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Compound Clips and Auditions

Lesson 13 from: Apple Final Cut Pro X: In-Depth

Larry Jordan

Compound Clips and Auditions

Lesson 13 from: Apple Final Cut Pro X: In-Depth

Larry Jordan

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Lesson Info

13. Compound Clips and Auditions

Compound clips and auditions are specialized functions inside Apple Final Cut Pro. An audition allows video editors to compare clips easily. A compound clip is a project inside of a project. Walk through the how, why and when for these advanced features.
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Lesson Info

Compound Clips and Auditions

The timeline index is really cool because it allows you to find eclipse. The ability to use markers is like sticking yellow sticky notes on your screen without the mess because it allows youto leave a marker and jumped two markers to indicate the beginning of an act or a problem with the clip or something that legal has to approve the two deuces nice I've used them in my class is I'd never used them in real life, I used marker's constantly, I use chapter markers constantly, I don't use two duis at all just so, you know, but you can use it to impress people at parties and say, hey, I can leave it to do inside my my project and and I'm sure that the guys that apple that developed it or really thrilled with that whether you use or not the world does not care these next three things that I want to show you compound clips and auditions and open and timeline are specialized function there's a there's an advantage to using each of them. Whether it works for your particular style of editing to...

tally depends upon you. We're gonna talk more about compound clips when we get to actually we'll talk about auditions first we'll talk more about compound clips is part of effects, which is where they have a greater relevance, but for right now let's, take a look at this dr cerf video and let's just time out a second here see if we can get ourselves over so far messed up we'll just take that out there and let's kill the audio because I don't need the audio and I'm going to play this clip and I've got a flash of black okay, this is close to what he's talking about we're going to the outer planets what toe I've got this I don't know what I want to use for my last shot, so I'm going to go to my new b roll dough I want to use the flaming son so I want to use the martian rover maybe I should use something from oh, I don't know maybe I should use something from, um from the space shuttle, so let me just hold the command key down of select this command click command click notice that I've now selected three different clips, each with three different durations go up to the clip men you go down to audition and I'm going to create a new audition what auditions allow me to do is to compare and contrast clips easily I'm auditioning the clip noticed this little spotlight thing it could be an alien flying saucer but it's actually a spotlight if you look really closely we wantto take that audition, turn this to video on lee and type the letter q and the audition is now located in the timeline command plus to zoom in just a bit and let's open this up so we can see more what's going on okay by the way with a scroll wheel mouse with the trackpad you just swiped two fingers left to right to move side to side to move side to side with the scroll wheel mouse hold the shift key down and shift scroll wheel so there's the icon that indicates this is an audition and as I play my clip even able to support communications terrestrial but we have now is that okay? It's not bad but have a nice if I could compare those other clips this is where the magic of auditions comes in if I go up to clip goto audition and select preview and now I now see my three clips and when I hit the space bar in the same way we've been able to support communications terrestrial but we have now a set of standards for this we're hoping we being j pl okay do it again but I want to click on this cleanse we've been able to support communications terrestrial okay hang on a second do it again in the same way we've been able to support communications terrestrial look at that by just simply clicking on the preview widow it allows me to preview between the three shots and notice that the duration of the shot changes as I click on the different scenes this allows me to quickly look att version one version two version three dough I like one ending in better do I like a different ending? Better? I really like this ending right here and notice that it automatically goes to the end. I could, of course, trim this will learn about trimming tomorrow, but the ability toe quickly look at different alternate endings, whether it's video on ly audio and video talking head b roll, whatever is really cool, and if I select this clip once I'm done goto audition and select, finalize and it releases thie other clips, so it goes back to being a single clip against so I don't have those three tied together auditions. Allow me to quickly review multiple clips I pick three you could pick two or twenty, makes no difference, hit the space bar and just keep selecting through command z clip audition preview in the same way we've been able to support communications terrestrial, not value way we've been able to support communications in the same way we've been able to support communications terrestrial tara, is that not cool, very fast, very easy way to review between clips it's called an audition, by the way, if I took this clip here and drag it into the audition way toward to turn white let go, I can say add this to the audition and now when I preview clip audition preview in the same ways in the same way we've been able to surprise in washington I now have the fourth clip that's added down and the audio is because I didn't disconnect the audio before I dragged it in we'll just delete that compound clay take a little bit of planning no it's not true the compound clip takes a bit of thinking about what a compound clip is a project inside a project a compound clip is what final cut seven calls a nest what avid calls a sub sequence we can take a group of clips and make them act as though they were a project now the reason for doing this let's go back to this example here hide the timeline index if we if we look at this I've got one two three layers of video four layers of audio that's not really complex but it's not simple I'm gonna just whips up sub sub sub sub sub sub steps and we go if I select all the clips command a go up to file new compound clip I gather all seven layers of these clips together and I say what I'm going to call this I'm going to call this compound um internet clip and they're now all reduced to a single clip the benefit this provides is my timeline is still seven layers hi it's his complexes that ever was but I'm ableto co elect all that complexity into a single clip, which means that my timeline becomes a whole lot of usual toe look at baby, this is clip for act one in a clip for act two to be able to open a compound clip double click it this steps into the compound clip, and we can see all of our different layers are there and to get back, I click on the go back button right here in the timeline history, and I go back to that containing compound clip when I create compound clips inside the timeline, I use it to consolidate really complex sequences this works, but I don't recommend it. Compound clips tend to be a bit tricky, and I found that they do have some issues with, um, you want to be careful toe on li yu's compound clips when you really need it, which is generally toe apply and effect to a group of clips. Rather than apply in effect to each individual clip, I can now have a single color correction setting that applies to the entire compound clip. We'll talk more about this and effects, or I can apply a single sound effect like the limiter filter or nick, you filter to a range of clips without having to do that to each individual clip. Simply to use it for the purposes of housekeeping, I think is going to cause you potential problems using it to apply a filter or in effect to a group of clips makes a whole lot more sense to deconstruct a compound clip, select the compound clip, go to clip and say break apart clip items and all your individual elements are back the way they were. Where compound clips become a whole lot more valuable, however, is when you select one or two clips inside the inside the browser. With those clips selected, go to file new compound clip and now let's call this opening title. I now have a compound clip than when I double click it to load to the timeline this's like a stand alone project. This is a project that I could build the