How to Edit to the Beat

Just looking at the title to this post makes me think of some sort of nerd version of a Gloria Estefan song. Hmm. Come to think of it this post is especially well suited for Gloria Estefan songs.

What follows is, in my opinion, the one feature that should have been demoed at MacWorld but wasn't. Seriously, this feature is awesome. Here is how to edit to the beat of a song.

Like I said, this feature didn't get much attention at MacWorld, and I am stunned that it hasn't gotten more attention since. We all need it and will use it. My rigorous (entirely anecdotal) survey (sample of 1) of home video projects reveals that most of us don't make home videos, we make home music videos. And it's no wonder. Kids running around Disneyland are a lot cuter if they are doing it to Bibbity Bobbity Boo.

Enter iMovie '09 and the beat marker. To sum up how this works, iMovie will now allow you to premark beats (or any point in an audio track for that matter) so that footage and photos will autofit to the beats you mark. This feature, by the way, has a serious wow-factor as you actually use it.

Before you do anything, though, click on the View menu and select "Snap to Beats", or just hit command-U.

Pick a Track, Any Track.
Start a new project then add a song to it. Once you've done this, your project will look a lot like this.

Experienced iMovie users will recognize that the song won't go anywhere without a video track, as iMovie automatically ends your project when the video ends (and not when the song ends). But this doesn't mean that you can't do stuff to the song in the meantime. If you click the gear icon on the track, you can select "Clip Trimmer" from the menu that appears. Once you do, your event footage is replaced by a window that looks something like this:

Pay particular attention to that little music note in the top right corner. That is a draggable beat marker, which works just like chapter markers and comment markers. Dragging is great and all, but I find it a lot simpler to just hit the "M" key on the keyboard. Alternatively, you can right click on the spot you want to mark and choose "Add Beat Marker" from the menu that appears. The actual markers appear as thin, vertical, white lines with a dot in them.

Now here is where it gets pretty fun. Start the audio track playing from the beginning. As the song plays, just tap the M key for every beat where you want to cut to a new shot. Go ahead and boogie while you do it. No one is watching.

Once you have done this through the whole song, you can take a moment to fix your mistakes. For the beat impaired, the handy soundwaves can often point you to the right spot. Beat markers are draggable even after you have placed them. You can remove them entirely by dragging them off of the top or bottom of the Clip Trimmer window. If you want to start over, just right click and choose "Remove All Beat Markers".

A useful tip: Usually if you are cutting right on the beat, your video cut will actually appear to be late. If you can practice tapping the beats just barely before the beats, your cuts will look just right.

Also, don't group your beat markers too closely together unless you are trying to get a very fast-paced effect. Once you are happy with all of the beat placements, click "Done" in the top-right corner of the Clip Trimmer.

Video Goes Here
You should be back in your Event Browser now, having a basically blank project awaiting some footage. Go ahead and select a length of footage then add it to the project above.

Voila. There it is. iMovie cut the end off the footage you selected and added it to the project. Try it with a photo now. Isn't that cool?

After very little work, you will have a project that looks something like this:

Notice how the beat markers show up in your project to remind you why the cuts are taking place there. Having them show up directly in your project allows you to refer to them in case you want to edit around them or want something in the middle of a clip happen at the beat. (Notice how in the second line on my project I extended a clip through one of my beat markers.)

What if the video isn't showing exactly what you want when the cut takes place? Not a problem. Just select the gear icon on the video clip and choose "Clip Trimmer". There you will be able to move the edit left or right to make sure you are seeing what you want to see. Just don't adjust the time unless you want to override the beat marker.

Not Just for Cuts
Beat markers work with pretty much everything else you might do in your project:
1. Titles, either the beginning or end of them, will be magically drawn to beat markers. This is also true of cutaways.
2. Layover audio tracks that display as flags under your video, in addition to the background-style audio track I used, work with beat markers as well. Beat markers inserted into layover tracks will snap to the beginnings and ends of clips, titles, cutaways, etc.
3. Beat markers even have the same effect in the Precision Editor.

Mistakes Were Made...
One of the really annoying things about previous iMovie versions is that as you edited to the beat manually, a tiny change would have cascading consequences. Multiple edit points could be thrown out of whack. iMovie '09 tries not to let that happen. If you adjust or delete a clip, you get this message:

It's nice to be warned, but iMovie will continue to warn you as you make changes. The dialog will stop appearing once you turn off Snap to Beats from the View menu.

Fun AND Functional
Before beat markers, editing a movie to music was pretty time consuming. Beat markers in iMovie '09 are a big time saver, but also pretty fun.

Enough of this, back to your boogie.

EDIT: Per Nathan's request in the comments, I uploaded my project from this post to YouTube. The shakiness of the footage is explained by the 10x zoom in the tiny camera I was shooting with (a Canon TX1). That, and an absolutely crazy stadium crowd.

(For those into football, this was the October 2007 Monday night game between Denver and Green Bay. Denver staged a last minute comeback only to have Brett Favre throw a 78-yard touchdown pass in the first play of overtime. I left that out of the video on purpose.) :P