Guides ·
Choosing Resolution and Frame Rate for an Audio Bar Overlay
The Output section of the create panel offers four sizes (640×360, 960×540, 1280×720, 1920×1080) and three frame rates (24, 30, 60 fps). The defaults are 640×360 and 30 fps. They are chosen for the most common use, a small overlay in a corner of a larger video, but they are not always the right answer. This guide explains how each choice affects the result.
Resolution: export at the size the bars will appear
The rule is simple: export at roughly the pixel size the bars will occupy in your final video, or the next size up.
If the overlay will fill about a third of the width of a 1920×1080 video, it occupies around 640 pixels across. Exporting at 640×360 gives you one exported pixel per final pixel. Exporting at 1920×1080 and shrinking it down in your editor gives no visible benefit and costs a larger file and a longer export.
If the overlay will span the full width of a 1080p video, export at 1920×1080. Scaling a 640×360 file up three times makes the edges of thin bars soft and the rounded corners blurry.
| Placement in a 1080p video | Approximate width on screen | Suggested export |
|---|---|---|
| Small corner badge | 400–700 px | 640×360 |
| Larger corner or half-width strip | 700–1000 px | 960×540 |
| Two-thirds width | 1000–1400 px | 1280×720 |
| Full width | 1920 px | 1920×1080 |
For a 4K project, the same logic applies: measure how many pixels the bars will occupy, and choose the export size closest to that. Scaling a 1920×1080 export up to fill a 4K frame will look slightly soft; for a corner badge in 4K, 1280×720 or 1920×1080 is a good fit.
How bars scale between sizes
The bar layout is proportional. Bar width is a percentage of each bar’s slot, max height is a percentage of the frame height, and corner radius scales with the frame width. A 640×360 export and a 1920×1080 export of the same settings look the same, only sharper. The preview is always drawn at 640×360, so what you see in the preview matches the shape of every export size.
Bar count and resolution
At small sizes, many bars become very thin. At 640×360 with 64 bars and 70% width, each bar is about 7 pixels wide, and after you shrink the overlay further in your editor it may drop to 3–4 pixels, where the rounded corners stop reading. For small overlays, 24–40 bars usually look cleaner. Use 48–64 bars when you export at 1280×720 or larger.
Frame rate: match the project
Always export at the frame rate of the video you will put the bars into. If your project is 30 fps and the overlay is 60 fps, the editor drops every other frame, which is harmless but wasteful. If the overlay is 24 fps in a 30 fps project, the editor repeats frames irregularly and the bars stutter.
| Your project | Export |
|---|---|
| 23.976 / 24 fps (film-style edits) | 24 |
| 29.97 / 30 fps (most YouTube uploads) | 30 |
| 59.94 / 60 fps (gaming, high-motion) | 60 |
Changing the fps setting re-analyzes the selected track, because the analysis produces exactly one spectrum per video frame. Pick the frame rate first, then tune the reaction settings.
60 fps makes motion smoother, not faster
Smoothing and Decay are defined in time rather than per frame, so a preset moves at the same speed at 24, 30 and 60 fps. With Decay 0.62 (the Default preset), a bar falls to half its height in about 48 ms whichever frame rate you pick; with Decay 0.82 (Calm), it takes about 116 ms. At 60 fps you simply get twice as many in-between positions, so fast hits look more fluid. You do not need to retune the reaction sliders when you change the frame rate.
When 60 fps is worth it
- Fast music (EDM, drum and bass, metal) with the Punchy preset, where quick transients are part of the look.
- Full-frame visualizers in a 60 fps project.
For calm music, static background videos, and small corner overlays, 30 fps looks the same to most viewers and halves the frame count.
File size and export time
Bigger frames and more frames per second mean more data. The tool’s internal size estimate, used to decide whether to save straight to disk, assumes roughly these video bitrates:
| Export size | Assumed bitrate | Roughly per hour of video |
|---|---|---|
| 640×360 | 1.2 Mbps | about 0.5 GB |
| 960×540 | 2 Mbps | about 0.85 GB |
| 1280×720 | 3.5 Mbps | about 1.5 GB |
| 1920×1080 | 6 Mbps | about 2.5 GB |
These are planning figures, not guarantees. The actual encoder bitrate depends on its quality setting and on content: a mostly black frame with a few moving bars compresses well, while many busy bars change more pixels per frame. Audio is encoded as AAC at 192 kbps and adds about 85 MB per hour. The status line shows the real file size when an in-memory export finishes.
Export time depends on your hardware, since frames are drawn and encoded as fast as the machine allows rather than at playback speed. The status line shows the current speed as a multiple of real time. A 1920×1080 frame has nine times as many pixels as a 640×360 frame, and 60 fps doubles the frame count, so 1920×1080 at 60 fps pushes eighteen times as many pixels per second through the encoder as 640×360 at 30 fps. Expect it to take noticeably longer.
When the estimated size exceeds about 80 MB, Chrome asks for a save location before encoding starts and streams the file to disk as it is encoded.
Recommended combinations
- Corner overlay on a 1080p YouTube video, any genre: 640×360 or 960×540, 30 fps.
- Full-width strip under a title: 1920×1080, project fps.
- Long playlist video with a small overlay (for example an hour of Suno tracks over cover art): 640×360, 30 fps. Keeps an hour-long file manageable.
- Short, fast EDM clip for social media: 1280×720 or 1920×1080, 60 fps, Punchy preset.
Quick checklist
- Measure how wide the bars will be in the final video.
- Pick the closest export size, or the next one up.
- Set the fps to your project’s frame rate.
- Tune reaction settings after setting fps.
- Check bar count against size: fewer bars for small overlays.