How Beat-Synced Storyboards Work

The short version

Music Studio finds the tempo and the position of every beat in the section you picked. It groups beats into bars and sections, then cuts the section into shots that are each a whole number of beats long. So every shot starts on a beat. Lyric subtitles snap to beats too.

1. Finding the tempo and the beats

• The song is decoded in your browser. Music Studio follows how loud the track is over time and marks the moments where new sound starts (onsets).
• It compares that onset pattern with itself at different time shifts. The shift that repeats best gives the tempo, with a preference for 85–140 BPM so it does not lock onto double or half time.
• It then slides a grid of beats at that tempo until the grid lines up with the strongest onsets. Those grid points are the beats.
• If the reading looks wrong, type the BPM yourself (40–220).

2. Bars and sections

Every 4 beats make a bar (4/4 time). Bars are grouped into sections — every 2 bars for a section of 20 seconds or less, every 4 bars for longer ones — and each section gets a label such as Intro, Verse or Chorus from how loud it is. The storyboard outline is written one section at a time.

3. How long each shot is

You choose slow, default or fast cutting. That sets a target length of about 5, 4 or 2.5 seconds. Music Studio picks the whole number of beats closest to the target, but never longer than one 5-second video clip, and cuts a shot every that many beats. A leftover piece at the end that is shorter than half a shot joins the shot before it.

4. Editing without losing the beat

Split a shot and the new cut moves to the nearest beat. Rewrite what happens in a shot or delete it; the remaining cuts stay on beats. The final export uses your song as the audio, so the cuts you see in the storyboard are the cuts you hear.

5. Lyric subtitles

Paste the lyrics and each line gets an equal share of the section, with every line start moved to the nearest beat. Lines are not matched word by word to the singing. For word-level timing, use the Lyric Video Maker, which reads LRC files and lets you tap along.

Where it can go wrong

• Songs with a free tempo, long rubato intros or no clear drums can give a wrong BPM. Correct it by hand before the storyboard.
• Section labels come from loudness, not from the words, so a quiet chorus can be labelled as a verse. Rewrite that section's outline before the shots are written.
• The beat grid assumes 4/4 time.