Swapping out audio amplitude

[mikey23456]

I've created a simple template to use for animated music videos. I'm not the most savvy with after fx, so there may be an easy solution I missed, but I was wondering if there was a way to swap out my audio amplitude. I have all the effects I like pick whipped to the slider of the first project I did, and have all the minimums and maximums adjusted to my liking. To make another video with these same effects applied the same way, I imported a new audio file and created another audio amplitude layer by converting the audio to keyframes. If possible, I really don't want to have to go back and pick whip all of the effects to the new keyframes, or have to re set up the minimum and maximum values every time I use this "template" with another song. Is there any way I can just replace the old audio amplitude layer with a new one, while keeping all the effects pick whipped to the slider?

[Moved from After Effects Resources forum into the much-more-trafficked After Effects support forum by a moderator]

[Szalam · Accepted solution]

If you Alt-drag (probably Opt-drag on a Mac) your new audio file into the composition, it will replace it. You can then delete the keyframes and make new ones.

That might keep everything intact. Make sure to save your project with a new name!

[mikey23456]

Thanks for the suggestion. I tried it and unfortunately it didn't work out . The thing is that after converting audio to keyframes, it becomes a new layer separate from the original audio file. It seems odd that I wouldn't be able to just swap that layer out with different keyframes while keeping all the same settings. 

[mikey23456]

A Ha! figured it out. Turns out I just don't know what I'm doing and misunderstood what you meant. I was thinking I needed to replace the whole layer I had with the new audio amplitude layer, when I just needed to replace the keyframes of the layer I have the effects tied to with the new audio amplitude keyframes. Thanks for the help, sorry for being a newb.

[Szalam]

Hooray! I'm glad you figured it out. We were all newbs once.

[gopherson]

Hey, I am having the same issue and I am not fully understanding this answer. I have tried "Option click" and dragging the new song into the composition, but it just stays the same and the new song plays separately. How do you replace the current song and audio keyframes with a new song and audio keyframes without having to start a new video? i.e. I have made a music video/visualizer that reacts to a song, now i want to change the song and have thing react to it, but every time i option/drag the new song in nothing happens.

any help is greatly appreciated.

[Rick Gerard]

If you change the audio, no matter how you do it, you are going to have to use the Keyframe Assistant again to generate new keyframes for the audio track. As long as you didn't rename the Audio Amplitude layer all you have to do is delete the original layer which will throw errors in all your expressions, then select the new audio track and use the Keyframe Assistant to generate keyframes from the new audio.

If your expressions contain the linear(t, tMin, tMax, Value1, Value2) method then you may have to adjust some values to get the look you want because no two audio tracks are going to have the same minimum and maximum values for their levels.

I hope that makes sense. It's not that hard to figure out when you realize that Audio Amplitude layer is generated by analyzing the audio, it is not tied to it.