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How to add an animated audio waveform in Premiere Pro

By Nicholas Johnson, who makes Podwobble · 30 October 2026

The short answer: the moving waveform comes from After Effects. In Premiere Pro, select the clips, right-click and choose Replace With After Effects Composition. In After Effects, add a solid, apply Effect > Generate > Audio Spectrum or Audio Waveform, and set Audio Layer to your audio. The linked composition plays in Premiere and updates as you change it.

Premiere Pro is where a lot of podcasts get edited, so it’s the natural place to want a waveform that moves with the voice. The waveforms on Premiere’s timeline are there to help you edit the audio; Adobe describes them as a way to see volume changes while you edit: an editing aid, not something drawn into the picture. For a waveform the viewer sees, you go through After Effects. This guide covers the exact round trip, which of the two effects to pick, how to wrap the waveform around a host photo, and how to give two hosts a waveform each. Premiere runs on Windows and macOS, and the menus used here are the same on both. (Adobe’s help pages now call the app just “Premiere”; it’s the same program.)

Can Premiere Pro make an animated waveform on its own?

Not with a built-in effect. When someone asked on Adobe’s forum how to put a moving waveform over a still image, Adobe’s community team answered that it isn’t available in Premiere Pro but is possible in After Effects (January 2025). The two apps are linked by Dynamic Link, so you build the waveform in After Effects and it plays in your Premiere sequence without exporting anything in between. You need both apps installed, and Adobe says to use the same versions of After Effects and Premiere, or Dynamic Link won’t work.

How do you add the waveform, step by step?

Send the clip to After Effects, put the effect on a solid, and come back. These are Adobe’s Dynamic Link steps with the effect settings from its Generate effects reference:

1. In Premiere, select the clips you want the waveform over: the audio, and the image or video under it.
2. Right-click one of the selected clips and choose Replace With After Effects Composition. After Effects opens and makes a new linked composition with your sequence settings.
3. In After Effects, add a solid the size of the composition (Layer > New > Solid).
4. With the solid selected, apply Effect > Generate > Audio Spectrum or Audio Waveform.
5. In Effect Controls, set Audio Layer to your audio. Nothing is drawn until you do.
6. Set the start and end points to place it, then the height, thickness and colours (below).
7. Save, and switch back to Premiere. The linked clip in your sequence now shows the waveform, and later changes in After Effects carry through.

Audio Spectrum or Audio Waveform: which should you use?

Use Audio Spectrum for bars that jump with the voice, and Audio Waveform for a line that traces the sound. Adobe says Audio Spectrum “displays the magnitude of audio levels at frequencies in the range that you define”, while Audio Waveform displays the waveform itself.

For speech, Audio Spectrum tends to be the more readable choice: a voice moves the bars clearly, where a waveform line can look like a busy scribble at small sizes. Fewer frequency bands and a higher Thickness give you chunky bars that still read on a phone. Audio Duration is how many milliseconds of audio the effect uses to work out each frame, so try a few values until the movement feels right.

How do you wrap the waveform around a host photo?

Draw a circle and use it as the path. Both effects have a Path setting, and for Audio Spectrum Adobe describes it as “the mask path along which to display the audio spectrum”. So:

1. On the solid that carries the effect, draw an ellipse mask around where the photo sits.
2. In the effect, set Path to that mask. The bars now run around the circle.
3. Put the photo layer underneath, centred in the ring.

This is the ring look you see on a lot of podcast clips. It’s also one of the looks in Podwobble, which is how the example below was made.

How do you give two hosts a waveform each?

Point each waveform at a different track. Each effect reads one Audio Layer, so a waveform drawn from the finished mix moves whenever anyone talks. If each host was recorded on their own track, bring those solo tracks into the composition as layers, make one solid per host, and set each solid’s Audio Layer to that host’s track. Give each host their own colour and the viewer can see who is speaking. Before you render, listen through once and make sure only the edited mix is heard, not the solo tracks on top of it.

The solo tracks have to line up with the edited episode for this to work. How to export them so they do, and what to do if you only have the mix, is in showing who’s speaking in a podcast video.

Can the host photo pulse with the voice instead?

Yes, with Convert Audio To Keyframes. In After Effects, choose Animation > Keyframe Assistant > Convert Audio To Keyframes with the composition active. Adobe says this adds an Audio Amplitude layer with three sliders, Left Channel, Right Channel and Both Channels, holding the loudness as keyframes. Link the photo’s Scale to the Both Channels slider with an expression and the photo grows and shrinks with the voice. If you’ve added solo tracks, do this in a composition that contains only that host’s track, because it reads all the audio in the composition. Keep the effect small; a few percent of movement reads as “speaking”, a lot reads as a glitch.

Why is playback slow, and how do you export?

After Effects is doing the rendering behind the scenes, so a linked composition can play back slowly in Premiere. Adobe’s Dynamic Link page suggests three fixes: use Clip > Render and Replace in Premiere to swap the linked clip for a rendered file, take the linked composition offline, or disable the linked clip while you edit other parts. Once you’re happy, export from Premiere as usual.

If you post in several shapes, say 9:16 for Shorts and Reels and 16:9 for YouTube, plan the layout for each one, and save the After Effects project as a starting point for next week.

What about captions?

Premiere has its own Speech to Text for transcribing a video and making captions from it, and it works in a range of languages, not just English. For captions that light up word by word, see word-by-word animated captions.

Is there a quicker way for a weekly show?

If the waveform clip is the whole job, a tool made only for it is quicker. Premiere and After Effects give you complete control, and for a one-off trailer that’s worth it. For a clip every week, it’s a lot of steps for the same result.

That’s why I make Podwobble, a desktop app for Mac and Windows that turns audio into video in four steps. In Voices you import the episode and give each host a photo, a name and a colour; add each host’s solo recording and Podwobble works out who is talking when (the solo tracks never appear in the video). In Look you pick a reactive ring around the host photo or one of four waveform styles (EQ Bars, Rise, Wave, Dots), and save it as a template. Captions transcribes on your computer and can highlight each word as it’s spoken, in English only; for other languages you bring your own file with Import SRT/VTT…. Export renders 16:9, 9:16, 4:5 and 1:1 in one go. It’s free with a small mark on exports, and Pro removes it. It doesn’t edit camera footage, so it sits alongside Premiere rather than replacing it.

For other ways to do this, including one free FFmpeg command and Clipchamp on Windows, see how to add a waveform to audio.

Questions

Do I need After Effects to add an animated waveform in Premiere Pro?

With Adobe’s own tools, yes. The Audio Spectrum and Audio Waveform effects are in After Effects, and Dynamic Link brings the result into your Premiere sequence. Both apps need to be the same version.

Why doesn’t my Audio Spectrum show anything?

Usually because Audio Layer isn’t set. The effect draws nothing until you point it at a layer that contains audio. Also check the start and end points aren’t off the edge of the frame.

Can I make the waveform a circle?

Yes. Draw an ellipse mask on the solid that carries the effect and choose that mask under Path. The bars or line then follow the circle.

Can I make a podcast waveform video without After Effects?

Yes. A free FFmpeg command or Clipchamp on Windows can do a simple one, and a dedicated app like Podwobble does the ring, captions and all four formats in one place. The options are compared in how to add a waveform to audio.

Written with the help of AI, from my notes on how Podwobble works. Facts are checked against the linked sources.