Trimming/cutting a clip more precisely?

Hello guys, I attended a car show in the past week. Now I'm in the editing stage of the production but I'm having a few complications with the trimming/cutting of the clips. Let me start by explaining what it is that I'm trying to accomplish. Basically I'm trying to trim clips to the bass of a beat, in this case the beat of the song going along with the entire video, on every bass thump I basically want to cut to a different clip or move slightly further in each clip. I have accomplished this in a video prier to the one I'm editing now, by what seems to be sheer luck because now I find that I'm not able to cut a clip exactly where the playhead is parked which obviously is exactly where I want to make the cut, but when I click cmd + b it either cuts before or after the playhead. This in turn causes the video to not exactly look as in sync as I would like, this causes a slight delay when the transition from clip to clip occurs compared to when the beat thump actually happens. If anyone knows how to make a cut exactly where the playhead is located I would greatly appreciate it.

P.S. If anyone knows how to accomplish this in another program such as After Effects or Premiere Pro, feel free to explain that as well. I'm willing to use any program so long I'm able to make the best edit possible.

Thank you to everyone ahead of time.

Actually Final Cut Pro is the only app I know of that can do just what you want. See here.

It sounds like your trying to edit on sub frames, which your not going to be able to do.

FCPX does what other NLE's don't do, it allows you to edit the audio far more accurately between the video frames, but you can't edit a video clip half way through a frame. If you use the left and right arrow keys to move through the timeline you'll see that it navigates frame by frame according to what ever frame rate you recorded to camera, this is the limitation of the frame rate and where you can put video edits.

But audio is much finer than video and if you skim or move the playhead between these points you can adjust the audio on a more detailed level.

Why doesn't this work for me ?you said the option key + the left bracket key or right braket key.i love this tutorial butvim having problems following.thanks in advance for your help.

Take at look at this and see if it helps:

library.creativecow.net/articles/payton_...yback/video-tutorial

The limitation for me and other editors I know is doing this during looped previews (Shift-/). When you hit editing keys it messes up the looping preview playback. That was a very powerful technique in legacy FCP. Hoping it comes back.

But yes, FCP X does more editing on the fly than most folks know it can do. Thanks for posting!

I think I know what you mean.

One technique I've been using for years now to cut to the beat (the boss at my day job is gaga over video that does this - ugh) is to load the music into your time line first, get to know the piece, and then play it all the way thru, while marking off the beat.

In FCPX, load the music, highlight the clip and then play it, hitting M with every beat you want to cut to (you'll hopefully have enough rhythm to pull this off). This will place a marker on an actual frame that you can then line your video cuts up with.

Hope that's helpful to anyone.

-timfo