The following transcript is taken from the site:http://www.lynda.com/Final-Cut-Pro-3-training/final-cut-pro-7-essential-training/54993-2.html

IntroductionWelcome

00:00 (Music playing)00:03 Hi! I'm Abba Shapiro and welcome to00:06 Final Cut Pro 7 Essential Training.00:09 If you are new to the application, you00:10 will learn everything you need to know to build a show.00:13 If you are using Final Cut Pro already,00:15 you will learn about many of the new00:16 features of Final Cut Pro 7, and00:18 discover how you can work smarter and faster.00:21 Some of the areas that we'll cover

00:23 include using keyboard shortcuts to quickly00:25 scan, select, and edit your media,00:29 mixing audio, working with00:31 transitions and filters, and color correcting your footage.00:34 We will also explore some advanced00:36 editing techniques, such as zooming in and around still00:39 images, and stabilizing bumpy shots with00:42 the SmoothCam Filter.00:44 Now let's explore Final Cut Pro 7.

Remapping operating system functions

00:00 Before we start editing in Final Cut Pro, there are a few system settings we need to adjust.00:06 Go to the Apple pull-down menu and select System Preferences.

00:10 Once System Preferences opens up, click on the Expose & Spaces icon, and00:14 then click on Expose.00:16 We want to remap the Expose functions of F9, F10, and F11, because we use these00:21 in Final Cut to do insert, overwrite, and replace edits.00:25 I like to still keep F9 and F10 and F11 for Expose, but I usually put a couple00:30 of modifiers in front of them.00:32 Hold down the Option and the Command key, Click on F9 next to All windows, and00:37 now click again to modify this to Command+Option F9.00:41 Do the same thing to the next two pull-down windows, and for good measure, also00:47 change F12 to Command+Option F12.

00:50 While we are here, let's go ahead and change Mouse Button 4 to a dash, as well00:55 as Mouse Button 3 to a dash.00:59 The next setting I would like you to change is in Keyboard & Mouse.01:02 If you are using a mighty mouse, you need to remap a couple of buttons.01:06 You need to make sure the right button acts as a Secondary Button when01:10 editing with Final Cut Pro.01:11 Remember, the mighty mouse acts likes a rocker switch.01:14 Rock it to the left for a Primary Button, and rock it to the right for the01:18 Secondary Button, commonly referred to as a right-click.01:22 Next, make sure that the top button and the side buttons are not mapped to01:26 Dashboard and Expose.

01:28 Go ahead and close your System Preferences window and now with these settings,01:33 you are now ready to use Final Cut Pro.

Launching the application for the first time

00:00 To launch Final Cut Pro, simply click on the Final Cut Pro clapboard icon in your dock.00:07 Now you will be greeted by several different dialogs when you launch Final Cut,00:11 and the first one is the Choose Setup dialog.00:13 Now, when you are editing video, there is a variety of formats that you can work with.00:18 It can actually be rather intimidating.

00:20 If we look at the Use drop-down menu, you see all the variety of formats00:25 that you can edit with.00:27 There is XDCAM, there is Offline, there is Online, there is Cinema Tools.00:31 This can be very daunting.00:33 So what we are going to do is we are going to refine this list.00:37 I want you to click on the Format drop-down menu, and you see a variety of selections.00:43 There is HD, which stands for High Definition.00:46 NTSC, this is the North American Television Standard.00:50 PAL, which is used in Europe and Australia, as well as a variety of other choices.00:55 In this instance let's choose the North American Format, which is NTSC.01:00 Now, this partially will refine our list, but we want to further refine our list.

01:04 So we are going to go to the Rate drop- down menu, and there's three rates to01:07 choose from, 23.98, 24 fps, and 29.97 fps.01:15 Let's choose 29.97.01:17 Now, what you will notice when we go back to the Use menu, that long list that01:21 we had before has been refined down to about 10 or 12 selections.01:25 Now, we are going to choose DV-NTSC and Anamorphic.01:30 This is the North American Format, but its Anamorphic.01:33 Now, what is Anamorphic?01:34 Anamorphic, think of as wide screen, so we are going doing some wide screen01:38 North American Standard Definition editing.

