The now-playing card you know from your phone, right inside Final Cut. Herbistry Music Player drops a clean, modern music-streaming-style card onto your timeline. Album art, track and artist, a progress bar, a waveform, playback buttons. Type in your track, pick a skin, and place it. It's free, and it's yours to keep.
The short version
Add it as a generator, drop your footage or a music visualizer on the track below, and you have a slick now-playing card sitting on top. Drop in album art, type the track title and artist, and set the progress and the run time. Choose from seven skins, from frosted glass to bold art panels, and three card shapes for a reel, a feed post, or widescreen. The whole background is see-through, so whatever is underneath shows straight through the empty space.
One thing to be straight about up front: the waveform is a look, not a listener. Final Cut does not let a generator hear your timeline, and Music Player does no audio analysis at all. The waveform animates to a tempo you type, so it moves in time without ever needing your song. This manual covers the whole setup and every control, top to bottom.
First run
Music Player is free and unconditional. No license key, no watermark, no trial clock. Here is the whole path from download to a card on screen.
Music Player does all its work on your machine. Your artwork and your project never leave your computer. It is a drawing tool, not a network tool, so there is nothing phoning home and nothing to sign into.
Where it goes
This is the one thing to get right, 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. And everywhere the card isn't, Music Player is transparent, so your footage or your visualizer shows right through.
That empty space around the card is on purpose. Because it is transparent, you can run anything you like behind it: your own footage, a solid color, or one of Herbistry's music visualizers reacting to the beat. Music Player is the clean player card up front; whatever you put underneath is the show behind it. It works the same in Motion, added as a generator layer with your footage below, and it fills whatever shape your project is, vertical, square, or widescreen, with no black bars.
The layout
Everything lives in one inspector, and it reads top to bottom. A few controls hide themselves when they don't apply, so the panel stays tidy: the Tempo slider only shows in BPM mode, Player Color hides on the art skins and Minimal, and the Shadow slider only appears when Text Color is on Auto. Here is the whole panel, then a breakdown grouped by what each part does.
The full inspector, top to bottom. The controls that don't apply to your setup hide themselves, so you may see fewer rows than this.
Fill in the card
The top of the inspector is the content. This is where the card becomes your song instead of the placeholder.
The cover art on the card. Click the well and pick any image and Music Player fits it into the art slot. It is stored inside your project, so it stays put when you close and reopen, and it comes along if you move the library. Big images are scaled down for you, so you don't have to prep anything first.
A clean placeholder tile, so the card still reads.
Your cover art, baked into the project.
The song name and the artist under it, the two lines every player has. Type them straight in. They pick up your Text Color and skin styling automatically, so they stay readable on whatever skin you land on.
The typeface for the title and artist, from your Mac's full font list. A rounded sans reads friendly and modern; a tight condensed face reads more like a label. Both lines share the one font.
A nudge on the text size within its row. Fonts fill their space differently, so some land looking tiny and some crowd the line. This is the tuning knob to even that out. It moves the text inside the card, it does not blow the whole thing up, that's what Size is for.
Shape it
Music Player fills whatever shape your project is. The Layout menu sets the shape of the card itself, and Size scales it up or down inside the frame.
Scales the whole card up or down in the frame. Because it scales the drawing itself instead of stretching a rendered image, the art, text, and edges stay crisp at any size. Turn it down to tuck the card into a corner, up to make it the centerpiece.
A compact card, off in a corner.
Front and center, the whole frame.
Layout is the shape of the card, tall, square, or wide. Size is how big that card is in the frame. Pick the layout that suits your project, then use Size to place it. Wide is the one most people reach for as the marketing shot.
Pick a look
The Skin menu is the surface of the card. Same track, same layout, seven completely different looks. It starts on the Herbistry skin, the house look, and you can swap it any time.
Frosted material · your fill color
A real frosted-glass panel with a soft bevel, a directional light, and a specular streak across the top. It holds up even at full strength and over bright footage, because it carves the surface as much as it lifts it. Set the tint with Player Color.
Flat fill · your fill color
A clean, flat panel in whatever color you pick. The simplest, most legible surface, and the one to reach for when you want the card to sit quietly and let the artwork do the talking. Set the fill with Player Color.
No panel · outlined elements
No panel at all. The artwork, waveform, progress bar, and buttons get a clean outline in your Text Color, with a subtle halo so they read against a busy background. The floating, panel-less look. Player Color and Player Opacity step aside here, there is no panel to fill.
The house look · default
The graffiti-styled brand panel Music Player ships on. Bold, colorful, and unmistakably Herbistry. The default, and a great starting point before you go hunting for your own look.
Painterly texture
A soft, painterly abstract wash across the panel. Colorful without shouting, and it plays nicely under white or dark text plates.
