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

1.

Open Chapter 08 Lesson 2, and load Seq Snowboard final to the Timeline. This is the same snowboard project you were working on in Chapter 7, "AudioThe Secret to a Great Picture."

2.

You've been editing for a long time. Are you in a hurry to add a dissolve? OK, here it is, in two steps:

Select the edit point between the first two clips (timecode: 01:00:03:04).

Press Cmd+T.

Poof. Instant dissolve. You've just applied the default transition, a 1-second cross-dissolve, to the selected edit point. (If you've changed your default transition, your default will appear instead of the cross dissolve. You will learn in Exercise 3 how to change the default transition.

That is, without a doubt, the fastest way to apply a dissolve to an edit point. But there's a lot more power available to you, if you can afford a few extra seconds.

3.

Chapter 6, "Trim Your Story."

7.

Turn off snapping (press N) and drag the edit point from side to side. Press U to select the three different sides of an edit.

You can roll or ripple the edit point as though the transition wasn't even there.

Gosh, I wish I knew this several years ago! Back then, when I needed to change an edit point, I'd remove the transition, correct the edit point, then reapply and adjust the transition. Trimming under the transition is just so much faster!

As you might expect, Final Cut provides a number of ways to apply transitions. The benefit to using the Effects menu is that it automatically applies the transition to whatever edit point you have selected. This is especially handy if you want to apply the same transition to more than one clip at the same time.

8.

Here's an example. Scroll down until you see the two clips stacked on top of each other (timecode 01:00:11:08). Click the lower edit point, then hold the Command key and click the upper edit point so that both are selected.

9.

Choose Effects > Video Transitions > Dissolves > Cross Dissolve. Again, poof! Multiple transitions.

Final Cut will not allow you to select more than one edit point on a track. But if you had, say, five video tracks, you could select one edit point on each track and apply the same transition to all tracks all at once.

10.

OK, undo that last double transition (press Cmd+Z) and go back to the first edit point again. It's between the first and second clips (timecode: 01:00:03:04).

11.

Select the Multi-Spin Slide transition by clicking it, slightly off center. Remember when, earlier, you changed its duration to 20 frames?

12.

Go up to the Browser and click the Effects tab. Twirl down the Video Transitions folder. Twirl down the Wipe folder.

13.

Select the Edge Wipe transition. Notice that it has a default length of 1:00 (1 second). Now, drag it from the Effects tab and place it on top of the existing Multi-Spin Slide transition. Notice that the new transition inherits all the timing and alignment characteristics of the old transition.

Another advantage of using the Effects tab to place transitions is that you can put a transition anywhere on the Timeline, regardless of whether the edit point is selected or not.

I use both of these techniques regularly in my editing, plus one more, which you'll learn about a little later in this chapter.

14.

Grab the edge of the transition and change the duration by dragging it shorter to a duration of 20 frames.

Transitions are remarkably flexible, if you know where to look. Here's where.

[View full size image]

15.

Double-click the transition to open it in the Transition Editor. Although the settings in the Editor vary by transition, this window contains the following sections:

Transition duration and alignment

Transition bar

Transition settings

The transition bar shows you the location of the transition, which allows you to make changes to the transition or the edit point beneath it. The dark blue/gray bar indicates video displayed in the clip. The light blue/gray bar indicates clip handles, and the white bar indicates where there is no video.

16.

Grab the edge of the transition and drag to change its duration.

17.

You can also trim the edit point by using the trim tools. Click the playhead in the Transition Editor and drag to do a Roll edit.

Or, click the end of one of the dark gray video clip bars to do a Ripple edit.

At the top of the window, you can set the transition's duration and alignment, display a list of recent items, or grab the drag handle (the hand) and move the transition. (More on this in Exercise 4.)

The transition alignment buttons are very usefulespecially when one of your clips doesn't have handles. Click the left-hand alignment button and watch the transition in the Timeline. This button aligns the transition so that it starts at the edit point.

18.

Click the middle button. This aligns the transition so that the middle of the transition is at the edit point.

19.

Click the right-hand button. This aligns the transition so that it ends at the edit point.

20.

In the middle of the Transition Editor are all the transition settings, which you can use to alter the look of the transition. These settings vary depending upon which transition you are editing.

In the case of this Edge wipe, change your settings to match mine. (You can grab the hands of the clock and twist to change the Angle setting.) Press the spacebar to play the results of your work.

There are two very, very small buttons on this screen that you should notice: the Reset button (the tiny red X in a circle) and the Change Direction arrow just above it. Click the Reset button to reset all the transition settings to their default. Click the Change Direction arrow to change the direction of a wipe.

When you are done tweaking, change your settings back to match mine.

[View full size image]

As you play the transition, the wipe travels in the same direction as the snowboarders (downhill to the right) and at about the same speed, making for an interesting transition between the two shots.

21.

Feel free to add other transitions to the shots in this sequence. As you will learn, though, use wipes sparingly. A wipe, by definition, is designed to call attention to itself. If you've done your editing correctly, you don't want people watching your wipes, you want them watching your program.

Once you are done playing, sorry, intensively practicing this exercise, you can save your work (or not, depending). The remaining exercises in this chapter are a series of brief techniques you can use to make working with transitions more efficient.

MOVIE | Transition.mov

For examples on using the Transition Editor, watch Transition.mov in the movies folder on the FCP HD HOT DVD included at the end of this book.