How to add visuals to Logic Pro

Logic Pro plays a movie in sync with your project, which is how film composers score to picture. Visuals drawn from the music itself come from a plugin. Load a visualizer Audio Unit on the Stereo Out channel strip and it shows a moving picture of your song, then records it with the sound in the file. This guide covers the Movie track for footage you already have, then the plugin for a picture made from the song.

The built-in route: the Movie track

Choose File > Movie > Open Movie and Logic Pro shows the movie as thumbnails on the global Movie track and plays it in the floating Movie window, locked to the playhead. You write the cue against the picture, then File > Movie > Export Audio to Movie writes your mix into the movie file. It is the right tool for a film score, an ad, or a trailer. Logic Pro plays the picture you bring and writes sound into it, so the video itself comes from somewhere else.

The plugin route: an Audio Unit on the Stereo Out

A visualizer plugin loads into an Audio Effect slot, with every look already built. You pick a scene and a palette, and it reacts to the track from the first beat.

This is the route Photism takes. It is a VST3 and Audio Unit effect that passes your audio through untouched, and the plugin window is the visualizer. Logic Pro loads Audio Units, so Photism runs there as the AU. Twenty-four scenes, from marbled ink to architectural geometry to a live reaction-diffusion figure, each react to kicks, bass weight, and energy in real time.

Install and scan

1. Install the plugin. Run the Photism installer. It puts the Audio Unit in /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components, where Logic Pro looks. macOS asks for your password once.
2. Scan it in Logic Pro. Open Logic Pro. If Photism is not in the list yet, choose Logic Pro > Settings > Plug-in Manager, select Photism, and click Reset & Rescan Selection.
3. Give it a home. In the Plug-in Manager, click the + above the Category list, name the new category Visuals, and drag Photism into it. It then shows up in that folder of the plugin menu.

Load it on the Stereo Out

1. Press X to open the Mixer and find the Stereo Out channel strip.
2. Click an empty Audio Effect slot, choose Audio Units, then Photism.
3. The plugin window opens on its own, and it is the visualizer. Press play in Logic Pro and the picture starts moving with the song.

On the Stereo Out, Photism hears the whole mix. Put it on a single track or aux instead and it follows only that part, a drum bus for example.

Pick a look

Every control has a button in the row along the corner of the window, so you can drive the whole thing with the mouse:

• tab · scenes opens the scene grid. Click any scene to jump to it.
• p · opens the palette card. Every color set is on one card.
• x · shuffle picks a fresh scene and palette in one click.
• g · tune opens the tuning panel, with the macros, the lens, and your saved presets.

The keyboard shortcuts work too. In the plugin they take shift: shift+g for the panel, shift+r to record, shift+o for the output. If Logic Pro answers a shortcut with its own key command, click the button instead. Drop an album cover onto the window and Photism builds a five-color palette from it, so the visuals match the release.

Record the video

1. Choose the frame with the a · button: 16:9 for YouTube, 9:16 for Reels and TikTok, 1:1 for a square post.
2. Put the playhead at the start of the song.
3. Click r · rec in the window, or press shift+r, then press play in Logic Pro.
4. When the song ends, click the record button again. The button steps through finishing, adding sound, and saving, then names the folder.

The MP4 saves to your Downloads folder with the song already in it, taken from the channel strip Photism sits on. You skip the bounce and the step of lining the song up in an editor. Clips record at each platform’s upload size, and the recording settings in the tuning panel go up to 4K.

Keep the plugin window open until the button says saved. Covering it with other windows is fine, and closing it ends the take. If the Link button in the plugin window header is on, Logic Pro shows every plugin you open in that one window, so turn Link off before a long take.

Change scenes on the drop

Photism’s scene, palette, mode, preset slot, and main controls are ordinary plugin parameters, so Logic Pro can automate them on the Output track:

1. Press Shift-Command-M to show the Output track at the bottom of the Tracks area, then press A to show automation.
2. In the Output track header, open the Automation Parameter pop-up menu, choose the Photism submenu, named for its slot, and choose Scene.
3. Click the automation line just before the drop, click again on the downbeat, and drag that second point to the new scene. Every playback switches the scene on that beat.

The same works for Palette at the bridge, Spin or Mirror as a slow build, or Preset Slot to swap the entire look on a section.

Getting it on a second screen

Click o · output, or press shift+o, to open a separate output window. Drag it to your second display or projector and make it fullscreen. It shows the visuals alone, with no buttons. To stream it, turn on Syphon in that window’s top bar and pick the Photism source in OBS, Resolume, or TouchDesigner. Syphon needs macOS 14 or later. The first time, macOS asks for Screen Recording access. Allow Logic Pro, since Photism runs inside it. The Syphon and Spout guide covers the receiving side.

Which route to pick

Both run inside your project, so trying either costs you a few minutes. You can feel Photism’s engine before installing anything at photism.app/online, which runs three scenes free in your browser from a dropped track or your mic.