To find the beats play the track, tap your foot or what ever and on the beat hit "M". You'll at least know where the cuts should go. The rest of it is the lap of the gods.

Well I haven't tried any edits yet. Obviously there will be some contenuity problem if I cut, but its a heavy rythm blues song so I am thinking the cut won't be too bad (with a fade) --- remains to be seen. I can't see any way to avoid it though, I don't have multi cam or even a constant audio feed to sync to. I'm instinctively sure though, that if the rythm doesn't match between the cuts that it will be ugly. --- Hence my question about aligning the beats.

LOL on the gods comment.

I have done the marrking thing on the beats before. Maybe this will help. I'm thinking, mark the second track elsewhere (Acid or Sonic Foundry) cut 2nd track a few beats before the fade and insert it to match the place where I want to fade in.

Is this good or is there a better way?

When I place markers to the beat, I literally hover my finger over the M key, and just tap out when listening to the music. It's dead easy - honest! If you want to improve matters, I suppose you could go to Edit Detail View [EDV] and "see" where the markers have fallen. Work out the beat interval and go from there. You can change the marker position by editing the numbers in EDV.

Any good?

Grazie

Zoom in on the TL to place 2 markers, 1 at the beginning of your beat and 1 at the end. Double click to get your blue loop area. Move the blue loop and match the 2nd marker to the beginning of the loop area to double check the spacing to the next beat. You can do this numerous times to verify your spacing. With the blue loop area active around a 'beat space', look in the mid lower TL find the actual duration of your 'beat space' or blue loop area.
Open 'Insert markers script' in Wordpad or notepad and insert the time and frame count you want. Save with .js extension, open run script in V4 under tools, navigate to your new script and run it. Don't forget to eliminate the silence at the beginning of most music when added to the TL, before you run the script. The script will run and insert markers. The script is also in Excaliber.
I do this process first before any editing or adding video to the TL, because the script will only run without any markers on the TL., and the time code area immediately above the TL, must be set to time and frames. You can also decrease the audio playback rate with the yellow triangle below the track headers to ensure complete accuracy of y6our beatmarkers If you use stills be sure to set the length of them to match the beat duration under the ...Preferences, Editing tab. Good Luck, John.

John, have you just explained how to "write" a script"? - G

"... or even a constant audio feed to sync to."
Too bad. Trying to stitch audio from discontinuous takes is darned near impossible.
See if you can get the band to lay down the whole song using your video clips as the tempo reference.

This is the tried and true method to accomplish what you want. Lay down the audio track first, drag the clips around for a visual beat match, apply cuts and fades, any desired post effects, and render. Goes pretty quickly once you've got the hang of it.

Grazie, I couldn't write a script. Merely changing the time to insert markers had to be explained to me by the masterful jetdv. Kudos to him for all the hard work. The biggest problem with my method is the beat markers rarly fit perfectly to the video frame per second time, so the marker duration tends to drift off the fps dictated by the vid format over the length of the music and needs to be manually adjusted down the TL. But it is still easier than loading and placing each marker manually. John

Oh I see. My method is pure muso . . Just run the audio<>video clip and sit there tapping out the markers on the M key to the beat you're feeling and hearing. Honest, it works a treat. Its not so fixed as the scripting and it allows for a bit more human interface to be part of the process . . dare I say an ANALOGUE input to DV? - ;-)

Grazie

Thanks for all the suggestions. After a night's sleep, and everyone's advice, I'm thinking its not as hard as I originally thought when posting.

This was a quick and dirty video of the last big party at a local venu. I thought some record was better than none, so I grabbed my camera as I was leaving to go. No planning at all.

Maybe a measure of fade to black/silence at the cut points will be ok with what I have to work with. I'll have to experiment and see what feels best.