Synchronized Lyrics
Synchronized lyrics contain a series of lyrics text pieces (lines, words, syllables) intermixed with timestamps that indicate at what specific time in the audio each piece begins. While Unsynchronized lyrics are stored in a tag as plain text, synchronized lyrics are stored as a single, contiguous binary object composed of text pieces interleaved with their associated timestamps.
A brief example will illustrate the use of the Synchronized Lyrics Editor, here using the following two lines of lyrics:
Strangers in the night
Exchanging glances
The simplest synchronization scheme would be a single line of lyrics per each grid line, with a corresponding timestamp indicating when each line begins in the audio:
Each line in the grid does not have to represent a whole line of lyrics, however. A more typical synchronization scheme would be based upon whole words or syllables. Below are the same two lines of lyrics timestamped by syllable this time:
Some basic formatting rules are visible above:
- New line indicators ("^") always go at the beginning of a grid line (but none should go on the first line).
- If a space character falls at the end of a piece of text, it should be placed at the beginning of the next grid line.
- All entries should be listed in ascending order of time.
Controls:
 Insert a new row above the current row. Delete the current row. Add a new row to the end. Move the current row up or down. As in the Main Editor, any row can be swapped with any other row by dragging its row number button to another location while holding the control key depressed Copy unsynchronized lyrics into the grid, one line of lyrics per grid line. Clear the grid of all data. |
