Pace rating has always been recognized and treated as difficult, subjective, and even controversial. Recently, a new idea of pace rating using video technology by showing work motions on a reference video and an actual (real‐life) video simultaneously on a screen has been proposed. By adjusting the speed (and thus the pace) of the reference video, industrial engineers or workers without extensive background in time study can synchronize the motion patterns in both videos, thus quantifying the actual pace of the method under study using their visual sense. However, the impact of motion pattern compatibility between the two stimuli (work motions on the reference video and the actual video) has not been investigated in detail. In this study, we elaborate that motion pattern compatibility between the reference video and the actual video has a significant effect on correct determination of the response (the rated pace) in terms of both the accuracy and the precision. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.