Final Cut Pro 7: December 2009 Archives

Did you know you can change the timing on your transitions in Final Cut Pro?  It's no secret, I love using transitions, within moderation of course; but I have a few favorites that I use and think to myself, wow, this would be even cooler if I could just slow it down a bit.  There are several ways to do this, mostly having to do with trimming the transition or changing the duration of the transition itself. 

One way is to simply right-click the transition and choose Duration from the drop down menu, and in the pop-up window that appears, enter the new duration and click OK.

Another way is to just drag the edges of the transition icon to make it shorter or longer.  But the third way is what I personally use most:  using the Transition Editor.  Double-click on the transition to open it up in the Transition Editor.

You can use the Transition Editor to make detailed changes to a transition's parameters.  Along with changing the timing, you can adjust the alignment, trim the edit point between 2 clips or even reverse the direction of a transition.

Check out this article for more detailed information about the Transition Editor.

Did you know that Final Cut Pro has a cool set of audio filters located within the Effects Tab?  You can apply audio filters by dragging a particular filter to a clip within the Timeline, and you can stack an unlimited number of filters onto clips.  Filters are processed in the order they are applied.



In order to adjust and see the controls for each filter, you must double-click a particular audio clip to load its contents into the Viewer window.  Click the Filters Tab at the top of the window to reveal a list of audio filters that have been applied.  Depending on your screen resolution, you may need to increase the size of the Viewer window in order to see the keyframe area for the audio controls.

It's fun to play around with some of the filters to see how you can change some of the audio effects of your clip.  I especially like the reverberation filter; it gives you that robotic feel.  The New Year is quickly approaching...do you have your Final Cut Pro class already scheduled?  Classes do fill up quickly since our class size is small and personal, so be sure to call us today!

There are a variety of different workflows when it comes to mixing audio levels within Final Cut Pro.  For example, you can edit projects by cutting video with its corresponding audio into a sequence and add music and sound effects later.  This is most commonly done with larger projects, such as, scripted film, television programs, and documentaries.  For shorter projects such as news and television commercials, you many want to start with a basic narrative soundtrack and add video to it, adding music and sound effects later.  Or, you can use a combination of these two methods. 

Regardless of how a sequence is created, additional audio tracks containing music, sound effects, and voiceovers are often added to it.  The audio levels of the individual tracks need to be adjusted so that the proper message is conveyed.  As an example, if you are putting music into a scene, the voiceover track should be at least six decibels louder than the music for the words to be heard.  All of the audio tracks are combined to produce the final audio output.

After the relative levels of the individual clips have been adjusted, the overall volume of the sequence needs to be adjusted.  To demonstrate this, I'll start by building a sequence with 10 seconds of bars and tone created by the Generators menu.

This automatically loads 2 minutes of bars and tone into the Viewer window.  Final Cut Pro automatically marks an area of 10 seconds in the middle of the clip.  If you place the bars and tone into the timeline, notice that the audio volume is -12dB in both the left and right channels, as shown by the audio meter during playback.  If you were to add two more audio tracks and overwrite the audio from the bars and tone into these tracks, the audio volume would be -6dB in both the left and right channels.

The process of combining audio tracks into channels is called mixing.  As you can see, adding audio tracks increases the overall volume without changing the volume of any of the individual tracks or clips.  For television programs, the desired maximum volume is -6dB.  To adjust clips in a sequence, you can use the Audio Mixer Tool.

There are a variety of techniques you can use to speed your trimming.  Here's some handy keyboard shortcuts to remember for trimming left and right in Final Cut Pro:

• V key:  Moves the playhead to the nearest edit point
• U key:  Toggles between selecting the In point , Out point, or both
• Comma:  Trims the selected edit point left one frame at a time
• Period:  Trims the selected edit point right one frame at a time
• Shift < or Shift >  Trims left or right multiple frames.  By default, this trims in five-frame increments, but the number of frames can be changed in the User Preferences under the Editing Tab

Remember, to get the most accurate trims, be sure to turn off snapping (N key), and also make sure you have plenty of handles.

This week's featured Plug-in for Final Cut Pro does an awesome job smoothing skin and removing blemishes from people on footage.  BeautyBox from Digital Anarchy uses an advanced technique like Face Detection to automatically identify skin tones.  There's no need to manually create masks or retouch frame by frame.  The process is designed to speed up the workflow that usually takes so much time for skin retouching.

Skin Smoothing is also a technology they use to keep important features of the face sharp but still reduce or even erase wrinkles & blemishes.  The auto-feature is really intuitive as to retouching, but there are also separate parameters within the filter that you can tweak for even better results.
You can download a demo at Digital Anarchy's website as well as see more examples of how this software can help you.  The demo plug-in does place a watermark (hence the gray vertical line on my sample) on your footage, but once you see what it can do in such a short amount of time, you'll be ready to purchase!

