Editing with Final Cut Pro 4 An Intermediate Guide to Uncompressed, DV, and Beyond
Charles Roberts
AMSTERDAM • BOSTON • HEIDELBERG • LONDON NEW YORK • OXFORD • PARIS • SAN DIEGO SAN FRANCISCO • SINGAPORE • SYDNEY • TOKYO Focal Press is an imprint of Elsevier
Focal Press is an imprint of Elsevier 200 Wheeler Road, Burlington, MA 01803, USA Linacre House, Jordan Hill, Oxford OX2 8DP, UK Copyright © 2004, Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Permissions may be sought directly from Elsevier’s Science & Technology Rights Department in Oxford, UK: phone: (+44) 1865 843830, fax: (+44) 1865 853333, e-mail:
[email protected]. You may also complete your request on-line via the Elsevier homepage (http://elsevier.com), by selecting “Customer Support” and then “Obtaining Permissions.” Recognizing the importance of preserving what has been written, Elsevier prints its books on acid-free paper whenever possible. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Roberts, Charles, 1967– Editing with final cut pro 4: an intermediate guide to uncompressed, dv, and beyond / Charles Roberts. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-240-80518-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Video tapes—Editing—Data processing. 2. Digital video—Editing—Data processing. 3. Final cut (Electronic resource) I. Title. TR899.R55 2004 778.59’3’0285536—dc22 2003028006 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: 0-240-80518-6 For information on all Focal Press publications visit our website at www.focalpress.com 04 05 06 07 08 09 Printed in the United States of America
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This book is dedicated to the memory of Ralph Fairweather, the true Yak. We all owe you a great debt that we can never repay. From all whom you’ve ever helped or just simply made smile, thank you. One day we’ll all meet again, and we’ll miss ya till then!
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Contents Preface
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvii
Chapter 1
Initial Setup: Optimizing the Mac OS and FCP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Macintosh OSX: The System Preferences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 The Energy Saver Preference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 The Displays Preference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Software Update . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Network Issues and AppleTalk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Multi-User and Administrator Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Installing FCP Software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Project Setup: Do It Right the First Time and Every Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Starting up FCP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Saving Your Project Correctly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 The Structure of FCP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 The Browser Window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 The Project Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 The Effects Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Moving a Clip around the Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 The Color Bars and Tone Generator Clip . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Moving the Clip from the Effects Tab to the Project Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Creating a Bin and Using It as an Organizing Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 The Viewer Window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Moving the Clip from the Bin to the Viewer . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 The Canvas Window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 The Timeline Window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Moving the Clip from the Viewer Window to the Sequence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 The Audio Meters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 The Toolbar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 The Tool Bench . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
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Editing with Final Cut Pro 4
Settings: Are Yours Correct? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 The System Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 The Scratch Disks Tab: The Issues Scratch Disk Assignment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 A Note on Partitioning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 A Look at the Scratch Disk Preferences Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Scratch Disk Assignment: Follow the Next Steps Precisely . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 Naming Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Waveform and Thumbnail Cache . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Autosave Vault . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Minimum Allowable Free Space on Scratch Disks . . . . . . . 45 Limit Capture/Export File Segment Size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Limit Capture Now . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 The Memory and Cache Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 The Playback Control Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 The External Editors Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 The Effects Handling Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 The Audio/Video Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 The Issues Involved in the Audio/Video Settings . . . . . . . . 53 The Summary Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 The Capture Presets Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 The Sequence Preset Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 The Video Processing Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 The Device Control Presets Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 The A/V Devices Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 Back to the Summary Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 The Easy Setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 The User Preferences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 The General Preferences Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 Real-Time Audio Mixing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 Audio Playback Quality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 Warn if Visibility Change Deletes Render File . . . . . . . 72 Prompt for Settings on New Sequence . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 Report Dropped Frames During Playback . . . . . . . . . . 73 Abort Capture on Dropped Frames . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 On Timecode Break . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 Autosave Vault . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 The Audio Outputs Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
Chapter 3
Media Acquisition: Logging and Capturing . . . . . 79 How Do We Get It Inside FCP? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 Pre-Log and Capture Techniques: The Paper Log and Timecode Window Burn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
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Logging and Capturing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 Create a Logging Bin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 The Log and Capture Window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 The Log and Capture Video Preview Window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 The Log and Capture Tabs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 The Reel Name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88 The Name, Description, and Marker Fields . . . . . . . . . 90 The Capture Buttons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 Capture Clip . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 Capture Now . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 The Process of Capturing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 Scratch Disk Info . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 Current Frame Timecode Field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 The Tape Transport Controls and J-K-L Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 The Jog and Shuttle Wheels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 Set the In and Out Points for a Clip . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 The Clip Duration Timecode Field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 Capture Using Capture Clip . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 Capture Now . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 Capture Now and Its Relationship with DV Timecode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 The Capture Now Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 Using DV Start/Stop Detection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 Batch Capture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 What Is Offline/Online? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 The Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 The Idiot Check . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
