[Tutorial] How to make a modern beatbar

[Liquid]

As promised, I'm created a tutorial on how to make a proper beatbar for your cock hero video.
There are a lot of ways to do it, but since the feedback for my Cock Hero - Getting Rough beatbar was unanimously positive, I'll show you the way I did it.

There are a couple of things you should be aware of before you start with this tutorial:

* Creating a proper cock hero video is very time consumig and exhaustive
* Start with a single round and try to perfect it before you make a complete video
* Build templates, work with copies, make backups
* Make sure to properly organise the files and directories from the start
* Many steps in this tutorial are simplified
* Aside from a step-by-step tutorial I'll also include a couple of hints of what to avoid and pitfalls you are likely to encounter.
* I'm not an expert on music and english isn't my first language so it's very likely I mixed up some terms and fucked up a couple of grammer related things. Feel free to PM me with neccecary corrections.
* Most parts of this tutorial will be explained with Adobe software.
* I included the menu path for most commands you will need. There are easier ways to get to these functions and most of them have keyboard shortcuts (which I myself prefere to constantly moving the mouse all over the screen). The menu paths however will always work, even if you have rearranged your workspace or changed the keyboard shortcuts.

[Part 1 - Music and Beats]
viewtopic.php?f=25&t=15907&p=199550#p199547

[Part 2 - Beat Track]
viewtopic.php?f=25&t=15907&p=199550#p199548

[Part 3 - Beatbar Video]
viewtopic.php?f=25&t=15907&p=199550#p199549

[Part 4 - Beat Change Indicator]
viewtopic.php?f=25&t=15907&p=199550#p199550

[Liquid]

Part 1: Music and Beats

First you need some music - don't pick your favorite song just yet or you might get sick of it by the time you are done because you had to listen to it a hundred times.
I recommend starting off with something easy - 90-180 bpm, audible drums, regular and easy to identify beats, 4/4 time - something like that.
Oh, and by the way: It doesn't always have to be trance or R&B :)

You will also need some beats. If you want to make your own, you can create them with HammerHead Rhythm Station (Freeware) or remix some samples in Audition or similar programs.
What you need is a couple of beat patterns that are easyly memmorizable and repeat every measure (so you only need them once and people don't have to look at the beatbar all the time).
Don't try to perfectly recreate the background beats of the songs you are going to use, use something simple.
I (and apparently the majority of creators) like to work with patterns that consist of beats or pauses at every 8th of a measure.

These patterns have proven to work pretty well with cock hero:

Code: Select all

   B-B-B-B- (Normal Speed - 4 beats per measure)
   BBBBBBBB (Double Speed - 8 beats per measure)
   BBBBB-B- (5-1)
   BBB-B-B- (3-2)
   BBB-BBB- (3-3)
   BBBBBBB- (7)

You can of course come up with you own patterns, just make sure you start with a beat, not a pause - that makes things a lot easier a bit later.

There are several ways to name your beat patterns. The BBB-B-B- for example could be seen as "3-2", "3-1-1", "123-1-1", "123-1-2", "123-1-1" or even "123-5-7-". In the end it doesn't really matter, as long as you are consistent with your naming so you don't confuse yourself.

Make sure to pick a sound for the beat that doesn't drive your audience crazy.
You can use kicks, snares, drums or the ticking of a metronome for example - trumpets or sirens would be a poor choice I imagine.

Don't worry about different the BPMs of your songs, we'll fix that in the next step.

When you are done make sure the beat patterns you created will loop well. When the sound is cut off at the end it will sound terrible.

[Part 2 - Beat Track] viewtopic.php?f=25&t=15907&p=199550#p199548

[Liquid]

Part 2: Beat Track

This part of the tutorial focuses on the audio of your beatbar (the beat track) and will be done in Adobe Audition CC 2015.

Create a new Session (File - New - Multitrack Session)
Add your Song and Beats (File - Import - File)



Drag your song clip onto the first track and zoom in (Ctrl + Mousewheel on the Waveform) until you see the waveforms more clearly



Drag your normal speed beat clip onto the second track.



Make sure you have Global Clip Stretching Enabled (Clip - Stretch - Enable Global Clip stretching), so you can just stretch your beats by dragging the white triange in the upper right corner of the clip.
I also recommend setting the Stretch Mode to Realtime (Clip - Stretch - Stretch Mode - Realtime)

Roughly stretch your beat clip to match the song, hit play (spacebar) and check if your beats match up with the beats of the song.
If you can't hear the beats over the song, reduce the volume for the music track (e.g. by turning the little knob on the left side of the track counter-clockwise)

Enable Looping by right-clicking on your beat and checking "Loop" (should be somewhere in the middle).
If done correctly, you will now see repeat icon in the lower left corner of your beat.

When you hover your mouse over the right edge of your beat clip, the cursor will change to a trim/loop symbol.
Click and drag to repeat the beat a couple of times.



