Wavebar-Phonogramm

Wavebar-Phonogramm is a free panel for Maya: a big, readable waveform right above the time slider, up to eight tracks, and real sound editing without leaving the scene. Made for lip-sync, and for any animation that has to hit the track.

Sound in Maya is usually a thin line in the time slider, one file per scene, and no mp3 at all. The second character's line, the footsteps, the music get mixed somewhere else, and you keep going back and forth. The panel brings that work inside Maya.

A wave that stays frame-for-frame with Maya

The strip always shows exactly the frames the time slider shows. Zoom the timeline and the wave zooms with it; roll the wheel on the wave and the playback range zooms. It is one range seen from two sides, so the two can never drift apart.

Park the panel right above the time slider, stretch it, turn it down to a ghost over the viewport, and lock it once it sits where you want it.

Scrubbing syllable by syllable

Drag across the wave: the playhead follows the cursor and you hear the sound syllable by syllable. Pick how much sound a frame plays: one frame to catch the lips closing on an "m", two or three to recognise a word faster. The arrow keys step frame by frame with sound, Space plays.

Up to eight tracks

Each track has its own colour, name, level, mute, and a lock against accidental moves. A track holds as many clips from as many files as you like: a character's steps, a door, a line of dialogue, side by side. Maya plays them all together: the panel mixes the tracks into one file itself, since the time slider holds a single sound.

The sound library

Your sound library, inside Maya. Favourite folders, every file with its wave as a list or as big cards, a name filter, a heart and a colour mark for the good ones. Add puts a sound on the track at the playhead, or just drag it there.

From a long recording or a video you take only the piece you need: drag across its wave and only that stretch goes on the track. The file itself is never cut.

Editing right in the panel

Split a phrase at the playhead, open a pause, swap two lines, move a piece over to another character's track, copy it, combine pieces back into one file. Pieces snap to their neighbours' edges, and sound trimmed off too eagerly can be pulled back out.

Fades are drawn with handles on a clip's corners, and where clips overlap they cross-fade. Everything is undoable, with an undo of its own: Ctrl+Z in the viewport undoes animation, on the panel it undoes sound.

Volume and balance over the frames

Every track has a volume curve and a balance curve. Duck the music under a line, fade a voice out, walk it from the left speaker to the right. The curves are edited in a mixer window of their own and drawn over the wave.

Export and a playblast with sound

Export any track, or the whole dialogue as one master track, to WAV or MP3. When the shot is done, one button makes a playblast with the sound in it: an MP4 that opens anywhere, the director's phone included.

A scene you can carry away

The whole edit lives in the scene itself: save the scene and the sound is saved. The scene plays even where the panel isn't installed.

Project Manager gathers every sound the scene uses into a folder beside it, so the scene can move to another computer, one without your sound libraries. From an hour-long recording it can take just what the clips play, with a little to spare. The panel's working files sit beside the scene too; it never writes anything into your sound libraries.

What it doesn't do

• It doesn't do lip-sync for you: no speech recognition, no mouth keys. It helps you hear and see the sound; the animator animates.
• It isn't a sound editor: no EQ, effects or noise removal. Volume, balance, fades and editing only.
• Without ffmpeg it opens plain 16-bit WAV only. mp3, other formats and sound from video need ffmpeg, which is free and installed once.
• Tested on Windows. Not tested on macOS or Linux.

At a glance

• Maya: 2019, 2020, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026
• System: Windows
• Formats: WAV, AIFF, MP3, AAC, M4A, FLAC, OGG, sound from video (via ffmpeg); export to WAV and MP3, playblast to MP4
• Install: copy a folder into Maya's scripts and add a shelf button
• Needs: ffmpeg for everything except WAV
• Interface: English; manual in English and Russian in the archive
• License: free, MIT, open source
• Tutorial: video on YouTube