FCP: Working with photos

1. Put all of the images you want to use in one folder on your FireWire drive.

2. In FCP, set up your project with the correct HD settings
-if your project only uses photos http://introto4df12.blogspot.com/2012/10/fcp-setting-up-your-hd-stop-motion_19.html
-if your project uses photos and HD video http://introto4df12.blogspot.com/2012/10/fcp-setting-up-your-hd-stop-motion.html

3. Go to Final Cut Pro>User Preferences. Click on the Editing tab and change the Still/Freeze duration to 1 second (the default is 10 seconds, way too long!).

4. Go to File>Import>Folder and choose the folder of images in your hard drive. The folder will appear in the Browser. Drag the folder into your timeline, and your images will appear in sequence. Each image will have a duration of 1 second.

5. To apply a filter or change the speed of all of your images you will need to NEST your sequence. This turns your many clips into one clip.
To nest a sequence:
-create a new sequence in your Browser (File>New>Sequence)
-double click to open it in the Timeline
-from the Browser, pull your original sequence down into your new sequence, it will appear as a single clip
-to make edits to your nested sequence that require the Viewer, remember to hold down the Option key when you double click to get your nested sequence to appear in the Viewer

6. If FCP is acting buggy, it may be that your images are too big. Suggested camera settings are posted here: http://introto4df12.blogspot.com/2012/10/canon-60d7d-settings-for-stop-motion.html. If you shot them as RAW files, all is not lost -- you can open/import them in iPhoto, then go to File > Export, and choose JPEG, high or medium quality. Then import the images into FCP again. This should make everything go much faster.