Final Cut handles most frame rate mismatches invisibly. The exception is 23.98 or 24 fps footage in a 25 fps project, or 25 fps footage in a 23.98 or 24 fps project: there it changes the clip’s speed by about 4%. The Equalizer stays locked to your timeline, so the animation keeps matching what you hear and the picture is the thing that shifts. There is no setting to turn this off. Either match your project’s frame rate to your footage, or convert the clip before you bring it in.
Pick a look
The Style menu is the shape of your equalizer. Same audio, ten completely different looks. Rainbow color is the default across all of them.
Every control
Grouped the way the inspector is. Most are a single slider; the ones with extra options say so.
The master dial for how hard the equalizer reacts. It lifts the quiet bands so the whole spectrum comes alive and pushes the loud ones harder. If the look is right but it is all too flat or too much, this is the one slider to reach for.
Flat and literal. Only the loud bands move.
Quiet bands lifted, the whole frame fills.
How the equalizer follows your song. Clip Head, the default, starts the song at the front of the clip. Timeline locks the song to the project timeline instead, so you can cut the equalizer into as many pieces as you like and every piece stays in sync, with nothing to re-line-up. Reach for Timeline the moment you start slicing the equalizer to the beat.
Song starts at the clip's front. Simple, but each cut restarts it.
Song follows the timeline. Cut freely, it stays locked.
Where your song sits, so the equalizer matches what you hear. In Timeline mode, set it to how far into the timeline your song starts; in Clip Head mode, it slides the song against the clip. Put the seconds here, and if you need it frame-perfect, add the frames in Sync Frames just below. Always a positive number, and it reaches up to two hours in for feature-length projects.
Frame-accurate fine-tuning on top of Audio Sync, for when the reaction is off by just a frame or two. It counts in your project's frame rate, so a few frames means a few frames whether you are at 24, 30, or 60. Audio Sync gets you the seconds, Sync Frames gets the last little bit.
Load a song and the Equalizer finds its tempo for you and locks the beat to it. This popup rides on top of that, and it is the tempo row you get once a song is loaded. 1× (Detected) is the default and runs at the tempo it found. If the detection came in at half or double the real speed, which happens on plenty of electronic and hip-hop tracks, pick 2× or ½ to put it back on the money. Or drop to ⅓ or ¼ just because a slower pulse feels better on the shot. Every option is an exact slice of the song's own tempo, so the animation stays locked and never drifts off, however long the clip runs. Pick a different song and it snaps back to 1× on its own.
Shifts the beat within itself. 0 sits on the beat, 0.5 lands on the off-beat, 1 is a full beat late. Works whether you are on a song or a manual BPM.
How fast the bars rise (Attack) and fall (Decay). Fast on both reads snappy and percussive; slow reads smooth and flowing. They live under the Advanced toggle.
How many bars the spectrum is split into. A low count reads bold and blocky; a high count reads like a fine, detailed spectrum.
How wide each bar is, from thin needles with gaps to bars that touch edge to edge. Pairs with Bar Count to set the whole density of the look.
Overall amplification of the signal. Turn it up to make a quiet mix drive the bars taller. Different from Intensity: Gain is raw volume, Intensity is how the reaction is shaped.
Only on the two Radial styles, and it appears right under Style. It sets the size of the empty ring in the middle that the bars grow from: small for a tight sun, large for a wide halo. Hidden on every non-radial style.
How the bars get their color. Four modes run off your own colors: Rainbow (per band) is the default, a full spectrum spread across the bars; Solid is one color; Gradient runs Color A into Color B; Reactive (by level) shifts each bar's color with how loud it is.
Under those sit eight built-in palettes, each a ready-made color ramp painted up every bar: Cyanotype, Sepia, Fire, Neon, Teal & Orange, Vaporwave, Toxic, and Infrared. Pick one and you're done, no color picking needed.
Color A is your solid color, or the start of the gradient. In Gradient mode, Color B is the far end and Gradient Direction runs the blend Vertical or Horizontal.
Color A applies to Solid and Gradient; Color B shows up for Gradient only. The eight palettes bring their own colors, but they still honor Gradient Direction, so you can run any of them up the bars or across them.
Little caps that ride the top of each bar and drift back down, the classic VU meter look. Hold Time is how long a cap hangs at a new high; Fall Speed is how fast it drops after.
A soft bloom around the bars, in their own color. Glow Radius sets the spread. On the two radial styles a smaller glow also gives you a bigger ring, so it doubles as a framing control there.
Sizes the whole equalizer up or down. Because it scales the drawing itself instead of stretching a rendered image, it stays crisp at any size.
With Animation FX set to Kaleidoscope, Scale does double duty. Pull it below 1.0 and the mandala folds into itself as a self-similar fractal: the lower you go, the deeper it folds, from a subtle texture near 0.95 down to a dense fractal at the bottom. It blooms deeper on the beat and carries your color through the pattern. At 1.0 and up it is the normal zoom.
Rounds the tops of the bars, from hard square edges to fully rounded caps. A quick way to shift from a technical look to a softer one.
A floor under every bar so quiet bands still show a sliver instead of vanishing. Raise it to keep the shape readable through quiet passages, or to float the whole equalizer off the baseline.
Log is the default and spaces the bands the way we hear, giving the bass plenty of room. Linear spreads them evenly by frequency, which crowds the low end and opens up the highs.
The FX engine
A visual treatment over the whole equalizer, and every one of them moves to the beat. Pick one from Animation FX, dial FX Amount and FX Speed, and go. The FX controls appear once you pick a mode.
