Synchronizing Fireworks to Music

There are several tools in FWsim to perfectly synchronize fireworks with music.

Waveform display

Starting with FWsim 2.2, the waveform is visible in the timeline:
A music cue with waveform
To make the waveform bigger, increase the track height under Tools -> Preferences. Note that this will make all tracks higher, not just the waveform.

Beat Synchronization

You can define beats within the music and align your cues to the beats. You can also set markers at the beginning and end of the music, and let FWsim generate beats in-between.

Setting up beats

  1. Insert music into your show.
  2. Right-click the music and select "Synchronize With Music".
  3. Find a part of the music that has constant tempo.
  4. Put the cursor at the first beat of that part and select "Phrase Begin". If you made a mistake, click "Remove".
  5. Play the whole part and count the beats. The last beat of the phrase does NOT count.
  6. Position the cursor at the very last beat. Click "Phrase End".
  7. Click "Phrase Edit" and insert the number of beats you counted before.
  8. If the music has other parts with different tempos, repeat Steps 4-7.
  9. Using "Single Beats", you can mark individual beats.
  10. Click "OK". The beats you configured are saved in the show file. Do NOT remove the music, otherwise you will lose the configuration.

Aligning cues to beats

After setting up beats, you can use them. Just drag cues in the timeline and they will snap to the beats of the music. Note that only the launch times snap to the beats, and not the explosion times. This will be improved in future versions of FWsim.
You can disable the snapping by holding the CTRL key.

Aligning steppers to beats

You can auto-align steppers to music. This adjusts the stepper duration and count so that every shot of the stepper is exactly on one beat.