01:42 The next part of the dialog that we are going to look at is the Primary Scratch Disk.01:46 Now, when you are editing video, you often want to have all of your media on a01:51 separate dedicated hard drive.01:53 On our current system, we have two hard drives internally.01:57 We have our Primary FCP Drive, which is where we have all of our applications,02:02 and we also have a Scratch Disk Hard Drive.02:05 We are going to switch our Primary Scratch Disk to the Scratch Disk Hard Drive.02:09 Now, your second hard drive may be labeled media, or you may not even have a02:13 second hard drive, in which case you can leave it at the default.

02:17 Once we have made these decisions, simply hit OK, and this takes us to the next02:21 dialog box, which says External A/V Devices.02:25 What Final Cut Pro is looking for is a camera or a deck or a television monitor02:31 that's hooked up to your Final Cut Pro system.02:33 Well, oftentimes when we edit, we don't always have a television hooked up or a02:37 deck hooked up or a camera hooked up, and having this turn on every time 02:42 we launch Final Cut is less than ideal. 02:44 So in this case we are going to click on, Do not warn again, and simply hit Continue.02:50 The third dialog that you see says Profiling RT Extreme.

02:54 What Final Cut is doing, it is analyzing all aspects of your hardware to02:59 determine how fast it can playback different video clips.03:03 Now, we are in the Final Cut Pro interface.03:05 The first thing you need to do is save your project.03:08 You say why, I haven't done anything yet?03:10 Well, once you save your project, Final Cut knows where to store all those03:15 little elements that you may be working with.03:17 When you capture something, it knows to store it in a folder named after that project.03:22 It can also auto save, so that if something happens to your computer while you03:25 are editing, you have a backup of your program.

03:28 To save your project, go on to the File menu, click on Save Project As, and you03:34 will get a dialog box.03:36 What I want you to do is name your project, and we are going simply name this03:40 First Launch, and click Save.03:46 Now you have saved your project, you are ready to go forward and work with Final Cut Pro.

Adjusting essential preferences

00:00 Before we dig in and start learning to edit with Final Cut Pro, we need to00:03 change some essential preferences.00:05 Now what are preferences?00:06 It's the way you like to do something.

00:08 What works with somebody else, doesn't necessarily work for you but there is00:12 a couple of preferences that when we change it, will make your editing life easier.00:16 To find the preferences in Final Cut Pro, simply move your cursor the menu bar,00:21 and click where it says Final Cut Pro.00:23 In the drop-down menu, you see a variety of options.00:25 You see User Preferences, System Settings, Easy Setups, Audio/Video Settings,00:32 there is a lot of things you can change in Final Cut Pro but we are going to00:35 just change a couple under User Preferences.00:38 Click on User Preferences and you see a variety of choices and a lot of tabs.

00:43 We are not going to go in and change everything.00:45 We are just going to change a couple of things.00:47 The first thing we want to change is Levels of Undo.00:50 By default, Final Cut has 10 levels or 10 actions that you can undo.00:55 You can change this number anywhere from as little as one to up to 99 actions.01:00 Now I personally can't remember 99 actions.01:02 35 to 50 is a good number for me.01:05 The other thing to keep in mind is the larger you make this number, the more RAM01:09 Final Cut Pro may use and if you don't have a lot of RAM to start with, if you01:13 are really pushing your system, you don't want to pick a big number.

01:16 For this course, let's set our Levels of Undo to 35.01:21 The next thing we want to change is the Autosave Vault.01:24 The Autosave Vault basically is your emergency reserve.01:27 Final Cut will make a copy of your project file every X number of minutes and in01:32 this case X is every 30 minutes but we can change that.01:36 We can change this from every minute to every 120 minutes.01:40 Since, we are working on a shorter projects, we are going to have Final Cut save01:43 a copy or clone of our show every five minutes.01:46 Now keep in mind we are not copying on top of the original file.01:50 That's all we save.01:51 We are making a backup in an Autosave location.

01:54 Now the reason we are choosing five minutes is because we are going to be making01:57 a lot of changes very quickly.01:59 Much like if you are cutting a commercial that's a 30 or 60 seconds spot, you02:03 are probably making a lot of changes very quickly.02:05 So, five minute saves are good.02:07 On the flip side, if I was cutting a documentary, which might be an hour or two02:11 hours long, and I was cutting it over the course of several months, I don't02:15 need to save a copy every five minutes, I can save a copy every 60 minutes or every two hours.02:21 The other thing we are going to change is the Keep at most per project.02:25 By default, it's 40.02:27 I always switch this to 100.

