Music visualizer glossary

Groups of neighbouring frequency bins summarised into a single number each, so a control can be driven by “how much bass is happening” instead of by hundreds of individual bins.

In Novus: Any audio-bindable control can be routed to a band; the bands are the same ones the export path computes, so a binding behaves identically in preview and in the rendered file.

See alsoAudio bindingRMSFFT (Fast Fourier Transform)

The calculation that turns a slice of audio into a list of how much energy sits at each frequency. Every bar, ring and ridge you see reacting to pitch rather than loudness is reading an FFT.

In Novus: Run once per rendered frame against the current audio window; the result is the frame's frequency bins.

See alsoFrequency binSpectrum (as a picture)Waveform vs spectrum

One slot in the FFT result, covering a narrow span of frequencies. More bins means finer pitch detail and a busier picture; fewer means a smoother, calmer shape.

In Novus: Exposed as a bar or bin count on the engines that draw the spectrum directly.

ControlsbinCountbarCount

See alsoFFT (Fast Fourier Transform)Mel scale

A multiplier applied to the audio signal before anything draws it. Turning gain up makes a quiet track drive the visuals as hard as a loud one — it changes the picture, not the exported audio.

Controlsgain

See alsoAudio amountRMS

A way of spacing frequency bins that matches how human hearing works: fine detail low down, coarser detail high up. A mel-scaled spectrum looks more like the music sounds than a linear one does.

See alsoFrequency binSpectrum (as a picture)

A waveform drawn as a line on an XY plane instead of left-to-right. Feed the left channel to X and the right to Y and the shape tells you about the stereo image: a diagonal line is mono, a circle is wide.

EnginesWaveform

See alsoWaveform vs spectrum

The single loudest sample in the current window. Unlike RMS it reacts to one sharp hit, which makes it useful for flashes and useless for anything you want to stay steady.

See alsoRMSTransient

A marker that jumps instantly to a bar's highest recent value and then falls back slowly. It is what makes an equalizer readable: the bars move too fast to follow, the caps do not.

ControlspeakHoldMs

See alsoEnvelope (attack and release)Frequency bin

Root mean square — the average loudness of the current audio window. It moves smoothly and is the right signal for size, brightness or drift; it is a poor signal for anything that should snap.

See alsoPeakOnsetBass, mid and treble bands

How much each frame's spectrum is blended with the frames before it. High smoothing gives a calm, flowing shape that lags the music slightly; low smoothing is twitchy and immediate.

ControlsspectralSmoothing

See alsoEnvelope (attack and release)FFT (Fast Fourier Transform)

A picture of frequency over time: one axis is pitch, the other is history, and brightness is energy. Scroll it and the last few seconds of the track become a landscape.

In Novus: Engines that keep spectral history expose how many past frames to hold.

EnginesSpectrumTerrain

ControlshistoryDepth

See alsoSpectrum (as a picture)FFT (Fast Fourier Transform)

The very short, very loud start of a sound — a stick hitting a snare, a pick hitting a string. Transients are what make a mix feel percussive, and they are what onset detection looks for.

See alsoOnsetPeak

A waveform draws the audio signal itself — amplitude against time, the shape you see in an audio editor. A spectrum draws the FFT of that signal — energy against pitch. They are two different views of the same second of music, and picking the wrong one is the most common reason a visualizer “doesn't react”.

In Novus: Both are first-class engines rather than modes of one another.

EnginesWaveformSpectrum

See alsoFFT (Fast Fourier Transform)Oscilloscope / Lissajous

How far the audio is allowed to push a control away from its base value. At zero the control holds still; at one the music has full authority. It is the difference between a visualizer that reacts and one that thrashes.

ControlsaudioAmount

See alsoAudio bindingGain

A bounded route from an audio signal to a control: pick a source, pick a range, and the control moves inside that range only. Bounded is the important word — a raw FFT value wired straight into a size is how visualizers blow up on a loud chorus.

In Novus: Any control marked audio-bindable in the engine reference can take one.

See alsoBass, mid and treble bandsAudio amountBPM phase

A musically meaningful pulse — the thing you would tap along to. Not every onset is a beat, which is why Novus tracks them separately: onsets are what happened, beats are what counts.

In Novus: Every engine mode is required to respond visibly to the beat latch; a mode that ignores it fails the render registry test.

See alsoOnsetBPMBeat gridBeat latch

The editable map of where the beats are: tempo, time signature, an offset for the first downbeat, and any individual markers you have moved. Detection proposes it; you own it.

In Novus: Corrections to the grid are stored in the composition, so the grid you fixed is the grid the export uses.

See alsoBPMBeatComposition

The internal signal that goes to full on a detected beat and then falls back on its own. It is what lets a shape punch on the kick without the renderer needing to know anything about tempo.

ControlsbeatSyncAllbeatAttackbeatReleasebeatSmoothing

See alsoBeatEnvelope (attack and release)

Beats per minute — the tempo. Detection estimates it from the spacing of detected beats, and you can correct the estimate by hand when a track's intro fools it.

See alsoBeat gridBPM phase

Where you are between one beat and the next, as a number from 0 to 1. Binding to phase rather than to the beat itself gives you smooth motion that stays locked to tempo — a rotation that completes exactly one turn per bar, for example.

See alsoBPMAudio binding

The shape of a reaction over time: attack is how fast it rises, release is how slowly it falls. A short attack with a long release is a punch that lingers; long attack and short release is a swell that snaps off.

