The complete Lyrical Video studio guide

1. Start a project and choose the canvas

Open the studio to work in the browser editor. The header holds project actions, canvas settings, zoom, fit and MP4 export. The left sidebar holds text and media libraries; the center is the canvas; the right Properties panel edits your selection; the bottom timeline controls when each clip appears. On narrower screens, side panels become drawers rather than changing the project itself.

Choose the canvas dimensions and duration before arranging a full song. A portrait composition suits phone-first videos, landscape suits a conventional player, and square works when the destination expects a square frame. These are composition choices, not guarantees about a platform's current upload requirements. Check the destination before producing the final file.

1. Create or open a project using the project controls.
2. Open canvas settings in the header and set dimensions, duration, frame rate and background.
3. Use Fit to see the composition, then zoom for precise placement. Zoom changes your editor view, not the exported dimensions.
4. Save a project package when you need a portable copy of the editable work.

2. Import audio, images, video and SVG artwork

Use the media library to import source files and place them into the composition. Search names and use media-type filters when the library grows. Images, video and audio remain distinct layers with their own timing. A supported video with an audio stream contributes that stream to the soundtrack; adding separate music can therefore create overlapping audio.

Original SVG documents are retained as vector sources. The editor creates transparent thumbnails and textures at the resolution needed for rendering, rather than replacing your original SVG with a flattened source. This is useful for logos and graphic marks. A browser must still be able to decode the selected media; a familiar container extension does not prove that its internal codec is supported.

1. Import your soundtrack first so timing decisions have an audio reference.
2. Import a background image or supported video and add it to the timeline.
3. Select the visual layer and adjust its dimensions, position and crop/fit controls.
4. Check the video's embedded sound before adding another audio layer.
5. Keep rights-cleared source files for every song, photograph, clip, logo and font.

3. Add lyrics manually or import SRT subtitles

The text library creates editable text clips. Type a lyric line, title or credit, then set its start and end time. For an existing timed transcript, import an SRT file and use the subtitle offset dialog when the whole file needs to move relative to the soundtrack. Each imported entry becomes an ordinary text clip: the canvas, timeline and Properties panel use the same editing path as manually created text.

SRT is a timed text format, not speech recognition. It provides clip-level subtitle timing, and ordinary SRT files do not supply accurate sung-word alignment. When word timestamps are available in the project, karaoke uses them. Otherwise the editor's defined clip-relative progression drives the animation. Listen and inspect the result rather than assuming the highlight is a forced alignment of the singer.

1. Add a text preset or import an SRT subtitle file.
2. Select a line on the timeline and edit its wording in Properties.
3. Set timing so the line enters before it must be read and leaves after its phrase.
4. Apply an overall import offset only when every subtitle needs the same timing correction.
5. Preview adjacent lines together to catch overlap, abrupt changes and spelling errors.

4. Scrub, trim and arrange clips on the timeline

Drag the playhead head or vertical stem to seek continuously. Scrubbing pauses playback and preserves selection. Clicking empty space seeks, while dragging empty space draws a selection marquee. Drag a clip body to move it; use its edge handles to trim the start or end. Timeline zoom gives more horizontal space for short phrases, and snapping helps align clip edges with other timing targets.

The timeline packs compatible clips into rows and creates extra lanes for overlaps. Row height remains fixed while lanes scroll, so long SRT projects do not make the timeline itself keep growing. Selecting a clip reveals a readable frame when needed. Keyboard arrows in the focused timeline nudge time by 100 milliseconds; Shift increases that to one second. Those shortcuts differ from canvas position arrows.

1. Drag the playhead to the phrase you want to adjust.
2. Move or trim its text clip, watching the timing tooltip and snap target.
3. Use timeline zoom when neighboring phrases are too close to grab easily.
4. Preview before and after the changed edge, not only the selected frame.

5. Select, batch-edit, lock and order objects

Canvas and timeline share a single compatible selection. Ctrl/Cmd-click toggles objects, Shift-click selects a range in the timeline, and empty-space marquee or row selection can select multiple compatible clips. Batch property edits affect selected unlocked objects and preserve unrelated values on each object. This is especially valuable for changing a song's font or position without rebuilding every line.

Click the canvas before using position arrows: each arrow moves selected visual objects by one pixel, or ten pixels with Shift. Inputs retain their own editing shortcuts. Lock an object when it should remain inspectable but not editable or deletable. Use layer-order controls to move an object forward, backward, to the front or to the back; that order is stored with the project and used by preview and export.

