DC Metro Final Cut Pros

Final Cut Pro – The Secrets of the Right-Pointing Arrow

Right Pointing Arrow Secrets

Its not like its obvious or anything, but a great deal of the look of the Timeline is controlled from a itty-bitty, teeny-tiny, right-pointing arrow at the bottom of the Timeline.

Just to the right of the four column track height button.

Click the arrow and look at all the different choices you have. Each of these is a toggle. Select, or deselect, each one and watch what happens.

LiveType – Creating Text on a Curve

LiveType

All text in LiveType sits on a blue baseline.

A flat, blue baseline.

However, getting the blue baseline to curve is easy – IF you know where to click and what to do.

• Control-click the end dot of the baseline and select Curve In.
• About an inch away from the end of the blue baseline a small blue dot will appear.
• Grab the dot and drag it. As you do, the blue baseline will curve.

Ta-DAH!

LiveType – Invisible by Default

Background

By default, LiveType backgrounds are invisible. This means that when you build a text animation in LiveType, anything placed on the Timeline below the heavy gray line will not export or render in Final Cut — though it will be visible within LiveType.

This “visible but not visible” thing is enough to drive you nuts!

Here’s where you control it:

• Go to Edit > Project Properties
• Look down to find the Background section. When Render Background is NOT checked, everything below the heavy gray line will not export or display when the LiveType project is rendered in Final Cut Pro.
• When Render Background IS checked, everything below the heavy gray line will export and render in a Final Cut Pro project.

LiveType – Creating a 16:9 NTSC Clip in LiveType

LiveType is my favorite application for creating text that moves.

However, it does not have a default setting for 16:9 DV.

This is easy to fix.

• Go to Edit > Project Properties.
• Change the Presets pop-up menu to DV NTSC 3:2.
• Change the Pixel Aspect to 1.20.
• Click OK.

Done.

Final Cut Pro – A REALLY Faster Way to Edit

TIp Jar

You may know that fastest way to edit a clip from the Viewer to the Timeline using the keyboard is to press F10.

What you may not know is that pressing Shift+F10 not only edits the clip to the Timeline, but adds the default video and audio transition to the start of the clip.

This one keyboard shortcut can save you up to seven mouse clicks alone!

Final Cut Pro – Sorting Browser Columns

Sorting...

The Final Cut Pro Browser is, at its core, a database.
This means that sorting your data is easy — if you know where to click.

• To sort on any column, click the column header. This sorts in ascending order. See the pointed triangle? That indicates the order of the sort.
• To sort in descending order, click the column header again.
• To sort on two columns at once, click the first column header, then Shift-click the second column header.
• To get out of a two-column sort, click any non-sorted column header.

Cool.

Final Cut Pro – Green is not just for stoplights

Green Lights

On the left edge of the Final Cut Pro timeline are a series of green buttons, which I call the “green visibility lights.” There is one for each track.

These buttons are enormously powerful, but quite shy — they don’t like telling us how much power they have.

When the green light is lit, everything on that track is visible (or audible). When the green light is dark, everything on that track is invisible (or inaudible).

But the impact of these buttons is much deeper than this.

These buttons control output and export. If the light is dark, NOTHING on that track will be seen, heard, output or export.

I use these in a variety of ways:

• To see a clip below another clip.
• To keep source audio files in the Timeline, but only hear the mix.
• To quickly switch between English titles (on, say track 4) and Spanish titles (on, say, track 5)

These buttons give me the power to control exactly which tracks I export in every sequence.

Note: Whenever you change the visibllity of a track, you always lose your render files. (Yes, Final Cut will warn you.) This is because render files are associated with the sequence, not the clip, and since you are changing what is visible in the sequence, the render files need to change.