entire open inside a compound clip. I could have titles, music, sound effects, multiple cues, transitions, multiple layers as complex as I want, but because I'm putting it inside a compound clip when I then add that compound clip into my project will just make this small again. When I add the compound clip into my project, it comes in as a single short clip single small clip, even though it could be multiple layers high, it could be really deep, it could have lots of different affectionate acts like it's, a standalone movie the benefit is by double clicking on it. I'm able to step into the compound clip and make changes to my opening text, so I can say my stars this week or fred smith and mary brown, my stars next week are our mary smith and fred brown. I can change the text without having to go back and re. I'll put a whole new movie without having to go back and change all my animation about being an after affection without being in motion to step back again, you click that go back button, this ability to create compound clips by first selecting clips inside the browser, double clicking on it toe opened up, then we could add additional clips by selecting a type the letter q, for instance, and we could then grab this title and make it shorter. And now, when I save the clip that is now instantly reflected inside my my compound clip, this dynamic linking of one project to another becomes a lot easier, and compound clips don't even have to have the same project settings. It could be different. Frame size is different frame rates, different, codex, totally different, it's going to automatically be rendered to match whatever project you drop it into, which gets me to the last point that I want to cover before I turn it back to jim. We have a feature called open in timeline what opening timeline allows us to do is to take a layered photoshopped graphic to take a compound clip to take a multi cam clip and simply double click it when we double click it it opens with second thoughts there it is this is the icon, the little interlocked hands okay that's the icon for a compound clip this is the icon for an audition we'll see a different icon for multi cam clips double click this icon and it now opens that compound clip inside the timeline so I condone editing I can grab this clip and moving around, grab this clip and drag it around so now and I could grab the audio levels and make sure the audio levels are down so audio doesn't yell at me when I get out of the studio, so I start with this I'm purposely avoiding doing any kind of picture and picture where transition because we haven't covered that yet both of those air coming in course, but I just want to talk about what we've already covered then when I go back and I take that compound clip and drag the compound clipped down, we have now changed the order we see first the mars footage and then we see the burning suns, then we go back to our shuttle stuff we can trim it the way we contribute any other clip the compound clips give us the ability to create projects which are then loaded inside other projects, and because they're stored up here in the library, I can use this project inside multiple projects, which is something that I can't do with a compound clip that's created inside the timeline, wei have covered a ton of material in a very, very short period of time. We took a look at all the preparation that we've done in terms of media management and understanding how the system works, and we finally started to use it to tell stories. Now, in our particular case, we told a single storey of the interplanetary internet, and then we created a whole lot of garbage just to be able to show how the technology works without having to worry about the content, because when we ignore the content, learning goes a lot faster. We looked at how weaken doing upend at it by adding a clip at the end of the timeline, the letter e doing insert at it, which inserts a clip at the position of the skimmer if the skimmer is active or the play head, if the skimmer is not active, I don't like the skimmer in the timeline, and I love the skimmer in the browser, so I'm always toggle ing the skimmer on and off with the keyboard shortcut, the letter s we learned how to do an override at it, the letter d by which replaces whatever that clip lands on in the timeline with the clip that was selected inside the browser and we learned how to do it connected clip, which puts a clip in a higher or lower position higher for video, lower for audio at the position of the play head so that really was just keeping one hand on the keyboard. We can have one hand, not a mouse or the trackpad setting ins and outs the other hand on the keyboard, heading a pen's overwrites inserts and connected literally as fast as your brain can think, which is exactly what you want final cut has now faded into the background, leaving us fully in editorial mode, not in it rustling a software mode. Then we looked at a whole variety of of other techniques. We looked at how to do replace at it by dragging a clip from the browser down on top of the clip in the timeline, we looked at how to do a back time infront time three point at it by setting a range inside the timeline and editing a selected clip in the browser down to the timeline. Then we looked at things like, how do we select clips, potter, you d select clips. How do you move clips the position tool we looked at how to create clips, full screen shift command s we looked at the timeline index, which is a wonderful tool for being able to keep track of what we're doing, we also looked at some specialized functions. We looked at the timeline history, we looked at auditions, we've looked at compound clips and we looked at opening time line will be seeing all of these with the exception of auditions, will be seeing all of these in future editing audition simply allow you an easy way to compare one clip toe another while compound eclipse exist across multiple software packages. Premiere and final cut seven auditions in the timeline history and the timeline index are unique toe final content and very powerful features on their own there's one big piece that's still missing, however, and that's adjusting where two clips touch that's the process off trimming, which is what we're going to talk about tomorrow, but jim, I think we've covered enough for right now I'm gonna toss it back to you and see if there's any questions before we wrap up. Yeah, we do have a couple, so I'm going to read this one from john are you e x p if it changes made in a compound clip, does that change? Not tucker and all projects were the same compound clip occurs any change that you make toe a compound clip will automatically change every adoration of that compound clip that exists in that project. The way that you would fix that is that you would select the compound clip and once the compound clip is selected you would go up to and I can never remember where it is but you would go up to the choice that says make compound clip independent and you can create an independent compound clip which then live separately from the existing compound clip and my brain is malfunctioning at this very instance toe which menu choice it is but this was a new feature and a new behavior in the ten one release in that in ten one a change made to a compound clip appears everywhere. Jim david devi says in the old days sound editors liked the audio tracks on specific layer orders is it still possible in final cut pro ten are is it still possible if there are no number tracks there's a workaround there's no more tracks as such it's now layers think layers of photo shop but we're going to talk about a process called rolls when we talk about audio so allow me to defer answering that question any further until tomorrow and if you take a look at my screen here are the keyboard shortcuts control why toggles on or off skimmer information that's that little label that appears in the browsers you move the skimmer across skimming needs to be on and in control, why toggles that time, code and file name, display shift f is something I haven't shown you, but shift up when you have your play head in a clip in. The timeline automatically highlights the source clip in the browser, matching the position of the end. The out in the play head command. Why creates an audition option? G creates a compound to clip shift command. Two toggles to display, open or close to the timeline index command f opens up a find dialogue. Inside the timeline index letter m. An option will set a marker at the position of the skimmer of skimmers. Active play head if it isn't, or option m sets a marker and opens the open market. Dialogue control, semi colon and control apostrophe jumped to the previous or the next marker.