02:30 This is the maximum number, the nice thing is it doesn't take up a lot of02:33 hard-drive space and it's nice to have that many insurance policies behind you.02:39 Once you have made these changes, go ahead and accept them by hitting OK and we02:42 are going to make one more useful change.02:45 If you notice the dock is still showing at the bottom of our screen and when you02:49 are editing, screen real estate is everything.02:52 The more space you have to see your Timeline, to see the other windows, the better.02:56 So, we are going to actually hide the dock.02:58 Now to hide the dock, simply go to the Apple pull-down menu in the upper03:02 left-hand corner of your screen.

03:04 And you will see there is an option for Dock and you simply want to turn Hiding on.03:09 Click on turn Hiding on and you will see that the dock will now recede into the03:13 bottom of the screen.03:14 So, we have gotten rid of the dock but how do we make use of that extra03:17 space with Final Cut Pro?03:19 Simply, go to the Window pull-down menu and you see there is a something that03:24 says Arrange and there is a variety of arrangement options and we are going03:27 to switch to Standard.03:29 Now the keyboard shortcut for your standard window arrangement is Ctrl+U. And I03:34 use this keyboard shortcut all the time.

03:36 Anytime my windows get out of control, I have moved them, I have closed them, I03:40 say to myself 'I Control U' and it gets the windows lined up.03:45 And you see now, we are using all of the screen real estate for Final Cut Pro.03:49 With these few preferences set, we are ready to use Final Cut Pro.

Learning the interface

00:00 The first time you launch any application and look at its interface, it can be00:04 kind of scary and Final Cut Pro is no exception.00:07 So, let's take a quick moment and get an overview of the main windows inside of Final Cut Pro.00:13 The first window, we're going to look at is our Browser in the upper left-hand corner.

00:16 Now, the browser is where we organize all the media that we're going to use00:20 to create our show.00:21 And there are three basic types of media that you're going to work within your00:24 program, video files, Audio files, and Images.00:29 If we look at our Video file folder and in Final Cut Pro this is called the Bin00:33 and it goes back to the days of film.00:35 So in our Video bin, we see a variety of clips and the icon next to them looks00:40 like a 35-millimeter filmstrip.00:42 If we move up to the top bin, they put Audio, we see a different icon.00:47 This icon looks like a speaker.00:48 But note that if you look at the names or the end of the names on each of these00:52 files, you see both WAV and AIF.

00:56 Final Cut Pro can use a variety of audio formats.00:59 In this case we have a WAV file and AIF file and finally in our Images bin,01:05 you see yet another icon and this looks like the film clip with the letters a, b, c on it.01:10 Now, if we look closely, we can see the Final Cut can use different kinds of still images.01:14 We can use a TIF image, PNG, as well as JPEGS.01:19 In addition to those types Final Cut can use any still image file type that01:24 Quick Time can read.01:25 You'll also notice there is a fourth item in here with a different icon and it's labeled .psd.01:32 This stands for a Photoshop document.01:34 Final Cut Pro can use Photoshop documents quite well as a matter of fact, if

01:38 you've ever used Photoshop, you may have discovered that Photoshop can save each01:42 element as a separate layer.01:44 When brought into Final Cut Pro, you can access these layers and modify them individually.01:50 The final element we're going to look at in our browser is the sequence or01:53 Timeline and has a similar icon to that of .psd file.01:58 Moving on to the Viewer, let's grab a clip, drag it into the Viewer and take a02:02 look at what happens in our Viewer window.02:04 Think of the Viewer window as a sandbox where you can choose what part of the02:09 clip you want to put into your show.02:11 You'll be marking an end point, an out point.

02:14 You can also modify the clip by adding filters to change it's color, using a02:18 Color Corrector filter or maybe even modify in the audio, by making it louder,02:23 softer, or adding plug ins to give it an effect, such as Reverb.02:28 To the right of the Viewer window is our Canvas window and the Canvas window02:32 represents what your viewer sees when watching your program.02:35 (Music Playing)02:44 (Narrator: It's the most unforgiving place on Earth.)02:48 (Narrator: Over 3.5 million square miles.)02:52 All the special effects, all your sound effects, all your titles are seen here02:56 in the Canvas window when you playback your show.02:59 Now, in the bottom of the interface, you see it says Timeline.

