Oscilloscope Music to ILDA
Turn stereo XY WAV files into Animation Studio layers and ILDA animations, with trim controls and clear playback limits.
Oscilloscope music encodes images directly in stereo audio — left channel drives X, right channel drives Y. Animation Studio's Oscilloscope quick tool turns the audio samples decoded by your browser into an XY layer, preserving their coordinates and source order for preview and export preparation.
What You'll Build
A trimmed XY layer you can preview and export as an .ild animation. Check the exported file with the player and scanner settings you intend to use; ILDA playback does not guarantee the original audio timing.
Step 1: Add an Oscilloscope Layer
- Open Animation Studio
- Click the Oscilloscope tool in the Assets sidebar — the Oscilloscope panel opens
Step 2: Load Your Track
Drop or select a stereo WAV file (left channel = X, right channel = Y). No file handy? The panel includes preset oscilloscope-music demo files you can quick-load.
Step 3: Check the Rate and Choose Frame Grouping
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| XY Point Rate | Shows the decoded audio rate in points/sec; this is a readout, not a scanner-speed control |
| Frame Rate | Choose 30 FPS or 60 FPS to group the same samples into fewer or more frames |
Changing Frame Rate does not add XY detail or lower the displayed point rate. The decoded rate can differ from the original WAV's rate.
Step 4: Trim the Section
Use the trimmer to set in/out points on the waveform. The panel shows the estimated frame count for your selection at the chosen FPS — a whole song at 60 FPS is thousands of frames, so start with a short loopable section.
Step 5: Generate and Export
- Click Add to Canvas — the converted frames land on an Oscilloscope layer
- Press Play to preview
- Keep Playback Frame Rate matched to the converter rate if prompted
- Click Download ILDA to export, or Open in ILDA Viewer to inspect scanner load first
ILDA export adds beam-off travel, dwell, and shutdown points. Those extra points and your player's settings affect playback timing. Check the stress heat map, scanner load, and synchronization before using hardware; changing Frame Rate alone does not make a demanding XY recording safe.
Layer and Output Limits
You can position, resize, and rotate the XY layer. Keyframes, motion paths, effects, and audio reactions are not supported on exact XY layers; remove them if an error asks you to. Export one XY layer at a time, or keep its timeline range separate from other visible layers.
Continuous XY hardware output is currently unavailable in Animation Studio. Vector layers can still stream normally. The separate Scope app has its own output workflow.