Doodly Beginner Tutorial

Syncing Audio and Video

Beginner Tutorial #24

Syncing Audio and Video

Shows the proper use of delay, duration and scrubbing back and forth with the playhead in Doodly when syncing audio and video in a Doodly video.

This is one of the toughest and most time consuming jobs as a doodler or video designer, in general. There is no magic sauce to syncing up Audio and video in Doodly. Everything is manual but this guide should make your life a bit easier. Additionally, please read question #42 in our Top 50 Doodly F.A.Q. to learn How do we speed up rendering times in Doodly? in our Doodly F.A.Q.

Play Head

Doodly has a play head with a needle attached to it so when you are playing back, you can see the play head and needle moving across the timelines. The play head and needle are a key part of syncing audio and video together in Doodly. Clicking the left mouse button and holding it down will allow for moving the play head back and forth; called scrubbing.

Basic Audio Signature

There is a very basic audio signature when importing or recording audio in Doodly. This audio signature has peaks and valleys in it with dips and spikes. When playing back your audio, you can see where the needle is located on the timeline. These two items will be your marker.

Syncing Assets to the Audio

Each asset has delay and duration options with it. These options are the secret everyone uses to sync up their video to their video. Add or remove delay before an asset is revealed on the canvas or add or remove duration time to adjust the time it takes to reveal the asset on the canvas.

Show Preview

This is the button that is located in the upper left corner of Doodly and it plays back at 30fps (frames per second). Clicking the button opens an embedded viewer inside Doodly. This is how you can see real time playback as you scrubbing back and forth along the timeline with the play head.

Additional Time at the End of the Scene (End of Scene Time)

This allows for time adjustments between scenes. There is a minimal of .5s required for scene transfers but depending on your doodle, the lowest amount of time to allow a viewer to absorb the scene that was just shown to them is 1.5s.

Note: Use the above combination and you will be syncing your assets to your audio in no time.

Frequently Asked Questions

Find answers to the most common questions regarding this topic.

Matching sound and visuals in the software requires manual adjustments because there is no automatic feature for this process. You will need to use the timeline tools, such as the play head and audio peaks, to line everything up manually.

The play head features a needle that tracks your position on the timeline during playback. You can click and hold it to drag back and forth, a technique known as scrubbing, which helps you pinpoint exact moments to match your visual elements with the sound.

When you bring in a sound file, the program displays a visual representation of the track showing various peaks and valleys. By watching these visual spikes along with the timeline needle, you can easily identify specific sounds and time your visual elements to appear at the exact right moment.

You can control exactly when and how long an item takes to draw by adjusting its delay and duration settings. Changing the delay alters the waiting period before the item starts drawing, while modifying the duration changes the total time it takes for the item to fully appear on your canvas.

While the system requires at least half a second between scene changes, it is highly recommended to leave a minimum of one and a half seconds. This extra pause gives your audience enough time to fully understand and appreciate the images they just watched before the next scene begins.

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Wayne Leiser
Wayne Leiser
Editor & Contributor
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