Final Cut Pro 7: June 2010 Archives

The Final Cut Pro Browser will allow you to sort your bins, and their contents in many ways. By default the Browser sorts by name in an ascending order. To cause the alphabetical order to be displayed in descending order, click at the top of the column, in the header. This will redisplay the order of the contents of the Browser in a reversed order.

To sort the contents based on the category of another column, all you need to do is click in the column header you want to sort by, and the contents of the Browser will be sorted by the category of that column. Same as the Name column, if you click the column header again, and you will reverse the order.

A perfect example of when you want to sort by another column category is when you are working with a producer that has come to the edit with a list of timecode of what they want to use. If you have given your clips individual names that when sorted alphabetically cause the Media Start column to be out of order, then you will need to sort the contents of the Browser based on the starting timecode, by clicking the Media Start column header. 

There are times when you want to unlink two channels of stereo audio. The most common reason is that there were two different inputs at the time of recording, and that the audio was accidentally ingested as a Stereo Pair. Once a Stereo Pair of audio is in the timeline it appears as if the tracks are linked, because they are acting as one. Linking is actually the term when video is paired with audio. When two audio tracks are acting as one, this is called a Stereo Pair.

If you need to see the audio waveform in the timeline, you can turn this on in one of three ways. The first, and most effective is the keyboard command. OPTION>COMMAND>W will toggle the audio waveforms on and off in the timeline. There is also a popup menu located in the lower left of the Timeline, that you can choose to Show Audio Waveforms. Last of all you can go into the User Preferences, and make the change in the Timeline Options tab. If you want the Audio Waveforms to always be on when you start a new sequence, you will want to check the Show Audio Waveforms box under Timeline Options in the Final Cut Pro User Preferences.

Final Cut Pro by default has each filter set up to apply with specific predetermined attributes. You can change these attributes, so when the filter is applied, it already has the desired attributes. 

To change a filters default attributes, it is very simple. First find the filter you desire in the Effects tab in the Browser, and then either hit return, or double click it to load it into the Viewer. Once in the Viewer from the Effects tab, you can make changes to the filter that will be remembered by Final Cut the next time the Filter is used.

Another option is to create a favorite of a filter with specific attributes, but if you have a particular way you like to use a filter, changing the default is certainly a great option.  You can use this same workflow to change the defaults on transitions, and video generators as well.

The viewer window will go blank after you select 'title crawl'.  Click on the Controls tab to adjust the parameters of the title.  Then change the animation style to either 'crawl' or 'roll'.

I also recommend turning on the 1:2:1 Deflicker option which will smooth out the playback motion during the crawl.



Type your text within the Boris text box and press the apply button when are you done.



That's it!  You now have crawling text within the Viewer window.  You can then take your crawling title to the next level by watching this short Final Cut Pro video tutorial.

In Final Cut Pro when you finish with a project, and you desire to be able to go back to it in the future, but don’t want to store all of the media associated with the project, what do you do? The answer is the Final Cut Pro Media Manager.

Upon completion of your project, you simply highlight the sequence, or sequences you wish to back up. After highlighting you will right click and select Media Manager. When the Media Manager window comes up, you will have a few decisions to make. In most cases when backing up a project, you will choose to Copy the media, which will create clips that represent all the media used in the selected Sequences. What is nice about the Media Manager is that if there are multiple  references of almost the same clip in the timeline, or different sequences, the Media Manager will only make one clip that contains all the necessary media. For example if you have a 5 second clip in the timeline, and in another sequence you have another 5 second clip that uses the last three seconds of the first clip, the Media Manager will create one 7 second clip that both clips will reference.  Another decision you will have to make is whether or not to include handles on the Media Managed clips. It is probably a good idea to give your clips a little handle. There will certainly be more flexibility in the future, if you include handles when you Media Manage. At the top of the Media Manager you will see two green meters. The top one represents the total size of the source clips that the clips to be Media Managed come from. The lower green meter represents how much space will be used once the media is Media Managed.  

In the project section there is a "Duplicate selected items and place into a new project" checkbox.  By checking this box, Final Cut will create a new project, that will include the sequences that were Media Managed, as well as a Media folder with all the Media Managed clips. By default Final Cut will create a Project Folder and place both the Project file and Media folder within it. If you choose not to check the box, you will need to relink your sequences to the new media.

The last step is to set the destination of the Managed Media. After choosing a Media Destination, you will click OK, and then name the Media Managed project if you checked the box in the Project section.