Live Waveforms — User Manual

Manual version v0.4.3 · September 2026 · Kaizen Audio

Contents

1. Introduction
2. System requirements
3. Installation
4. License
5. Getting started (quick guide)
6. The interface, area by area
7. Choosing tracks and updating
8. Strip tab — position and size
9. Waveform tab — the wave and the clips
10. Layers
11. Colors tab — colours and multichannel
12. The Kaizen Overlay frame
13. Sync and the per-machine offset
14. Follow PT waveform zoom
15. Presets
16. About tab
17. Troubleshooting
18. Specifications

1. Introduction

When we work on the sound of a picture in post-production, the waveform lives in the Edit Window and the picture lives in the Video window: you look at one or the other. Live Waveforms puts the wave on top of the video, locked to the playhead sample for sample. You see the peaks, the gaps and every audio in and out without taking your eyes off the picture.

It doesn’t touch your audio —it’s a silent instrument—: it reads the session through PTSL (Pro Tools’ scripting layer) and paints a transparent overlay anchored to your Video window. No audio in the signal path.

• Shows up to four tracks, stacked.
• Draws clip gain, fades and crossfades, markers, mute zebra and track names.
• Works in stereo and multichannel (LCR, 5.1…), including multi-mono MXF.
• The strip can follow Pro Tools’ vertical waveform zoom with the same shortcuts.
• It refreshes on save.

Everything about how the strip looks (position, size, colours, alpha, layers) is saved with the session, so it comes back the same every time you open it.

2. System requirements

3. Installation

1. Quit Pro Tools.
2. Open the Live Waveform <version>.pkg installer (signed and notarized by Apple — it installs with no Gatekeeper warnings) and follow the steps.
3. The installer places two things:
   • the plug-in, in /Library/Application Support/Avid/Audio/Plug-Ins/Kaizen Audio/;
   • Kaizen Overlay, in /Library/Application Support/Kaizen Audio/. It shows up on the selection screen, ticked and not un-tickable, because the plug-in draws nothing without it. It is the same app the other Kaizen Audio plug-ins use: if you already have this version or newer, it is left untouched.
4. Launch Pro Tools. If it was already open, quit it fully (Cmd+Q) and relaunch so it rescans.
5. The first time the overlay starts, macOS asks for Accessibility permission for Kaizen Overlay. Grant it: once per computer, and it covers every Kaizen Audio plug-in and every DAW.

To uninstall, delete Live Waveform.aaxplugin from that folder. Kaizen Overlay can stay: the other Kaizen Audio plug-ins share it.

4. License

Live Waveforms is licensed through your Kaizen Audio account (Moonbase). No iLok, no serial numbers to type: activation happens in your browser. The license is one per person and covers up to two (2) of your computers (see the EULA the installer shows).

No license, no strip. Because this is a silent instrument, the lock is visual: without a valid license (or an active trial) the overlay does not show — no waveform, no frame. As soon as you activate, the strip appears on its own, no restart. The activation flow is the one shared by every Kaizen plug-in.

4.1 Activate (online)

1. When you insert the plug-in unlicensed, the activation panel opens (or open it from About → Manage License). Click Activate and Let’s go!.
2. Your browser opens at kaizen.audio. Sign in and, from your account menu, assign the license to this machine — or request the trial if you haven’t bought yet.
3. Back in Pro Tools: the panel closes on its own, nothing to restart, and the strip appears over the video.
4. Check the status in the About tab: you’ll see Active and your email.

4.2 The trial

The trial is the full plug-in for 15 days. When it expires, the activation panel comes back so you can enter a permanent license.

4.3 Offline activation (computer with no internet)

If the studio machine is off the network, click Offline Activation on the activation screen:

1. Generate your machine file (a .dt, on the Desktop by default).
2. Take it (on a USB stick) to any computer with internet, go to kaizenaudio.moonbase.sh/activate, upload it and download your license file (.mb).
3. Back in the studio, drag the license file onto the panel’s drop zone (or double-click to browse for it).

Offline-activated licenses never reconnect to the internet.