03:02 And the Timeline is simply a graphical representation of what is being shown03:06 in your Canvas window.03:08 It has 99 video tracks and up to 99 audio tracks and if you notice when I play03:13 the Timeline by hitting the spacebar.03:15 (Narrator: A vast wilderness. It's the Sahara Desert.)03:22 You'll notice, as I play this, you can see it graphically happened in the03:25 Timeline and then you can visually see what's happening in the Canvas.03:29 Finally, the last two windows that we're going to look at are our Tool03:32 palette and you're probably familiar with the Tool palette for your Word03:36 Processing program.03:37 Here you can select different tools, so you can do different activities

03:41 within your Timeline selecting all of the clips, selecting part of a clip,03:45 cutting clips in half.03:46 We'll go more into the Tool palette later on in the lessons and finally, we03:51 have our Audio meters.03:52 The Audio meters allow us to see the volume of our sound.03:56 If it's too loud, if it's too soft, or maybe if it's over modulated.04:00 Let's go ahead and play the Timeline and you can take a look at the Audio meters.04:04 (Narrator: With people and cultures as unpredictable as the landscape.)04:10 Well, there you have it.04:12 A quick overview of the Final Cut Pro interface.

Customizing the window layout

00:00 Earlier, we showed you a basic overview of the main window in Final Cut Pro.00:05 Let's look a little bit deeper into the interface and how it operates.00:09 First off all, how can you tell a window is active?00:12 One of the biggest challenges to a new user in Final Cut Pro is knowing which00:16 is your active window.00:17 It's actually pretty simple.00:19 If you look at the Title bar, you'll see that there is a light gray background00:23 with dark gray text.00:25 This indicates the active window in Final Cut Pro.00:27 As we move around the interface, you'll notice where it says Viewer.00:31 It's actually kind of a dark gray background and light gray text.00:34 The contrast is not that great and I know that this is not an active window.

00:38 To make a window active, simply click on it and you can click anywhere in a00:43 window to make it active.00:44 So, let's go over to the Canvas, I'm clicking right in the middle.00:47 We can go down to the Timeline and click the Timeline anywhere to make that00:51 active and once again go back to the Browser.00:54 To open or close a window in Final Cut Pro, notice that there are three circles00:59 in the left corner of each window.01:02 The button on the far left of each window allows you to close that window.01:07 If the window is closed and you need to reopen it, you can use a keyboard01:10 shortcut and there is a keyboard shortcut of Command+1, Command+2, Command+3 and01:14 Command+4, I'm going to hit Command+1 to bring back our Viewer window and

01:18 remember think of it as a clock.01:20 Command+1 is for the Viewer, Command+2 is for the Canvas, Command+3 is for the01:25 Timeline, and Command+4 is for the Browser.01:27 Now, this keyboard shortcut is also useful for selecting a window.01:31 For instance, if I wanted to select the Canvas window, all I have to do is hit01:36 Command+2 and now the Canvas window is active.01:40 If I hit Command+2 again, while the window is active, it actually hides that01:44 window and if I hit it a third time Command+2, it brings that window back.01:50 So using this same analogy, let's take a look at working with the Timeline.01:54 Command+3 will select it, Command+3 again will hide it, Command+3 again will01:59 now make the window reappear.

02:01 So, it's very easy to select, hide, or reopen a window using Command+1,02:07 Command+2, Command+3, and Command+4.02:11 The second circle in our window, allows us to minimize a clip.02:16 So, if I click this in the Viewer, it will minimize the Viewer and place it into the dock.02:23 To get it back out of the dock, the easiest thing to do is go back to our02:27 keyboard shortcuts, and what is at 12 o'clock, Command+1 will now reopen that window.02:33 The third circle here is our Resize window.02:37 So, for instance, let's go over and select the Browser window and we're going to02:41 click that third circle and you'll notice that suddenly our Browser is no longer02:45 confined to the left-hand corner.

02:47 It actually utilizes the bulk of our screen space and this is nice because if02:51 I want to see more detail in any of my windows, I can simply click on that02:55 third dot and resize it.02:58 Now, if I wanted to reset my windows, I can simply go to Window > Arrange > Standard.03:05 The keyboard shortcut here is Ctrl+U. The next thing you may want to do is03:11 actually move a window around and to move a window you need to grab it by it's03:16 name and you can simply slide it anywhere around your desktop and this is really03:21 useful, if for instance, I have a document in the background, I want to copy03:24 something from or even if I want to drag Media in, to import it to my Browser.