Geometric pattern
An overlapping-circles pattern, playful and rhythmic. A bit of retro energy without tipping into busy.
Faceted texture
A faceted, crystalline surface with depth and sparkle. The most dramatic of the art panels, great for a hero shot.
On Glass and Solid, you set the panel with Player Color. The four art skins bring their own texture, so Player Color steps aside there, but you can still dial Player Opacity to pull a busy skin back so the text stays readable. On Minimal there's no panel to color at all. The art skins also lay a soft plate behind the text in Light or Dark mode so the words always read over the pattern. See the next two sections for the color and text controls.
A look, not a listener
Here is the honest bit, and it is by design. The waveform does not listen to your song, it can't, and Music Player does no audio analysis at all. What you get instead is a clean animated waveform that pulses to a tempo you type. It is a vibe, and it is meant to be.
What the waveform does. None hides it for a cleaner card. Static draws a still waveform shape that just sits there. BPM makes it pulse in time, and that is the default. Pair it with the Tempo dial below.
Hidden, or a still shape. No motion.
Pulses along to the tempo you set.
The beat the waveform pulses to, in BPM mode. Type in your track's tempo and the waveform grooves along in time. It only shows when Waveform is set to BPM, since it doesn't do anything in the other two modes. Not sure of the number? 120 is a safe, natural mid-tempo that reads well on almost anything.
That is a different tool, and it's the reason the background is see-through. Herbistry's Audio Effector visualizers, Equalizer and Mimic, read your song and react to the real audio: bars on the bass, the works. Run one of those on the track below Music Player and you get both at once, the clean now-playing card up front and a real reactive spectrum playing behind it.
The transport
The bits that make it read like a real player: the bar, the times, and the transport buttons. Each one is yours to keep or cut.
How far along the track reads, as a percentage. It sets where the dot sits on the bar and splits the elapsed and remaining times to match. Freeze it wherever looks right, or keyframe it to crawl across the shot.
The song's full length, typed like 3:41. The card works out the elapsed and remaining times from this and the Progress dial, so the two time labels always add up.
The progress bar and its dot. Turn it off for a stripped-back card that's just art, text, and buttons.
The elapsed and remaining times sitting at the ends of the bar. Off when you want the bar clean, or when you'd rather not commit to a run time.
The transport buttons, previous, play, and next. Keep them for the full player look, or drop them for something more like a poster.
Color it in
Five controls set the card's color and keep the text readable over anything you put behind it. A couple hide themselves when they don't apply, so you'll only ever see the ones that matter for your skin.
Tints the lively parts of the card: the waveform, the filled part of the progress bar, and the skip arrows. It starts white for a clean, neutral player. Set it to your brand color, or pull a color out of the artwork, to tie the whole card together. The play button stays white on purpose, so it always reads as the main action.
The panel fill on the Glass and Solid skins. This is the base color of the card itself. It hides on the art skins, where the texture is the fill, and on Minimal, where there's no panel at all, so you won't see it unless it can do something.
Despite the name, this is not a see-through slider. It sets how solid the panel reads. Turn it down and the surface fades toward a solid tone, dark under light text, light under dark text, so the card holds its own over bright, busy footage instead of dissolving into it. It's how you dial a loud art skin back so the text still reads. It works on every skin that draws a panel, and hides on Minimal.
The panel settles toward a flat, calm tone.
Full-strength skin, glass streak and all.
Auto reads the panel and picks light or dark text to suit, the clean, hands-off default. Because the background behind the card is unknowable, Light and Dark let you force it: pick the one that reads against your footage. On the art skins, Light and Dark also lay a soft plate behind each line so the words never get lost in the pattern.
Auto's legibility aid: a soft drop shadow under the text and elements, since Auto skips the plates and outlines the other modes use. 0 is none, 100 is a solid black shadow, and anywhere between is a gentle lift off the background. It only shows when Text Color is on Auto, because that's the only mode it does anything in.
Cheat sheet
The sliders and menus at a glance, from one end to the other.
| Control | One end | The other |
|---|---|---|
| Text Size | 0.5: smaller text in the row | 1.5: larger text in the row |
| Layout | Vertical / Square | Wide (the hero shot) |
| Size | 0.2: a small corner card | 3.0: fills the frame |
| Progress | 0: start of the track | 100: end of the track |
| Waveform | None / Static: no motion | BPM: pulses to the tempo |
| Tempo | 40: a slow pulse | 220: double-time |
| Player Opacity | 0: panel settles to a flat tone | 100: full-strength skin |
| Text Color | Auto: reads the panel for you | Light / Dark: you force it |
| Shadow | 0: no shadow (Auto only) | 100: solid shadow under text |
Before you install
Music Player is a Mac video plugin. Here is what you need.
Get help
Trouble installing, finding it in the Generators browser, or getting a card to show? Reach out and we'll sort it.