2. FINAL CUT PRO: WORKING IN TIMELINES - SOUND EDITS, NAVIGATION, TRIMMING, TOOLS, AND THE SKIMMER
[10:48 min]
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What You'll Need: Final Cut Pro
TRANSCRIPT
Hi, Aubrey Mozino here from We Make Movies.
There are many tips and tricks that will make you a faster editor in Final Cut Pro X. Over the next few minutes, I’m going to show you a few of my favorites!
First things first. Final Cut Pro X has a powerful and unique feature called the Magnetic Timeline. It will help you edit really quickly without accidentally knocking video or audio out of synch or changing your edits in other parts of the timeline.
Let’s see how it works. We’re going to start with a timeline that we’ve already added some clips to. I showed you how to do this in the Final Cut Pro X Basics video.
Select a clip on your timeline and move it in between two other clips. Notice the other clips slide out of the way to make that happen. If the other clips have audio or graphics associated with them that will slip out of the way too. Do this a few times to get used to the feel of how the clips move out of the way.
Next, select a clip and drag it above another clip and let go and see how the timeline responds.
Now select the clip below that clip and drag the clip further down the timeline between two other clips. Notice how the clip on top moves with it. All clips above a clip in the magnetic timeline will move with the clip they are connected to.
The place where clips are attached is called the “connection point” You can tell where the connection point is by zooming into the timeline by pressing cmd-+
Do you see this little blue dot below the start of the clip? That’s the connection point, and we know the clip is connected to this frame of the clip below it in the timeline.
Final Cut will move everything that’s connected together. At the moment when I move the clip underneath the connected clip moves with it. But what if I wanted the clip to move with the next clip in the timeline?
You can change a clip’s connection point by pressing opt-cmd and clicking towards the bottom of the clip. And you can see the connection point moves -- in this case to the next clip in the timeline. Now when I move this clip, the clip above moves with it.
Now, find your playhead which is the solid white line towards the middle of your timeline and press the up arrow. You’ll see that the playhead moves to the previous edit. Press the down arrow, and you’ll see that it moves to the next edit. If you press the left arrow, you can move the playhead one frame left. If you press the right arrow, you can move it one frame right.
On any keyboard, pressing Function left arrow will take you to the front of the timeline and function right arrow will take you to the end of the timeline. If you’re on a large keyboard, you can press the home key to get to the front of the timeline, or the end key to get to the end.
Now, lets zoom out of the timeline by pressing cmd -. Continue zooming out by pressing cmd -. Now zoom back in by pressing cmd +. Keep pressing cmd-+ until you are all the way zoomed in. Now, press shift-z to fit your all of the clips into your timeline. You can always get back to this view by pressing shift-z at any time.
Next, hover over the filmstrip badge above the timeline and click it. You can change how you view your filmstrip and waveforms with these buttons, and you can adjust your clip height with this slider. Lets make our clips a little bigger here.
Now, let’s change the length of some clips. press cmd + to zoom into one of the edits on your timeline. Click one of the edges of your clips and drag out and in. This is how you will extend or shorten a clip. Using your mouse or trackpad move the skimmer (the red line) to just before the clip and press the spacebar -- you will see how your new edit. If you want to use the keyboard to adjust your edits, press the down key to move to the next edit. Press the left bracket to select the left edge, the right bracket the right edge, or the slash key to select both edges. You can move the edges left and right by one frame with the comma and period keys. Hold down shift-comma or period to move it in 10 frame increments. Additionally, with an edge selected you can park your playhead or skimmer somewhere near the edit and press shift-X and the edges will jump to that point in the timeline.
You can also trim the front or back side of an edit to the playhead or skimmer by hovering your skimmer to a point and pressing option left bracket or option right bracket. Option left bracket will trim the start of a clip to that point. Option right bracket will trim the end of a clip to the skimmer or playhead.
You can do this with just the sound or just the picture. Find the waveform at the bottom of the clip which is a representation of the audio. Double click the waveform, and you’ll see the sound expand out from the video.
Now click and drag the top edge out and you’ll see the video side extend in and out. Select the edge of the sound and do the same, and leave the edge of the sound below the next clip. This is what professional editors call an L cut, because it makes an L shape on the timeline. If we did this at the other end of the clip it would be called a J cut, because, you guessed it, it makes a J shape on the timeline. These are common edits where the sound or picture of the previous clip overlaps with the next edit. Lets play that back. It sounds a little abrupt at the end because the sound doesn’t fade out.
To fade the sound out gradually, hover the skimmer over the edge of the clip until you see the cursor change into the two arrows facing out. Now click and drag towards the inside of the clip, and you’ll see that your audio is fading down with it. If you ctrl or right click on that icon, you’ll see that you have options to change the fade type. You can experiment with a few different fade types to get just the sound you’re looking for.
Now, do you see the bar that goes horizontally across the middle of every clip in the timeline? That controls the volume of each of your clips. You can change the volume of your clips by dragging that bar up and down. But what if you want to reduce the volume of the clip in just a selected range? Often you want to do this to lower the volume of music under a section where someone is speaking. Final Cut has a really easy way of doing this.
Hold down the R key and click and drag across the section of another clip in your timeline, and you’ll see that it creates in and out points across that clip in the timeline. Drag down on the bar between those two points and you’ll see that it creates a section where the volume is lowered.
You may notice that this process creates small white diamonds on the volume line. These diamonds are called keyframes and specify the volume right at that point. You can make the time it takes for the volume to be lowered to the lowest point by moving these keyframes closer or further apart.
You can also create your own keyframes by hand. Hold down the option key and click on the bar and you’ll see a keyframe appear. Hold down option and click again and you’ll see another appear. Add a third keyframe then click the one in the middle and drag down.
You’ll see the volume go down between the other two keyframes. Now drag down the volume line to the right of the last keyframe, and you’ll see the volume on the whole end of the clip go down.
Next, we’re going to cut up some clips in the timeline.
Click at the top of the timeline towards the middle of a clip to park the playhead. Press cmd-B. You have now cut the clip in two, and you can move that section of the clip to another part of the timeline. If you park the playhead between clips that are connected in the timeline and press shift-cmd-B, you’ll see all the clips in the timeline get a blade added to them.
There is also a blade tool that you can access if you press the b key. Now you can add blade edits throughout your timeline. When you’re done blading, go back to your selection tool so you can start making edits again by pressing the A key. I can now select a segment from a clip I just bladed in the project and move it around the timeline separately.
There are a variety of editing tools you can get access to in Final Cut, and you can see their keyboard modifiers by clicking the arrow dropdown above the timeline. See that you can go to the blade key by pressing B, the range selection tool by pressing or holding down R, or the standard selection tool by pressing A.
One other tool to note is the Position tool. Using the position tool by pressing P will override the magnetic timeline. Now, when you move clips, It will leave a blank clip (or slug) in the clip’s place and clips will no longer move out of the way in the timeline but will instead be overwritten. You can also delete that slug or any clip, by selecting it and pushing delete.
You can revert back to the standard magnetic timeline by pressing A. You can create slug at any time by pressing Alt-W, or by selecting a clip in the magnetic timeline and pressing shift-delete.
Additionally, if you find at times you’d like to turn off the skimmer and instead just work with the playhead, you can press S. Notice how I’ve stopped scrubbing footage as I hover through the timeline. You can turn it back on by pressing S again.
Working with the timeline in Final Cut Pro X can go very deep and we’ve just scratched the surface here with what is possible, but this should be enough to get you moving through your edit at a very fast pace.