Creating Click Tracks for Video

A click track video is put together to a song just like you normally would, but then for the service, you replace the music with a click track that is sent only to the musicians so they can perform the song live while the video plays. The click track needs to be in time with the original music score so that the edits fall where they should. Maintaining synchronization is not a big deal if the footage is just atmospheric, but if you are trying to tie certain shots to certain phrases in the song, the band and video needs to be in sync. Here's how to do it.

For this exercise I used Final Cut Pro and Soundtrack Pro, though you could accomplish the same thing in the Adobe suite. You can also use a dedicated music program like Logic, Cakewalk, Reason or any number of other sequencing software to build the click track, and any video editor you like.

First, edit the video like you normally would, using the song as your soundtrack. Next, open up a new project in Soundtrack Pro (or your music editor of choice). Import your song and begin the process of determining the tempo and time signature. If the music director already knows this, the hardest work is done. Most worship tunes (and most rock music for that matter) are in 4/4 time, which means there are 4 beats to a measure, and the 1/4 note gets the beat. When you listen to the music, count off. If you find yourself counting, 1,2,3,4; 1,2,3,4; 1,2,3,4; then you are in 4/4 time. If you are unsure, start there.

Tempo is expressed in beats per minute (bpm). Getting the tempo right is the hardest and most critical elements of the whole process. Some software has beat detection tools which makes this a lot easier; sadly Soundtrack Pro does not. To determine the tempo and create the click, you need a simple loop of beats. I found that the Wood Block loop works really well. If you use this loop, you'll notice that the loop has beats on 1 and 3. This could be expressed as, 1 rest, 3, rest; 1, rest, 3, rest; or 1, 2, 3 4, 1, 2, 3, 4; and so on. For a click we want clicks on all four beats, but we'll fix this later on.

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Here is the Soundtrack Pro display. Note the Tempo control, set at 120 bpm. Also notice that I trimmed the song file so that it starts right at the beginning of the clip, and then I lined that up on the first beat of the third measure (3.1). This makes it easier to determine the tempo. Make sure to adjust the position of the song when you change the tempo, because it will move around. Simply select the current measure (the top red circle), and type "3.1." Then using the snapping function, bring the song start right to that.

Place your song on one track, then load the Wood Block into another track. Stretch the loop out to the length of the song. Play the song and find the first beat. Line up the first beat of the wood block with the first beat of the song. Hit play. Very quickly you'll notice if the wood block is beating faster or slower than the song. Here's an example. The default tempo is 120 bpm. This is what the song sounds like with the block beating along at 120.

Now at first, it may sound like the tempo is way too slow, but remember, the block is only beating on 1 & 3. In reality, it doesn't matter because when doing a click, you don't really care about what the beat is, you just want the clicks on the beat. Since I know this is too fast, I slowed it down to see what that sounded like. Here's the same thing only at 60 bpm.

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Clearly, this is too slow. After playing around for a while, I came up with the proper tempo, 76 bpm. This is what it sounds like.

Now that the tempo is correct, you can clearly hear the clicks happening on 1 & 3. As I said earlier, we want the clicks on all four beats. This gives the musicians a steady beat to follow. At first I played around with different ways to accomplish this (editing the sample, the Apple Loop Utility, etc.), but the easiest way is to just double the tempo. In my case, the target tempo was 76 bpm. To achieve clicks on all four beats, I dialed up the tempo to 152 and viola! a perfect 76 bpm four beat click. This is the result.

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Now you'll see the tempo at 152 bpm, and you'll also notice that there are 4 beats in the first measure before the song starts. Remember, we don't really care what the wood block loop thinks it's doing, we just want 4 clicks per measure.

Export your click track as an AIFF file (or WAV), making sure it's longer than you need to cover the song. Import the song into your editor and line it up on the beat.

The next trick is to give the musicians a cue when to start. Having a click track is good, but if you put the first click on the opening beat of the song, they will fall behind. So what I did was to put 2 measures (8 beats) in "silence," meaning before the song actually starts. To further clarify, I used a 2 frame 1K tone at beat one of the first 3 measures. So it sounds like this...

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From this point forward it's all clicks. The third beep is the beginning of the song (measure 3.1). In the red circles, you can see a 2 frame 1K tone. I've lined this up by eye using the waveforms, and verified it by ear.

To finish the video, mute the music tracks and export with just the click. When you play that back through Media Shout (or whatever you use), make sure the soundman sends the click to the monitors (in-ears work best, though this works in wedges) and not to the house PA (that would just spoil the ambiance...).

There you have it. A simple way to synchronize the band with a video. All told it takes almost as much time to explain it as it does to do it, so give it a try!