Final Cut Pro X Quick Guide

Final Cut Pro X (FCPX) is Apple Computer’s first attempt at synthesizing of their iMovie consumer tool and their professional video editing suite, Final Cut Pro. FCPX gives you all the capabilities you expect, you can easily synchronize images and sound, add special effects, and export projects as stand alone videos in a variety of formats.

Step 1 — Open Program, Create Event and Import Media When you open FCPX, you automatically initiate an event. Events are where you store your all your files. Then the program asks if you want to start a new project, the specific edit you are planning. FCPX automatically creates a folder inside your document folder where it stores the projects and events. If you are possibly editing on several computers (or working in a computer lab), you might want to create your new event on an external drive right from the start, and only import your material from that drive at the beginning.

With the external drive attached (it must be a Mac-formatted drive), select the drive under the Event Library. On the menu bar select File> New Event, and then name your event with YourName.. Now Select select File> Import and import the various Folders with your material (at first you can also use the file import button in the All Clips window, or through the Image and Audio Browser Tabs, or directly from a camera).

The FCPX windows are similar to most editors, a place to store imported clips, a Timeline to edit within, and a monitor to view the progress of your edit. FCPX borrows from the iMovie metaphor the idea of multiple browser tabs to allow you to explore your pre-existing collections of iPhoto and iTunes based images and audio, as well as access an array of effects, transitions, and title features. The Inspector Browser function, useful for refined work with the elements in your timeline (like changing fonts in Titles) is found in the Browser tabs.

To begin your project, Import the Tutorial Images, Voiceover, Video and Soundtrack folders.

Final Cut Pro X Quick Guide

Keyframe button Step 2 — Audio in the Timeline

The next step is to edit the pacing of your voiceover. Drag your voiceover folder to the Timeline. Listen to the entire voiceover, and decide if you need to shorten or lengthen any pauses. You can adjust the length of an audio clip using the selection tool.

If you put your pointer at the edge of an audio clip (so the cursor shape changes) and drag to the left or right, you can change the clip’s duration on the timeline. Use this tool to shorten any pause between the clips of your voiceover. You can lengthen a pause between clips by using the position tool moving the clips further apart on the Timeline to create space between them. And you can use the Break tool to create breaks within a clip.

To get back to the beginning of the timeline, click anywhere in the Timeline. Your playhead will jump to wherever you click. Tap your space bar to start and stop.

Step 3 — Adding and Editing Images Your next step is to start bringing in images. When you click on an image you will be given a Range Selection option to decide how much time you want to bring into the timeline. Widen the yellow Range Selection, and use the Hand to drag it on the Timeline above the audio track against the playhead. If you move the playhead so it’s over the image in the Timeline, you will see it in the Monitor.

When the first image is entered, you may want to set the Preference option, Final Cut Pro > Preferences, to Transitions, available media, to help you with your edit. You should also start your Storyline by selecting the first clip, and going to Clip>Create Storyline. This creates a nested connection to all the clips as they are brought to the Timeline.

Final Cut Pro X Quick Guide

Now you can use the Selection tool along the clip edge to shorten or lengthen the image clip, just as you did with your audio clips in Step 2. Your task is to work through your story from beginning to end and put the images where you want them, making sure they nest into the Storyline along with the prior clips. Play back each edit, to make sure the image is on screen in the right place for the right amount of time.

Step 4 — Adding and Editing Video If you’re using video from a camera, have one of your teachers show you how to capture and save the clips you want. Pre-existing clips can be imported just like still images. To edit video, you use the Range Select tool to scroll back and forth across the image in your clip bin to see the image in the Monitor.

Once you have the section of video you want then you can drap/drop the clip into your Timeline and adjust its length using the Selection tool if necessary.

Note: Make sure to avoid overwriting your voiceover audio with audio from a video clip; you can put video clips on track V2 to be safe. Once the video clip is on the Timeline, you can unlink the video and audio by clicking on the Linked Selection button. Once unlinked, you can make changes to either the video or the audio without effecting the other.

