Final Cut Pro Notes

 

The big folder is the same as your scratch disk. 

All your files need to live in that one big folder.

All the files that you are using for FCP should not be rendered to H264.

Once you have all of your files correct codec and together in a big folder

OPEN FINAL CUT… It’s important to only run Final Cut as it is function intensive

It will immediately ask for a deck…. CLICK CONTINUE….

If you get an ERROR at this time, then you want to “reset scratch disk”

Then assign YOUR OWN FOLDER.  You have to tell Final Cut to Quit your project:

You cannot just close Final Cut… or your project will pop up when it reopens.

File

New Project

Window

Arrange

Standard

Then save the untitled project… there should only be one project open that says “untitled project 1” 

Go File

Save Project As

then save that to your folder.   Now you will see in the folder a FCP project file.  This is now your editing decisions…. It doesn’t include all the files associated with it.  This is why we established the scratch disk. 

The First thing you need to do when you open up

Final Cut Pro

System Settings

Then set your scratch disks….. click “Set” in the Upper Right and then go to the folder where you are working.  YOU MUST DO THIS AT THE BEGINNING EACH TIME YOU OPEN FCP because somebody before you has been using a different folder.

REMEMBER: At the beginning hit shift Q and make sure that your scratch disks are set to the appropriate folder.

The Next thing you want to do is import the files that OR the folder that you wish to work with.  You can

By default FCP will open up a sequence.  You need to make sure that the sequence settings match up.

If they do not.. highlight the sequence, then go to Sequence Settings and change it to animation or whatever so all files and the Sequence are the same.   EVERYTHING SHOULD MATCH UP!

The Next thing you want to do  is start editing

The best way is to highlight the clip and double click… . it will pop up in the middle window.  As you move along, the upper right corner will show you the time that  have moved.  Because you have not marked in and out the time will adjust.  

There are three tabs in the middle window.  The video you would like to “Fit to window’

Sync you want to leave off

The third has many many options. And you want to have it set to image.  Title safe bar can be turned off and on while editing. 

The final button is show excess luma.  Which will keep you in the parameters for legal broadcast.

J K and L are the backwards forwards and stop keys.  Double clicking on L with make it move fast

Other keyboard shortcuts…. If you use the right and left arrow key it will move you one frame… adding shift will move you by the second. 

To mark in and out on a clip: I for in and O for out.  If I want to go back to any point you can use the UP arrow.  If Option I and Option O will remove the markings.

If you would like to have more than one clip from the same clip, you can go to Apple U and it will create a sub clip (or a copy of the original clip) and

The top right window is the canvas, which is a representation of your sequence or timeline.   There are many ways to bring to the timeline.  You can drag and drop and you can cliek the red yellow or blue buttons. You should look at the direction of the arrow when you drag the clip down.  Red means and overwrite edit (when pointing down)  Insert edit will move things aside, the yellow edit will move aside, the red will OVERWRITE. 

Apple plus and minus will zoom you in and out when you are editing. 

The timeline indicator in the bottom left shows you where you are.

In the upper right hand corner is the ripple sequence marker.. don’t use.

There is a button to disconnect the video with audio… as if you wanted to flash to a reaction. SHIFT L  will also unlink the video with the audio.  This unlinking is called and L cut. 

The tool palette is down on the right side.   The tools are selection A … blade tool B and track tool T.  A selects… the next one is a track select you can highlight and shift click to select.

Numeric delete will delete and close the gap,  a regular delete will only delete the clip or the gap… one thing at a time. 

If you mouse in between two clips and if you select the gap between and then double click you will get a trim edit window to pop up.

If you only want to change the one of the left, you will highlight the window that you are wanting to adjust, if you want to watch how the edit is working, you can watch it on a loop.

On the very bottom of the timeline there are items that you can click on…. You can click on here.  Show audio wave forms is a useful function that is listed there.  You can also change the size of your video in the area. You can change the size of the timeline.

The toggle click overlays… will provide a black line and you can edit the opacity/brightness of your clip, or you can highlight the pink line if you want to edit your audio. 

When you are done with your video…. All you have to do is go to save project and the CLOSE project and the quit