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Ratings and Reviews

a Creativelive Student
 

Absolutely one of the best & easy to follow teaching / learning sessions for this product. Larry has a great approach & insight into delivering a wealth of information from his years of experience that budding video engineers will certainly benefit from with a product that is powerful & great to use. I'm enjoying the journey to better understand & use this great product, expanding my experience in producing awesome video presentations. Great work Larry, & also huge fan of creativelive Keep up the great work you all do to assist budding producers in mastering their skills. Noel Blake Melbourne Australia

plb42
 

Final Cut Pro with Larry Jordan has been of enormous help to me just stating in FCPX. Larry has a unique way of getting the message on the basics across in an easy to understand manner. I have not yet looked at the entire course as I am practicing the steps as I go through the course. Many programs of FCP are not presented in the easy to follow manner thatL array does so well. I am 100% delighted with my purchase. I am in Sydney, Australia, and, due to the time difference it is impractical to view courses live. So I had to purchase on trust which in this case was a good choice. It would be good if Creative Live could perhaps rerun programs so overseas folks could view them at a convenient time. The courses still need to be purchased as I find it best to run it on another monitor and put what is taught into practice. Well done and thanks for the special offer in July.

a Creativelive Student
 

Attending this class was really a life-changing experience. Larry is a wonderful teacher and clearly on top of the program and methodology, and the way he structured the course, did frequent reviews and constant technique reminders (naming keyboard shortcuts as he did them, for example) really added a lot to the presentation. The depth of the class was very much appreciated, and his command of a complex subject showed that it was possible. I have wanted to understand FCP for several years and have only gotten the beginnings of a handle on it in the last 6 months or so. This class was an exponential knowledge upload and I hope will allow me to do lots of things I've only wondered about. I thought Jim was a good foil for Larry and did a nice job keeping things together, even when there was a technical problem. The value for me of being able to sit through the class before deciding to purchase was huge, and I am very much looking forward to reviewing the videos as questions come up. The class was very thorough and I didn't feel anything was being left out. Thank you so much for making it available.

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