03:29 Once again, I have messed up my windows.03:32 I'll go back to my keyboard shortcut of Ctrl+U.03:35 Finally, you'll notice as you move your mouse between windows, its icon changes03:41 from an arrow to two vertical lines.03:44 If you click-and-drag, you see you can actually manipulate the size of the03:47 windows and how they relate to each other.03:50 So, if I'm working in an environment where I need to see more of my Browser and03:54 don't need as much space in my Timeline, I can simply click on the edge and drag03:58 it down, giving me much more real estate here and once again to reset your04:03 windows, simple go back, Window > Arrange > Standard.

04:09 Now, you can control your windows in Final Cut Pro, instead of letting them control you.

The four ways to drive Final Cut Pro

00:00 The good thing about Final Cut Pro is that there is four or five ways to do everything.00:05 The bad thing about Final Cut Pro is that there is four or five ways to do everything.00:10 In this lesson, we are going to look at four different ways that you can edit in Final Cut Pro.00:15 The first way is simply using pull-down menus.00:18 Now many of you are already familiar with pull-down menus.00:21 If you notice in Final Cut Pro, your pull-down menus are organized in different

00:25 editing function, putting on effects, tools that you might need, things you will00:30 do in your sequence, how to modify a clip, editing effects.00:34 Then within each of these pull-down menus, there is actually sub-menus00:38 for things you can do.00:40 So for instance, you can create a New and then within that, you see a sub-menu00:44 Sequence, Bin or Offline Clip.00:48 The other thing you'll notice is there is keyboard shortcuts associated with00:52 each of these menu items.00:54 And that brings us to our second way of editing within Final Cut Pro and that is00:59 using keyboard shortcuts.01:00 Now most editors like to use keyboard shortcuts, they are much faster and the

01:04 nice thing about Final Cut Pro is if you start by using pull-down menus because01:09 you don't know the keyboard shortcuts, next to each item in the pull-down menu01:14 that has a keyboard shortcut, you'll see what the keyboard shortcut is.01:19 The challenge is which symbol means what and it can get very, very confusing.01:24 So when it comes to keyboard shortcut, there is only four things you need to01:26 remember, Command, Control, Shift, and Option.01:30 But which of the four symbols represent those four different tasks?01:35 It's actually pretty easy once you've gotten to get your head wrapped around it.

01:39 The most frequently modifier key is the Command key and the Command key is01:44 pretty easy to remember because if you look at your keyboard, to the left and01:47 right of the spacebar, you actually see the words Command, and you see the exact01:51 same icon on your keyboard that you do in the pull-down menu.01:55 The next keyboard command that you would probably use would be the Option key.02:00 Now, I can never remember what the Option key is.02:02 So let's go down and find an Option symbol and a really good way to remember it.02:07 If I want to clear my in point, the keyboard shortcut is Option+I and if I look

02:12 closely at this symbol, to me, it looks like an escalator.02:15 And if I'm on an escalator, I have an option to go down or I have an option to go up.02:20 So that's how I remember the Option key.02:22 The next key we are going to look at is the Shift key.02:24 Now the Shift key is a pretty easy key to remember, because it's simply an Up arrow.02:30 So I can remember Up arrow, Shift, which leaves our fourth key, which is the Control key.02:36 Now, the Control key is a little tricky to remember at first, but when I was a02:40 kid, there was a game I used to play and whoever had the hat on was the leader.02:44 They were in control and to me, that little triangle is the hat.

02:48 So if you have the hat, you are in control.02:50 So in this case, if I want to do Clip enable, I would hit Ctrl+B.Now one more02:56 thing about keyboard shortcuts.02:57 A lot of times you'll get a keyboard shortcut that requires two modifier keys.03:02 In this case, Levels control uses both the Option, the escalator as well as the Command key.03:08 So if I want to use this keyboard shortcut, I simply would hold down03:12 Option+Command+L and by the way, when using keyboard shortcuts, I have seen03:17 a lot of folks try to hit the Modifier key and then the letter all at the same time.03:22 Trying to time all three fingers striking those keys at the same point.03:26 You don't have to work that hard.03:27 Simply hold down the one or in this case, two modifier keys first and then

