Final Cut Pro X Cookbook

Final Cut Pro X Cookbook

By : Jason Cox

Buy this Book

Final Cut Pro X Cookbook

By: Jason Cox

Buy this Book

Overview of this book

As technology becomes more and more accessible and easier to use, we are expected to do more in less time than ever before. Video editors are now expected to be able not only to edit, but create motion graphics, fix sound issues, enhance image quality and color and more. Also, many workers in the PR and marketing world are finding they need to know how to get viral videos made from start to finish as quickly as possible. Final Cut Pro X was built as a one-stop shop with all the tools needed to produce a professional video from beginning to end.The "Final Cut Pro X Cookbook" contains recipes that will take you from the importing process and basic mechanics of editing up through many of FCPX's advanced tools needed by top-tier editors on a daily basis. Edit quickly and efficiently, fix image and sound problems with ease, and get your video out to your client or the world easily.No program gets you from application launch to the actual editing process faster than FCPX. After covering the basics, the book hits the ground running showing readers how to produce professional quality videos even if video editing isn't your day job.The recipes inside are packed with more than 300 images helping illustrate time-saving editing tools, problem-solving techniques and how to spice up your video with beautiful effects and titles. We also dive into audio editing, color correction and dabble in FCPX's sister programs Motion and Compressor!With more than 100 recipes, the Final Cut Pro X Cookbook is a great aid for the avid enthusiast up to the 40-hour-a-week professional. This book contains everything you need to make videos that captivate your audiences.

Final Cut Pro X Cookbook

Credits

About the Author

About the Reviewers

www.PacktPub.com

Preface

Free Chapter

Importing Your Media

Introduction

Importing from a tapeless video camera

Importing MTS, M2TS, and M2T files

Importing DSLR video

Importing music from iTunes and GarageBand

Importing still images

Importing data from a tape-based camera

Importing and working with layered Photoshop files

Importing iMovie projects

Importing Final Cut Pro 7 projects

Working with your already organized media

Relinking media files

Customizing Your Workflow

Introduction

Getting acquainted with the Final Cut Pro X interface

Customizing the keyboard

Adding keywords to your clips

Marking clips as favorites and rejected

Creating a Smart Collection

Working with a second computer monitor

Working with a broadcast safe monitor

Customizing the Event Library and Event Browser

Batch changing clip names and other metadata

Editing efficiently with optimized and proxy clips

Basic Editing Mechanics

Introduction

Appending, inserting, and overwriting clips to a storyline

Working with (and without) the Magnetic Timeline

Creating connected clips

Replacing a clip

Splicing clips with the Blade tool

Using the Trim tool, part 1 — trimming and rippling

Using the Trim tool, part 2 — rolling

Using the Trim tool, part 3 — slipping and sliding

Creating and working with gap clips

Enhancing Your Editing

Introduction

Making a three-point edit

Creating additional storylines

Trimming audio and video separately with a split edit (also known as making a J or L cut)

Grouping clips together as a compound clip

Adding markers and to do items

Auditioning multiple shots or takes

Editing in beat to the music

Using the Precision Editor

Multicam part 1 — getting your media synced and prepped

Multicam part 2 — making the live cut

Multicam part 3 — fine-tuning your multicam edit

Sweetening and Fixing Your Sound

Introduction

Reading and understanding the audio meters

Lowering your music during speakers

Lowering a loud, unexpected background sound with manual keyframes

Replacing bad audio with a cleaner recording

Sound effects, part 1 — browsing, connecting and panning

Sound effects, part 2 — animating with keyframes

Sound effects, part 3 — working in a surround sound space

Removing unwanted audio channels

Unlinking audio from video

Using FCPX's auto audio enhancements

Recording a voiceover

Practical Magic a.k.a Useful Effects

Introduction

Adding an effect and changing its parameters

Animating parameters of an effect over time with keyframes

Adding a watermark or logo to your video

Downloading and installing more effects

Blurring out a face or logo

Disguising a voice

Copying and pasting effects onto multiple clips

Going green (screen) part 1 — the basics

Going green (screen) part 2 — improving your key

Going green (screen) addendum — using the mask effect to cut out unwanted parts of an image

Titles, Transitions, and Generators

Introduction

Adding transitions to clips

Adjusting the transition's parameters in the Viewer, Inspector, and timeline

Creating counters and countdowns

Adding a timecode overlay

Inserting a placeholder clip

Creating a text style template

Creating a credit sequence

Creating a video-in-text effect

Creating a custom animated title

Creating and reusing show intro

Get Your Movie to Move

Introduction

Making freeze frames and speed changes

Creating speed ramps

Showing an instant replay

Using the Transform tool

Cropping or trimming a clip

Panning and zooming over a photo or clip with the Ken Burns effect

Creating a video wall

Making your image move by keyframing in the Viewer

Moving clips in sync with compound clips

Changing keyframe timing in the timeline

Customizing motion paths with Bezier handles and modifying interpolation

Altering the Aesthetics of Your Image

Introduction

Stabilizing a shaky shot

Automatically balancing color and/or match color to another shot

Manually color balancing with the Color Board

Picking a color look or creating your own

Fixing the exposure and adjusting the contrast with help from the Luma waveform monitor

Adding secondary color corrections, part 1 — shape masks

Adding secondary color corrections, part 2 — color masks

Adding secondary color corrections, part 3 — combining color and shape masks

Keeping only one color in your image

Spotlighting an object or text

Getting Your Project Out of FCPX

Introduction

Exporting an archive-quality version of your film

Exporting for Apple devices and computers

Sharing your video on YouTube and other video sharing sites

Burning a Blu-ray or DVD

Roles, part 1 — labeling clips with Roles

Roles, part 2 — exporting selected Roles

Sharing large files over the web with Dropbox

Sharing your project with other applications using XML

Duplicating or moving projects from one drive to another

Archiving a project for possible future editing

Conclusion

Working with Motion and Compressor

Introduction

Getting acquainted with the Motion interface

Enhancing title templates with Motion

Creating a custom Lower Third

Publishing a template to FCPX

Publishing parameters to a template

Getting acquainted with the Compressor interface

Adding chapter markers in Compressor

Burning a Blu-ray or DVD with chapter markers

Creating your own Compression preset

Creating a droplet based on a preset

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Introduction

As video editors, we need to be flexible. Changing deadlines, various video file formats, backseat editors (a.k.a. directors and producers); they all make us have to constantly adapt our workflow. In turn, we need flexibility in our editing software. Luckily, Final Cut Pro X (FCPX) has plenty of tools to adjust to our needs and different working environments.

For Final Cut Pro 7 users, FCPX's one-window interface seems restrictive at first compared to FCP7's multiwindowed layout. This is misleading, however, as almost all the different areas of the interface can be hidden or resized easily based on our needs. Keyboard shortcuts have also changed, but we can alter those as well. And thanks to the 10.0.3 update that arrived in early 2012, we have much more flexibility in connecting to additional broadcast-quality hardware.

In addition, FCPX vastly exceeds FCP7's media management capabilities. Cross-referencing media is a piece of cake, thanks to the introduction of keywords and...

Final Cut Pro X Cookbook

By : Jason Cox

Final Cut Pro X Cookbook

By: Jason Cox

Overview of this book

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Final Cut Pro X Cookbook

Introduction