Final Cut Pro sequences can become incredibly complex and can contain tons of edit points, therefore, being able to manage your Timeline window is an important skill, and important that you are able to manage your sequences efficiently.  Final Cut Pro provides the ability to resize each track (or layers in your timeline) within a sequence.  By stretching your tracks vertically, or making them taller in the Timeline, your clip icons become larger.  When the track height is at its smallest, you won't be able to see the clip icons at all. 

There are track height presets that automatically resize the tracks for you.  The toggle for the Timeline track height is located in the lower left corner of the Timeline window.  You can also use the keyboard shortcut Shift+T to cycle through the different track sizes.

Shown below is a sample of the different track heights to give you an idea...

You can also manually adjust each track by placing the mouse cursor just below each track until the mouse cursor changes into the resize indicator.  For example, if you only want to change the track size in just one of your audio tracks in order to see the waveform better, you might use this method.  Drag the corresponding track to the size that you prefer.



You can also set the track to open at a particular height everytime you open a new sequence by setting it in the user preferences under Timeline Options.

We have a great 5 day Final Cut Pro class that can help beginners through intermediate editors alike; why not give us a call today to schedule?

Cooliris is a new option for browsing images and video. After downloading Cooliris it embeds a button onto your browser that launches Cooliris. Once in Cooliris you are able to view the media in a much more interactive format.



Cooliris has a 3D wall that allows you to zoom in and out, or move up and down the wall. You are also able to isolate individual images or video. Cooliris even works on your internal drive, so you can navigate to a folder of pictures on your computer, and it will display them the Cooliris way. This is a great way to take a quick look at 100's of files for use in applications like Final Cut, Motion, Photoshop, and After Effects



This is a very exciting application, I highly advise you to give it a try.

Final Cut Pro students are always seeking shortcuts in order to make their editing workflow more efficient.  But sometimes they don't realize those shortcuts are usually right in front of them.  To find a shortcut for any button or function in the interface, simply move your pointer over that area.  A Tooltip appears with the tool name and keyboard shortcut when you leave your cursor untouched while parked on a particular tool. 

The key is to force yourself to look at that tooltip and tell yourself, "ok, next time I need to turn off Snapping, I will use the N key", and really force yourself to use it; rather than giving yourself carpal tunnel and taking the extra time to move over to the tool palette to toggle on or off snapping.

keep reading...there's more!

There's a handy new way to create freeze frames in Final Cut Pro 7 with a lot less hassles than the older version; it's by using the new speed tools available.  With the older version you had to place the playhead where you wanted to freeze it, press Shift+N to bring up the freeze in the Viewer, and then you would change the duration for as many frames as you wanted to hold the freeze.  Next you would do an insert edit at the playhead, which almost always messes up your audio and leaves a gap in your track; so then you'd have to fix that or maybe move it to another track, which then just created a whole lot of unnecessary work.

continue reading for an easier step by step...

Here is one of those fun discoveries of a new feature in Final Cut Pro that I didn't know about. In Final Cut 7 there is a new feature called Reveal Affiliated Clips in Front Sequence. It is basically the opposite of Reveal Master Clip (shift +F). Where as Reveal Master Clip highlights the location of a clip in the File Browser from the Timeline, Reveal Affiliated Clips in Front  Sequence highlights the location of a clip in the Timeline, by right-clicking a clip in the File Browser, and choosing Reveal Affiliated Clips in Front Sequence.   I know there have been times that I gave a clip in the File Browser a color label to see it in the Timeline. This is a much more effective process.

So many times I've downloaded Plug-ins and haven't been able to find them afterwards; it's become a frustrating practice for me in the past as well as other users I've talked to.  The key is the location of the Plug-ins folder.  Because of the variety of plug-ins available out there, all plug-ins do not install in the same manner; it's basically your job to move them to the correct spot.

The correct path to place your plug-ins is HD > Library > Application Support > Final Cut Pro System Support > Plug-Ins

The reasoning behind the method is so that you're placing them in the base level of the computer versus an individual user.  Some plug-ins companies have you using an installer and will place them within the User folder, and therefore not everyone who uses that computer will have access to them.

Another important point regarding plug-ins that so many users tend to forget is the fact that you have to restart Final Cut Pro after you've installed your plug-in, otherwise it will not appear in Final Cut.

If you are shooting in one of the progressive modes with the Panasonic AG-HVX200 HD Camera, make sure you pay special attention to the type of progressive mode that you are shooting in. 

Before reading further, this article is only relevant to those of us who are shooting for Standard NTSC playback to video.  This article does not apply to those who are using Apple cinema tools to print back to film.

The progressive format you chose can affect the audio/video sync of your clips after they are ingested into Final Cut Pro.  It also affects the storage requirements.  In particular there are two major differences between 720p and 720pn.  So what is 720pn? What does the 'n' stand for? Read on....