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

1.

Open Chapter 07 Lesson 1. It's in your FCP Projects folder. Double-click Seq Talking Heads start to load it into the Timeline.

Save this project under a new name (File > Save As). Call it Hurricane, and save it in your FCP Projects folder.

2.

Chapter 4, "Build Your Story."

This is one of the great strengths of Final Cut. Whether you are editing video, audio, or audio and video, all the tools work exactly the same. So, everything you learned about editing clips to the Timeline, organizing them once they are on the Timeline, and trimming your clips to remove the parts you don't need still apply when you add audio into your sequence.

5.

Play the end of the clip on the Timeline. Notice the "um" at the end? Trim this. You can do this several ways, but, remember, for trimming, always turn off snapping (press N). Otherwise, snapping keeps jumping you to the nearest edit point.

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6.

First you need to find out where the Out needs to be set, so grab the playhead, back it up before the end of the clip, and play it. Stop the clip when he says, "rainfall" (timecode: 01:00:03:26).

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7.

Often, when editing audio, turning on audio waveforms in the Timeline is helpful. You can do this by pressing Option+Cmd+W or…

…clicking the small right-pointing arrow in the lower-left corner of the Timeline and turning on Show Audio Waveforms.

Keep in mind, however, that there is a performance hit in Final Cut when you have audio waveforms on. So, keep them off when you are editing video, and your system will perform faster.

8.

Now you have several choices for trimming the end of the clip:

Turn on snapping, grab the end of the clip, and drag it to the playhead.

Turn on snapping, select the Razor Blade, cut the clip at the playhead, and delete the unused portion on the right.

Turn on snapping, select the Ripple tool, and ripple the end of the clip to the playhead.

Press Ctrl+V to cut the clip at the playhead and delete the unused portion.

9.

Double-click Bush Emergency to load it into the Viewer. This time, you'll set both the In and the Out in the Viewer, so you won't need to trim it on the Timeline.

Click the Stereo (a1a2) audio tab, and find the beginning of the audio, where he says, "Uh, yesterday.…" Set your In three frames before he starts speaking (01:00:14:03).

Again, you are giving a little breathing room to the clip to make the audio sound more natural and less "clipped."

10.

Go to the end of the clip, where he says, "…across the state." Using the arrow tools can help find the exact end of the audio. Again, add three more frames and set the Out (01:00:23:10).

Using one of the automated tools, edit this clip to the Timeline. If you have problems editing using one of the automated tools, be sure you don't have an In or Out set on the Timeline (press Option+X). Play the two clips and watch the video.

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Did you see where he "jumped" when the edit point went through? This sudden video shift is called a "jump cut," and these, also, are considered bad editing and need to be fixed.

There are two ways to conceal a jump cut:

Put a different shot between the two shots.

Put video on top of the two shots to cover it.

11.

Using the Up Arrow tool, move the playhead between these two clips (01:00:14:03).

12.

Double-click Devanas Big story to load it into the Viewer. Set the In and the Out to the beginning and the end of his sound bite. (This term comes from radio news where a "sound bite" is a short clip of someone talking, in this case, Mr. Devanas. It is a "small bite of sound.") Your timecode points should be close to an In of 01:00:05:10 and an Out of 01:00:13:20.

Try, if you can, to cut out the "uh" at the beginning of the sound bite, which will make it sound better.

Edit this clip to the Timeline, so that it fits between the first two clips. You'll need to use an Insert edit.

13.

Chapter 5, "Trim Your Story." Shuffle the clips around to see if it improves the clarity of the story.

The key point to this exercise is that the editing tools you've already learned work exactly the same way when you are editing audio. It's just that now, when you are building an audio-driven story, you need to make your edits based on what's being said in the audio, not the visuals in the video.

17.

In the next exercise, you'll learn how to add B-roll to illustrate what the speakers are talking about. For now, though, save your work. You'll be using this exact same sequence in the next exercise.

NOTE | Audio Scrubbing

Audio scrubbing is a quick way to review audio while you are editing.

You turn audio scrubbing on (or off) in the View menu, or by pressing Shift+S. When it's on, dragging the playhead across clips in the Timeline, Viewer, or Canvas allows you to hear snippets of the audio. When scrubbing is off, dragging the playhead is silent.

NOTE | The Benefits of Two-Track Editing

When I'm editing dramatic material, I tend to keep the video to one track because it helps me to see the pacing of a scene.

However, when I'm editing anything that's a talking head with B-roll, two-track video editing is far easier. First, because moving B-roll clips is as easy as dragging them from one spot to another on the V2 track, this means I don't have to mess with the trimming tools. Second, I can see where all my jump cuts are in v1. Once I overwrite the v1 video, all my jump cuts are covered. Third, using two tracks of video makes it easier for me to checkerboard my audio clips, which you'll learn about in Exercise 5. Finally, keeping my talking heads on v1 makes it easier to see where I need to put my lower-third supers and IDs, because I can see where the shots change. (You'll learn about text and titles in Chapter 9, "Text, Titles, and Graphics.")

You can, of course, edit your pieces any way you like. However, this is a system that works well for me.