1. Select compatible text clips together to establish consistent typography.
2. Adjust the common Properties value, then inspect unusually long lines separately.
3. Lock a finished background before moving lyrics above it.
4. Use undo after an accidental group edit rather than manually repairing every clip.

6. Style typography, gradients and shaped scripts

Properties gives you font family, size, bold, italic, alignment, fill and outline. Choose solid fill for simplicity or horizontal/vertical two-color gradients for a distinctive treatment. Font weight and italic style are loaded for the actual selected font. Uploaded custom fonts and remote fonts need to be available to the font loader; a missing font is an error, not a promise that the export will quietly use a different typeface.

Use a font that contains the characters in your lyrics, especially for Kannada and other connected scripts. The renderer preserves complete shaped text when bending it, rather than positioning isolated characters along a curve. Still inspect every language visually: font coverage, line breaking, spacing and readability are typography decisions, and expressive display fonts may not cover all scripts.

You can enter Unicode lyrics in your own language and upload a font through the font picker. TTF, OTF, WOFF and WOFF2 files up to 16 MiB are accepted and stored locally. Select the uploaded family for your text clips and verify that it covers the required characters and shaping; language support depends on the chosen font, not a fixed language menu.

1. Choose a font family that covers your lyric language.
2. Set size and alignment, then adjust fill colors and outline thickness.
3. Check the longest line at the intended viewing size.
4. Use contrast against the brightest background frame, not only the current still.

7. Choose scale mode, wrap mode and curvature

Scale mode changes font size when you resize text with its handles. Wrap mode changes the configured text box while keeping font metrics; text wraps to its width and overflow is clipped to its height. Multiline and curved selections use rendered bounds for font-scaling handles. Rotated objects keep the opposite corner or midpoint fixed during proportional resize.

Curvature bends the complete shaped text texture. For wrapped text, the block curves as a whole rather than bending each line independently. Strong curves need enough box height, or part of the text can be clipped. Use the angle control to rotate the layer, and X/Y, width/height, scale, anchor and opacity controls to place it precisely. Numeric property edits pause playback and reveal the selected clip when it is outside the current time range.

1. Pick Scale for a short headline and Wrap for a predictable multiline area.
2. Set box width before fine-tuning font size.
3. Increase curvature gradually and inspect top/bottom clipping.
4. Adjust position with pixel-based controls or canvas arrows.

8. Combine lyrical presets, transitions and continuous motion

Lyrical presets provide a starting combination of style and animation. You can then edit independent entrance and exit transitions, their durations, continuous float/wave/beat motion, amount and speed. Wipe reveal composes with the existing entrance, exit, motion and karaoke behavior. Text-library treatments such as Prism Reveal, Liquid Gold and Rhythmic Punch remain editable rather than being baked into a video.

Changing an effect or preset previews the selected clip. The Properties play/stop control lets you inspect another preview; long clips show the beginning and ending, and effect preview restores the original playhead afterward. Actual project audio drives music effects. A project without audio can show a demonstration response in effect preview, but that response is not a generated soundtrack in the exported MP4.

1. Start with a preset that fits the mood, then change the font and colors.
2. Keep entrance/exit durations short enough for the phrase length.
3. Use continuous motion sparingly when the lyric needs close reading.
4. Preview the same treatment on a short line and a long line.
5. Listen with the real soundtrack before choosing a beat-reactive amount.

9. Animate and grade background images

Image treatments include cinematic zoom, drift, soft beat and crossfade. Properties exposes brightness, saturation, contrast, temperature, blur, vignette and fade durations. Presets such as Editorial monochrome, Golden hour and Crisp performance are editable grading choices. Keep the image dimensions and anchor suitable for the movement so a zoom or drift does not expose an unwanted empty edge.

Zoom-in/out accepts a normalized focal point so movement can favor a face, landmark or other subject, including on rotated or non-centered layers. A crossfade requires overlapping visual clips and fade durations; simply placing two clips end to end is not an overlap. Inspect bright and dark parts of each image while checking lyric contrast.

1. Select the image and choose a motion preset.
2. Set intensity and, for zoom, its focal point.
3. Grade the image to support readable text rather than compete with it.
4. Overlap neighboring images when you want a true crossfade.
5. Scrub the full motion to check framing at both ends.

10. Add audio-reactive equalizers and music visuals

The visualizer library presents visual previews rather than only effect names. Styles include bars, wave, circle, breathing ring, ribbon, particles, segmented LEDs, dot matrices, concentric rings and orbit spectra. Preview tiles animate on hover or keyboard focus unless reduced-motion preferences disable animation. Their demonstration bands are not a measurement of your project soundtrack.

