Book Image

Final Cut Pro Efficient Editing

By : Iain Anderson
Book Image

Final Cut Pro Efficient Editing

By: Iain Anderson

Overview of this book

Final Cut Pro (also known as FCP, previously Final Cut Pro X) is Apple’s efficient and accessible video editing software for everyone, offering powerful features that experienced editors and novices will find useful. FCP is the quickest way to transform your raw clips into a finished piece, so if speed is important, make this a key tool in your editing arsenal. Final Cut Pro Efficient Editing is a comprehensive best practice guide for all editors. You’ll not only learn how to use the features but also find out which ones are the most important and when you should use them. With the help of practical examples, the book will show you how typical footage can be assembled, trimmed, colored, and finessed to produce a finished edit, exploring a variety of techniques. As you progress through the book, you’ll follow a standard editing workflow to get the feel of working on real-world projects and answer self-assessment questions to make sure that you’re on track. By the end of this Final Cut Pro book, you’ll be well versed with the key features of this app and have all the tools you need to create impressive edits.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
1
Section 1: Importing and Organizing
7
Section 2: Rough Cut to Fine Cut
13
Section 3: Finishing and Exporting

Three-point editing and more

You may not have considered it, but most edits are defined in terms of the source clip (which part of a clip you want to use) rather than the timeline (where do you want the clip to go). However, it's possible to prioritize the timeline instead, and this is sometimes called "three-point editing," because technically, at least three points are defined every time you add a clip. It's a traditional method, and here, you'll learn about how to mark part of the timeline to receive a clip and how to connect or overwrite a clip to that region.

So far, we've added connected clips in a somewhat haphazard, less controlled way, by selecting a few seconds of a clip and then pressing Q. That means that the three points are the In (1) and Out (2) on a Browser clip, plus an In (3) point on the timeline.

But you can flip that "source clip dominance" around by explicitly placing two of those points on the timeline....