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User manualMusic videos

Formats · Chapter 17

Music videos

A music video starts from the song. Vexel maps its bars, sections and lyrics, lays the shots on the bars, drives each take with its slice of the track, lip-syncs the sung lines and cuts on the beat.

Add the songLink to Add the song

  1. Create a Music video project

    See Create a project.

  2. Upload the track

    In the Assets tab, use Add the song (or drop the file and tick The project song). WAV or MP3 work best; audio up to 500 MB.

  3. Let it analyse

    The song is analysed automatically, free, in about 3 minutes: stems, beats, bars, sections, energy, key and word-timed lyrics. The Director waits for it.

The song panelLink to The song panel

The song panel with bars, sections, waveform, lyrics and planned cutsFull size
  1. Play, time, bar, BPM, meter, key and the map version.
  2. Zoom, cut style (Performance, Hybrid, Story) and Singers.
  3. Board N shots.
  4. Lanes: Bars, Sections, Audio, Lyrics, Cuts.
  5. Summary and the singer legend.
  • The panel sits above the script in the Script tab. Sections are shaded by energy; Lyrics chips are coloured by who sings (Female, Male, Duet, Backing; dashed means guessed); Cuts previews the planned shots: performance, story and cutaways, with a mic on lip-sync shots.
  • The cut style sets the mix in sung sections: Performance (about 70 % performance shots), Hybrid (half and half, default) or Story (about 30 %). Instrumental sections never get performance shots.
  • Click or drag the lanes to seek. Space plays, ← → move a bar, + − zoom.

Lyrics and singersLink to Lyrics and singers

  • Paste lyrics (the document icon): one sung line per row. [Verse] and [Chorus] headers are fine; voice tags go in headers such as [Female], [Male - shouted], [Female + Male], [Backing vocals] or a cast name like [Verse 2: Radu].
  • Update singers only applies the tags instantly; Analyze with lyrics re-runs the analysis with your lyrics as a guide.
  • Edit who sings each line (or Singers) sets Female, Male, Duet or Backing per line; ⇧-click sets a range. Click a lyric chip to set one line.
  • Lyrics become lip-sync performance shots. The words are never written into a video prompt.

Shots on the barsLink to Shots on the bars

  • Board N shots turns the planned cuts into storyboard shots that last whole bars. On a board with shots it asks: Add after or Replace board (shots with work on them are kept).
  • The Storyboard shows the song strip above the board, and each card shows its section, bars, a Lip-sync badge and its lyric line.
  • If shots were retimed off the bar lines, N cuts off the bar offers Snap to bars. Locked shots keep their place.
The storyboard of a music video with the song strip and lip-sync cardsFull size
Shots laid on the song: sections, bars and lyric lines on every card.

Takes driven by the trackLink to Takes driven by the track

  • Each song shot is generated with its slice of the track as the model’s audio reference: the vocal stem for sung lines, the full mix otherwise.
  • Takes are rendered at least as long as their slot, with handles for dissolves.
  • In the Shots tab, performance shots have a Lip-sync · sung line strip: switch it on to lip-sync every new take automatically, or Run lip-sync pass on the take in the cut. Lines up to 15 s use Sync React-1, longer ones Lipsync-2. The synced take arrives as the next version.

The cut on the songLink to The cut on the song

Assembling a music video lays the song on A1 and every take on its bar lines. From Deliver you can render a vertical 9:16 master (subject-aware re-framing) and a Spotify Canvas.

Map a song by handLink to Map a song by hand

If an analysis fails (unreadable file, empty, or longer than 20 minutes), choose Retry or Map by hand: set the BPM or Tap the tempo, the meter (4/4, 3/4, 6/8), where bar 1 starts (Use the playhead), the key, and paste the lyrics with section headers. Each save makes a new map version.