How to use PulSound
PulSound is completely free to use right now — no account, no upload, no payment. This page walks through the whole process once, then covers the parts people usually ask about.
The short version
- Open the studio (the front page).
- Pick a style preset, or choose a template yourself — hover or tap any template to see it move before picking it.
- Choose your audio file.
- Set the aspect ratio for wherever the video is going.
- Press Preview to see it move.
- Press Export video and wait for the track to play through.
The file downloads when the recording finishes, and a share panel appears with quick links to Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. That's the entire process.
Nothing you load is uploaded
Your track is read by your own browser and analysed on your own machine. It never travels to our servers, so an unreleased song stays as private on PulSound as it is in the folder it came from. The same applies to your cover art and background image.
This has one practical consequence worth knowing: the recording happens in real time. A three-minute song takes three minutes to export, because the video is being produced as the audio plays. There is no queue and no server to wait on, but there is also no way to make it faster than the song itself.
Four kinds of video, not just one
| Mode | What it's for |
|---|---|
| Visualizer / Background | The classic music video — bars, particles, 3D, glass, fire, and more, all reacting to your track. |
| Intro / Outro | A short, fixed-length title card (3–8 seconds). A track is optional — the animation plays on its own. |
| Lyric Video | Captions synced to your track. Paste lyrics with timestamps, or use Tap Sync to set the timing by ear while it plays. |
| Transparent overlay | Exports with no background at all — just the reactive shapes — for layering over a live stream in OBS or Streamlabs. |
Choosing an aspect ratio
| Ratio | Where it goes |
|---|---|
| 16:9 | YouTube, and anywhere a normal widescreen video is expected |
| 9:16 | YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, TikTok |
| 1:1 | Square posts in the Instagram feed |
| 4:5 | Portrait posts in the Instagram feed — taller, so it fills more of the screen |
Export the same track more than once if you need it in several places. Your settings stay put between exports, so switching ratio and pressing Export again is a two-click job.
Resolution, frame rate and file size
1080p is the practical sweet spot for social platforms. 720p is perfectly acceptable and finishes faster. 360p and 480p exist for test exports — use them while you're still deciding on a look, then switch up for the real thing. 4K looks sharpest on YouTube but is demanding on your computer; if a 4K export stutters, drop to 1080p or switch from 60 fps to 30.
MP4 or WebM
Choose MP4 unless you have a specific reason not to — Instagram, TikTok and Facebook require it, and YouTube accepts both. Up-to-date Chrome, Edge and Safari record MP4 directly. Older browsers record WebM and PulSound converts it in your own browser afterwards, which roughly doubles the wait; if conversion isn't available, you still get the WebM file, and that one uploads to YouTube without any trouble.
Style presets
A style preset picks a template and tunes colours, sensitivity, font and effects to suit a genre — Deep House, Techno, Lo-Fi, Trance and many more. It's a starting point, not a lock: everything a preset sets stays fully editable afterwards, so pick one close to your genre and adjust from there rather than starting from a blank template.
Colours, gradients and text
Every colour field — accent, background, title text, artist text — can be a flat colour or a smooth gradient between two colours, with an adjustable angle for the background. Title and artist text each get their own colour and, optionally, their own gradient, independent of each other.
Overlay effects
Rain, snow, fog, lightning, fireflies, bubbles, falling leaves, glass drips, film grain, VHS glitch and a light leak — all layer on top of whichever template is selected, and several can run together at once. One shared intensity slider scales all active effects.
A timer on the video
An optional clock can be burned into the exported video itself — counting up from 0:00 or counting down from the track's length, in any corner, in your own colour. This is separate from the player on the Discover page, which has its own independent time display.
Getting a result that looks designed
- Pull your accent colour from your cover art. One matching colour does more than any other single setting.
- Turn sensitivity down for loud, heavily compressed masters, where everything moves at once and nothing reads. Turn it up for sparse or quiet tracks.
- For vertical video, move the text away from the bottom edge — apps put captions and buttons there.
- Fewer bars usually looks better on a phone than more. Detail disappears at small sizes.
Release pages and HyperFollow
Create a free account and every track you upload gets its own page at pulsound.com/your-name/track-title, with your cover art, a player, and buttons through to Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube. HyperFollow pages go further — pick from a dozen designs, set your own colours and font, and add links to every service you're on, all on one page you can put in a bio.
If something goes wrong
- The export stutters. Lower the resolution or frame rate, and close other tabs.
- Switching tabs during export ruins the video. Browsers slow down background tabs. Leave the tab visible while it records.
- Nothing moves in the preview. Check the track is playing and your system volume isn't muted.
- The file came out as WebM when you asked for MP4. Conversion couldn't run. The file still works for YouTube; for Instagram or TikTok, try an up-to-date Chrome, Edge or Safari.
Still stuck?
Write to support@pulsound.com — describe what you were trying to do and what happened instead, and we'll help.