Final Cut Pro HD For Dummies

Helmut Kobler is a Los Angeles-based filmmaker who has recently finished his latest project — the sci-fi action adventure Radius. (You can see scenes from Radius in many of this book’s figures.) Helmut’s a confessed Mac addict (he writes many features and reviews for MacAddict magazine, in fact) and has been using the Mac since 1987. In a past life, he directed and produced award-winning video games for PCs and the Sony Playstation. If you want to know more about Helmut’s film Radius — and the 2-disc DVD that it’s featured on — visit the Web site, at www.radiusmovie.com.

Introduction 1

About This Book 1

How to Use This Book 3

Foolish Assumptions 3

How This Book Is Organized 4

Part I: First Things First 4

Part II: Importing and Organizing Your Media 4

Part III: Editing Your Media 5

Part IV: Adding Pizzazz 5

Part V: Outputting Your Masterpiece 6

Part VI: The Part of Tens 6

Icons Used in This Book 6

Contacting the Author 7

Part I: First Things First 9

Chapter 1: Introducing Final Cut Pro 11

Understanding the Purpose of Editing 11

Exploring the Capabilities of Final Cut Pro 12

Appreciating nondestructive editing 13

Final Cut Pro versus the competition 13

New in Final Cut Pro HD (and the earlier version 4) 14

Going with the Final Cut (Work) Flow 16

Taking a Grand Tour of the Interface 17

The Browser 18

The Viewer 19

The Timeline 20

The Tool palette 21

The Canvas 21

Chapter 2: Getting Started 23

Hardware Requirements 23

Selecting and Configuring a Mac 24

CPU speed 26

Memory (RAM) 26

Disk storage for DV video 27

Monitors and LCDs 28

Doing DV? You need a FireWire port 29

DV videocameras and playback decks 30

Other optional hardware 30

Getting Started 32

Connecting and preparing all your hardware 32

Launching Final Cut Pro 34

Choosing an initial setup 35

Working with Projects and Sequences 37

Saving and autosaving projects 38

Setting up the Autosave feature 39

Managing projects 40

Adjusting Your Project and Sequence Settings 42

Choosing a different Easy Setup 44

Choosing a different preset 44

Creating new presets 44

Chapter 3: All About HD (High Definition) 47

What Is HD? 48

Supersharp image quality 48

Wide-screen aspect ratio 49

The many flavors of HD 49

How Final Cut Works with HD 51

The way things were 51

Final Cut Pro HD makes HD easy 51

Creating DVCPRO HD Video 53

Affordable HD Cameras — the Good and the Bad News 53

Part II: Importing and Organizing Your Media 57

Chapter 4: Capturing Media from Tape 59

Connecting a DV Camera or Deck 60

Understanding Timecode 61

Capturing in the Log and Capture Window 61

Navigating through a DV tape 62

Describing and capturing video — the long way 64

Logging clips 66

Changing your logging bin 67

Capturing the video — the short way 68

Locating captured clips 70

Letting Final Cut Pro Find Scenes for You 72

Capturing over Timecode Breaks 73

Batch-Capturing Clips 75

Chapter 5: Importing Media That’s Already on Your Mac 77

Your Media Files Are Welcome Here 77

Some Media May Need Rendering 78

Importing Your Media into Final Cut Pro 79

Importing one or more files at a time 80

Importing a folder full of files (or other folders) 81

Importing files by dragging them from the Finder 82

Importing music tracks directly from a CD 83

Importing Photoshop files (layers and all) 84

Converting MP3 (and Other Kinds of Audio) with QuickTime Pro 86

Chapter 6: Organizing Your Media 91

Working in the Browser 91

Using bins 93

Viewing clips as icons or in lists 93

Figuring Out the Browser Icons 95

Using Browser Columns 96

Understanding the column headings 97

Sorting clips by column 98

Working with column headings 98

Changing names and settings in a column 99

Making Copies of Clips 100

Adding Transitions and Effects to the Favorites Bin 101

Finding Clips Fast 102

Searching by clip name 102

More-powerful searches 103

Dealing with Offline Media 104

Recapturing deleted clips 106

Reconnecting an offline clip 106

Part III: Editing Your Media 109

Chapter 7: Editing Basics 111

