Final Cut Pro HD | H•O•T Hands-On Training [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

1.

If the project from the last exercise is not open, open Board Feet from your FCP HOT Book Projects folder.

2.

Start with a simple example. Create a new sequence and call it "Seq 3-point." (Note the leading space in the name.) Double-click it to load it into the Timeline. Notice you now have two sequence tabs open in the Timeline.

It's OK to have more than one sequence open in the Timeline at once. However, if you have less than 1 GB of RAM in your computer, performance improves if you limit the number of opened sequences in the Timeline. Sequences in the Browser use virtually no memory, so you can store as many sequences there as you want.

This is why I had you leave the sequence from the last exercise open. It's time now to learn how to close a sequence that's open in the Timeline.

3.

Ctrl+click the tab of the sequence you wish to close and choose Close Tab from the shortcut menu. The sequence is removed from the Timeline, but still accessible from the Browser. Double-click it to open it back into the Timeline.

4.

Load the clip Track The gap into the Viewer. Set an In 2 seconds after the start of the clip. Set the duration to 5:00 (In: 1:02:29:08,duration: 5:00 ).

5.

Now, move the playhead in the Timeline to 1:00:02:00. The fastest way to do this is to double-click in the timecode box in the upper-left corner of the Timeline and type in the numbers. Be sure to use colons to separate the numbers.

See how the playhead immediately jumped to the timecode you entered?

6.

Now, press I to set an In. Next, move the playhead 3 seconds later in the Timeline. The easiest way to do this is to press the + key on the keypad or keyboard, type 300, and press Return. (Note you didn't use any periods or commasmore on this later.)

See how the playhead jumped to the new location? You combine + or with timecode entered from the keypad to move the playheadin the Timeline, Viewer, or Canvas.

7.

Press O to set an Out.

8.

Finally, just to make this challenging, slide the playhead so it's before the In; the exact amount doesn't matter.

Here's what you've done. You marked a 5-second clip in the Viewer. Then, you set a 3-second duration in the Timeline. Finally, you moved the playhead to a location outside the In and Out on the Timeline.

When you perform this edit, what do you think will happen? Will the edit start at the playhead or at the Timeline In? Will the edit duration be 3 seconds or 5 seconds?

9.

To find out, drag the clip from the Viewer onto the Overwrite overlay in the Canvas.

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Ah-HA! The clip started at the Timeline In and ended at the Timeline Out. In other words:

Setting an In on the Timeline overrides the position of the playhead in determining where a clip starts when edited from the Viewer.

Setting a duration on the Timeline overrides the duration set in the Viewer.

Back-timing means you determine where you want to a clip to end, and Final Cut calculates where it needs to start. Here's an example.

10.

Again, using the Seq 3-point, load the Thru trees clip into the Viewer. Go to timecode 1:02:01:16 and set an Out. (Right, I said set an Out.)

11.

Now, press the minus () key on the keypad, type 400, and press Return. The playhead in the Viewer moves back 4 seconds. Set an In (01:12:03:12). You should have a clip duration of 4:01.

[View full size image]

12.

On the Timeline, move your playhead to 1:00:10:00, either by entering the number into the timecode box or sliding the playhead. Set an Out. Don't set an In on the Timeline.

13.

Now, drag the clip from the Viewer on top of the red Overwrite button in the lower-left corner of the Canvas and watch what happens.

[View full size image]

The 4-second clip in the Viewer was moved to the Timeline so that the Out of the clip in the Viewer matched the Out set in the Timeline.

I use this technique frequently when I want to have the end of a video clip match a sound cue or when I need more control over where a clip ends on the Timeline than where it begins.

14.

Save your work, but keep this project open. You'll need it once more before this chapter is done.

NOTE | Timecode Shortcuts

This last exercise illustrated how you can use timecode to move the playhead in the Viewer and Timeline (and Canvas, too, for that matter). In fact, Final Cut tries to bend over backwards in making it easy to enter timecode.

For instance, the following numbers on each row are equivalent for NTSC video:

Here's the translation:

You can substitute a period in place of two zeros for minutes, seconds, or frames.

Colons are optional; you can leave them out.

Type a one- or two-digit number and Final Cut assumes you mean frames. So 15 = 15 frames, 30 = 1:00, 45 = 1:15, and 75 = 2:15.

Type a three- or four-digit number and Final Cut assumes you mean seconds and frames. So, 115 = 1:15, 1200 = 12:00, 2445 = 25:15 (that was tricky), and 9999 = 1:42:09. (OK, I haven't really used that last one, but I was curious, so I checked.)

Type a five- or six-digit number and Final Cut assumes you mean minutes, seconds and frames.

You can use these techniques to set durations, move the playhead, or, as you'll see later, move clips and even edit points.

Timecode is very cool and makes video editing much faster and more precise. (For PAL video, the concept is the same, but the numbers are different, because PAL plays 25 frames per second, whereas NTSC plays 30.)