Seamless loop

A seamless loop is a piece of video or audio that ends exactly where it begins, so it can repeat without a visible jump or an audible click. In short video, loops are everywhere: animated backgrounds behind text, music beds under a voice, ambience such as rain, and reels designed to replay smoothly.

Seamless video loops

A video loop is seamless when the last frame flows straight into the first. Every moving element returns to its starting state at the end: a gradient finishes its cycle, particles complete their orbit, a grid scrolls exactly one cell. In code, that means animations whose duration divides evenly into the loop length and that end where they start.

Animated backgrounds are the most common use. A loop of 8 or 10 seconds can run behind a video of any length, and nobody notices where it repeats as long as nothing jumps.

Seamless audio loops

Music loops are seamless when they contain a whole number of bars at their tempo and the audio at the cut matches up. The length follows from the tempo:

seconds = bars x 4 x 60 / BPM

At 124 BPM, 8 bars last 15.48 seconds. A loop cut to that exact length, with any reverb tail folded back into the start, repeats without a bump. Ambience loops such as rain or waves work the same way, without the bars.

Loop versus edit

A loop has no ending, so it is perfect under a video of any length but sounds unfinished on its own at the end of a reel. An edit with a real ending (a final hit or chord) is better when the music should finish with the video. Many music packs offer both.

In Motion Cheat Code

Each of the 30 music tracks comes as a seamless loop plus 15, 30 and 60 second edits with a real ending and three stems; the 30 animated backgrounds are seamless loops at 1080 x 1920 with their HyperFrames source; and the ambience sounds loop without a click. See the music page for the tracks and their tempos.