Energy Arc & Holds

Overview

By default the edit’s intensity follows the music: loud, busy passages bring stronger clips and faster cutting. The energy arc lets you draw that intensity yourself, over the song’s waveform: a slow build to a peak, two waves, a staircase, or anything you draw point by point.

Holds mark stretches of the song where the edit settles: shots run long (up to 16 beats, ending on a bar line) and beat effects such as flashes, zoom punches and glitches rest. The music and the rhythm bar carry on as normal.

Cuts always stay on the beat. The arc and holds change which clips play and how often it cuts.

Both need Core or above.

Shaping the arc

On the ADVANCED tab, under ENERGY CURVE, click Shape it…. In New video, Shape it… is under Length and Intensity and opens the same window on the songs picked there. The window shows your song’s waveform with its bar lines. With several songs or rounds, it shows all of them as the edit will play them, breaks and Length included.

1. Pick a shape under Start from and click Use this shape:
   • Build to the drop - rises to the loudest part of the song, then eases off
   • Wave - rises and falls about once a minute
   • Staircase - four steps up
   • Plateau - up, a long high stretch, then down
   • Two peaks - two climaxes with a dip between them
2. Adjust it:
   • Click to add a point.
   • Drag a point to move it. Points snap to bar lines.
   • Right-click a point to remove it.
3. Choose how it is used:
   • Blend with the music mixes the arc with the music’s own energy. Blend strength sets how much: 100% is the arc alone, 50% an even mix.
   • Follow exactly sets each shot’s intensity and the cut rate from the arc alone, and takes the place of Narrative.
4. Click Save. The line next to Shape it… shows what is set.

Then Generate as usual: the draft shows the result.

The arc takes the place of an Energy curve file when both are set. Export CSV… saves the arc in the same time_s,intensity format, to keep or share.

Holds

In the same window, tick Draw holds and drag across the song to mark a hold. Holds snap to bar lines. Right-click a hold to remove it. You can draw holds with or without an arc.

Each hold starts and ends on a cut, and no shot runs across its edges.

How much difference it makes

On a 2:45 song with Two peaks, compared with the same edit without an arc (our tests):

• Blend at 100%: cutting about 1.9 times faster where the arc is high than where it is low (1.4 times without the arc), and calmer clips where it is low.
• Follow exactly: about 2.3 times faster where the arc is high, with cut rate and arc moving closely together.
• A 20-second hold: 3 shots of 6-7 seconds, where the edit otherwise had 8 shots of about 2 seconds.