I have had several people that have been having issues with Maya 2011 and audio clips. I get statements and comments like this, “When I go to scrub my animation the audio is not synched up! Help!!!”…. “It works in Maya 2009!” Well, specific issues with scrubbing the sound clip in Maya after offsetting the audio track in the timeline is just an update issue. It seems that the way Maya handles the audio in Maya 2011 is a little different. All you need to do it import the file again offset it and then play through the clip by using the play button. Once the file is re-cached or read then go back to scrubbing. Everything should be fine then. If not then email me and I’ll try to help.
For those newer users, or if you are using sound clips in Maya 2011 and have never used the offset features in the audios dialogue box, just run through the following steps.
With Maya open go to File->Import and then navigate to the clip you want to import or simple drag the audio clip into the viewport.
When you look at the timeline it should look like this:
It’s pretty thin and when working with audio clips for dialogue or general sound it can be hard to see what is going on in the waveform.
Q: “Why do I need to see the audio clip’s waveform?”
A: Often times it is beneficial to see the peeks and valleys in the sound. It helps to see where the beats or rhythms fall within the clip while synching up actions and lipsynch.
If you open the preference window within Maya: Window->Settings/Preferences->Preferences you will see the following window.
Under the Categories column on the left select Time Slider. The change height from 1x to 4x.
In order to hear the audio play set the Playblack Speed to Real-time (24 fps).
When you’re done make sure you save your preferences. — (Note the preferences window will close!)
You should now see the Time Slider is 4 times it’s normal size.
In order to see the wave form even clearer you can change the color in the Color Preferences.
Expand the animation menu and click on the color swatch. I have changed myine to yellow.… the results look like the following image:
This will make it much easier to see that waveform!
You can pull in multiple audio clips and turn them on and off by right clicking on the time slider and going to Sound and selecting the track you would like to use.
In order to offset the audio clip you can go to the sound clips dialogue box and then enter an offset value.
Once you select the dialogue box the attribute editor will open that looks like this:
Enter a value in frames that you want to offset the audio clip. Just remember that if you offset it just play through the clip and then you should be able to scrub the audio as well.
Tip: If you need to mute the clip there is a checkbox under duration that will toggle it audible or not.
To delete audio files from your scene:
1. Go to the dialogue box for the audio clip and then highlight the title of the name of the audio in the audio field.
2. Command+C to copy it.
3. In the Mel command line type: delete filename;
4. Then press enter.
Another way to find and delete audio tracks is to open the outliner.
Under the Display menu in the outliner you will see several options. Uncheck the DAG Object Only option. It is located here:
Now you will see many other things listed in the Outliner including Audio Nodes.
Now simply select the nodes and delete them.
Another way to delete sounds is to navigate to Edit -> Delete by Type -> Sounds and then pick the sounds file to delete.
If you want all the files gone then goto: Edit -> Delete all by type -> Sounds and that will delete them all at the same time.
There are probably two more ways to delete sound files because in Maya their are 5 ways to do anything. See if you can find the other 2 and get back to me… LOL.
Additional Notes:
If you have imported sound and cannot hear it try one of the following:
1. Check and make sure you are on Realtime 24 in your timeline settings.
2. Check you audio file and make sure it is supported.
3. Reselect the audio file by right clicking on the time line — goto sound and choose file.
4. Make sure you are up to date on you Maya software. I have found issues in 2011 until updating to the current service pack!
5. You cannot import files that start in a number — Example 1audiotrack.wav.
That’s it for now. Find great clips and animate your heart out.
CraigBowman
Thanks so much, you’re an absolute lifesaver. I couldn’t get my offset to work, and in the end I deleted the audio, reimported it, reset the offset and it worked. Thanks!
Craig…thanks man. You’ve just saved me hours of headaches…again.
Hey!
I have the problem with sound offset.
I know this isn’t a bug in Maya 2011 because other people don’t have this problem, so it’s a setting somewhere I guess…
I offset the sound, the .wav moved at the right place in the timeline. Everything seems fine. But: When I play my timeline, even with the wav offset correctly, the sound begins at frame 1!
Do you have any idea what I do wrong?
Thanks!
