Abaltat Muse represents a departure from traditional post-production tools, exploiting artificial intelligence to measure select elements of a moving picture and then composing music to match those elements. Designed specifically for video editors, Abaltat Muse uses a combination of picture window, timeline, and keyframes to compose music, leveraging a video editor’s skills — not a musician’s — to create music.

“The highly imaginative technology behind Abaltat Muse allows video editors to actually create original compositions tailored to their specific picture sequences,” said Siun Ni Raghallaigh, managing director at Abaltat. “The software actually writes the music to the picture and provides the editor with tools for refining or updating tracks at any point. The resulting music has the aural quality of a recorded band and can be altered in real time to achieve just the right sound.”

Among the elements that help the video editor achieve the right sound are the preferred style of music, the elements in the picture, the instruments needed, and the time signature that works best with the edit. Once a best fit is achieved, the user has limitless options in adjusting the composition using factors such as melodic constraints, scale modulation, and audio mix. All these adjustments can be performed using keyframes in a timeline synced to the picture.

Abaltat Muse composes the music and plays it out using a sample player and virtual instruments. The software incorporates technology from experts in the audio industry, namely Native Instruments and Garritan Libraries. Consequently, the audio and instrument quality is extremely high. The audio can be exported as AIFF or WAV files. The composition can be exported as a MIDI file, should the editor require a composer to do additional work on his or her composition.