Select a visualizer to edit applicable density, thickness, spacing, amplitude, sensitivity, speed, cell rows and color palette controls. Use solid, two-tone or spectrum color where available. Protect lyrics excludes padded text bounds from the music effect; it does not animate the text. The soundtrack and shared scene renderer drive project preview and export, so an appealing library thumbnail is only the starting point.

1. Add the soundtrack and place a visualizer from the preview library.
2. Position it away from the most important lyric area.
3. Tune sensitivity and amplitude using quiet and loud sections of the song.
4. Enable Protect lyrics when the effect needs to avoid text bounds.
5. Reduce density or opacity if the visual competes with reading.

11. Mix audio and understand video sound

Audio layers and supported video layers with embedded audio contribute to the project soundtrack. Clip timing, source offset, gain and track mute determine what is heard. Muting a track affects its audio; merely hiding the visual layer does not mute its soundtrack. Overlapping sources are summed, so increasing every gain can distort the combined result instead of making it better.

The export pipeline decodes and mixes audible sources at 48 kHz stereo. Source decodes and the mixed soundtrack occupy memory even when the MP4 is being saved directly to disk. A silent project exports silence; missing or undecodable audio is not intentionally replaced or silently dropped. Listen to overlapping passages and trim unused audio rather than carrying it across the entire composition.

1. Check every audio-producing layer, including imported video.
2. Mute tracks that should not be heard.
3. Set clip boundaries and source offset before raising gain.
4. Preview transitions and loud passages for clipping or unexpected overlap.

12. Save local projects and portable project packages

Projects persist in the browser's IndexedDB, while layout preferences use localStorage. This is local persistence, not a cloud account or cross-device sync service. Use project package export/import when you need to move editable work to another browser or device. Keep a package before clearing site data or changing your browser profile.

Private browsing, storage pressure and clearing browser data can remove local work. A downloaded MP4 is the finished video, not the editable project. Treat source media, project packages and final exports as different deliverables. After importing a package, inspect timing, fonts and media before continuing: custom and remote fonts still need to be available, and unsupported codecs remain unsupported on the new device.

1. Name your project clearly in the project controls.
2. Export a project package for portability and retain it in your own storage.
3. Import the package on the target device and inspect the composition.
4. Export an MP4 separately when you need a finished video.

13. Export an MP4 and read progress correctly

Use the header export command to open the single export dialog. Choose dimensions, frame rate, quality and destination appropriate to your device and intended platform. MP4 output uses browser WebCodecs for H.264 video and AAC when there is audible audio. Configuration support is probed; unsupported dimensions, frame rates or codecs fail visibly instead of silently lowering the selected quality.

Memory output creates a standard fast-start MP4 and downloads it. Where the native save picker is available, direct disk output writes a fragmented MP4 to the selected file. That path reduces retained encoded media but may have less player/editor compatibility. Disk saving does not eliminate memory needed for source decoding, GPU textures or audio mixing. Select the destination deliberately; a failed disk export is not automatically retried as a memory download.

Elapsed timing starts after the destination picker. Remaining time is estimated from recent encoding throughput, not promised before preparation finishes. You will see preparation and finalization states because font loading, decoding, encoder flushing and saving are real stages. Cancellation stops scheduling new work, but native operations or a file commit already in progress can take time to settle.

1. Review the composition from first frame to last frame.
2. Open Export and select resolution, frame rate and quality.
3. Choose memory output for a standard MP4 or disk output where supported.
4. Keep the tab and device available while the export runs.
5. Play the saved file in the intended player and check both audio and text.

14. Troubleshoot missing media, fonts and performance

If playback or export cannot decode a source, inspect the actual codec rather than assuming the file extension is enough. Use a browser that supports the required WebCodecs configuration and a valid source file. If text fails to render, check that the selected font is reachable or correctly imported and covers the lyric characters. Remote font requests require a network connection; your local media workflow is not a guarantee that every dependency is offline.

Resource warnings are guidance, not a measurement of free RAM or a fixed song-length limit. Large frames, long audio mixes, many textures and concurrent applications increase resource pressure. Direct disk output can help encoded-output memory but does not make the whole pipeline constant-memory. Test a short representative composition on your device before investing in a large final export.

• Missing visual coverage can show the canvas background; inspect gaps between clips.
• Long wrapped or strongly curved text can clip: increase the box height or reduce the treatment.
• Quiet or muted audio can make a visualizer appear inactive.
• If an exported file will not open in another editor, compare standard memory MP4 with fragmented disk MP4 support.
• Automatic transcription, manual word-alignment tools, general keyframes, beat markers and coordinated scene templates are not current features.

Frequently asked questions