Final Cut Pro...

Today we got going with a Final Cut Pro tutorial and I was very impressed with the programme as a whole. I was particularly pleased with the fact that it is very similar to Premiere Pro as I have become quite confident with Premiere Pro so hopefully the transition to this new programme shouldn't be too much of an issue.


The main principles of Final Cut Pro are very similar to what we've been taught previously and key recommendation that I am always keen to remember is where you save you're work.

All aspects of projects need to be saved to the same place, the same folder on the same drive as it's pretty vital for it to work properly. This goes along with making sure all the settings are correct, If you go to Final Cut Pro (menu) - Audio/Video Settings then the settings should be set to DV PAL 48 Khz for the first two lines and the third should be set to Firewire PAL.

Once that is set it is pretty important to save your work to a specific folder on the particularly drive, so if you are using an external hard drive make sure you select that when going to save. Then if you check your scratch disks in File - System Settings you can check that all aspects of your work are going into the same folder.

Now you can start, either by placing your tape into one of the tape decks or if there aren't any available it is possible to edit your package straight from the camera by using a firewire (I expect these are available at the Loan Counter at Uni?!).

You're now ready to get editing and producing your package/film/documentary or whatever it is you're editing. I think the best way to get used to this programme is to use it, play around with it and discover things for yourself, but here are a few hot keys that might make progress faster:

Hot Keys:

Apple Key + 8 = Capture Mode - Where you can capture the sections of filmed material you want to use.

Shift + L = Link Selection - Can be used separates your audio and video sections when in the timeline so that you delete the audio if you just want to use the video for example.

A = Arrow - Gives you back the arrow which can be used to drag clips, shorten them and is generally the tool you will probably need most.

B = Razor - Very useful tool which can be used to chop clips to delete parts or separate etc.

Below is a pretty useful video of the basics of Final Cut Pro which I found on YouTube, there are loads of videos for the programme on YouTube and there are some excellent tutorials on there.