03:32 you can press the letter, and you will get the exact keyboard shortcut you are looking for.03:36 The third way that you can work with the Final Cut Pro interface is simply with buttons.03:41 As you see we have a variety of buttons here in our viewer as well as in our03:45 canvas, as well as in our Tool palette.03:48 Now a lot of folks find it's really challenging to remember what that button does.03:53 If you notice, if you hover your mouse over any button, you'll actually get03:57 what's called a tool-tip and a tool-tip tells you what that button does, and04:03 also tells you what the keyboard shortcut for that button is.04:06 So for instance, this button represents play into out, and the keyboard

04:11 shortcut is Shift+Backslash.04:14 If you notice I can go over here to the tooltips, do the same thing,04:17 select Track forward. It's the T key.04:20 Now the Tool palette works a little bit differently than the other buttons.04:24 If you've worked in other programs such as your Word Processing program or04:28 Photoshop, you'll notice that if you click and hold on a Tool palette icon,04:33 you'll actually reveal other tools below the primary one.04:37 In this case, we have Slip, Slide, and the Speed tool.04:41 If I go up to the Arrow and click and hold, it's my select track forward, select04:46 track backwards, both ways, everything forward, and everything backwards.

04:51 But we'll get to more detail about all the tools in our Tool palette later on in other lessons.04:57 One more key thing to know about working with tools in the Tool palette is that05:01 they all have a keyboard shortcut to switch them.05:04 So if you notice, if I go over to the Selection tool, it says the A for arrow,05:09 will switch to that tool.05:10 So I'm going to click on the A key and you will see that it's switched over05:14 to the selection tool.05:16 In the case of the keyboard shortcut, we saw earlier that T was for the05:19 Track Selection tool. S was for Slip.05:22 So a lot of times, if you have the wrong tool selected because you clicked in05:26 the wrong place, simply go back and click on the Tool palette, or use the

05:31 keyboard shortcut that switches you back to ideally your Selection tool which is05:36 the Arrow and is letter A.05:38 The fourth way that you can edit within the Final Cut Pro interface is by05:42 right-clicking or Ctrl-clicking.05:45 What Ctrl-clicking does is it opens up a context sensitive menu, which means05:50 wherever you right-click, whatever you can do in that section of the interface05:54 will be shown to you.05:56 So if I click on the Scrubber bar in my Viewer, I see things that I can do in06:00 that specific location, clearing in and out, marking splits, and marking in and outs.06:05 If I go over to my browser, do the same thing, by right-clicking or if you are06:10 on a laptop and don't have a mouse, Ctrl-clicking.06:13 You see these are different ways that I can view my browser.

06:18 In the same browser, if I right- click on a clip, I don't get the ways I06:22 can change my browser.06:23 I can find ways that I can modify that clip.06:27 A good exercise to learn more about what you can do in Final Cut Pro is simply06:31 right-clicking in different areas of the interface to discover what you might be able to do.06:36 For instance, clicking over here in a clip within the time line, can give me06:40 some functionality that I wasn't even aware of.06:43 So most new users to Final Cut Pro asked, so what way should I use when I edit06:49 within the Final Cut Pro interface?06:51 Should I use menus, should I use keyboard shortcuts, should I right-click,06:55 should I use buttons?

06:56 Well, the truth is whatever works best for you is the way you should edit.07:00 Now most editors like to use keyboard shortcuts because it's much more07:04 efficient and a lot faster.07:06 But if your hand is on your mouse, and you want to scrub through a clip, that07:10 may be a lot quicker than moving your hands over to the keyboard to hit J, K,07:14 and L, or if you are finding you are doing something you don't do a lot and you07:18 need to go to the pull-down menu, a lot of times that will be quicker than07:22 trying to remember the keyboard shortcut.07:24 The trick with Final Cut Pro is edit the way you are most comfortable, and07:29 you'll ultimately become a faster editor.

Organizing the browser

00:00 Organization is one of the key elements in being a good editor, and having an00:05 organized browser is the best way to start.00:07 So let's take a look at how we can make our browser more functional, and more useful.00:13 The first thing I want you to do is we're going to stretch out the browser, so00:16 this is really our focus and to do that, we could click the little circle in the00:21 upper left-hand corner, but we're going to manually stretch it out.00:24 And I find that if you stretch it in a little bit first, you can break it away00:28 from the other windows and then stretch it out, so you can actually have it00:31 fill your entire screen.

