Editing video to music is an art form in its own right. Done well, you can turn a fine piece of music and some cool video footage into a multimedia assault on the senses that leaves your audience to pick up their jaws from the ground.
One of the secrets of making music and moving pictures work together is to ensure that the visual cues from the video sync up perfectly with the video. This might seem like an impossible task, but there’s a little trick that’ll help you hugely. Before you sit down to edit the video, listen to the music you want to use carefully: what are the parts of the music that you want to ‘meet up’ with its visual counterpart? That’s going to be the vital part of your editing work.
Instead of trying to guess where to start the music and the video footage from your camera phone to make them ‘meet up’, use your editing software to skip directly to the part of the music you had in mind. Move the video back and forth until the beat of the music matches perfectly to the visuals.
Do this with all the main points of the video, and then stop moving your video tracks. You can now layer the rest of the video ‘on top’ of these key points, safe in the knowledge that the crescendo of your magnum opus will remain intact throughout.
When you show off your video, your viewers will notice that your music and the visuals match up – and they’ll think you’re a super-hero video editor at the same time. Just don’t tell ’em how easy it was!