Tutorial: Final Cut Pro Basics © Bruce Strong 2011
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FINAL CUT PRO TUTORIAL • PAGE 1 OF 1 TUTORIAL: FINAL CUT PRO BASICS © BRUCE STRONG 2011 This tutorial contains some camera-specific ingest instructions. See additional tutorials for additional camera-specific ingest information. GETTING STARTED 01. File management & Workflow 02. Setting Up Your Project 03. Capturing, Transcoding & Importing 04. Tools 05. Editing and Transitions 06. Audio Basic 07. Rendering 08. Miscellaneous Editing Helpers FINE TUNING 09. Audio Expanded 10. Visual Editing Expanded 11. Video Color Correction 12. Text Elements FINISHING UP 13. Reconnecting Broken Links 14. Exporting & Compression 15. Setting Up Your Project (Expanded) BRUCE STRONG • SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY • [email protected] • WWW.BRUCESTRONG.COM FINAL CUT PRO TUTORIAL • PAGE 2 OF 2 GETTING STARTED 01. FILE MANAGEMENT & WORKFLOW FILE MANAGEMENT 1. Before you start, quit all other programs. It’s also often good to restart your computer. 2. When working in Final Cut, it is best NOT to store all your assets (photos, audio, video, etc.) on the system hard drive (where your FCP application resides). Instead, use a fast hard drive, one that is at least 7200 RPMs. Space-wise, bigger is better. Firewire 800 is preferred over Firewire 400 or USB. 3. On that second drive, create a folder to contain all the pieces of your project. Inside that folder, you will make a set of folders to keep all your project elements organized. a. Keeps you organized so you know what and where your assets are. b. FCP needs to keep track of where your assets are. c. Simplifies transferring and backup of your project. So, create a project folder. You might name it something like this: Date (year first)_Assignment_FirstnameLastname EXAMPLE: 2011_05_18_ImmersionV1_BruceStrong 4. Create the following folders inside your project folder: AUDIO FCP SCRATCH FCP SEQUENCES OUTPUT IMAGES (can include graphics or make that a separate folder) TEXT VIDEO Note: From now on, everything related to your project should be stored in and saved into this project file. Once you start working in FCP, changing the names of folders or files already imported into the project will require that you reconnect that item. More on this later. BRUCE STRONG • SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY • [email protected] • WWW.BRUCESTRONG.COM FINAL CUT PRO TUTORIAL • PAGE 3 OF 3 SUGGESTED WORKFLOW 1. Set up your project folder and subfolders for your assets, FCP and your output. DON’T SKIP THIS STEP. 2. Set up your Final Cut Pro project 3. Ingest, capture or import files 4. Log and edit your project. (Many build the audio narrative first.) 5. Audio sweetening 6. Color correction 7. Add any effects or motion 8. Add text elements 9. Render, export, compress 02. SETTING UP YOUR PROJECT This tutorial is designed to get you up and running in FCP as quickly as possible. More detailed information on how to setup your project will be covered later. AUDIO/VIDEO SETTINGS 1. Launch Final Cut Pro. 2. When you Open FCP, you may get a message saying there is no external device or deck attached. Click “Continue.” 3. If you are using an older version of FCP, you will need to setup your project. To do so, go to File and select “Easy Setup” from the menu. It will bring up this menu. Select the appropriate option depending on the camera you used. If you are shooting HDV video at 1080p30, than choose the following option. BRUCE STRONG • SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY • [email protected] • WWW.BRUCESTRONG.COM FINAL CUT PRO TUTORIAL • PAGE 4 OF 4 4. Then select Setup. FCP will continue to use this sequence setting until you choose a different one. CAUTION: When you change the Sequence Settings here, it does NOT change any sequence settings for sequences that are currently open. So the best thing is to create a new sequence—FILE>NEW>SEQUENCE or Command (apple key) N—and use that new sequence. (Assuming the other sequence has not been used, delete it so you do not accidentally use it. Select the icon in the Browser and hit the delete key on your keyboard.) 5. FINAL CUT PRO 7 can detect the format of your clips and can adjust your timeline accordingly. Select YES when the given the option to change your timeline to match your clip. CAUTION: Your timeline will take on the settings of the FIRST clip you bring into the timeline. So carefully select your first clip and remember for each timeline you create. 6. Later we will talk about how to create your own sequence settings. SAVING YOUR PROJECT Earlier, you made a number of folders in your project folder. One was called FCP SEQUENCES. You now are going to save your current FCP project to that folder on your hard drive. 