How to shorten a music track to your ad length and keep its real ending
Give Vizard Agent the ad's exact length and ask for the music to end the way the track really ends. It maps where the track builds, peaks and resolves, cuts out a stretch of the middle at two matching beats, and joins the start to the true ending so the final chord lands with the last frame instead of fading out mid-phrase.
What do you type into Vizard Agent?
Ask for an arc, not a length. "Make the music 40 seconds" is satisfied by a fade, which is exactly what makes an ad sound unfinished. "One coherent soundtrack with a tension arc that resolves at the end" asks for the shape, and the length becomes a constraint on the edit rather than a place to stop.
One consistent, atmospheric soundtrack with a coherent tension arc for the whole 40 seconds. It shouldn't break off mid-phrase.
What does Vizard Agent actually do?
It finds the ending first and works backwards. A track's last few seconds, where the beat drops away and the chord rings out, are what make it sound finished, so those are kept intact and the cut goes somewhere the ear will not look for one. In the session behind this article it:
- Generated one full-length score and had it listened to for structure: intro, build, peak and a long outro, plus a stray spoken sample to avoid.
- Analysed the last eighteen seconds to find where the beat drops, where the chord dies away and the best downbeat to enter on.
- Built an attack curve for the track and snapped both edit points to the strongest beat near the end of the peak and the start of the real ending.
- Joined the two with a crossfade of about a tenth of a second, placing the splice so the bed is exactly 40 seconds, which also cut out the spoken sample.
- Set the music level per section under the voice and over the end card, and had the whole bed reviewed for a single arc and a smooth internal edit.
When does this not work well?
When the track has a long, slow ending. If the outro needs twenty seconds to resolve, a short ad leaves almost no room for the rest, and a track that ends more abruptly is the better choice. Songs with lyrics are harder too, because the join must not cut a word.
Common questions
Why does my ad music sound cut off? It fades mid-phrase. Vizard Agent keeps the track's real ending.
Will the cut in the middle be audible? Rarely. Vizard Agent cuts on two matching beats.
Can it hit an exact length? Yes. Vizard Agent places the splice to land the ending on time.