Tips for Adding Music to Films in Video Editing

Using music in your films is one of the best ways to drive emotion, connect to the audience, and elevate the video. If the visuals and the music are out of sync, however, disaster can happen. Here are a few tips for editing music to videos from a seasoned professional.

In this video, travel filmmaker Brandon Li shares some of his editing secrets that keeps him in control of the music he uses. He discusses ways to keep hit points, those important musical cues such as a beat drop, aligned with your most interesting footage while moving clips around. Further, he shows how he will respectfully edit the music to create music breaks or changeups without it sounding weird or out of place. Following these up, Li also has a couple music editing no-nos and the best way to remedy them, for example dealing with music that has lyrics under a clip of someone talking on video.

While Li uses Final Cut Pro X for his work, his suggestions are useful for all video editing platforms.

What are your own tips for editing music to videos? Leave them in the comments below.