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Reviewing Clips for Edit

Lesson 9 from: Apple Final Cut Pro X: In-Depth

Larry Jordan

Reviewing Clips for Edit

Lesson 9 from: Apple Final Cut Pro X: In-Depth

Larry Jordan

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Lesson Info

9. Reviewing Clips for Edit

Time to dig into editing -- but where do you start? Reviewing the available clips to see what to include is a good place to start. Larry walks you through the process, from the keyboard shortcuts, to marking a clip.
Next Lesson: Importing Clips

Lesson Info

Reviewing Clips for Edit

What we've done, what we've done so far is we spent a lot of time getting organized we spent a lot of time planning we spent a lot of time understanding how the whole technology works and the reason is once you understand how that works it becomes a part of you and everything you do is built upon that foundation as philip was talking about his self taught and one of the problems with being self taught us you'll learn the stuff that you're interested in not the stuff you need to know and this stuff that we've been covering the oh it's kind of dull and boring is stuff that you really need to know to be successful it's an editor why do I care about codex? Why do I care about storage hado I import files hado I get ready whereto I store my media how do I open my media when I need it are all questions that wouldn't occur to you until you realize I have no idea how to get started so we spent a lot of time learning how to get started well now the fun part starts which is the actual editing and...

that's we're going to be doing for the rest of today are you guys comfortable questions so far? Okay, I'm going to open a new what am I going to do? We'll just create a new library and we'll call this first at it bernard do I have to call it first at it? Say no no could I call it anything I wanted to say yes. Okay, could I store it wherever I want? You have been paying attention? Good work. You can name it anything you can store it anywhere. I'm gonna call it first at it because otherwise I'd have to call it a friend and I've already named a sea turtle. Fred, we don't want to do that twice, so we're just gonna close this library and there's our first at it and I'm going to create two events, press the return key called this one media and then I'm going to type go up to file, go down to new event, create a second event and call it projects at question yes, um in the in the old days we used to hide events and things teo make sure loaded faster so the fewer libraries you have, um enabled will the found cut load faster? We like to think of our computers as being infinite in size, infinite speed, infinite power, but in point of fact, they're not. I mean, at some point we run into the physical limitations of the hardware. Now the hardware we work with tadeusz is miles better than what we worked with even two to five years ago, but it's still finite my basic philosophy is if I don't need it, don't open it because otherwise I'm stumbling over stuff I don't need, so I'm always closing libraries that I don't need because it keeps things cleaner and easier to see it doesn't take ram toe open stuff that I don't need no if I need it, I'll have three, four, five, six libraries open at once that's not a problem, but if you don't need it close, the library reduces the resource is the computer needs and gives more resource is of the stuff that I want it's not that final cut requires on ly one library to be open at once, just exactly the opposite. In fact, if I open aiken, say let's, open up our category library and let's, open up my first library on let's, open up our interface library! I mean, I could have as many libraries opens, I want I can twirl them so I can hide them all not a problem, but if you don't need him, don't open another thing that we can do. By the way, I should show this one other thing as long as I'm here, we've talked about the fact that this button enables or disabled hides or displays the library panel, this button here allows us to group clips by the date they were shot, so notice here I've got the chute date of this particular footage was in two thousand eleven or august of two thousand eleven or two thousand ten. I can also sort the clips in the browser by file name or by the date they were created or by take number or duration a sending your descending order. This gear menu determines how clips are organized. I tend to turn organization off and set it to none, but it defaults to the date the content was created. I can have a change the grouping order a sending or descending, and then within each group I can have within each group I can have it sorted by name or duration or take for me the date is irrelevant. I don't care for me for the stuff that I do for my training. I don't care the day this was shot, so I go to the gear menu and I said don't group the date disappears and my clips and are simply alphabetized by file name, total personal preference and it's controlled by this gear menu here and now we've discovered all for these buttons. This turns the library's on and off this control, sorting inside the browser that's where the clips are this controls whether I see all thumbnails or a single thumbnail followed by a list, these are personal preference whatever fits your style best is perfect. In my particular case will leave the set to thumbnails, and we'll make sure grouping is set to none. Oh, by the way, don't tell jim okay, this is one of the cool new keyboard shortcuts that showed up with the ten one release. If you hold the control key down and you hold the command key down and you type the number one, the library panel and the browser both disappear, which means you're now looking at just the image up here. Control command one