FINAL CUT PRO

Final Cut Pro Tutorial at Chelsea CCAD

(Basics) Student Notes by AB - Thanks for sharing your notes

Cameras, Tape, Storage and Archiving
Buy an external hard drive if you are doing lots of video – see ebuyer on web. About 50 - 80 Pounds for a cheap one.

4 mins DV video (standard) = 1GB – so you need lots of size. Also access to a DVD burner (they have set top ones you can just plug your laptop into).

A DVD is a very compressed format – so don’t keep it as your only copy. DVD is for presentation only, not for archiving. DV tape is still the best way. You don’t want a DVD recording camcorder!

Canon XM2 3 chip cameras here are the best, as well as small Panasonic GS180?? 3 chip cameras (300 Pounds, smaller size). Also lesser quality stuff for event recording.

Video has 25 frames per second.

Final Cut Express and Pro
Can do sound only, still images – very flexible. Better than imovie – which limits your creativity amazingly – and final cut is easier, more efficient etc.

It can run on small laptops well, renders more quickly on big computers.

Final Cut Express is amazing value for money. 90% of the functionality of Pro, really everything you’d want. Buy from apple cheaply. Big difference is Pro is better for a corporate, server environment. Express is great for a single machine.

Steps to Making a Video
1 – capture (record and import video and sound – more than you need)
2 – edit (choose and manipulate)
3 – output to video or DVD.

Starting Pro
• You need to tell FC where to put all its files. Create a folder (eg. desktop), and point FC to it by opening System Settings, then Set, and choose your folder. Do this for every cache and option.
• Save this project.

Capturing
• Connect camera to the computer via a firewire cable. Camera firewire cables are usually smaller at the camera end. Turn camera to VTR (player mode, not camera).
• Go to file – capture.
• You can control the camera remotely – play, rewind etc!
• Don’t worry about the quality of the preview.
• Give the clips – or sections – different names (in description). Hit Capture Now.

You can also import from your computer – control click in the first window (Import) and Choose.

Editing
You can just drag your thumbnails into the editing bar from the browser – a good quick way. Splits it into one video track and two audio tracks. Dropping it above automatically makes a new track.

Find the point you want to start in viewer, and click ~”mark in”, go forward, ‘mark out’. You can slide these along. Drag whole window, then, into the timeline. You can also disregard what you’ve done by dragging your edited section longer and shorter after! Extending it etc.

Ripple versus other edit.
If you get a sideways arrow when you drop a second clip, it will cut the previous clip, extend a gap, and stick it in the middle. Not very useful, as you go back to the bit you cut into. But you can keep deleting the second part. Kepp an eye on the canvas monitor, and it will tell you where it is going to cut in!

That’s how you edit, though – you push stuff out the way, and re-sample.

Linked Editing
Keep it on ‘linked selection’ (little green infinity symbol) – keeps audio sync’d to video. Either camera sound, or audio added later. You can unlink, move them, and link them in a new spot. You can even chop into the sound, rubbing out the front, not shifting it along.

Mainly used to delete all video to keep just the sound, or vice versa.

Better editing – actually the best way - select an in and out, put it in. then, put your yellow triangle in the timeline area, pick up the viewer picture, and DRAG IT INTO THE CANVAS WINDOW. Excellent! It’ll give you options – insert, replace, superimpose, etc. Usually use the first two. Drop and there you are!

Snap
Clicking snap (green two arrows symbol near infinity) on - snaps it to the edge of other clips.

Sequences
You can make a New sequence (in File). Click on one and it’ll go to it in the tracks window. So you can make a project in little bits. And you can drop sequences into each other to join them up in the end.

Speed
Select the track, hit tools – speed – and do percentage.

Flip
Double click on any section to select it – and use the filters on the viewer window.

Still images
Export as Quickfile conversion, and change the format to jpeg on the next window. Re import it. Now you can edit it in photoshop.

Using Photoshop to Edit, and Frames.
Set an external editor?
You can just grab them all and drop them in (they do it in order), and drop them in to timeline, and it will put them in order (alphabetical).
Control quick and ‘open in editor’ to get into photoshop (change your preferences if it isn’t already set to Photoshop).

Frames
Don’t do it on a slow computer – as it chews up processing to watch it, but click on the little arrow in bottom left hand corner. Select “show frames”.

Best Shortcuts
JKL
Backwards J – keep pressing for fast slow, K = stop. L = forward.
I is marking in. o is marking out. Brilliant!

Printing to Video
File – Print to Video (follow options on screen).

Printing to DVD
Export to Quicktime Format, into a DV file, drop into toast, and burn to DVD.

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