1. Go to the File menu and select Save. 2. Navigate to your FCP SEQUENCES folder inside your project folder and save it there. 3. Remember the naming convention: Date_Project v1_YourName SYSTEM SETTINGS Now tell FCP to save all the project’s scratch and render files—basically everything the computer will create while you are editing your project—into your project’s FCP SCRATCH folder. 1. Select the System Settings. BRUCE STRONG • SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY • [email protected] • WWW.BRUCESTRONG.COM FINAL CUT PRO TUTORIAL • PAGE 5 OF 5 2. Click Set 3. Navigate to the FCP SCRATCH folder in your project folder. 4. Back in the System Settings window, repeat the process to set the Waveform Cache, Thumbnail Cache and Autosave Vault “Set” buttons to the FCP SCRATCH folder. BRUCE STRONG • SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY • [email protected] • WWW.BRUCESTRONG.COM FINAL CUT PRO TUTORIAL • PAGE 6 OF 6 5. Also in the System Settings window, set your External Editors (fifth tab from the left). This will allow you to open clips off the Timeline in their respective programs. a. Still Image File = Photoshop b. Video Files = Quicktime Player c. Audio Files = Soundtrack Pro BRUCE STRONG • SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY • [email protected] • WWW.BRUCESTRONG.COM FINAL CUT PRO TUTORIAL • PAGE 7 OF 7 USER PREFERENCES Now let’s set a few preference options. 1. Set the “Levels of Undo.” The maximum is 99. 2. Set “Save a copy every: XX minutes.” This will save a backup copy, but I advise that you still save and save often! 3. Next, click the Editing tab and set the duration you want for each photo to initially appear on the Timeline. If you are doing a lot of fast sequences, I recommend setting this to a very short time, such as 00:00:00:04 (which means 00 hours, 00 minutes, 00 seconds and 04 frames per second). For normal projects, I recommend 5 seconds as a starting point (00:00:05:00). 4. Also set the Preview Pre-roll to 2 seconds—00:00:02:00. BRUCE STRONG • SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY • [email protected] • WWW.BRUCESTRONG.COM FINAL CUT PRO TUTORIAL • PAGE 8 OF 8 5. You also can set your labels here. 6. Save your project. YOUR WORK SPACE 1. Browser: (Top left) Where you see and organize the icons representing your assets, sequences, and where the Effects tab is located. 2. Viewer: (Top middle) This plays individual clips. 3. Canvas: (Top right) Where you watch what is being played in the Timeline. 4. Timeline: (Bottom) Where you build your movie by arranging clips, set transitions, etc. Browser Viewer Canvas Timeline Note: Control U reorganizes the desktop as you see above, provided you are on a window other than the Browser. Or you can go to Window>Arrange>Standard to get the same view. BRUCE STRONG • SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY • [email protected] • WWW.BRUCESTRONG.COM FINAL CUT PRO TUTORIAL • PAGE 9 OF 9 5. In the Browser, set up a series of bins for your project. Usually, I mimic the same file structure I created on my hard drive in my project folder. To do so, you can either create new bins by using Command B or follow File>New>Bin. 6. By the time you are done, you should have the following bins: a. AUDIO b. FCP SEQUENCES c. IMAGES (for photos and graphics) d. TEXT e. VIDEO 7. Click on the sequence icon, rename it and drag it into the FCP SEQUENCES bin. TIP: A short cut for this is to drag your AUDIO, IMAGES, TEXT, and VIDEO folders (the folders full of assets) from your project folder on your hard drive directly into the Browser. If you drag the folders in, all the assets inside them also will be imported. (Caution: Do not drag the FCP SEQUENCES folder from your hard drive.) BRUCE STRONG • SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY • [email protected] • WWW.BRUCESTRONG.COM FINAL CUT PRO TUTORIAL • PAGE 10 OF 10 03. CAPTURING & IMPORTING Everyday the number of video formats seems to increase. In this tutorial, we will cover capturing from HDV tapes, transcoding and importing. Additional handouts will cover HDSLR video and other formats. CAPTURING FOOTAGE FROM AN HDV VIDEO TAPE 1. Make a bin (Command B) and name it Capture Video. Then drag it into the VIDEO bin. 2. Right click (or Control click) the Capture Video bin and select Set Logging Bin. An icon will appear to the left of the folder. 3. File > Log and Capture (Command 8) BRUCE STRONG • SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY • [email protected] • WWW.BRUCESTRONG.COM FINAL CUT PRO TUTORIAL • PAGE 11 OF 11 The following window opens: 4. To capture HDV footage, rewind and begin playing your tape. Click Now in the lower left corner of the Log and Capture window. Your entire tape will be captured. FCP will create a new clip for each time the Record button on your camera was turned on/off.