How to edit video to music in Final cut pro X - 2 ways to cut to a beat

right hey friends it's freezing outside so I thought we would do a nice inside tutorial for this week's video someone must me a few weeks ago how I cooked video to the beat of a song any piece of music using Final Cut Pro so I thought it was a great opportunity to do a quick video to show them how to do it so that's what we're doing this week so let's not mess around let's get straight into it [Music] so if we go over to my screen then what I've got is I've got Final Cut open I've thrown some random b-roll into a new project and I've got my timeline here so the aim of the game here is to create some sort of a video where the cuts of the video go in time with the music so first things first there's two different ways to do this there's two ways that tend to work for me when I do this first way works really well with normal footage the second way works a little bit better if you're dealing with sort of slow-motion footage and you need to be changing the pace of the video so we'll start with a simple one okay so first things first we're going to go over to our solids and we're going to create a new custom solid and we're going to drop that in to the timeline I'm going to go into our Media Browser where I've got a song somewhere here where are we there we go got this song and we're gonna drop the song underneath there so then if we pull our custom layer out to the length of the song like so and then what we're gonna do right is we're going to play it and we're going to hold down command and then as we play whenever I think there's a good place for a cut I'm going to do command B and that is going to put a cut into this custom layer so it's probably easier to show you than it is to explain it so I'm just going to play this now and that's what we're gonna do [Music] okay come on feet come on be [Music] and you see what I'm doing and you can get creative with this you don't always have to do it on the beat in fact sometimes it's better if you don't keep it interesting on the snare there on the bass [Music] anyway that is probably enough of that so now what we have got is we've got this black custom layer with our song underneath and it's cut into lots of short segments like so alright so if we now go into our footage again we can sort of have a look at what we've got here and this is just a slider project you'll be seeing more of this in a future video I just thought it seemed like some nice footage that we could use I'm going to just change this view here so we want some sort of so what we're going to do right is we're going to find a clip that we like the look of say this one we'll do we're going to set out in an out point the out point doesn't really matter so we can use the eye and the Okies so if I click in it's going to set an end point on the eye key and then I can scroll along and click oh and it's set that out point now if I drag this clip over the top of my custom solid here and I let go it's going to ask me what I want to do with it and if I say replace from start then it's now put that onto there okay so now we can choose some other clips that we like the look of yeah that one looks nice or just go in and obviously this is going to be really rough or rough as houses but if you're doing it then you can take a little bit more time and you can see the sort of process that I'm doing but it's a good place to start so we say replace from start and we can find another clip that we like the look of yeah that looks like a nice one in set an out point the out point isn't important because the out point when you drag it over like this oops check it on there it's only really taking into account the start point the end point it's going to set itself based on the length of that custom solid that we're replacing and already you can would be see here [Music] cut cut nice so I'm just going to keep going [Music] [Music] anyway you get the idea [Music] great so that is why number one in order to do this however if you're dealing with slow-motion clips where you want to set the time of the clip once you've got it in the timeline this goes completely wrong because if we just go back to my screen look this it's beautiful it goes to the beat it's just the way I want it now if I put it into slow motion I select that clip and I come here and I say automatic speed this was shot at 120 frames I think we shot this app so what happens is now that's in slow motion but it's completely throwing my timing off so this way only works if the footage that you're putting in is at the speed that you want to be playing it back if you're using slow-motion footage or if you just want a bit more flexibility and you don't want to have to decide what your cuts are straight away then this is where option two comes in really helpful so I'm going to show you that now so if we just come back into this project I'm just going to do file new project here so we start again and this time what I'm going to do is I'm still going to start with some normal footage just being indecisive now right daddy drag that in to the timeline then I'm still going to drop my music down here okay and there you go we're starting to make something this way you're just doing things a little bit more freestyle but what we're going to use is we're going to use markers which is a little handy tool in Final Cut Pro so that you know kind of where you want the cuts to be and then you're going to manually put the clips in so I'll show you what that looks like so where we've got this track selected and we're going to play and when we click em you can see if it's a blue marker on the track there see these blue markers that I'm adding every time I press em it puts a marker so I'm gonna command Z all of them we're going to go back to the beginning and just like we did with the command B on the custom solid layer on the previous approach this time we're just going to press M where we think we might want to cut so let's play [Music] okay turn that volume down so you can get as creative as you want is this you can see here I'm not putting it on every beat of the bar I'm not putting it on every bass drum or every snare hit I'm just kind of feeling the music man and just going with what feels good and and a lot of people will say that when you're editing stuff it's actually quite predictable if you put your cuts on the beat then people get quite bored quite quickly so try and mix it up this is just a tool use it however you want okay so now we've got our cuts what we can do is we can zoom in a little bit got this first clip I mean I don't know if it's any good but we'll use it anyway and then we're just dragging out to sort of where our markers are now you can get quite specific about where those cuts are all right but generally I mean I'm zoomed in a lot there as long as you get it pretty close you're gonna be all right so now what I'm going to do is I'm gonna throw some more footage down onto the timeline and then once I've got it in I'm just going to sort of manually do it and I tend to do this quite a lot however you see the beauty of this is if I now say I want to play this clip in slow motion so I'll go to the time here and I set automatic speed then it throws it right out but now I can actually just trim this down to what I want like so again same with this second clip maybe I want all of this b-roll sequence to be in slow motion so I can just set it I know where I want my cuts to be before I've even started so again this one maybe this one I'll keep fast because it's got some nice movement in there you go that was a nice bit I used last time zoom in again find that marker that I want that was another bit I used so put that in that's really long or you can actually put the marker here and you can do command B and then just delete the bit you don't need so I'm you know I'm using the I'm using the edges of the clips like this dragging grabs that drag it in but you don't have to do it like that any of this sort of tools that you need so you know I could put the marker there command B cut that clip right in the chapter and there you go and you can keep going and going and going but let's just play that back quickly slow motion nice [Music] beautiful so you get the idea so that's it two quick ways to cut your video to the beat of a song hopefully that is helpful to you certainly when I figured that out it reduced my time spent editing greatly so yeah if there's another way that you think that you can do this which is better than mine then please let me know in the comments I'm always up for hearing your ways of doing things hopefully you like the video if you did give it a thumbs up I do lots of videos like this to do with photography filmmaking cameras gear reviews all that sort of geekery really so if you like that sort of stuff subscribe to my channel you'll get notified when I next upload a video and other than that that is everything for this week and probably my last video before Christmas so have a wonderful Christmas and I will see you next year for more camera japes and fun see ya [Music]

Channel: Will Chidlow

Views: 32,276

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Id: lIBhnoYeXgM

Length: 13min 26sec (806 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 13 2017