Change to loop options

Apr 27, 2020

We’ve introduced a new option for video/audio synchronisation, loop-audio, and changed how the standard loop option works based on user feedback.

Previously, loop would cause either video or audio to loop to match the duration of the longer asset in a scene. After user feedback, we changed this since it seems that looping audio narration over video is almost never what users wanted to do. From today, using the loop synchronisation option will repeat the video clip in a scene until for the duration of the audio, but it will not repeat the audio if the video is longer.

For scenes where you want to repeat the audio to match the video duration, for example if there is a background sound that should play throughout the whole scene, use the new loop-audio option.

This also changes how default looping for animated GIFs works. Previously, if the GIF sequence was longer than the narration in the scene, the voice would repeat over and over. Now, you’ll hear it only once. You can, of course, change this by applying a different synchronisation option.

The new options are available both as a stage direction property, and as a markdown shortcut. Here are some examples:

> ... sync:loop will repeat a video when the audio is longer
  
(video:
  file: stopwatch.mp4
  sync: loop
  segment: 0 - 2)

This video will loop to match the duration of my sentence, so I can speak for as long as I want.


---

> ... sync:loop will not repeat the audio when the video is longer

![loop](stopwatch.mp4)

One, Two, Three.


---

> ... sync:loop-audio will repeat the audio when the video is longer

![loop-audio](stopwatch.mp4)

One, Two, Three.

To see these in action, check out the Synchronising audio and video example on GitHub. For more information on these and other synchronisation options, check out the Videos format reference.