On or off the beat?

Hi Guys

quick question, I have done a lot of promo's for small businesses here and always match the audio beats to the change in footage (oh I wish the FCPX team will come up with a way of auto marking the beat so i don't have to do it manually)

however, I've watched some footage recently which does not transition on the beat! am I missing something?

Often you want the cut to be off the beat so that the content of the shot, the door slam, the car taking off, the movement of an arm happens on the beat.

It all depends on the situation and content. As Tom says, it is more fluid for cuts from one angle to another in a scene to be made during a mundane action. Such as door closing, person getting up or sitting down, head turns. As for music, depend on the content of the music, and the action going on. I see rules of thumb that claim you should cut on the beat, on the back beat, 1/16 before or after beats. I've done more music videos than I can remember, and I don't think there's any rule about that. Just stay in time with the music, and tell a story. Not like most music videos today that are just a string of dizzying cuts from one location to another, and nothing has any relation to the story being told in the song or instrumental.

My Theory would fit into BenB's and Tom's view. One of the basic rules of editing is that if the viewer is conscious of it then the editor has failed to some extent, the perfectly edited job would be one where the viewer would say "I didn't see any edits". Back to music, cutting on the beat tends to draw attention to the cuts, cutting off the beat or in the middle of a phrase but using the phrase (and the beat) to accentuate the action draws attention to the story and allows you to draw the viewers attention to things which you want him to notice. Is this a rule?......NO, but if you use at as a guideline you won't go far wrong. If you are working with a composer then of course you can have your cake and eat it too.

learned a trick from an 'old school' editor:

• apply music to your project
• let music play
• let finger 'dance' on the key M

=> it depends a lil' on your musicality/dancing skills, but you soon get all sorts of markers - on the beat, off the beat, on accents, blue notes, climaxes… and not to forget pauses...

those tappings often'miss' the peaks in the waveform, but give much bettet results....

machine-beats soon get boring...

I say cut *beside* the beat

Too much cutting 'on the beat' does not fit very well with most forms of content, music videos included.

Cutting on the beat can be good for "slam cuts" where you want to highlight something and in a sense make the viewer aware of the editing.

I believe the best approach is to let the content of the footage match the footage which has already been mentioned, like a door slam or maybe a punch or what have you.

In music, there is a mechanism that either pushes the rhythm forward, or pulls back on it. Editing on or off beat will lend itself to that. You can also accent the beat, the back beat, or even accent off beat in music. I would NEVER give generalizations about how to edit to music, since there are way too many variables for those rules-of-thumb to apply regularly enough to hold up. Style, mode, content all will dictate how you cut with music. It is nothing like editing to dialog, which I'm seeing a lot of folks try to do.

I love this feature: making a cut, highlighting the cut with Trim Tool selected, then tweaking with the comma and period keys to tweak it slightly before, on, or after the beat depending on what feels right in the moment.