Step 5 — Adding Transitions When working with video, most people don’t use transitions other than the cut edit (cutting straight from one shot to another), but when working with still images, transitions can help create a flow to the work. The cross dissolve is the most basic way to do this. To add a transition to all clips, Shift-

Click on all clips, until they are all selected, then add transitions to all clips by using theCommand T. You can also do one at a time, by clicking on the Transition Browser tab, and choosing Cross Dissolve and dragging it to the seam between clips.

Final Cut Pro X Quick Guide

Step 6— Panning and Zooming To pan or zoom (in or out) on an image, you must set keyframes. For instance, to zoom in on the girl’s face in the “search” image, we will need to set two key frames —one that shows how we want the clip to look at the beginning of the zoom, and one that shows how we want the clip to look at the end of the zoom. Find a clip you want to zoom in on, and click on it in the Timeline to select it. Move the playhead to the point in the Timeline where you want the zoom to start. In the Monitor window, first click the Scaling tool in the lower left corner of the window. You can re-size the image in the visible area. Then click the Set Motion Keyframe button in the upper left corner as seen here.

By clicking the button you have set a keyframe, and it will hold this position for the duration of the movie, unless you set a new keyframe.

Now you progress by FIRST moving your playhead along the Timeline to choose the next place to set a keyframe, change the window size from the original keyframe to this new position.

If you want more than one pan or zoom on a single image, remember it is a good design principle to establish each shot. So if you zoom out first, then want to zoom in again, make sure to set an additional keyframe 2-3 seconds after the place you have arrived. This will hold the shot, before it moves to the next framing of the scale of the image.

Where you put you last motion keyframe, the image will stay put until the end of the movie.

Final Cut Pro X Quick Guide

Step 7 — Adding Music

The first step to adding music is to make sure you have some space at the beginning of your film to have the music establish before you start speaking. Here you will want to use the Position Tool from you tool list, then File>Select All in the Timeline, and grab the first image to move your voice and all the images together while maintaining the synchronization of your

edit.

You can use the Range Select within your soundtrack clip to set how much of the music you require. You can then drag and drop your music or sound effects audio clip into the Timeline below your voiceover.

Setting the sound level for your clip is best done using the Range Select Tool from your tools.

Choose the tool and draw a rectangle at each end of your edit just before and just after the spoken voiceover. Then take the middle line inside the audio clip and reduce the sound by dragging downward, The advantage of this process is it also provides you with editing keyframe points that allows you to extend the fade, as you choose. You can also fade in or fade out the sound in the file by the same method only by making a Range Select at the beginning or the end of the file, and dragging all the way down.

Step 7 — Adding Titles/Working in Layers

The easiest way to think about layers in Final Cut is to make a title. In Final Cut Pro X, like in iMovie, the Titles are available in a one of the Browser Tabs. Dozens of options are available, but it is almost always a great idea to keep it simple. In our story, we actually want to have the title appear an image, so that the title is “composited” or designed to look best with a background image.

Final Cut Pro X Quick Guide

So the first step is to bring the image onto the timeline as a background. The Moon image drops in before the first image in our movie in the new space provided for the soundtrack.

We chose the Middle title which puts two lines of text, toward the bottom middle of the bottom right corner of your screen. We dragged the Title thumbnail in the space above the Moon image in the Timeline.

To edit the title, and place it in the proper location, you can type in the Monitor, and then grab the Text handle to position.

To add transitions, you simply need to select the Moon image, then the title and Command G, followed by Command T, to add the storyline, and the transitions.

Step 10 — Exporting a Movie

When you’re finished editing, click on File>Export. From there you can decide what kind of file you’d like and the quality and relative size of that file. We recommend exporting one large file for archiving or putting on a DVD, and one compressed (smaller) file for putting on a CD, on the web, etc.

Congratulations on your movie!