Edit to Beat

I've tried listening to songs and timing hitting the M key with the beats so it will be simple to cut to later on. I find my marks are always off by too much that I end up going back and listening for beats, defeating the purpose. I was wondering if anyone could share the way they set up markers or any other techniques they may use for editing to the beat.

You know, after you do it long enough, just doing one cut at a time, you start to get real fast at it.

Play, listen for when the beat you want to cut on, space bar, and then back and blade it over the beat...you do this enough, and you start to get real good at guessing where the spot was you need to blade.

Do THAT enough, even if you miss it by 1-3 frames, you get really fast at bumping into T pointer to roll the cut to where it needs to be.

Rather than forcing to do it one way or another, I just recommend taking the path of least resistance. It's usually possible to get ungodly fast at a technique if it works for you, even if it's a keystroke or two more than it could be.

Hit m for guidance and them adjust the markers to the waveforms

I typically try to time the beat, but it never seems to be on enough. Guess my ear hand reflexes arent what they used to be! It just seems like I'm wasting my time making markers if I just go back and do it scrub frame by frame.

Waveforms never show up completely for me in FCPX, especially not when playing my project.

I work at a recording studio and I do a lot of cutting to music, be it a live multi cam concert, a music video, or a quick promo.

The biggest thing that I've found is that most of the time, cutting on the beat doesn't work. Depending on what's happening on screen it's still better to follow the "narrative rules" to try and cut on motion. When I see videos that are cut to the beat it gets very predictable and I notice every cut. But when you cut a few frames before or after, it has a much more natural flow.

When I have a shot of a drummer hitting a cymbal, I'll usually cut just after he hits it. This has to do with the fact that when there is a loud noise, people will blink, so if you wait a frame or two for their brain to process the sound, they will probably blink when your cut happens.

Other times I will completely ignore the beat. If I'm on a shot of a guitar player, I will cut when they slide their hand up the neck of the guitar (usually toward the end of the motion).

In some specific cases cutting to the beat works really well, but in general, cutting to music is no different than cutting a narrative story, the visual movement is more important than the beat.

Julian's right. Can't always cut to the beat. I'll cut to the beat for a musical phrase, then lay off.

I'll also sometimes cut a tiny bit ahead or behind the beat to push or pull the tempo if I feel what is happening onscreen warrants it.

Or sometimes it's all driven by the picture, damn the music.

You can see a mixup of all the above in this vid I did a couple years ago:

I totally agree too, Cutting on the beat sometimes defeats the purpose of editing i.e. that editing should be essentially invisible. Yes on occasions we will cut on the beat to bring attention and emphasis to a particular point in time in a narrative but cutting where you are more conscious of phrase makes much more sense in respect to the narrative.

Cheers

Ian

These are definately things to consider as well instead of alwaya cutting to the beat. Making it more story/narative driven. My work is prodominately weddings, so I'll need to start thinking more about this on my next edit. Thanks guys.