Final Cut Pro (FCP)

New School FAQ for FCP: http://www.newschool.edu/information-technology/technology-labs/video/

Software and Hardware Overview
• Digital vs. analog video, nondestructive and nonlinear editing
DV requires 3.6MB of storage per second, 216MB per minute, 1GB per 5 minutes
• Aspect Ratios
4x3: This is the standard television format used throughout the second half of the 20th Century. Sometimes referred to as 12x9.
16x9: This format has gained acceptance as the new standard for widescreen TV, DVD and high-definition video.
21x9 (Cinemascope): A very wide screen format used for theatrical release movies.

• Desktop Tour
• Menus, Shortcuts, and Controls
Shortcuts:
Cmd-+/- to zoom in and out of window
Shift-Z to fit to window
Ctrl-Click for shortcut menus
Cmd-A to select all
Cmd-X to cut
Cmd-Z to copy
Cmd-V to paste
Shift-Click to select multiple items
Home key to go to beginning of sequence
Cmd-C then Option-V to paste attributes
• Editing and Effects Windows
The Browser: window where you organize and access all of your media source material
The Viewer: your source monitor, allows you to view video and audio clips, mark edit points, and add/control effects
The Canvas: monitor where you view playback of edited sequences (linked to the Timeline)
The Timeline: displays edited sequences as clips arrayed on multiple video and audio tracks along a time axis
The Tool Palette: contains editing tools for cutting and moving clips (similar to Photoshop)

Capturing Media
• Log and Transfer

Getting Digital
• File Naming — .bin, .seq, each folder/drive/partition should not contain the entire name of another f/d/p
• Selecting a Logging Bin
• Logging and Transferring
• AutoSave Features

The Viewer
• Working with Clips
• Navigating with Timecode
• Setting In and Out Points

Editing in FCP
• Creating a sequence
• Basic Editing
Insert edit: inserts clip at the In point, and moves media to the right to make room for the new source clip
Overwrite edit: the source clip overwrites sequence clips past the sequence In point with no time shift in the existing sequence
• Deleting clips from a sequence
Lift: removes selected material leaving a gap (shortcut: Command-X)
• Performing Edits in the Timeline

Using the Timeline and Canvas
• The Canvas Window
• The Tool Palette
• Working with Items in the Timeline

Transitions
• Adding Transitions
• When to use transitions
• Locating and Applying Transitions

Technical Resources
• The Final Cut Pro Help Menu in Final Cut Pro — this is the entire FCP manual in PDF format, easy to search and relatively well written for a software manual
• http://www.mopictive.org — The New York City Final Cut Pro Users Group, free to join and a good resource for technical questions