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Calculating frames which downbeats fall on?


Roger

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  • *A:M User*

I did this in one of my animation classes (ages ago) and for the life of me I can't remember the formula for this.

 

I've calculated 30 downbeats in a 30 second song clip.

 

I know that there are 30 frames per second of animation.

 

Total frames for a 30 second animation is 900 frames.

 

So I am having a brainfreeze and am stuck trying to figure out which frames the downbeats fall on. I did a google search but didn't find much. Went through Animators Survival Kit

and while I found info about dialogue there, nothing about animating to music.

 

I know this is something relatively simple but I can't for the life of me think of it right now. Anyone?

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  • *A:M User*

Ok, I think I was making this way too hard.

 

Song is about 60 beats per minute / 1800 frames in one minute =

 

30 beats per frame

 

So major actions could fall on frames 30, 60, 90 or 300, 1200

 

Right?

 

That just seems a bit too convenient though, so I wonder if I screwed up when I was counting the downbeats in the song.

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I assume the main reason you are using 30 frames per second is to simplify the math.

Standard March time is on 12s (12 frames for each foot striking the ground) for a full March cycle of 24 frames (2 beats) per second.

 

The attached image has a breakdown of how beats per minute and frames per beat match up (courtesy of Don Bluth).

Don has some videos that help sink the lessons of timing in more deeply here.

 

Hans Perk has a handy javascript converter on his site that calculates beats/frames/feet of film:

http://afilmla.blogspot.com/#CalcLab

 

There are online metronomes that would help you calculate in terms of 30 frames per second. (or do the math)

 

It'd be straightforward enough... we should set something like this up in A:M! :)

bpm.png

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Thanks Rodney. After doing some more searching last night I found some other info as well. Also found something called Mixmeister BPM Analyzer (free download) that will let you run a song through and calculate BPM automatically. I think it is only compatible with .wav files though.

 

I decided I wanted a fun little exercise to do an animation test to, thats what started all this. I'm nearly done fixing my penguin, so I hope to have something soon.

 

After listening to the song again, I must have not gotten the tempo accurately the first time it seems closer to 120bpm.

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Thanks Rodney. After doing some more searching last night I found some other info as well. Also found something called Mixmeister BPM Analyzer (free download) that will let you run a song through and calculate BPM automatically. I think it is only compatible with .wav files though.

 

Beware of that site/download - Norton seems to think there is a trojan downloader lurking there - whatever that means. Might be a false positive?

mixmeister.jpg

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A Trojan horse, or Trojan, is software that appears to perform a desirable function for the user prior to run or install, but (perhaps in addition to the expected function) steals information or harms the system. The term is derived from the Trojan Horse story in Greek mythology.

 

 

"I was a hacker in my younger days" not very good but I knew enough to be dangerous lol.

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