brings it back control command one toggles it on and off. This is such, ah, huge treat, because it reduces the amount of garbage up here, and especially when you're doing effects or color correction work to be able to display scopes here, and the color corrections gear color board over here means that I can still have a really nice in which, without having to move to a to monitor display, and philip, I know you were about to ask. Larry does final cut support to monitors the answer's. Yes, if you wanted to, you would go up to a window and you can show events. Remember that's your media on a second display, and all of your event thumbnails are on the second monitor, or you can move the viewer to a second display, and you've got a much bigger picture of your video on a second display and if you have the right interface you could take the hd my out of your computer or any video coming out the thunderbolt port converted to h d s d I rst I and feed a video monitors here able to actually do call a grating which ed would be important to you because you want to call a great off a video monitor not off a computer monitor final couple then support a video monitor via h d s d I or h d m I and then to computer monitors one show in the event in one show in your timeline all that's proper possible so I'm demo ing on a very small single display but final cut supports multiple monitors and multiple displays if you ever get this play confused you can't figure out how to get it reset go up to revert to original layout and itjust resize is everything so you hid the browser you can't get the browser back you have no idea what happened goto window river toe original layout and everything comes back the way it wass okay still with me jim we okay over there okay so what we've just done I'm going to just highlight these libraries right click close that library right click closed this libra ray right click closed this library we're going to spend the next couple of hours editing a short documentary featuring dr vent surf we'll learn more about dr cerf well today about dr surfing a second dr cerf really could be accused of being the father of the internet he and his a partner in the late early in the late nineteen sixties early nineteen seventies invented what's called the t c p I p protocol tc pipe is the way that computers are able to talk around the world it is the foundation upon which the internet is built dr cerf was in van nuys, california in two thousand four and I was uh hired to do an interview with him talking about he was at the school to talk about staying in school and studying math and science and I had the pleasure of spending an hour with him and recorded interview for alcatel lucent because they wanted to put that up to their website first dr surface of wonderful person uh just just a charming gentleman second unbelievably bright he's on the board of directors of google least he was then he's works heavily a j p l is deeply involved with nasa on the mars missions invented the internet and still as just a down to earth personality and a huge fan but what makes me a really huge fan is that that I have discovered after writing eight books on premiere and final cut and doing hundreds of hours of training and thousands of articles you cannot license footage that has audio with it aiken license video footage with no problem but licensing footage with sync sound is almost impossible I can't find it I can't license it people just don't release sync sound interview audio unless it's really bad in which case you don't want to use it anyway dr cerf gave me carte blanche to do anything I want with the interview including out takes said whatever you need go ahead on the ellipsis feet I mean I've been using doc to serve for because he I'm speechless the size of the gift is incredible cnn five years ago was charging twenty five dollars a second per use toe license a clip with audio video you can get from stock footage anywhere audio cannot get to save your life so we're working with four by three standard def video because dr cerf was kind enough to share it that's all I could shoot in two thousand four but the process of editing audio and video is the same standard def or high def and it's the same sixteen by nine or four by three every single button works exactly the same way I just don't want you to laugh at me for using four by three video because I get my hands on and I have tried now jim one were really important thing no you're off the hook bernard in real life we would watch a clip by pressing what ki tto play a clip within the timeline baseball check and we would watch the clip and we would listen to the clip and we would think about exactly the part that we wanted to use this is called marking a clip we're going to learn how to do that in just a minute. Okay still with me? What keyboard shortcut would you use to mark the in of a clip after you've watched it? Amazing now let us pretend that we don't have any time whatsoever and I still need to mark the beginning of a clip. What keyboard shortcut would you use to mark the beginning of a clip if you had no time at all to watch it two in a row? Does it make a difference in terms ofthe the technical start setting the start and finish of a clip? If we watch the clip or not and that is the whole thrust of what we're going to go through in the next little bit of time theoretically every shot we should watch we should listen to what dr cerf has to say and we should pick exactly the best sound bite exactly the best quote with expect with the best picture quality would you not agree bernard, but is the process of setting the enemy out the same if I watch the clip or not? I have answered it back it's the same whether you watched precisely so I'm not going to care about the content I'm not going to necessarily