How strong the effect is. On most it's straight intensity; on Kaleidoscope it's the fullness of the fold.
How fast the effect pulses against the beat. 1 is on the beat, 2 is double-time, 0 freezes the motion.
Which way the directional effects push, Horizontal, Vertical, or Radial. Shows up for RGB Shift, Glitch, and Wave.
For Auto-Cycle, how often it switches effect: ½ Beat, 1 Beat, 1 Bar, or 2 Bars.
When a Kaleidoscope is running, the Mandala Pattern menu picks how it folds: Classic, Flower, Star, Tunnel, Spiral, or Grid. Each one turns the same spectrum into a completely different symmetry.
And here's the trick that unlocks a whole other set of looks: with a Kaleidoscope running, drop Scale below 1.0 and the mandala folds into a self-similar fractal that blooms on the beat. Each pattern folds into its own kind of fractal, so it's six more looks hiding in one slider. See Scale in the controls for the full rundown.
Turn on Add 2nd FX and pick a 2nd FX to layer a second treatment on top of the first, like a Kaleidoscope fold with a Pixelate crunch running through it. The two share Direction and Mandala Pattern, and an effect can't stack on itself. This is where the wild looks come from.
Kaleidoscope plus Pixelate. RGB Shift plus Hue Flow. A radial style with Scroll spinning it. Between two stacked effects, six mandala patterns and their fractals, ten styles, and a dozen color modes, there are basically infinite equalizers in here. The presets are a tour of the good ones, so start there and then go build your own.
One click, full look
A preset sets every control at once: the style, the colors, the effects, the shape. Pick one from the Presets menu at the top of the inspector, then tweak anything you like. One thing presets never touch is your song. The look changes, the music stays.
Bars · Rainbow · glow, no FX
The factory state and the instant reset. A clean rainbow bar spectrum with a soft glow. When a look gets away from you, this is the way back.
Bars · Rainbow · subtle glow
The clean pro spectrum. A crisp rainbow bar analyzer that reads instantly and sits on top of anything.
Waveform · phosphor green · Scroll
A single phosphor-green scope trace scrolling like a lab monitor. Retro, minimal, and endlessly watchable.
Center Mirror · 12 fat bars · Reactive VU + Hue Flow
Twelve chunky mirrored bars in reactive VU color, drifting slowly through the spectrum. A bold, physical meter.
Area · yellow to red · Glitch flicker
A filled spectrum in a hot yellow-to-red gradient with a flicker of glitch. Looks like the bottom of the frame is on fire.
Dots · rainbow · big glow + Sparkle
A floating dot-matrix EQ with a heavy bloom and sparkle motion. Dreamy, weightless, a little haunted.
Line · cyan · RGB Shift
A single glowing cyan line with the color channels split apart. Clean neon with a chromatic edge.
LED Segments · Reactive VU · Pixelate
Segmented meter columns crunched into 8-bit blocks. Straight out of a cabinet from 1987.
Mirror Waveform · yellow to green · Pixelate + Kaleidoscope
A mirrored scope in toxic yellow-green, pixelated and folded through a kaleidoscope. Loud and a little dangerous.
Mirror Waveform · white to black · Pixelate + Kaleidoscope (Tunnel)
Black-and-white pixelated waveform folded down a kaleidoscope tunnel. Hypnotic, stark, hard to look away from.
Center Mirror · green to red · Kaleidoscope (Flower) + Hue Flow
A delicate flower-fold mandala in shifting green-to-red, with the hue rolling underneath. Full trip.
Radial (Outward) · rainbow · RGB Shift + Hue Flow
A rainbow ring bursting outward, channels split and hue rolling. Feels like something is about to come through it.
Radial (Inward) · blue to violet · radial Wave
Bars pointing inward in a cool blue-violet, rippling with a radial wave. A slow pull into the center.
Area · rainbow · fast Hue Flow + Kaleidoscope
A filled spectrum folded through a kaleidoscope with the color racing around. Deep-space drift.
Radial (Outward) · rainbow · Glitch + Kaleidoscope (Tunnel) + ripple
A rainbow burst rippling out in concentric rings that pump on the bass, folded down a tunnel. The showpiece.
Make it yours
Built a look you love? Save it and reuse it anywhere.
It saves the whole look, every control at once, but not your song, so one preset works across every project and every track. Your saved looks live on your Mac, not inside a single project, so they follow you everywhere you edit.
Cheat sheet
The sliders at a glance, from one end to the other.
| Control | Low end | High end |
|---|---|---|
| Intensity | 0: flat, only loud bands move | 100: quiet bands lifted, frame fills |
| Gain | 0.1: barely there | 3: a quiet mix drives tall bars |
| Bar Count | 8: chunky and bold | 128: a fine, detailed spectrum |
| Bar Width | 0: thin needles | 1: bars touch edge to edge |
| Audio Sync | Negative: song reads later | Positive: song reads earlier |
| Beat Nudge | 0: on the beat | 1: a full beat late (0.5 = off-beat) |
| BPM | 60: slow march | 200: double-time |
| Scale | 0.1: tiny | 2: fills the frame |
| Glow Radius | Small: a tight edge | Large: a soft bloom |
| FX Amount | 0: off | 100: full strength |
| FX Speed | 0: frozen | 3: triple-time pulse |
| Min Height | 0: quiet bars vanish | High: a visible floor at all times |
| Corner Radius | 0: square tops | 1: fully rounded caps |
Before you install
The Equalizer is a Mac video plugin. Here is what you need.
Get help
Trouble installing, syncing a song, or unlocking the Equalizer? Reach out and we'll sort it.