FinalCutPro X Training

Today we received our training on Final Cut Pro X and despite my nearly non-existent experience on editing software, I found it surprisingly simple to use (after asking a million and one questions). I jotted down some notes on where important tools are and which are the best to use, so hopefully with a bit of practise my videos will begin to look professional… instead of it looking like a five year old has been set loose with a video camera.

The piece you are creating is called an “event” and to create a new event you ctrl click and select “new event” or go to “file” and then “new event”. Nice and simple. If you are importing videos from an SD Card you just go to “file”, “import files”, and then find the SD in the desktop and select the video you want. Or if you’re using a tape then you go to “file”, “import from camera”, then the video will show up in front of you (make sure it is rewound) . You then click import on the bottom right hand side and click stop import when you don’t want the rest of a clip.

If there is a clip you particularly like and want to access it easily then you can favourite it by pressing the star icon. This will then put a green stripe across the top of the clip. If you want to get rid of the audio from a clip then you can double click the clip, and ctrl click the audio, then select “detach audio”. If a clip runs for too long then you ctrl click and select “retime” at which point you can speed it up or slow it down.

To correct any colour issues, such as one of the clips being filmed at a different time of day to the others, you select the clip and then click on the “i” icon. Open the video section and select the clip you want to match the colour to, the computer will then match the colour automatically for you. However if you would like to correct the colour manually then you can also click the arrow on the right next to “correction 1” and use the colour chart.
You can also add transitions, music, effects and titles by a simple drag and drop.

Once you’ve finished with your whole event then go to “share” and then to “export media” which will automatically give you the highest quality. You can also publish your finished event straight onto YouTube.