Hit play again and check if the beats still match.

If you notice, that your beats are a bit too slow or fast, stretch the beats again by dragging the right edge until they match up again.

Repeat this step until your beats match perfektly for the entire song. This is important! You may have encountered countless videos where the beginning of a song is ok and by the time the song/ends it's completely out of sync.

When you are done, listen to the entire song and make sure you didn't fuck up the beginning by fixing something in the end.

When you are satisfied, drag all other beat clips onto an empty layer (each of course, not all onto one).
Enable Looping, stretch to match your normal speed clip and loop to the end of the song.



Since we don't want all the different beats to be audible at the same time, drag the yellow line (thats the volume) to the bootom for all tracks but the one you want to start with.

When you want to change the beat simply click on the yellow line of the beat thats going to end (creates a little blue diamond) and drag the line after it down to the bottom.
Do the same thing for the beat thats going to start (just in reverse). I recommend doing this in sync with the tempo - it's easier, cleaner and better for your "users".



Incidentially most songs change the mood on multiples of 4 tempos - you should too. Make sure you don't change beats too often, the the user get accustomed to the speed and pattern of the beat.
Somewhere between 8 and 16 beats works pretty well. (The example in the screenshot is exaggerated to show the different beats)

Pick a beat that matches the song - it's doesn't have to be exactly like the song (that can be annoying too if it's a complicated beat)

Repeat this step until you are done, listen, check again, etc.

Some songs just don't work! It may be because they are way too fast, have irregular beats, change the tempo or are in 3/4 time.

When you are satisfied with your beats, make sure they are wankable.

Seriously, I'm not kidding. Whip your cock out and get going. If you can't do it you want to know as soon as possible!
It might be hard to throw away something you have worked so hard on (pun intended) but it's way better than noticing this inwankability(r) when you already finished the video.

By now you should have a complete mixdown that satisfies the following criterias
* The speed of the beats and the speed of the music match from start to end
* The volume of the beats is high enough to be noticeable over the music
* The "mood" of the beats matches the song
* The beats are simple enough to memmorize
* Segments with the same beat are long enough to wank to the beat by memmory instead of activly waiting for the sound
* The speed of the beats is comfortable to masturbate to.

Now it's time to export our tracks (File - Export - Multitrack Mixdown - entire session)

I recommend splitting it into two files: The music and the beats.

The easiest way to do this is to mute (the M on the left side of the waveform) the music track to export the beat track and then solo the music track (S) to export just the music.

Now you have 2 MP3s that you will need in the next part of this tutorial.

[Part 3 - Beatbar Video] viewtopic.php?f=25&t=15907&p=199550#p199549

[Liquid]

Part 3: Beatbar Video

This part of the tutorial focuses on the actual beatbar video and will be done in Adobe After Effects CC 2015.

Create a new Project (File - New - Project) and import your Music and Beat Track (File - Import - File).
Next create new Composition (Composition - New Composition) and make sure that the settings (at least video width and FPS) match the ones you have in mind for your final video.
The height of the video shouldn't be the full height of the final video, but only as high as you want the beatbar to be (e.g. 1920 x 90).
The duration should be long enought to fit the entire song and a little extra (10-20 seconds).

Drag you music and beat files into the composition

Creata a new solid Layer (Layer - New - Solid) add the waveform effect (Effect - Generate - Audio Waveform).



The default settings of the effect are not ideal, so we have to tinker around a bit:

* Set the Audio Layer to the Layer with your beats audio file
* Make sure the Start and Endpoint cover the entire with of the layer (0 - 1920)
* Displayed Samples is way too low --> 400
* Audio Duration ditto --> 5000 ms



Since we amped the settings quite a bit, live-previews of the video might no longer be possible.
That means when you hit play you wont have any audio - which is a bit inpractical for our purpose.

Luckyly we don't need to check the entire track, a couple of seconds are enough.

In the "Preview" Panel, hit the "RAM Preview" Button. After Effects will now pre-render a couple of frames and when you hit the button again play them (including sound)

You can of course tweak the colors of the waveform too and add a nice background background.

The beatbar is still missing one important detail: An Indicator

Create a new Solid Layer (e.g. 90x30 px) and put it dead center over the waveform.

Run the RAM-Preview again and make sure the beats "hit" the indicator at the right time.
If not: adjust the position of the indicator or the Audio Offset setting of your waveform.

When the indicator is working properly, we need to make sure the start and end of the video ok too.
Scroll your timeline all the way left to 00:00.
Can you already see some beats? Thats bad!
You want to have some reserve when editing the video, and you don't want to surprise people with your beats - you want them to see them coming.
Drag both your audio tracks (not the waveform, just the audio) a couple of seconds to the right (synchonosly of course) until you can't see any beats at 00:00.