Understanding the Editing Process 111

Getting to know the Timeline 113

Playing back video: The Viewer and Canvas windows 114

Looking at timecode data in the Viewer and Canvas 116

Moving Clips to the Timeline 117

Inserting and overwriting 117

Choosing the right track on the Timeline 119

Using a shortcut to insert and overwrite 120

Setting a clip’s In and Out points in the Viewer 120

Recycling a clip by changing its In and Out points 122

Selecting Clips on the Timeline 122

Moving a Clip That’s Already on the Timeline 125

Overwriting a moved clip 125

Swapping a moved clip 125

Inserting or overwriting a copied clip 126

Speeding Editing with Snapping 127

Resizing Clips That Are Already on the Timeline 127

Resizing clips directly on the Timeline 128

Resizing clips in the Viewer window 129

Understanding the limitations of resizing clips 131

Cutting a Clip in Two 132

Deleting Clips from the Timeline 134

Using lift edits and ripple deletes 135

Deleting a range of frames on multiple tracks 136

Chapter 8: Getting to Know the Timeline 137

Investigating Timeline Tracks 137

Locking tracks so that they can’t be changed 138

Muting and soloing audio tracks 140

Hiding video tracks so that they don’t play 141

Setting up destination tracks on the Timeline 141

Adding and deleting tracks from the Timeline 144

Customizing Your View of the Timeline 147

Making Timeline tracks big and small 148

Customizing other Timeline stuff 149

Navigating the Timeline 154

Moving the playhead anywhere on the Timeline 154

Moving the playhead linearly through the Timeline 155

Zooming In and Out of the Timeline 156

Some Timeline Details 158

Chapter 9: Editing Wizardry 161

Going Beyond Insert and Overwrite Edits 161

Replace edits 161

The Match Frame feature 163

Fit-to-fill edits 165

Superimpose edits 166

Splitting Video and Audio Edits 167

Splitting edits from the Viewer 168

Splitting edits on the Timeline 169

Using Advanced Editing Tools 170

Resizing clips with roll and ripple edits 171

Slip-slidin’ clips 175

Using Markers to Highlight Important Moments 179

Setting markers 179

Renaming, deleting, and designating markers 182

Searching for markers 183

Playing a Clip Backward 184

Changing a Clip’s Speed 185

Setting a constant speed 186

Setting a variable speed 187

Stopping Action with a Freeze Frame 191

Nesting a Sequence into Another Sequence 192

Adding a Voice-Over to a Sequence 193

Part IV: Adding Pizzazz 197

Chapter 10: Audio Excellence 199

Some Audio Basics 200

Capturing and maintaining high-quality audio 200

Understanding stereo and mono audio 201

Rendering audio 202

Three Ways to Set Volume Levels 204

Changing the volume of audio clips in the Viewer 205

Adjusting the volume of clips on the Timeline 210

Mixing with the Audio Mixer 212

Panning an Audio Clip 217

Creating Audio Transitions 219

Working with Audio Filters 221

Applying an audio filter and changing its parameters 221

Changing filter parameters over time with keyframes 223

Disabling and deleting filters 226

Getting quick access to your favorite filters 226

Exploring Audio Filters 226

Equalization filters 227

Echoes and reverberations 227

Compression and expansion filters 228

Noise-reduction filters 229

Copying and Removing Audio Attributes 229

Chapter 11: Composing a Soundtrack 231

Getting Started 232

Installing and launching 232

A quick overview of the interface 233

Creating Your Soundtrack 235

Getting video into soundtrack 235

Establishing your score’s master settings 238

Finding the right loops 239

Editing loops on the Timeline 241

Looking at your Timeline options 244

Changing volume, pan, and key 245

Other Stuff 249

Markers mark important moments 249

Applying effects 251

Making your own loops and one-shots 252

Exporting Your Score 252

Chapter 12: Creating Transitions 255

Exploring the Types of Transitions in Final Cut Pro 255

Applying Your First Transition 257

Looking at the Many Ways to Apply Transitions 259

Dragging transitions from the Browser to the edit point on the Timeline 260