4.4 Deactivate / move to another computer

To free a machine (remember: 2 computers per license): About → Manage License → Deactivate. It needs internet (it tells the server that machine is free). Always deactivate from the button, don’t just delete files: if you remove the local license without deactivating, that machine still counts as taken (if that happens, contact support to free it). Offline licenses have no Deactivate button — move them from the web or through support.

4.5 Working offline

With an online license, the plug-in revalidates with the server occasionally and silently. If you go offline (or a proxy/VPN gets in the way), it keeps working for a 14-day grace period, showing you the deadline on screen. Get back online before that date and the count resets on its own.

5. Getting started (quick guide)

1. In Pro Tools, open the Video window (Window → Video) and load your video clip.
2. Create an Instrument track and insert Live Waveforms (Kaizen Audio).
3. Open the plug-in window. The four track selectors show “Loading saved data…” for a moment while the session’s tracks load.
4. In Track 1, pick the audio track you want to see. You can add up to four (they stack in the strip).
5. Press VIEW OVERLAY (bottom). The strip appears over your video, pinned to the playhead. Hit play: the wave scrolls in sync.
6. If the strip doesn’t show up, see section 12 (Accessibility permission / manual anchoring).

That first setup is saved with the session: reopen it and everything comes back.

6. The interface, area by area

The window is fixed size. Top to bottom:

7. Choosing tracks and updating

• The 4 selectors pick which tracks get drawn (up to four, stacked 1→4). The [AUD *] suffix tells you the track type and that it has clips.
• Update forces a refresh: it re-reads the session’s clips and the WaveCache (Pro Tools’ waveform cache).
• Auto-update: most of the time you don’t need Update. When you save the session (Cmd+S), the strip refreshes itself with the new clips and audio. If you add a clip whose audio Pro Tools is still analysing, give it a moment and hit Update.

The selectors read “Loading saved data…” while Pro Tools hasn’t reported the tracks yet. With no session open they read (none).

Where each waveform comes from. Live Waveforms identifies a clip’s audio by its UMID — the same fingerprint Pro Tools uses to relink media — and looks the waveform up in the WaveCache with it. That’s why it gets the right one even when the session holds several different files sharing a name, which is the norm on production sound, and even when the clip uses a high channel of a poly with more than eight tracks. Silent audio (the Pic Cut and Scene Cut dummies, mutes) is drawn as a flat line, just like in Pro Tools.

If a clip shows no waveform but plays audio, it almost always means Pro Tools hasn’t analysed that file yet: save the session, give it a moment and hit Update.

And if the whole strip comes up with no waveforms at all, check the diagnostic line on the About tab. If it reads “no index yet”, the WaveCache is there but Pro Tools hasn’t written its index yet — which happens to very large sessions while they’re open. Save the session and come back.

8. Strip tab — position and size

Controls where the strip lives over the video and how big it is.

• Overlay on Pro Tools — shows/hides the strip (same as VIEW OVERLAY).
• Side — which edge of the video it sticks to: Top · Bottom · Left · Right.
• Zoom — seconds visible across the strip (more zoom, more time on screen).
• Size — how thick the strip is (a percentage of the video’s height/width). Multiple tracks share that block.
• Alpha — the general alpha: the transparency of clips, waves and the rest of the components (not the backdrop).
• Backdrop — the alpha of the black veil behind the strip. It’s independent from the general Alpha: you can have an opaque black backdrop with translucent clips. Besides giving the wave contrast, it’s handy to cover burned-in info on the picture (scope bars, timecode burn-ins, etc.) that falls under the strip and gets in the way.
• Shuttle — scrub speed on FFWD/REW (percentage of real time), like Pro Tools/Streamers.

9. Waveform tab — the wave and the clips

• Show waveforms — draw the waveform inside each clip, or not.
• Height — the wave’s height (vertical zoom). It covers Pro Tools’ whole ladder, 0.55 to 118.9, with 6 at the slider’s midpoint. It can follow Pro Tools’ zoom (see section 14).
• Alpha — the wave’s transparency.
• Clip fill — the fill of the clip body.
• Clip border — the clip frame thickness (0 = no frame).
• Clip round — corner rounding of the clip.
• Fade/bord — alpha of the fades/crossfades and the frame (they move together).
• Follow PT waveform zoom — see section 14.