Now check the same thing for the end of the composition: Can you see all the beats leaving the left side of the screen?
If not - stretch all your solid layers to be a bit longer than the audio filed and, if neccessary, adjust the duration of the composition.
(Composition - Composition Settings - Duration)

When you are done, export the composition (File - Export) by adding it to the "Render Queue" or the "Adobe Media Encoder Queue".

Now you have a video of your beatbar that you can use for the next part of the tutorial.

You don't have to repeat all those steps for every single beatbar.
Once you have a design you are happy with, simply duplicate and edit the composition
* Duplicate the composition (Copy & Paste)
* Replace Audio Tracks
* Adjust Composition Duration
* Change the Audio Layer of the Waveform Effect to your new beat layer
* Export

Make sure you are really happy with the look and feel of your beatbar because changing every single one of them afterwards is a bit of a drag.
So again: Complete an entire round for your video before you make all the beatbars. Trust me, you will likely tinker around with it a lot!

[Part 4 - Beat Change Indicator] viewtopic.php?f=25&t=15907&p=199550#p199550

[Liquid]

Part 4: Beat Change Indicator

This part of the tutorial focuses on the beat change indicator and will be done in Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2015

The beat change indicator helps your users to know that the beat will change a couple of seconds before it's actually happening. This will prevent them from staring at the beatbar all the time, because they trust you to warn them of any changes in advance.

First of all we need a new project (File - New - Project) and a new sequence (File - New - Sequence) for our video.

Import the beatbar video (File - Import) und drag it into the timeline of the sequence.
Premiere will propably ask you if you want to change your sequence settings to better fit the video - which sound pretty reasonable.
No! We don't want our video to be 90 pixels high!

Since the beatbar will be inserted in the middle of the video, you need to adjust the vertical position (Effect Controls Panel - Video Effects - Motion - Position) so that the beatbar is on the bottom.

For the beat change indicator, we need to create some kind of hint, marker, arrow or whatever you fancy that we will later animate.
By creating a new title (File - New - Title) we get a static editable frame that overlays our beatbar.



Build whatever you like that shows what kind of beat pattern is coming and maybe an indicator that points to the center.

Now drag that title into a new sequence (this will be indicator "intro" sequence) and go to the Effect Control Panel. And make it roughly 5 seconds long.

Activate the position animation by clicking on the little stopwatch icon next to it.



Change the position of your indicator for the very last frame in the sequence so that it precicely hits the beat indicator of the beatbar.
The position of the first frame should be far on the right side of the screen, so that it is hidden completely.

Make sure you fine-tune the initial position so that, when animated, your indicator moves at the same speed as the beatbar.

This "Beat Change Intro" sequence can now be added to the "main" sequence everytime the beat changes.
Simply skip to the exact moment a new beat pattern hits the beat indicator of your beatbar und drag the beat change indicator into the sequence (a different layer as the beatbar of course).
If this isn't possible because the "perfect" moment would be between two frames, just pick the one that looks better.
You can move the selected sequence (or clip) by a single frame by pressing Alt + Left/Right.
When you align the indicator sequence so that it ends exactly when the new pattern hits the beat indicator, you should see your indicator scrolling in from the right, hovering over the first beat of the new beat pattern.

You can make another sequence like this for the outro of the change indicator (fade away, slide left, etc.) or, if you are interested in something a little bit more fancy, you can animate the beat change indicator even further

For the animation of the beat change indicator, you are going to need another sequence. Insert the Beat Change Indicator Title that you used for the Intro Sequence and position it over the beat indicator again.
This time just animate the vertical position instead of the horizontal and make it hop up and down on the indicator.
The actual speed of the animation doesn't matter (try 1 beat per second, it's easier when the timeline acts as a guideline), just focus on the pattern.
Repeat the pattern a couple of times (e.g. 4). You will have to create this animation for every sinlge pattern you are using, but for now make just a single one until you are satisfied with what you created.

Add the Finished sequence to the end of the "Intro". You will have noticed by now, that the animation doesn't match the speed of your beats.
Select the Rate Stretch Tool from the toolbox and stretch the animation to fit the speed of your beats.

Since you know exactly how many times you repeated the animation, simply skip to the position of the video where you would expect the animation to be over and stretch the animation to end at that position.
These templates (Intro and Animation) can be used for all other rounds too - just drag them into the sequence and stretch them to fit.



The main sequence you created in this step will be the basis for a round of cock hero. Now you just need to insert your videos in a layer below the beatbar and beat change indicator.

[alchemi183]

Thank you for taking the time to make this tutorial!

[jackstock]

Great job. Sticky this

[sbewtwopointoh]

deleted....

[supermokkori]

Liquid, this thread is a wealth of information for all current and future CH-style creators, thanks a bunch for putting this together.

Mods, it would be ideal to stick this thread - great information here and well-organized as well.