Keyframes are not referred to as keyframes in Soundtrack Pro, they are known as Envelope points. Envelope points have the ability to be positioned much more precise than keyframes. In Final Cut Pro for example, a frame is typically a 30th of a second, and I think we all known that a 30th of a second can be an eternity with audio.

To apply an envelope point, you must first open the envelopes associated with a particular track. To do this you click the disclosure triangle in the upper left corner. Once the envelopes are open you simply double click at the position that you desire an envelope point. To adjust the value you can either drag it manually, right click on the point and choose Set Value, or go to the Details tab in the Left Pane and input the value. Right clicking on a point, or working in the Details tab will also allow you to copy the value from either the previous or next point to the selected point. 

To remove a point, first select the point by clicking on it, and then hit the delete key.

Apple Compressor will allow you to set the poster frame of whatever you are running thru Compressor. A poster frame is the frame that is displayed when your movie is viewed in the Finder. This can be very useful when trying to identify one video that looks like another, or starts with a fade up from black.

To set the poster frame, in the Preview window move the playhead to the frame that is to become the poster frame. Next go to the Modify Marker Settings pop up menu in the Preview window, and select Set poster frame. That’s all there is to it. 

One thing to keep in mind is that when in Column view in the Finder the poster frame will display in the tiny icon in front of the file name, but not in the Preview when the icon is selected.

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.

When you need a Slideshow in your DVD, and don’t have the time or budget to produce a photo montage video in Final Cut Pro, a DVD Studio Pro Studio Pro Slideshow is a great solution. Creating a slideshow in DVD Studio is very easy to do.

If you have all the pictures in a folder, you can just drop the folder on a menu button in DVD Studio Pro, and the Slideshow will be created and linked from the button to the Slideshow, and back to the menu. This may be all you need to do if you just want a Slideshow without music, that plays each slide at the DVD Studio Pro default of 5 seconds per slide. Chances are you will be willing to spend the extra 20 seconds it takes to set your slideshow to music. If you have a desired length that you would like each slide to be on screen, just select all the slides, and enter the desired duration window. To add audio to your Slideshow, you need only drop an audio file on the audio well in the Slideshow editor. If the desired duration of the slides multiplied by the number of slides is longer than the duration of the audio, you can set the Slideshow to loop the audio in the Slideshow Settings. In the Slideshow Settings you can also set the Slideshow to Fit to Audio. This will automatically figure out how long to play each slide to make the Slideshow play every slide evenly, and last the duration of the audio. If you add multiple audio files to a Slideshow it will calculate the slide duration based on the total duration of all the audio added to the audio well. 

Remember that lightning surges can enter your system through any physical metal connection to the outside world, including any Ethernet, antenna, co-ax, or phone cables as well as power cables.  Many surge protectors shield some or all of these types of connection, so bear them in mind as you tally up your surge protector needs.

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.