Beyond Print
Bringing Your Vision to Life
An Introduction to Final Cut Pro
Once you are happy with your rough cut you can begin to fine-tune your sequence by adjusting the length of each clip. This is called Trimming and is used to adjust the pacing of your sequence. Trimming is similar to cropping except that you are cropping the length of time an image appears, not it’s size.
To move around in the Timeline, grab the yellow triangle, called the playhead, located in the Timeline ruler at the top of the window. Move it to the right or left to quickly scrub through your sequence and see the results of your work. Press the spacebar to play back your sequence at normal speed.
Making Your Images Move
You are probably used to creating layered graphics in Photoshop to achieve your final image. In the video world, the practice of animating multiple layers of images is called compositing. In Final Cut Pro, images or clips are layered on different video tracks. Each clip can be adjusted separately to create a composite image. This video will show how to get started in the world of compositing.
Creating Movement with Final Cut Pro.
Once you’ve imported some images into Final Cut Pro it’s time to start adding some movement.
Let’s begin by adding an image to the Timeline. It now appears as a clip.
Double-click on the clip to open it the Viewer.
At the top of the Viewer select the motion tab. The motion tab displays some of the many parameters that you can animate in Final Cut Pro. When using the motion pane your changes will be reflected in the Canvas to the right.
Let’s create some basic movement using the Scale and Center parameters.
In the motion pane, you’ll see a column called Nav. This is where we can set keyframes for different parameters.
Adding Transitions
Once you have added several clips to the Timeline, you may want to add transitions between your clips. A transition is a design element that changes the way your clips are joined together. They can greatly affect the visual pacing of your project. Moving directly from one clip to another is called a cut and is the most common type of transition. Another common transition is a dissolve where one clip dissolves or fades into the next. It is less abrupt than a cut and can be more visually pleasing.
There are many other types of transitions located in the Effects tab of the browser. Apply a transition by dragging it to the point where two clips meet. Experiment with different types of transitions to find the one that makes the most sense for the pacing and feel of your sequence.
To apply a transition between two clips, drag the transition from the effects window to the point where two clips meet.
Rendering Your Sequence
Once you have completed your sequence, you will need to render it in order to prepare for final output. Click in the Timeline and then press Command – R on your keyboard. Now hit the spacebar and preview your new design.
A Keyframe let’s Final Cut Pro know that something needs to change. In order to initiate a change you need at least two keyframes. The first one indicates the beginning of a change and the second indicates the end. You can have more than two keyframes for each parameter but for this example we are only going to use two.
First, let’s make sure we’re at the beginning of the clip by pressing the Go To Previous Edit button.
Press the diamond shaped button in the Scale row to set a keyframe for Scale. Do the same for Center.
Now press the Go to Next Edit button in the Canvas to go to the end of the clip.
Change the Scale to 20 to make the image smaller. You’ll notice that Final Cut Pro has seen that we have made a change to the Scale and automatically inserted a new keyframe into the graph. Now, grab the image and move it to the top left corner of the Canvas. Again, a new keyframe for Center has been placed on the graph.
Play back the clip to see the effect of the keyframes.