10. Layers

Four fixed switches under the tabs (always visible), toggling elements of the drawing:

• Track names — the track name over its strip, in the track colour.
• Fades — draws fades and crossfades (crossfades as crossfades, not as a fade-out plus fade-in).
• Markers — Pro Tools ruler markers, with their colour and name.
• Mute zebra — a diagonal hatch over muted clips.

11. Colors tab — colours and multichannel

Each element can follow the Pro Tools track colour or use a colour of its own:

• Clip / Wave / Border — from PT track — on: uses the track colour. Off (or clicking Custom): pick a fixed colour.
• Custom — opens the colour picker for that element.
• 5.1+ chan — for tracks with more than two channels, which channel(s) to show: Center · Left · Right · L C R. In stereo, both channels are stacked.

12. The Kaizen Overlay frame

Live Waveforms does not draw the window. Kaizen Overlay does — a Kaizen Audio app installed alongside the plug-in that holds a single frame shared by every plug-in in the range. If you also run Streamers Pro, both draw into that same frame: one window, not two.

You place the frame once and it serves them all. Its settings live in the ⚙ (gear) in the header, under OVERLAY ANCHOR — this machine (it depends on each computer’s monitor and layout, not on the project).

• Anchor to video window (auto) — on by default: the frame finds the Video window on its own and follows it as it opens, moves, changes screen or resizes, full-screen video included. Until it finds one, Live Waveforms draws nothing — it never covers your DAW.
• Manual — if it can’t find it on your machine: turn the toggle off and drag and resize the Kaizen Overlay frame onto your video. That position is saved on that computer and shared by every plug-in.

Accessibility permission. To find the Video window, macOS requires Kaizen Overlay to have Accessibility permission (System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility). It is granted once per computer, to the app and not to your DAW, and it covers every Kaizen Audio plug-in and every DAW. The plug-in asks for it with a dialog and a Grant button that opens that panel with Kaizen Overlay already listed.

The frame is click-through: it never steals clicks or covers your DAW’s mouse.

The footer also reports the renderer currently drawing the overlay: RENDER: METAL, RENDER: OPENGL or RENDER: OFFLINE. It is a diagnostic readout, not a setting you need to choose.

When two plug-ins draw on the same edge

Live Waveforms sits at the top by default and Streamers Pro’s Cue Strip at the bottom, so they stay clear of each other. If you move the wave to the same edge, both are drawn, stacked, and Live Waveforms tells you with a dialog: who was there first, and on which edge. To separate them, change Side in the Strip tab.

Nothing is blocked: if you would rather have them overlapping, close the notice and carry on.

13. Sync and the per-machine offset

Live Waveforms applies no automatic delay compensation: it uses the playhead as-is and subtracts the session PDC (you’ll see it in the footer), the same way Streamers Pro does. If you still see a small drift, trim it in the ⚙ (gear):

• Offset ms — shifts the strip by ±ms until it matches the picture Pro Tools already shows aligned. It’s a per-machine setting (it depends on each computer’s hardware/buffer): saved per computer, applied to every session. Reset 0 zeroes it.

Normally this Offset should match Pro Tools’ Video Sync Offset: the same delay you use to line up external video monitors. If you have that value in Pro Tools, start with the same one here.

14. Follow PT waveform zoom

Pro Tools changes the vertical waveform zoom (the drawing’s amplitude) with Cmd+Alt+[ and Cmd+Alt+], and resets it with Cmd+Alt+Ctrl+[. Live Waveform can follow that with the strip:

• Turn it on in the Waveform tab with Follow PT waveform zoom.
• With Pro Tools in front, those shortcuts raise/lower the strip’s height along with Pro Tools’. The reset re-aligns them (it’s the anchor).

Pro Tools doesn’t expose the exact zoom level, so the strip follows the steps (not the absolute value): use the reset to line them up again. It only acts with Pro Tools in the foreground.