listen to the shots very much. I'll listen just a little bit to make sure that they have audio, but I don't care about the content because I'm not telling a story right now. I'm teaching you how the software works, so I'm not gonna waste any time playing clips and finding exactly the right frame to put our edit because it's, your all of them software works the same. Whether I play or not and this, I've discovered, is a really important point. People are so students are so afraid of getting it wrong that they worry about precisely matching what I'm doing. Ignore that practice setting and in type the letter I practice setting out type the letter o it's an end it's an out regardless of where it goes in the clip, don't try for perfection just figure out oh yeah, there's the eye on the keyboard what happens if I push it on and in? Gets set takes all the pressure away means that you can learn how the software works without trying to be perfect. Once you know how the software works, we're going to spend the rest of our lives being perfect, but not to learn it, learn it. Push a button see what happens the worst that happens is final cut sticks its tongue out you say boy, that was a really stupid choice but no small animals get injured if you push the wrong key on your keyboard, rockets don't explode the world does not end, push a button and then, if necessary, type undo so let's imports the media command I I'm going to go to the source media footage. I'm going scroll down to work says dr cerf anyway, that's why we're using I mean she's a great guy to share his footage would you let out takes go of interviews with you. Never in a million years not gonna happen such a great guy and fund interview and bright. Ok, I'm done now let's see what we want to finish here let's work with, um, jim, you get to pick because you are the executive in charge of the whole operation today. Do you want to talk about the interplanetary internet? Or do you want to talk about the benefits of being a mathematician? I think the benefits of being a mathematician, okay, so we'll work with that terrific tio the fact that you've screwed up the rest of my demo has nothing to do what just say success do the math, click import selected when and we'll create we don't need to create optimized media could start a optimized to don't need to pull the folders in not going to keep this very long going to say leave in place and I should always check that check box in the window would put itself away and there's dr cerf well, we've imported the media, but we don't have any place to put the media we need thio create a new project philip do you see anything in the interface that we could possibly click on that would allow us to create a new project at all any hint of where we might go? Maybe the blue slate this thing that says create new project and I think that might work you know there's just no grass growing under your feet we click it and it opens up it opens up the project window now there's two sides to the project window there's the automatic side in the custom side we're going to keep it simple. For right now we're gonna call this first project and projects get stored in events remember, an event is a folder so the project it's stored in the event I can stored in the media folder or the projects folder in truth I could store this anywhere doesn't make any difference off an event is just a folder philip, do you have any suggestions on where you'd like to store this project projects were extremely eight perfect so because media is checked if I don't change is it's going to storm the media folder? I'm gonna move it down to projects dough I have to move it to projects okay perfectly right I can store a project anywhere and a project is just the edit of our clips so click okay why don't I see the project over here? I'd I see the clip but I don't see the problem what happened to the problem was the project I got a select the got open the folder to see the stuff that's inside the folder click on media I look at what's inside that folder click on projects you see what's inside the project unnoticed down here it opens up a new timeline with a dark bar going across the center and like gray bars we're going to talk about that when we get to editing in just a minute I want to go back to the project category I want to rename the project now and we're going to see how much you were paying attention can we grab nice try? No, it is not it's not ok can I rename a library? Yes. How do I rename a library? Click on it and rename it okay, I got to do more than click on I got a fresh aqui right cry right click right click no the key starts with the letter r ends with the letter and it has returned in the middle so that one day I am sorry. So what, kiddo? I pressed to rename it return. Okay. She pressed the return key that opens the tech stops in selecting. Can I re name an event? Yes. How does a renaming event? I would try the return key and they have returned. Key opens the fire. They text up so I can edit it. Can I rename project? What would you guess I would kiss? Yes. Okay. And how would I rename it? I would try but to turn kiki, remember, you got to select the name first and then you press the return key. Have you noticed there's? A consistency here in the interface that once you learn it, one way works. Exactly. Same for multiple things. We can rename libraries, weaken rename events we can rename project she highlighted. You pressed the return key. You are exactly correct and noticed that the date and time that we created the project is stamped right below the name. And this is the duration in time code. We're going to talk about time code in a couple minutes, but for right now timecode says that this has zero duration there's, no clips inside it another thing that we can do is notice