For a Professional Touch, Cut on the Beat

Eventually, you're going to want to do a bit more with your movie editing than you can do with FlipShare, which is designed for basic trimming and sequencing and transitions that are infinitely better than what you're used to seeing in home videos or on YouTube, but still lacking in some basic creative controls that are available in other editors, beginning with iMovie or Windows Movie Maker.

I spent some time in this video, and in this article, and this article explaining how you could use those editors, rather than FlipShare, to gain some of those advantages.

A company called Avid Technology began the whole 'non-linear editing' revolution, and invented many of the user interface mechanisms and metaphors which are now common in other video editing programs, such as those I just mentioned.  In particular, they invented the 'timeline' concept, in which your video is arranged into tracks for video and audio, usually with the video on top, that show a cursor running over the tracks, from left to right, as the media plays.

A popular thing to do is to introduce a sound track, which all of these programs allow you to do.  Audio tracks usually show you a wave form, and you can examine the wave form for peaks, which show you the loudness and the rhythm of the music.

Here's the tip:  When you're editing your video, make your cuts in the video correspond to the musical beats, for a very dramatic and professional effect.  Watch virtually any professionally-produced movie or TV show, and pay attention to how this is done.  It's most obvious, of course, in musical videos, but you can also frequently see it in action scenes, car chases, and the like.

One might call this video of mine a 'video slideshow,' which consists of nature shots against a backdrop of music...

This technique is also quite useful when you're doing a photo slide show.  Transition from one slide to the next on the beat, and see what a difference it makes.