Editing to slow music

[Sephirothskr]

Kinda in the title, I'm having a hard ass time with this. Editing to a slow song and I'm not quite sure what to sync to... I need help. ><

[Changelling]

Do you mean that you don't know where to cut? or you don't know what clips would match a slow segment? As for the latter I'd say if say you can either judge the mood of your clips, and/or you can use clips with little motion because these are usually the ones with the right mood. If the camera in the clip is zooming in/out/sliding with a relatively slow speed then that is fine.

If its tips regarding cuts you need I'd give these small tips:
1) If your song has verses, you can make your cuts at the beginning of statements. For example "I told you I was hurt" >cut< "bleeding from the inside" >cut< and so on.
2) If there is a pattern of strong drum beats with about 1 second or more space between them you can do your cut there. If its shorter than 1 second I'd say this won't be slow anymore.
3) If no drum beats and verses are there, and you cant notice clear peaks in your audio that would mark a nice cutting spot, and everything feels like pretty much 1 very long sound then I say it calls for 1 clip with little to no motion, but this is usually found at the end of songs so I doubt its your case.

[Mol]

i don't think same song should be edited same way , more like depending on how you perceive/feel it atm.
Stuff to consider:
Ignoring sounds if there's quite a bit near each other despite song giving a slow feel i think anything between 1-4 maybe 5 beats .
Going for internal instead of external:might be the simplest way as it's not so easy to give a fast feeling to vid if you just go for internal with limited amount of animation there might use external when you want to go to different scene.
Various sync: cut 1st to two sounds when some new sounds pop up to cut two different sounds if there are any.
My favorite "slow" vids ever:

this blends internal sync in quite creative ways that aren't so easy to notice sometimes ;P.

cool lyric sync while keeping it fairly paced.

some of my own experiments:


a variety of internal and external sync. Tl;dr of movie.

standard external with some flavoring of internal, think might be boring : P

[The_McLaughlin]

1) If your song has verses, you can make your cuts at the beginning of statements. For example "I told you I was hurt" >cut< "bleeding from the inside" >cut< and so on.

Heh I litterally listened to the song used for your reference 10 minutes prior to reading this post. That's a little weird.

On topic however. I agree with this tip. I use that same method alot too. It also works really well if the lyrics sync up with what is happening in the clip too. I tend to focus on the lyrics when I edit (I've been told on some of my more fast paced amvs that I edit too slow and I think it's partly becuase of this, however on my videos that tend to be more drama focused and use slightly slower songs people have really seemed to like them and I haven't recieved any negative comments on the pacing in those videos.)
Maybe also try to sync to music phrases, so rather than focus on cutting on a particular beat, maybe try to make cuts after shifts in the music. (Does that make sense? So for example say there is a piano solo playing in your song and in that solo it has 3 distinct sections that make up the solo, make your cuts on the three different sections of the solo. Kind of like sentences but with musical notes rather than words. I don't know how else to explain that if I weren't at work right now I would try to find an example to link too but I'm at work so I can't so hopefully that description clears up what I'm trying to say.)

[Sephirothskr]

1) If your song has verses, you can make your cuts at the beginning of statements. For example "I told you I was hurt" >cut< "bleeding from the inside" >cut< and so on.

Heh I litterally listened to the song used for your reference 10 minutes prior to reading this post. That's a little weird.

On topic however. I agree with this tip. I use that same method alot too. It also works really well if the lyrics sync up with what is happening in the clip too. I tend to focus on the lyrics when I edit (I've been told on some of my more fast paced amvs that I edit too slow and I think it's partly becuase of this, however on my videos that tend to be more drama focused and use slightly slower songs people have really seemed to like them and I haven't recieved any negative comments on the pacing in those videos.)
Maybe also try to sync to music phrases, so rather than focus on cutting on a particular beat, maybe try to make cuts after shifts in the music. (Does that make sense? So for example say there is a piano solo playing in your song and in that solo it has 3 distinct sections that make up the solo, make your cuts on the three different sections of the solo. Kind of like sentences but with musical notes rather than words. I don't know how else to explain that if I weren't at work right now I would try to find an example to link too but I'm at work so I can't so hopefully that description clears up what I'm trying to say.)

What sucks is the beat to my song is simply the same 2 notes over and over and over again, so it's hard to find a foothold, I basically count every other 2 notes as a beat, and I'll do a transition every 6 beats, and try to find a picturesque scene the audience can view and try to find meaning in for about 4-5 seconds, and at the end... Let's just say I don't wanna spoil the ending

[dreamawake]

Go with the flow