In Novus: The beat smoothing control sets both time constants together, so one slider takes you from a hard strobe to a gentle breath.

ControlsbeatAttackbeatReleasebeatSmoothing

See alsoBeat latchSpectral smoothing

A low-frequency oscillator — a slow, repeating wave used as a source of motion rather than as sound. Route one into a control and it sways on its own whether or not the music is doing anything.

In Novus: An LFO node in the Studio graph, evaluated by the same graph evaluator that runs during Classic playback.

See alsoNode graphAudio binding

The moment a new sound starts. Onset detection watches for a sudden rise in energy and reports it as an instant, which is why it fires on hi-hats and guitar stabs as well as on kicks.

See alsoBeatTransientBeat grid

The document. One versioned file holding the layer tree, the node graph, the timeline, the beat grid and every control value, which both editors read and write. Opening a document in the other editor does not flatten what that editor cannot show.

In Novus: Exported and imported as a .novusvis file; guests can download one without an account.

See alsoLayerNode graphEngine version and migration

A renderer with a published control schema and a stable id — the unit Novus builds visualizers out of. Engines are not presets: changing an engine's controls reshapes it rather than picking a different template.

In Novus: Every engine's full control table is published on its reference page.

See alsoModeCompositionEngine version and migration

Each engine's control schema carries a version. When a schema changes, a migration rewrites older documents into the new shape rather than dropping the values it no longer recognises.

See alsoEngineComposition

Some settings belong to the whole composition — resolution, the beat grid, the master clock — and some belong to one layer. Changing a global setting moves everything; changing a layer setting moves one thing.

See alsoLayerComposition

A control value pinned to a specific time. Between two keyframes the value is interpolated, which gives you scripted motion the music cannot override.

See alsoTimelineAudio binding

One stacked element of the composition — an engine instance, an image, a caption, a logo. Layers composite in order, and each carries its own controls and its own audio routing.

See alsoCompositionGlobal vs layer scope

A named starting configuration of one engine — a set of control values with a title, not a separate renderer. Switching mode changes numbers; switching engine changes the code that draws.

See alsoEnginePreset

The wiring diagram behind a composition: audio sources, maths, envelopes, remaps and merges, connected into the controls they drive. It is optional — a composition with no graph is a valid composition.

In Novus: Edited in Studio, but evaluated in both editors, so a graph you built in Studio still animates during Classic playback.

See alsoLFOCompositionAudio binding

Any saved set of control values. A mode is a preset the catalogue ships; anything you save yourself is a preset too, and both are just values over the same schema.

See alsoModeComposition

A protected region of the frame that generated geometry must leave alone — usually the centre, so a logo or a face is never drawn over.

EnginesLogoRadial

ControlscenterSafeZonelogoScale

See alsoAspect ratioLayer

The number that starts every random decision an engine makes. Same seed, same audio, same picture — which is what makes a preview worth trusting as a prediction of the export.

See alsoDeterministic export

The time axis of the composition: trims, sections, keyframes and markers. It is the same clock the export walks, so what you scrub is what you render.

See alsoKeyframeDeterministic export

Per-pixel transparency, so a visualizer can be laid over other footage with no black box around it. Only some export formats can carry it — choosing a format without alpha is the usual reason a transparent export arrives opaque.

See alsoCodec vs containerOverlay

The shape of the frame — 16:9 for landscape video, 9:16 for vertical, 1:1 for square. Engines lay themselves out from the frame's shape, so switching ratio re-composes rather than crops.

See alsoSafe zoneOverlay

How many bits per second the encoder is allowed to spend. Too low and fast motion smears into blocks; past a point, more bitrate only makes the upload slower.

See alsoCodec vs containerFrame rate

The codec is how the pictures are compressed; the container is the file that holds the compressed video, the audio and the metadata together. MP4 and WebM are containers, not codecs, which is why two MP4 files can behave completely differently.

See alsoAlpha channelBitrate

The guarantee that the same composition, audio and seed produce equivalent frames every time, in preview and in the rendered file alike. It is why the preview is a preview and not an approximation.

In Novus: Preview, still capture and video export share one clock, one audio-frame contract and one set of engine configs.

See alsoSeedFixed-step clockTimeline

Advancing the animation by a constant amount per frame rather than by however long the last frame actually took. Without it, a slow machine renders a slower-looking video — the same project would export differently on a different laptop.

See alsoDeterministic exportFrame rate

How many images per second the export contains. Higher is smoother and larger; 30 is fine for most uploads and 60 is worth it for fast motion.

See alsoFixed-step clockDeterministic export

A visualizer meant to sit on top of something else — a stream, a gameplay capture, a talking head — rather than to fill the frame on its own. Overlays want transparency and a quiet centre.

See alsoAlpha channelSafe zone

How hard an engine works your device, summarised from its GPU cost and the number of elements it draws by default. Heavy engines are not better ones — they are the ones to check on a phone before you rely on them.

In Novus: Shown on every engine card and on the engine reference page, derived from the same budget numbers the runtime enforces.

See alsoFrame rateEngine

Any drawing whose horizontal axis is pitch and whose height is energy — bars, a filled area, a ridge, a scrolling waterfall. All of them are the same FFT drawn differently.

EnginesSpectrumBars

See alsoFFT (Fast Fourier Transform)SpectrogramWaveform vs spectrum