To the beat of music

[acprovid]

What software do I need to create a video to the beat of music?

[TimKennelly]

Andre,

That is a built in feature in the Audio Record, Edit menu of the operating systems since SE5.

[chetdavis]

As Tim mentioned, this function is part of the OS in Smart Edit 5 and higher...

Here (below) is my tutorial for using this capability - I should mention that Bobbie Evoy (Bobbie on this Forum) has done some great things beyond this capability that allows you to insert transitions, etc. You can send her a Private Message to obtain the hand-outs she distributed at the MGT 2008.

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Begin with an empty Storyboard – then go into to the Audio Record/Edit screen.

1. Select a song from your Audio Sample list, or quickly load one in with the
CD Import function.
2. Then click the “Split” button. Click the “Insert scenes into the Storyboard” box.
3. Then, playback the song (or other audio element) by clicking the playback icon
4. Click on ‘use’ every place you wish to split your audio content.
5. When you are done splitting your audio - click “OK” - this process may take a few
minutes as Smart Edit 5 automatically adds video black to the audio segments you
chose.
6. When you go back to the Edit screen you will see a new storyboard with multiple scenes
with your song/audio as the original audio track. Note the colored musical note icon in
each scene in your storyboard (this is an indication that something special is about to
occur!).
7. Now select a scene from your Scene Bin to use as the first scene in your music video.
With a scene selected in your Storyboard (with the musical note icon) click “Replace” and
the video scene in your Scene Bin will be added to the Storyboard – on top of the
highlighted Storyboard scene. You will hear that this new scene retains the audio you split.

If the scene you use is longer than the audio segment, the end of the scene will be
automatically trimmed to fit the segment. Continue on and replace all of the scenes in
the Storyboard, and you are now finished. You may add titles or Image Processing Effects.
This editing to the Beat function is designed for hard cuts where the new scene accents a
sharp beat in the music. Transitions will change your audio timing and are not designed for
easy use with this effect (though there is a method to do this by manually calculating the
new times with added scene length for the transitions).

* You could manually split your audio element (music or voice) if you wanted to precisely
make a split. To do this, follow the above steps but instead of the above step #3, click on
Split Audio, scroll the trackball to mark the split location and then click on ‘Use’. Then again
click on ‘Split Position’, scroll trackball to find the next split location and click ‘use. Repeat
the process until your entire audio element is split as you desire. Complete the rest of the
process as above (steps 5-7).

Hope that helps!

Regards,
Chet