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

1.

Open Chapter 07 Lesson 2, which is in the FCP HOT files lessons folder. This is the same project you completed at the end of Chapter 6, "Trim Your Story." Double-click Seq Snowboard Final to load it into the Timeline.

2.

Put the playhead at the beginning of the sequence, if it isn't already there. What you are going to do is to record an introductory narration for the beginning of the snowboard commercial.

You don't need to be James Earl Jones to be successful as a narrator. Nor do you even have to like listening to your recorded voice. Of all the actors I've ever worked with, none have ever liked the sound of their voices. That isn't the point. The point is do other people like listening to the sound of your voice?

A narrator needs to be easy to understand at first hearing and seem interested in the material he or she is presenting. Most importantly, his or her voice should complement the emotional tenor of your project.

3.

Because this is the intro, move the playhead to the edit point between the second and third shots and set an Out. This tells the Voice Over tool to stop recording when it hits the Out.

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4.

Choose Tools > Voice Over to open the Voice Over tool. The tool opens in its own window, though when it does, it sizes itself to match the size of the Viewer, then parks on top of it. You can drag this Voice Over window wherever you want and resize it.

The lower half of the window allows you to set the following:

The Input and Source (which vary depending upon how your microphone is connected to your computer).

The sample Rate (default is 44,100 Hz); I set mine to 48,000 to match the audio sample rate of my Final Cut Timeline.

Gain, which controls how loud or soft your mic volume is. Again, try to get your narration to record around the 6 level.

Offset, which allows you to adjust for the delay between the time you talk and the time it gets recorded. This, too, varies by computer and operating system version, though the default of 1 Frame is a good place to start.

These audio beeps count you down to zero during recording, so that you can time the narration to end on time.

5.

The top half of the window shows you where the recorded narration will appear in Final Cut. (Voiceover narration is always placed on the Timeline in the track immediately below the last used trackin this case, A2.)

Plus, this is where you enter the name of the soon-to-be-recorded clip. In this case, type Snowboard Intro.

6.

When everything is ready, click the Record button.

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The Voice Over tool flashes orange in its status screen, counting down to when the recording starts.

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7.

During the recording, the Voice Over status window turns red, the Timeline plays, the Audio Meter bounces, and…

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…as you get near the end, the status screen counts down the final 10 seconds.

If you are wearing headphones, turn on Sound Cues. In addition to flashing red and counting down to zero on the screen, you will hear beeps in your headset that count you down as well. When I do voiceover recording, I find myself concentrating on the script and the reading, and I don't have time to watch the screen for a countdown. These audible beeps are really helpful to me in bringing the reading in on time.

When the recording is complete, Final Cut records it to disk and drops it on the Timeline into the track below the last used track.

Voiceover recordings are stored in memory during recording. When recording is complete, they are permanently saved into the Capture Scratch folder. If I am working on a machine with limited memory, I make it a point to keep my recordings short.

Also, Voice Over tool recordings don't show up in the Browser unless you drag them from the Timeline to the Browser.

8.

That's it for this exercise. If you recorded anything you want to keep, save your project. Otherwise, close this project because we are going back to the Hurricane project for the final exercise in this chapter.