Waveframe

Turn a picture and a piece of audio into a YouTube-ready video

Waveframe is a free, open-source Linux app. Drop in a background image and your audio, place the waveform where you want it, pick one of 20 animated styles, and export a 1080p video. Your audio is copied in bit-for-bit, never re-encoded.

Download for Linux free AppImage, no installation View the source on GitHub
The Waveframe window: a background image in a 16:9 preview with a resizable waveform box over it, file pickers, a colour panel and an export panel.

Your audio, untouched

Most video tools quietly re-encode audio and shave a little quality off. Waveframe copies the original audio stream straight into the video file, byte for byte, whether that stream is MP3, WAV, FLAC, AAC/M4A or OGG. The output format is chosen so that copy is always possible: MP4 when your audio fits it, MKV otherwise. YouTube accepts both. If you override the format with one that would force a re-encode, Waveframe says so plainly and refuses to degrade your sound.

20 animated styles

Bars, mirrors, rings, scopes, grids and pulses. Every style appears in the picker as a moving preview, so you choose by eye.

Colour that matches

The waveform colour is picked from your image automatically. Override it any time with a picker or a hex code.

Sharp by refusal

Images below 1920 × 1080 are refused with a plain explanation rather than upscaled into blur.

Free and open

GPL-3.0, no account, no tracking, nothing to pay. FFmpeg is bundled, so the AppImage just runs.

How it works

  1. Add your two files

    A JPG or PNG background (1920 × 1080 or bigger) and your audio file.

  2. Place and style the waveform

    Drag the box anywhere, resize it by its corners, choose a style and colour. The preview shows exactly what the video will look like.

  3. Export

    One click, choose where to save, and you have a 1080p video the same length as your audio, ready to upload.

Twenty ways to move

Classic spectrum bars, SoundCloud-style progress waveforms, neon oscilloscopes, circular spectra, LED blocks, starbursts and more. Every thumbnail in the picker animates, so you choose with your eyes rather than guessing from a name.

The style picker showing twenty animated waveform thumbnails, including bars, rings, dots, grids and scopes.

Download

One file, no installation. Download, make it executable, run it.

Download the latest AppImage 
chmod +x Lightmorphic-Waveframe-*.AppImage
./Lightmorphic-Waveframe-*.AppImage

64-bit Linux. Free under the GPL-3.0 licence. Source code on GitHub.

Questions people ask

Does Waveframe change my audio?
No. The original audio stream is copied into the video byte for byte. Waveframe never re-encodes, resamples or trims it, and it picks the output format (MP4 or MKV) specifically so that copy is always possible.
Which file formats does it accept?
Images: JPG or PNG, at least 1920 × 1080. Audio: MP3, WAV, FLAC, AAC/M4A or OGG. The exported video is 1920 × 1080 H.264, in an MP4 or MKV file.
What does it cost?
Nothing. Waveframe is free software under the GPL-3.0 licence. No account, no tracking, no paid tier, and the full source code is public on GitHub.
Will YouTube accept the exported video?
Yes. The export is 1080p H.264 video in an MP4 or MKV container, both of which YouTube accepts, and the video length matches your audio exactly.
Which Linux distributions does it run on?
Any 64-bit distribution that can run AppImages, which covers all the common ones. FFmpeg is bundled inside, so there is nothing else to install.

Get in touch

Found a problem, or want a waveform style that isn't there yet? Tell us. Waveframe gets better because people write in.

Bugs and ideas: open an issue on GitHub

Issues land with a real person. Plain descriptions beat perfect bug reports; say what you did and what happened.