00:33 The first thing we want to do is we want to put all of these clips into some00:37 organized structure.00:38 So we're going to create three bins.00:40 Now, bins is what we call Folders in Final Cut Pro, and it comes from the film industry.00:45 So we need to create three new bins.00:47 There is a couple of ways to do that.00:49 If I go under File, I can go New, and we see we have a choice to create a Bin.00:55 But it's much easier to use the keyboard shortcut and we've learned that little00:59 symbol means command.01:00 So Command+B will create a new bin.01:03 So go ahead, click in the gray area of your browser, and click Command+B three times.

01:10 This will create three bins, which we are going to label Audio, Video.01:22 Now, one thing you'll notice is when you name the bin, it will be alphabetized.01:26 So be careful that when you click on it that you're actually changing the name01:30 of your bin, and not changing the name of the clip.01:33 This final one is going to be Images.01:35 Now what we want to do is we want to drop our clips into their01:39 respective folders.01:40 There are a lot of ways to select a video clip in Final Cut.01:43 I can simply grab it by its icon, and in this case, I see it looks like a01:48 35-millimeter film frame.01:50 So I know it's a video clip, and I drop it in the Video folder.

01:54 But that's not necessarily so efficient to drop them one at a time.01:57 What I really want to do is be able to select multiple clips.02:01 So if you hold down the Command key, I can select all the icons that look like02:06 film clips, and drag an entire series of clips into my Video folder.02:14 Another way to select clips is to simply lasso them.02:18 You click outside of the icon, hold your mouse down, and drag over the clips,02:24 and in this way, I can select multiple clips at once, and drag these in this02:28 case, because they say A B C on them into the Images folder.02:33 Now another clip that we want to drag into the Images folder says Running The Sahara.psd.02:38 Now, though this looks like a sequence, it is a Photoshop document.

02:42 So we'll go ahead and drag that into the Images folder, and finally our .JPEG02:47 into the Images folder.02:49 One more way that you can select clips within the browser is to select the first02:53 one that you want to work with.02:54 In this case Sand Blowing, pull down the Shift key, and select a clip from the03:00 other end of the group, and all the clips in between will have been selected.03:04 I see these are all Speaker icons, so I know immediately that they are audio files.03:09 Let's go ahead and drop that into the Audio folder.03:11 So now we have a very organized environment, but I want to see what's inside03:16 each of these folders, and there is a couple of ways to do that.

03:19 One way is simply to click on this triangle to the left of the Bin icon.03:24 This is called the Disclosure Triangle.03:25 If I click on that, it will reveal the contents of that bin.03:31 Another way that I can look at the contents of a Bin is to double-click on the folder.03:35 Now, I'm going to double-click in this folder, and you see it opens up as this03:39 floating window on top of everything else.03:42 This can make things very confusing.03:44 In an ideal environment, I want to open up my Bins as attached tabs on the03:49 top part of my window.03:52 So we're going to close this window, we learned how to do this earlier by03:55 clicking on the left button.

03:57 Instead of double-clicking on the icon, I'm going to hold down a Modifier key,04:02 the Option Modifier key before I double-click.04:05 Now, when it opens up that window, it opens it up as an attached tab and04:10 it's very easy for me to step through my different tabs, and find the items I'm looking for.04:15 Let's go ahead and do the same thing with our Images folder.04:18 We are currently looking at a browser in a list form.04:21 But sometimes, it would actually work better if we could actually look at it as icons.04:26 You can switch back and forth from whether you view something as a list to

04:29 viewing something as an icon, simply by right-clicking or Ctrl-clicking in the04:33 empty area, and switching from View As List to View As Icons.04:39 I find viewing as large icons to be the most convenient.04:42 Now, you'll notice that you can actually see in the case of these images, a04:46 small representation of what that picture looks like.04:49 Let's jump back over to our Video tab.04:52 You'll notice that the Video tab has not switched to large icons also.04:57 Each tab is independent from each other.04:59 So one tab can be as large icons, the next one small icons, the next one05:03 could be as a list.05:05 Now another thing we can do to take advantage of our browser is organize the

05:09 spreadsheet of information. There is a lot of information located in our browser.05:14 You can see the duration of our clips, where the in and out point is in our05:17 timeline, when we captured at the Media Start and Media End.05:21 But sometimes, it's too much information or perhaps there is information further05:26 down to the right that will be useful to us.05:29 You can easily modify your browser to suit your needs.05:33 If for instance, I wrote log notes that gave me detailed information about each05:37 clip, and I felt oh, I want to see that first, I can simply grab that column05:42 header and move it over to the left.05:45 Conversely, if maybe I had nothing in my log notes and I just wanted to hide