the project if I click on it there's a gold box around it if I grab the project and drag it into a different event noticed the project is now stored in event and projects by the way are always listed at the top oven event media's listed below it grab it and dragged it down to the project category okay bernard you want to take a wild guess as to how we would delete a project I would select it and then right click on it right click and say moved to trash on the project has gone now if you made a mistake command z undo brings it right back but if I wanted to get rid of it permanently right mouse click and it's now gone so I'm going to create a new project double click and recalled this second project and now my project shows up because that was the event that I had selected remember the event is just a folder case still with me weaken duplicate projects and here we duplicate projects again I'm going to write mouse click and we have two options I can duplicate the project and duplicate the project as a snapshot the snapshot is new with the ten one release and I highly recommended keyboard shortcut his shift command d that's the symbol for shift that's command that's the letter d hopefully d's when you recognized anyway shift command d ah, snapshot is better than duplicating a project because it deals with compound clips and multi cam clips much better so when in doubt always duplicate a project as a snapshot. This was the original way to duplicate it works, but there's some issues, not bugs, just the way that it's designed snapshot is designed to more robustly. When you want to make a copy of a project always duplicated as a snapshot, we'll talk more about that in multi cam work. Alright, let's, see where we are here, how do you save you work? What a great question! Have you noticed that I haven't had to save a library I e when I close the library, it remembers final cut does what's called auto saving because final cut is actually storing data into two databases. Think filemaker the database is update the updated the instant you pressed the return key tto change a name or import of file the databases updated that quickly a tenth of a second, even if and when I was doing some beta testing with a pre release version of final cut, it was crashing on me, I would make a change, and then maybe a second later it would crash that changes recorded to the database instantly, so that even if the crash occurred, the database is up to date, so I never save I never save when I import. I never say when I create events I never save when I create projects I never save when I add it. As soon as I make a change to my project that changes instantly reflected into the databases and it's now a permanent part of the file. This is a wonderful thing, because in the event that I forget to save my project is safe in the event, I have a crash in almost all cases my project to safe not always, but almost always but there's a big downside to this. If you open a project that client has already signed off on and you look at it, you realize what happens if I just make this one change as soon as you change that. That changes now permanently recorded as part of the project, because it's instantly saved it's a tenth of a second after you make any change to it, which means that if, for instance let's just say hypothetically, this second project had clips in it and the clips were approved. I want to make sure that I don't make any changes to what I want to write. Maastricht save this is a snapshot, I want to say this approved version and add enough piece of the word is spelled correctly. And now when I'm reviewing the second project, any changes that I happen to make by mistaking the second project are not changed in the approved version this is why creating a snapshot is so important but the snapshot khun still have changes there's no way to lock a project so you khun prevent changes all projects are always editable you simply wantto create a snapshot in the label in such a fashion that you don't make changes to it but there's nothing you need to save sir locking tracks then inside of a project can't block tracks and you can't lock a project so everything is always mutable you can always make changes I wish that I could lock this and say don't change that apple has not enabled that functionality so at this point we just have to say okay, I just got to be careful I can look at this but I can't make changes to it that auto save question is a great question thanks for asking cable bail would like to know when you pull up video clips in the events folder from the finder why does the video clips not have any audio with them if you open them in final cut pro? There is audio but not in the finder okay final cut plays the audio but the finder doesn't play the audio that what I'm hearing that's what I'm saying when you pull it videos in the events folder from the finder. Okay, it is entirely possible that, oh, I can think of three reached two reasons why there are many media formats that don't actually exist us a clip. They have to be assembled, and there are also video formats, which are video in one file, an audio in a separate file. Remember, jim, when we were talking earlier that I said that sometimes final cut needs to marry all these files together, they have a clip that we can play. Some abc hd clips, store video in one folder and audio in a separate folder, and it isn't until we married those all together as part of the media import window. And we coalesced, um, and optimize the files that were able to actually marry the audio to the video. I suspect that what he's saying is that he's playing one of those clips

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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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