INTRO TO FINAL CUT PRO: IMPORTING, REVIEW FOOTAGE, MAKE AN EDIT, SHORTCUTS  [7:27 min]

TRANSCRIPT

Hi, I’m Aubrey Mozino from We Make Movies.

Editing video can be intimidating -- to the beginner filmmaker it can seem very technical and complicated.

In this video I’m going to show you that it’s super easy to get started editing. We’re going to use Final Cut Pro X which is very powerful, professional video editing software, but it’s also extremely intuitive and quick to learn. By the end of this video you’ll have your footage imported and will be well on your way to completing your first edit!

First things first. To begin an edit we need to create a Library in Final Cut Pro X. A library is a container for all the media and edits in a particular project.

Go to the File menu and select New, then Library. Let’s call this Library “Smartphone Studio” and press Save to create it.

While we’re at it, we’ll also create a new Event, which is like a folder on your Mac or similar to a bin if you’ve used other professional editing applications.  Go to file menu select New, then Event (or press Option N). Let’s call this new Event “Media” and press OK to create it.

Now we need to import some footage.  If you airdropped from your iPhone, your footage is probably sitting in your downloads folder.  There’s two ways to import it into Final Cut. 

With the Media event we just created selected, you can open the Import Window by going to File, Import Media, and then navigate to the folder.

Let’s select some clips in the Import window. You’ll see a lot of import options on the right hand side of the window, and we’ll cover some of those options later, but for now just click import selected on the bottom right hand side of the window to import the footage.

You can also drag and drop directly from the Finder into Final Cut.  To do that, go to the finder, go to your folder with your footage, in this case the downloads folder. Select your first clip, then hold down shift, scroll down and select the last clip.  Next, go into Final cut, select the event you’d like to import into (in this case the Event called Media that we created earlier), and drag either into the browser or the event itself.

Next, here’s how to preview and navigate through your footage.

There’s two ways of viewing your footage in Final Cut.  The first view is called Film Strip view and is on by default.  You can see your clip names displayed below each clip in the browser and when you hover over a clip you can easily skim through the footage.

If you want to play something back, hover to the place you’d like to play back from and push the spacebar.  Push the spacebar again to pause.

The second view is called List View.  You can toggle between filmstrip and list view by clicking this button in the top right of the browser.  List view will allow you to scroll between your clips with the up and down arrows, and just like in Film Strip view you can skim the footage in the thumbnail at the top of the list and start and stop playback with the spacebar.

Next we need to create a Project. The project is a timeline that will hold all our edits for our video. To create a new project go to File, New then select Project, or simply press Command N. There are a lot of project options you can set, but to get us going we are just going to go with the automatic settings. With automatic settings the project options will automatically be set to the size and frame rate of the first clip you add.

OK so now, let’s make an edit.  Hover inside one of your clips and go to a place where you would like a clip to start in your edit.

Click inside the clip and drag to the right until you find a place you’d like to stop.  Next, click in the center of the selection and drag it into the timeline which is where you edit will be created.

Congratulations, BTW.  Once you’ve done this, you’re now officially an editor! 

From the timeline, push on the up arrow to move to the beginning of the clip, and push the spacebar to play it back and you will see that the edit matches the selection in the browser.

Now, go to another clip in the browser and hover to a place where you might like the clip to begin. This time we’re going to use shortcuts on the keyboard to create an edit

Press I on the keyboard to set an in point.  Next, hover to where you’d like the clip to stop and press O to set an out point.  You can now drag that selection into the timeline as you did the last time, or you can press the E key to have the clip go to the end of the timeline.

Now, go into your timeline and hit the up arrow to move between the two clips. 

There are a number of other keys you can press to make editing your clips really fast.

Press the Q key to place the clip above the timeline. When you place a clip above the timeline that clip will show when you playback rather than the clip underneath.

Press the W key to insert the clip between clips.  Press the D key to overwrite over a clip.  Press E again, and you’ll see the clip added to the end of the timeline as before.

Finally, lets click back over to filmstrip mode and quickly try this with a couple of clips there.  First, click and drag across a clip to make a selection and drag it into the timeline.

Now, go hover over another clip you’d like to add to your edit, set an in point where you’d like the edit to start by pushing I, set the out point by pushing O, and then hit E to enter it into the timeline.

Finally, go into the project and select a clip and start moving it between other clips in the timeline.  Notice that the other clips will move out of the way to make room for that clip and automatically reorder themselves. 

This feature is called the magnetic timeline and its unique to Final Cut Pro X.  You can connect video clips above the timeline as well and they will remain connected to the clips below as you move them up and down the timeline.

What you have seen is the basic editing process in Final Cut Pro X, and you now know all the steps needed to build your amazing video!