05:49 that column, if I right-clicked on it or Ctrl-clicked on it, I can hide that05:54 column from view, because I don't use it.05:57 If I right-click on the Duration column and look down, you see there is a06:01 variety of other options for viewing information.06:04 One that I find really valuable is Show Thumbnail.06:08 When I click on Show Thumbnail, I actually see a small poster-frame representing06:13 each of my video elements.06:15 What's really cool about this is if I left-click on any of these, and move my06:20 mouse left to right, I can actually scrub through this clip.06:24 And more so, if I'm scrubbing through a clip and I find, you know, this06:28 represents the image more than the very first frame, I just queue it up by

06:33 moving my mouse to the right and before I release the mouse button, I hit the06:37 Ctrl key and then I let go of the mouse button, and it saves this as the poster frame.06:43 If I want to close any of my tabs, it's very easy to do.06:47 I can either right-click on that tab and close it, or if I'm inside the top06:53 level of my browser, I can simply go over here to the Images folder, which we06:58 have as a separate tab, click on the Disclosure triangle, and as you see it07:02 immediately closes the tab.07:04 So one thing to keep in mind is when looking at any Bin, you can either click on07:08 the Disclosure triangle and see the contents within your browser, or you could

07:13 open it up as a separate tab, one or the other, but not both.07:17 Another way of organizing your browser is color coding both the clips as well as the folders.07:23 To do this, simply select a clip, right-click on it, go down to the bottom of07:29 the pull-down window to label, and pick the color that works best for you.07:34 As you see, now I can very easily discern this clip from the other ones.07:39 I can also right-click on a Bin.07:42 If I right-click on a Bin to change its color, in this case we'll make it red,07:46 when I open that Bin as a tab, Option+Double-click, that tab maintains the07:52 color of the folder.07:53 Again, making it very easy for me to find what I'm looking for.07:58 Once you have your browser organized exactly how you want it, simply reset

08:02 your windows by hitting Ctrl+U. Your browser is back where it belongs, and you08:07 can continue to edit.

Tab improvements

00:00 One of the enhancements to Final Cut Pro 7 is that the tabs have been modified00:04 so that they are much more user-friendly.00:08 For instance, the Project tab now has a Final Cut Pro Project Icon, which makes00:12 it much more easy to distinguish from all the bins that might be open.00:17 In the past we could always color-code both our sequences and our bins.00:22 But now when you color-code a Sequence or Bin, its tab is color-coded too.

00:27 So, for instance, I have color-coded Running with the Sahara in my Browser to Yellow.00:32 And as you can see down here, it shows up as Yellow in my Timeline.00:36 Now Running the Sahara color corrected doesn't have a color code to it.00:41 But if I go up here to my Browser, right-click and change its Label color to say00:46 Red, it immediately updates in the Timeline with that Red color code.00:50 I can do the same thing with tabs in my Browser.00:53 So, for instance, let's say I have my Audio Bin.00:57 First we'll double-click with the Option key to open that and as you can see01:01 it's right now Gray.01:03 And I'll go back to my primary project file, right-click on the folder, go down

01:07 to Label, and make it Green.01:10 It's immediately updated in the Browser as being Green.01:13 Now, as you can see if I look at the flow of the tabs in my Browser, I see01:18 Audio, Tab Improvements, Video, and Images.01:22 Well, I want my project file to be on the far left.01:25 With Final Cut Pro 7, I can simply grab the audio tab and drag it to the right01:30 and reorganize it right in the Browser.01:32 As a matter of fact all four windows can be organized just as easily.01:37 If I go down to my Timeline, I can switch the order of Running with Sahara.01:41 In my Canvas I can also switch order, and I can do the same thing if I wanted to in my Viewer.01:47 Another great enhancements to tabs is the ability to right-click and be able to

01:51 close all of your bins in your Browser at once.01:55 You can do the same thing in your Timeline.01:57 As a matter of fact, a lot of times I'll have multiple sequences open, and I02:01 want to close them all except for the one I'm working on.02:03 Now, if I right-click on it, I have the choice of closing just that one tab, but02:08 being able to close all other tabs is a real time-saver.02:12 So, as you can see, working with tabs in Final Cut Pro 7 is much easier than02:17 it's ever been in the past.