Check your preferences and make sure you have your playback set to realtime.
I got that probleme too, when i restart maya. THe Sound begin at frame 1. I resolve this issue to change the name of the .wav file then to re-import it. But now when i click play button i cant ear the sound, while, i ear the sound when i move the timeline with the mouse.
Thanks for help.
You may need to reselect the sound file by right clicking in the timeline goto to sound and re-choose the correct sound file.
I tried to import the .wav file but it says //Error: cannot find file.
How can I import it?
Specifically, how did you go about importing it. Usually there are two ways to import the sound file.… drag and drop or goto file import… then navigate to the file on your system and choose it.
Try dragging the file in to the scene!
Craig — you just saved someone’s life at Autodesk … I was getting so frustrated with this, issue — I’m so glad I found your post. Thank you — thank you for saving me too!
wow this was incredibly helpful. BUT i’m still having a slight problem. so i did as you said and reloaded the audio file then offset and played. totally fixed the playback problem in maya. however, when i playblast it’s still quite off. for example, my audio is offset to begin at frame 270 in the timeline, but when i look at the frames in the quicktime playblast it begins at frame 220 and it’s waaaay before the animation even begins. is it a playback setting? do you think the audio is at a different playback speed than 30fps? would that be the cause for such a large offset? is there a setting that i’m missing in my playblast prefs somewhere? would love it if you could help, email me back! thanks a ton!
That’s a new one.… what type of audio file are you using?
I’m having the same issue as Brian only after calculating my frames it seems that my animation is playblasting more slower than in the viewer when I’m working on the file. The audio however seems to trigger at the right time. I’m using a .wav and I dragged and dropped it into the timeline and then set the offset
Check and see if you have play every frame on in your preferences. If it is then it will only play as fast as your computer can calculate and display. If it has to play at 12 frames per second to do that — then it will. If you set it to Realtime 24 then it will drop frames if it has to in order to try and maintain 24 FPS using the play button in Maya. It will still fluctuate based on the power of your computer and the complexity of the scene but will be much close to the actual frame rate you will be out putting to. A plast-blast is the only way to get a real 24 FPS feedback. You should make them and make them often!
I’m having a problem. I drag my audio file in (.wav) to the timeline, but a green bar appears along the bottom of the timeline, rather than it showing the peaks etc. It makes no sound whatsoever as well. I checked my preferences and they seemed fine. I didn’t have a problem at Uni with this, and my Maya is just as up to date as theirs :/
Check the sound file you are using and make sure something is not wrong with it at the source. If it is ok. Make sure you have your project set to the appropriate folder. Delete the sound file node for the sound file you are using and re-import by going to File Import instead of dragging. Right click on the time line and go to sound. Select the file there. As a last resort try converting the sound file to an .aiff if you are working on a MAC. Try some of these things out and then get back to me if it is still not working!
Wow, finally found someone whose advice works, a lifesaver.
Thanks!
All this coming after I had to re-install Maya as 2010 had a graph editor that was making invisible selections that would only show up when the window was minimised then maximised! — any thoughts as to why that happened? — My head has been fried for the last 5 days of wasted time, Grrrrrr. Now back to 11 sec feb comp only 4 days left and 3secs done aaaaah…
Thanks you so much for this post .… I was struggling with audio file playing in timeline with scrub .… now its fine …
Thanks so much
Hi Craig,
It seems that I am having a problem similar to Tim’s post above. My UI playback is fine, but the playblast is off. When playblasting, it renders my entire animation first, then plays the audio afterwards. I took all of your suggestions, deleted the audio, re-imported, changed from .wav to .aif, real-time playback at my 30fps. The playblast options are set to default and it opens in quicktime 7. Im running on an iMac with osx snow leapord. 10.6.8
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Tons of research brought me to your blog. I appreciate any help.
I know this is a really late reply … sorry I’m not sure how I missed this… did you try 24fps? Which version of Maya are you running?
Thanks for the reply Craig. I am running Maya 2012. I have not tried setting it to 24fps. I’ll have to see if that works. What I did since then is to playback from the UI in real time. I have a decent amount of RAM installed, so it saves a bit of time. I had to give up on the playblasting.