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

1.

Open Chapter 09 Lesson 1. You'll find it inside the Lessons folder on the FCP HDHOT DVD included with this book. Double-click Seq Ready to Title to load it into the Timeline. It should have all the graphics you've created so far during this chapter. If not, open Seq Ready for credits.

2.

Create a scrolling text clip by choosing Text > Scrolling Text from the Generator pop-up menu in the lower-right corner of the Viewer.

3.

Go to the Timeline and put your playhead at the In of the fourth clip from the end, B clean WS. Then, repatch the video so that v1 Source connects to V2 Destination.

4.

Edit the text clip to the Timeline, then drag the Out with the Arrow tool so that the credits text covers the three clips prior to the final sound bite. Then, double-click it to load it into the Viewer.

5.

Enter your credit list in the top half of the Controls panel. Put asterisks between the titles and names as a separator. Final Cut turns this into the correct spacing automatically using the Gap Width setting in the next step. You can change the font, size, and color as you like. In this case, use Lucida Grande,32 point.

6.

At the bottom of the Controls panel are some new settings:

Gap Width controls the size of the horizontal gap, indicated by the asterisk, between the title and the name.

Fade Size fades the text at the top and bottom of the screen. This is a percentage of the entire screen. Adding a slight fade makes the credit roll look nicer, to my way of thinking.

Direction controls which way the text scrolls.

Auto Kerning improves the spacing between letters. I always leave this on.

7.

Add a drop shadow to your text and move your playhead near the middle of the clip to see what the credits look like. (Pretty darn nice, if you ask me!)

8.

Save your work, and you're done. There's still more to come in the next exercise, so keep everything open.

NOTE | Graphic Math Anxiety, Part IIWhat Color Is White?

Wouldn't it be nice if… computers and video used the same white and black levels?

Well, they don't.

When you hear terms like "8-bit video" and "10-bit video," the bits refer to the number of levels between maximum black and maximum white. Eight-bit video has 256 discrete levels, and 10-bit video has 1,024 levels.

This means pure black on the computer has an RGB value of 0,0,0, and pure white on the computer has an RGB value of 255, 255, and 255.

The problem is that video doesn't have that great a range. In 8-bit video, video black in the U.S. is only 16 (as measured on the RGB scale) and video white is 235. To complicate matters, video is measured in IRE, where 7.5 IRE equals video black and 100 IRE equals video white.

The reason you need to care is that you can create graphics on your computer that are too white. When they are broadcast, they visually distort and make the audio buzz. Not good. If you are creating professional-level video, this results in your tapes getting rejected for poor technical quality.

There is some good news, however. First, create all your graphics with black set to 0. Your capture card or DV deck handles the conversion to the proper level of black automatically.

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With white settings, it isn't so easy, though Final Cut adds a preference to help. Choose Sequence > Settings (or press Cmd+0) and click the Video Processing tab.

Here's the rule: if you are outputting to DV or DVD, set this pop-up to Super-White. If you are outputting to a professional SD format, such as Betacam, set this pop-up to White.

What this menu tells Final Cut to do is "clamp," or automatically reduce, all imported graphics so that their white levels match the tape format to which you are recording. This setting affects only imported graphics, and not video, but, still, it's a great help. (You'll learn a way to clamp video white levels at the end of the next exercise.)