Each keystroke raises or lowers the height by the same proportion, not by a fixed amount: the first step eases in and every step feels the same. The ladder is matched to Pro Tools’ —three steps up put Height at 6, and it has the same eight rungs it does:

1 → 1.8 → 3.3 → 6 → 10.9 → 19.8 → 36 → 65.4 → 118.9

Every keystroke lands on a rung, so stepping back down the same number of times returns you exactly where you were, even if you moved the Height slider by hand along the way. The slider covers that same scale, with 6 at its midpoint.

15. Presets

In the header, the Preset menu saves the strip’s look (everything on the tabs): colours, size, alpha, layers, and so on. It does not save the track selection (that belongs to the session).

• Factory: Default · Outline clips · Solid clips. They ship with the plug-in, but they are your files: you can edit them, and if you delete one it stays deleted (it won’t come back next time you open the plug-in).
• User: your presets, saved with Save….
• < / > cycle through them all.

They all live together in the company folder, inside your Documents folder:

~/Documents/Kaizen Audio/Live Waveform Presets/

Kaizen Audio is the folder shared by all our programs (you’ll find PRISM, Streamers and VORTEX in there too). Open Presets Folder in the menu opens it in the Finder: presets are plain .lwfpreset files, so moving them to another machine or handing them to a colleague is a drag and drop.

Coming from an older version: presets used to be tucked away in ~/Library/Kaizen Audio/Live Waveform/Presets/. The first time you open the plug-in they move themselves to the new folder, names and dates intact. Nothing to do, and nothing is lost or overwritten.

16. About tab

Explains what the plug-in does and the sync note. The License line shows Active (with your email) when licensed, Not activated otherwise, and Checking activation… for the second it takes to check when the plug-in opens. A Manage License button opens the activation panel (activate, deactivate, check status, request the trial).

Below it, the Overlay line tells you what is happening with the drawing: if Kaizen Overlay isn’t running it says so and a Start button appears; if it is missing the permission, a Grant; while it uploads the waveforms of a large session, how many are left; and when all is well, which version of Kaizen Overlay is behind it and the size of the video it found. That version is not idle trivia: the plug-in talks to whichever copy of Kaizen Overlay is running, so this is where you see which one.

Last, a diagnostic line (tracks read, pic cut, WaveCache and .ptx status, and the build date).

17. Troubleshooting

The strip doesn’t appear over the video. The Overlay line on the About tab usually says so itself. If not, check in this order: (1) that the plug-in is licensed — About should read Active; if not, open Manage License and activate (with no license the overlay never shows); (2) that Kaizen Overlay is running — if it isn’t, About says so and gives you a Start button; (3) that Pro Tools’ Video window is open; (4) that VIEW OVERLAY is on; (5) that Kaizen Overlay has Accessibility permission — the app, not Pro Tools (see section 12). If it can’t find the video on your machine, switch to manual (⚙) and place the frame by hand.

The wave and Streamers Pro’s Cue Strip overlap. They are both on the same edge. Change Side in the Strip tab: by default the wave sits at the top and the Cue Strip at the bottom, so they never touch.

The strip floated over Pro Tools and covered the mouse. Fixed since 0.3.1: when it loses the video, the strip hides instead of covering the screen. If you see it on an older version, update.

Settings weren’t saved with the session. Fixed since 0.3.1: every setting travels with the session. The Offset and the video anchor are per-machine by design, not per-session.

I added a clip and it doesn’t show. Save the session (auto-update) or hit Update. If the audio is new, give Pro Tools a moment to write its WaveCache and hit Update again.

There’s a small drift on play. Trim Offset ms in the ⚙ (it’s per-machine). See section 13.

The backdrop dimmed when I lowered the Alpha. Fixed since 0.3.1: Alpha (general) and Backdrop are independent.

Does it run on an Intel Mac? Yes. Live Waveforms v0.4.3 is a Universal build for Apple Silicon and Intel. If an older package refuses to install, download the latest installer.

18. Specifications

Live Waveforms is a Kaizen Audio Group SL product — kaizen.audio Pro Tools and AAX are trademarks of Avid Technology. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.