Make an ambient video loop

An ambient loop is watched out of the corner of the eye, often for hours, and that changes what matters. A tiny jump that would pass unnoticed once becomes a tic when it comes round every eight seconds all evening.

• No visible jump. The eye is quick to catch a flicker or a sudden shift. A long crossfade turns the restart into a slow dissolve that reads as part of the scene.
• Slow motion spread across the frame. Flames, ripples, drifting snow and swaying grass move everywhere at once, so no single moment stands out as the start.
• Nothing that arrives and leaves. A bird crossing the shot, a passing car or a log falling apart is memorable, and viewers start waiting for it to happen again.
• Steady light. A cloud passing over the sun or a camera adjusting its exposure creates a brightness change that is very hard to hide at the join.
• A longer loop. A 20-second loop repeats 180 times in an hour; a 2-second loop repeats 1,800 times. The longer the loop, the harder the pattern is to learn.

If the scene has one moving element and everything else is still, such as a candle in a dark room, a cinemagraph can freeze the rest and make the movement the only thing that changes.

Repeated sound gives a loop away faster than repeated picture. A distinctive pop in a fire recording, heard every twelve seconds, becomes the thing people notice.

Keeping the original sound

With Original selected, Smooth the sound at the join blends the last moment of audio into the first, and with a crossfade the sound fades across along with the picture. Choose a stretch where the sound is even, without a loud crack or a gust, so nothing stands out on each repeat.

Using a separate recording

Pick Music and use Choose music to add a longer audio file, such as an hour of rain or a slow piece of ambient music. Turn on Repeat the music if it is shorter than the video, and add a Fade in and Fade out. A long audio track over a short picture loop hides the repetition well, because ears and eyes stop lining the pattern up. Music replaces the clip’s own sound; the two are not mixed. The loop with music page covers the music settings in more detail.

Silence

For shops, waiting rooms and offices, Off is often the right choice. A silent fire is still pleasant to look at and doesn’t compete with conversation.

From a USB stick

Copy the MP4 to a USB stick and open it with the TV’s built-in media player. Many smart TVs play MP4 files with H.264 video and AAC sound, which is what the MP4 export uses, but check the supported formats in your TV’s manual first. If the stick is formatted as FAT32, no single file on it can be 4 GB or larger, so a long, high-quality loop may need the stick formatted as exFAT, if your TV reads it. Some TV players have a repeat setting, which lets an hour-long file run all evening.

By casting

Save the file to your phone or computer and cast it to the TV from an app that can play local videos. The sending device usually has to stay awake and nearby for the whole session, which is why a USB stick is often more reliable for long viewing.

From a laptop

Connect a laptop over HDMI and play the file full screen in a player with a loop option. VLC can loop a file indefinitely, so even a short export will keep running.

An hour suits most uses, and you can go up to three hours. For a longer session, export an hour and let the TV or player repeat it. Size 1080p is plenty for most TVs, and Quality at Standard keeps calm footage looking clean. The estimate line under Export settings shows the file size before you start.

With a crossfade, one pass is re-encoded and its frames are then written again for every repeat, so the encoding time depends on the length of the loop rather than the hour; most of the remaining time goes on writing the file. The one-hour loop page explains the length options and file sizes in more depth.