Using the keyboard shortcut 260

Copying and pasting a transition 261

Editing Clips and Adding Transitions 261

Rendering Transitions 263

Rendering a single transition 263

Rendering all transitions in a range 264

Modifying Transitions 264

Changing the duration of a transition 264

Changing the alignment of a transition 266

Moving transitions 267

Replacing and removing transitions 267

Fading In and Out 267

Saving and Organizing Custom Transitions 268

Using the Transition Editor to Customize a Transition 269

Chapter 13: Adding Text to Your Videos 271

Formatting Text for Display on a TV 271

Selecting the right font size 272

Avoiding thick and thin 272

Using textures and colors sparingly 273

Getting Started with a Text Generator 274

Creating Text with Final Cut Pro 275

Creating text and adding it to a video 275

Understanding the options on the Controls tab 279

Touring the text generators 282

Creating titles on colored backgrounds 285

Creating Titles with LiveType 286

Exporting a movie from Final Cut Pro to use with LiveType 287

Using LiveType to create a new title 288

Using Titles and Text Created Outside Final Cut Pro 291

Working with Photoshop and Final Cut Pro 291

Preparing Photoshop Text for Final Cut Pro 292

Chapter 14: Special Effects with Filters and

Color Correction 295

Shooting Video with Effects in Mind 296

Making a Colored Clip Black and White 296

Getting That Old, Grainy Video Look 298

Changing Colors 300

Using mattes 300

Using the RGB Balance tool 302

Working with Color-Correction Tools 304

Selecting and changing the color of an object 307

Copying color-correction settings to other clips 309

Fixing or Adjusting Exposures 309

Comparing Results with the Frame Viewer 312

Checking Out More Handy Filters 313

Blurring the Action 315

Saving and Applying Customized Filters 316

Chapter 15: Motion Effects 319

Manipulating Images in Wireframe Mode 319

Scaling, rotating, and moving images 321

Cropping or distorting an image 322

Working in Wireframe mode in the Viewer 323

Changing Images with the Motion Tab 324

Using Keyframes to Change Motion Settings over Time 326

Using keyframes to set clip opacity 327

Editing existing keyframes 329

Using keyframes to set other motion values 329

Editing motion keyframes 332

Creating a Multiple-Screen Effect 333

Chapter 16: Compositing 337

Choosing a Composite Mode 338

Applying a Composite Mode 340

Understanding Alpha Channels 342

Compositing with Mattes and Keys 342

Creating a simple matte 343

Compositing with keys 347

Tips for getting clean keys 350

Part V: Outputting Your Masterpiece 353

Chapter 17: Recording to Tape 355

Setting Up for Recording 355

Looking out for dropped frames! 357

Recording to DV tape with a camera or deck 358

Recording to VHS 358

Recording to Tape 361

Recording directly from the Timeline 361

Printing to video 363

Editing to tape 365

Editing Online versus Offline 369

Chapter 18: Exporting Your Movie to a Digital File 371

Working with QuickTime Video 372

Getting to Know Codecs 373

Looking at the Video Codecs 374

Looking at the Audio Codecs 376

Knowing Your Data Rates 377

Export Away! 378

Exporting a Batch of Movies 381

Easy Exporting with the Compressor Application 383

Exporting video from Final Cut Pro using Compressor 384

Batch-exporting sequences with Compressor 386

Part VI: The Part of Tens 389

Chapter 19: Ten Tips for Becoming a Better Editor 391

Try Out the Final Cut Pro Tutorials 391

Study (Don’t Just Watch) Movies and Commercials 392

Practice on Someone Else’s Real-World Footage 392

Go Online and Find a Community 392

Join a Final Cut Pro User Group 393

Upgrade Your Hardware 393

Upgrade Your Software 394

Curl Up with a Good Book 395

Chapter 20: Almost Ten Tips for Managing Big Projects 397

Keep Your Media Files Organized 398

Use Bins — Lotsa Bins! 398

Keep Your Clip Names Informative 399

Document Your Clips 400

Use the Find Feature 401

Stay Oriented with Markers 401

Break Scenes into Sequences and Nest ’em Together 403

Save on Hard Drive Space 403

Index 407