How can you match the transitions and pace of a video to the song in movie-making programs?

Question by happygoluckyy: How can you match the transitions and pace of a video to the song in movie-making programs?
I’ve noticed that in a lot of videos, people have managed to make the pace or transitions of their video match the pace of the song that is played. In other words, when the song starts going very fast, the transitions also become faster, and are in sync with the song. Have these people manually made it so or is there some kind of feature that would make this task more efficient/easier? I’m a mac user and am using iMovie. Anything on there I can use?

Best answer:

Answer by Nathan Blair
I work on a daily basis with music video producer and editor, Melyssa Vazquez. I know for beginners, pacing is a tough trick to learn! I think your question has a few possible answers.

The first way you can tighten the pacing of your video is to simply adjust the duration of each clip in your timeline. To do this in iMovie, make sure you switch to timeline mode. Try to cut to each shot on every downbeat of your music.

To change the pacing of your transitions, simply use the speed slider at the bottom of the transitions pane. Here’s an article that may help: http://www.apple.com/support/ilife/tutorials/imovie/im3-6.html

Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!