Beat Detection: Colored Dots Show Music Rhythm on Timeline

When your project has a music track, Bitcut can analyze it to find individual beats. These appear as colored dots on the timeline, giving you a visual map of the rhythm. Seeing beats helps you place clip boundaries on musically meaningful moments, making cuts feel intentional rather than random.

How Beat Detection Works

Bitcut uses on-device audio analysis to detect rhythmic hits in your music track. Every drum kick, snare hit, or accent becomes a dot on the timeline. The analysis runs automatically when you add a music track, and takes just a second or two.

Beat Dot Colors & Sizes

Not all beats are equal. Bitcut classifies each detected beat by its strength and shows them with different colors and sizes:

  • Red dots (largest) — downbeats. The strongest accents in the music, typically the "one" of each bar. These are the most impactful moments for cuts.
  • Orange dots (medium) — regular beats. Standard rhythmic hits like snare on beats 2 and 4. Good for secondary cuts.
  • Yellow dots (smallest) — offbeats. Subtle subdivisions between main beats. Useful for fast-paced edits.

Dot size scales continuously with beat strength — a very strong downbeat appears larger than a moderate one. This gives you an instant visual feel for the musical energy at any point.

Cut on red dots. For the most satisfying edits, align clip transitions with red (downbeat) markers. The audience feels the cut land on a strong musical moment, even if they can't explain why it works.

Beat Markers on the Timeline

Beat dots appear as a row of colored circles along the timeline ruler. When you zoom in, you see more detail — individual offbeats become visible. When zoomed out, only the strongest beats show to keep the view clean.

Vertical beat markers can also appear as lines running through the timeline, making it easy to visually align clip edges with beat positions.