SampleThis Manual

Overview

SampleThis turns a track into a vertical video for Reels, Shorts and TikTok. Load a track, give it a title, its BPM and key, crop it to the part you want to show and pick a colour. SampleThis then renders a video of your title over a waveform that moves with the music, with the cropped audio as its soundtrack.

• An audio effect. Load it on any audio track in your DAW (AU, VST3 or AAX). While the preview plays you hear the loaded track in place of that track's audio. When the preview is stopped, your audio passes through unchanged.
• Saved with your project: The title, BPM, key, crop and colour. The track itself is not saved, so load it again when you reopen the project. Loading a track always starts with the whole track selected, so set the crop again after loading it.
• Not automatable. The plugin has no DAW parameters and does not use MIDI.
• Undo: Changes to the title, BPM, key, crop and colour can be undone with Cmd+Z and redone with Cmd+Shift+Z or Cmd+Y. Loading a track cannot be undone. Undo and redo are not available while a reel is generating.
• Info bar: The bar at the bottom explains whatever is under the mouse.

On Windows, use Ctrl wherever this manual says Cmd.

Quick Start

1. Click LOAD TRACK, or drag an audio file onto the plugin.
2. Type the title, then set the BPM and the key.
3. Drag the yellow handles of the crop around the part of the track the reel should play.
4. Pick a waveform colour.
5. Click play under the preview to see and hear the reel.
6. Click GENERATE. When the video is done it is shown in its folder, and OPEN FILE shows it again later.

1. Loading a Track

Click LOAD TRACK and choose an audio file, or drag a file from your computer anywhere onto the plugin. If you drag several files, only the first one is loaded.

• Formats: wav, mp3, aif, aiff, flac, ogg and opus.
• Length: Only the first 10 minutes of a longer file are loaded.
• Status: The line under LOAD TRACK shows how far the import has got, then the file's name. Before a track is loaded it reads "No track loaded. Load one to generate a reel."
• A new track replaces the last one, and the crop starts over with the whole track selected.
• A track cannot be loaded while a reel is generating, or while another track is still importing.

2. Reel Preview and Playback

The tall panel on the left is the reel as it will look: SampleThis! at the top, then your title, the BPM and key, and the waveform, which moves with the music while it plays. The generated video also has a small Sottovoce DSP logo under the waveform.

• Play and pause: The button at the bottom left plays the preview from the playhead, and pauses it.
• Seek bar: Spans the crop, not the whole track. Click or drag it to move the playhead.
• The preview plays the crop once and stops at its end. Click play again to start over from the beginning of the crop.
• While the preview plays, the loaded track replaces the audio of the DAW track SampleThis is on, with a short fade in and out. When it stops, your audio passes through again.
• Clicking GENERATE stops the preview.
• The controls are dimmed until a track is loaded.

3. Title, BPM and Key

These are the words on the reel. The preview updates as you type.

• Title: Click the box and type. Press Return or click somewhere else to keep the title, or press Esc to go back to the last one. An empty title becomes UNTITLED, and a box showing UNTITLED starts empty when you click it.
• BPM: A whole number from 20 to 999. Decimals are rounded, and numbers outside the range are brought inside it. Text that is not a number leaves the BPM as it was. A new instance starts at 120 BPM.
• Key: The arrows on either side of the note move the key down or up a semitone, wrapping round between B and C. The arrows beside MAJOR or MINOR, or a click on the word itself, switch between the two.
• The reel shows the BPM and key under the title, for example "96 BPM | Am".

4. Crop

The crop sets which part of the track goes into the reel, and the reel is as long as the crop. The overview shows the whole track. The bars inside the yellow frame are in the reel's colour, the bars outside it are grey, and the white line is the playhead.

• Handles: Drag the left handle to set where the reel starts and the right handle to set where it ends. The preview follows while you drag, and the crop is kept when you let go. Hold Shift to drag slowly for fine adjustments.
• Reset: Right click a handle to move it back to the start or the end of the track.
• Seek: Click inside the crop to move the playhead there. Click the left handle without moving it to jump back to the start of the crop.
• Shortest crop: 250 milliseconds, or 1 percent of the track if that is longer.
• The line under the overview shows where the crop starts and ends and how long it is, in minutes, seconds and hundredths, for example "0:02.40 to 0:13.60 (0:11.20)".
• The crop is locked until a track is loaded, while a track imports, and while a reel is generating.

5. Waveform Colour

Click GREEN, BLUE, PINK, ORANGE or GREY to colour the reel's waveform and the bars inside the crop. The chosen colour's button is brighter than the others. Green is the default.

6. Generating a Reel

Click GENERATE to render the reel. The line under the button shows the progress, first "Rendering frames" and then "Encoding video". When the video is done it is shown in its folder, and the line reads "Saved" followed by the file's name.

• The video: 1080 by 1920 pixels (9:16) at 30 frames per second, an MP4 with H.264 video and AAC audio. The audio is the crop of the original file, with a short fade at the very end.
• Where it goes: Your Documents folder, named Reel and the date and time it was made, for example "Reel 2026-10-16 21.30.05.mp4".
• OPEN FILE: Shows the last reel in its folder (Finder on a Mac, File Explorer on Windows). If it has been moved or deleted, generate it again.
• REGENERATE: Once a reel is made the button reads REGENERATE. Each click makes a new video, and the earlier ones are kept.
• Cancel: While a reel is generating the button reads CANCEL. Cancelling stops the render and saves nothing.
• While a reel is generating, the title, BPM, key, crop and colour are locked, and the preview stops.
• If something goes wrong, the line under the button says what happened, and no unfinished file is left behind.

The FFMPEG component

Generating needs FFMPEG, a component the installer installs unless you untick it: FFMPEG Video Export Component on a Mac, FFmpeg Video Encoder on Windows. Without it GENERATE is greyed out, and the info bar says "Video export requires the bundled ffmpeg component. Reinstall the plugin with the FFMPEG option enabled." Run the installer again and tick the component.

7. Settings

Click the SOTTOVOCE logo at the bottom right to open the settings menu.

• View Licence Agreement: Shows the EULA and copyright notice.
• View Licence Information: Shows the active licence information.
• View Manual: Brings you to this page.
• Scale-up Plugin Dimensions / Scale-down Plugin Dimensions: Shows the plugin at 100 or 150 percent. Scale-up is greyed out when the larger window would not fit on your display.