The disclosed technology provides solutions for enhancing a user's experience of music video playback. Beat temporal locations are identified in the soundtrack of a multimedia content item, and surround the beat temporal locations, the playback speed of video frames is adjusted. An audio event trigger is determined using a beat decomposition process that generates event vectors including time-index information, wherein the event vectors indicate temporal locations of the audio event trigger. Playback speed can be changed by advancing the timing of displayed frames before the occurrence of a rhythm event, and by delaying it after. Shader parameter courses can be changed by being accelerated before the occurrence of a rhythm event and by being decelerated after.