Processing Audio Visualization (PAV) - Commands

PAV allows you to change how music is visualized by adding, configuring, and removing Visualizers at runtime. You can issue commands to PAV by writing into the PAV window and hitting enter. What you write is displayed at the bottom right of the window (see image below). You can scroll through the command history by using the up- and down-arrow keys. Note that there are no error messages: if you enter a valid command, it is executed. If the command is invalid, nothing happens. This page lists all available commands. (home)

The PAV window.

Adding and removing Visualizers

To add a Visualizer type add x [level], where x is the name of the Visualizer to add (see Visualizers) and level is the (optional) level you want to place the Visualizer at in the stack. All active visualizers are placed in a stack and drawn independently from each other. Visualizers with lower levels are drawn first. Visualizers can be removed via rem level. You can see all active Visualizers and their level at the top right of the PAV window.

Configuring Visualizers

Active Visualizers can be configured at runtime via c level attribute value1 [value2 .. valuen]. The remainder of this page shows all available commands for all visualizers. The prefix c level is omited for clarity.

Common Attributes

The following attributes are supported by all Visualizers.
color COLOR1 [COLOR2 ... COLORN]
Allows you to specify the color(s) used by the Visualizer. You can specify any number of colors. How these colors are used depends on the Visualizer. All colors must be of the form RRGGBB or AARRGGBB.
area LOWX LOWY HIGHX HIGHY
Sets the area of the display window that is available to the Visualizer. How this area is used depends on the Visualizer. All values are relative to the window size and must be between 0 and 1 (e.g. 0.5 means half of the window width/height). The origin of the coordinate system is at the top left.

Bubbles

bloom V
Whether to emphazise bright colors or not. V must be 0 or 1.
size MIN MAX
Sets the minimum and maximum size of the bubbles. The sizes are relative to the display area width. MIN and MAX must be between 0 and 0.5.
rate MIN MAX
Specifies the minimum and maximum rate at which bubbles are spawned. The values are per frame, i.e, a rate of 0.1 means that on average 1 bubble is spawned every 10 frames. MIN and MAX must be between 0 and 5.
darken FACTOR
Sets the darken factor, that is how fast bubbles disappear. FACTOR must be positive, default is 12.

Wavering

sw VAL
Sets the stroke weight to use when drawing. VAL must be a parsable float > 0 (e.g. 1.5).
radius RX [RY]
The radius of the ring. The values are relative to the display area width, i.e. 0.5 means 0.5 times the display area. If only RX is specified, that values is used for RY aswell.
displace DX [DY]
The maximum displacement of the ring. The values are relative to the display area width, i.e. 0.5 means 0.5 times the display area. If only DX is specified, that values is used for DY aswell.
rcolor COLOR
[OpenGL mode only] Sets the color of the ring. COLOR must be of the form RRGGBB or AARRGGBB.
darken FACTOR
[OpenGL mode only] Sets the darken factor, that is how fast stuff disappears. Must be greater 0 and below 1. Default is 0.006.
brightthresh VALUE
[OpenGL mode only] Sets the brightness threshold for the bloom effect, that is how bright a color must be in order to glow. Must be greater 0 and below 1. Default is 0.3.
bloomintensity VALUE
[OpenGL mode only] Sets the intensity of the bloom (glow) effect. Must be >= 0.
exposure VALUE
[OpenGL mode only] Sets the exposure to use for tone mapping. Must be > 0. Default is 1.6.
maxbright VALUE
[OpenGL mode only] Sets the brightness maximum for tone mapping. Must be > 0. Default is 0.9.

Waveform

mode MODE
Sets the drawing mode. Valid modes are bins (default), dots and shape.
sw VAL
Sets the stroke weight to use when drawing. VAL must be a parsable float > 0 (e.g. 1.5).

Spectrum

mode MODE
Sets the drawing mode. Valid modes are bins (default), dots and shape.
freq F1 [F2]
Sets the frequency range to display. All values must be positive integers. If only F1 is set, it corresponds to the maximum frequency (all frequencies up to F1 are visualized). If F1 is 0, all frequencies are displayed (default). If F2 is set too, F1 and F2 specify the minimum/maximum frequency to display.
sw VAL
Sets the stroke weight to use when drawing. VAL must be a parsable float > 0 (e.g. 1.5).

Spectogram

hightop V
Sets whether to display high frequencies at the top or at the bottom (default). V must be 1 or 0.
freq F1 [F2]
Sets the frequency range to display. All values must be positive integers. If only F1 is set, it corresponds to the maximum frequency (all frequencies up to F1 are visualized). If F1 is 0, all frequencies are displayed (default). If F2 is set too, F1 and F2 specify the minimum/maximum frequency to display.

Rainbow

mode MODE
Specifies whether to use the frequency distribution (default) or the intensity of the sound for calculating colors.

Phasor

mode MODE
Sets the drawing mode. Valid modes are dots, lines and curves (default).
sw VAL
Sets the stroke weight to use when drawing. VAL must be a parsable float > 0 (e.g. 1.5).

MelSpectrum

num NUM
Sets the number of bands to calculate (default is 40). NUM must be a positive integer.
bcolor COLOR
Sets the color of the rectangle borders. COLOR must be of the form RRGGBB or AARRGGBB.
quantize STEPS
Sets the number of quantization steps (see Wikipedia). STEPS must be an integer. Set to 0 to disable.

Boxes

rotate FACTOR
Rotates the boxes at a speed specified by FACTOR. Factor must be between -5 and 5. Set to 0 to disable.
bcolor COLOR
Sets the color of the box edges. COLOR must be of the form RRGGBB or AARRGGBB.
quantize STEPS
Sets the number of quantization steps (see Wikipedia). STEPS must be an integer. Set to 0 to disable.
maxheight HEIGHT
Specifies the maximum height of the boxes. Must be a positive integer.