Chapter 4
Importing Media
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
What Importing Is and What It Is Not . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 Audio CD Import the Right Way: Using QuickTime Pro to Import and Convert Sample Rates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110 Importing Photoshop Graphics Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 Square vs. Non-Square Pixels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 Getting Photoshop Layer Effects into FCP Intact . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 The Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 The Title-Safe Zone and Overscan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 Prepping the Image for FCP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 Importing and Using the Photoshop Image . . . . . . . . 123 Organize and Backing Up Your Project’s Imported Media . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
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Editing: the Business and Pleasure of Final Cut Pro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 Working in the Viewer Window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 The Viewer Window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 Match Frame Button . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 Mark Clip Button . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 Add Keyframe Button . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132 Add Marker Button . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132 In and Out Point Buttons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 Drag and Drop to the Sequence: Insert/Overwrite . . . . . . . . . 135 Drag and Drop to the Canvas: Insert/Overwrite with a Transition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 A Few Words about Realtime and Rendering Effects . . . 142 Refining the Transition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 The ‘Oroborous’ Transition Sequence Trick . . . . . . . . . . . 150 Creating Customized Transition Favorites . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 Trimming Those Edits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154 The Easiest Trimming Technique . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
Chapter 6
Advanced Editing Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 More Trimming Precision: The Trim Edit Window . . . . . . . . . 159 Calling Up the Trim Edit Window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160 The Track Drop-Down Bar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160 Navigating the Clips in the Trim Edit Window . . . . . . . . . 163 Previewing the Trim Before Leaving the Trim Edit Window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167 The Timeline and the Toolbar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169 The Timeline Tracks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169 The Track Routing Selection Area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 The Timeline Customization Controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178 Audio Controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178 Clip Keyframes Button . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 Clip Overlays Button . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180 Track Height Switch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181 The Zoom Control Meter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183 The Time Scale Bar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183 Playhead Timecode Field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184 Toggle Snapping Button . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186 Toggle Linking Button . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186 Linking Operations Demonstrated . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188 The Split Edit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191 Sync Issues With Linking and Unlinking Clips . . . . . . . . . 192 Button Bars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
Contents
Chapter 7
ix Trimming in the Timeline: The Toolbar . . . . . . . 199 Toolbar vs. Keyboard Shortcuts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199 The General Selection Tool (Keyboard Shortcut–A) . . . . . . . . 201 The Selection Toolset and Accessing “Hidden” Toolsets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201 Edit Selection Tool (Keyboard Shortcut–G) . . . . . . . . . . . 201 Group Selection Tool (Keyboard Shortcut–GG) . . . . . . . . 202 Range Selection Tool (Keyboard Shortcut–GGG) . . . . . . . 203 The Track Selection Toolset (Keyboard Shortcuts–T, TT, TTT, TTTT, TTTTT) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204 The Roll and Ripple Edit Toolset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205 The Roll Edit Tool (Keyboard Shortcut–R) . . . . . . . . . . . . 205 The Ripple Edit Tool (Keyboard Shortcut–RR) . . . . . . . . . 207 The Asymmetrical Trim: Split Edit/L-Cut with the Ripple Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208 Gang-Synced Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210 The Slip and Slide Toolset (Keyboard Shortcuts–S, SS) . . . . 212 The Slip Tool (Keyboard Shortcut–S) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212 The Storyboard Rough Cut Technique . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214 Slipping in the Viewer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217 Slip into Sync . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217 The Slide Tool (Keyboard Shortcut–SS) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218 Monitoring the Slip and Slide Tools in the Canvas Window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 The Razorblade Toolset (Keyboard Shortcuts–B, BB) . . . . . . . 219 Using the Razorblade Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220 Performing a Ripple Delete . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222 The Zoom Toolset (Keyboard Shortcuts–Z, ZZ, H, HH) . . . . . 224 The Zoom In and Out Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224 The Hand Tool (Keyboard Shortcut–H) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225 The Scrub Video Tool: Scrubbing a Clip’s Thumbnail (Keyboard Shortcut–HH) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226 Creating Thumbnails in the List View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227 Master Clips and Affiliates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229 The Subclip . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231 Dupe Detection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234 The Sequence Settings Window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236 The Crop/Distort and Pen Toolsets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
Chapter 8
Compositing and Special Effects . . . . . . . . . . . 239 Compositing Layers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239 Setting Up a Sequence for Compositing Layers . . . . . . . 240 Keyframing in the Sequence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
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Adding Type: The Text Generator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244 Master/Affiliate Clips and the Viewer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245 Special Effects: Motion Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249 The Image + Wireframe Viewing Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251 Creating a Motion Path . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255 Setting the Keyframes for Motion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255 Nonlinear Interpolation—Adding a Curve . . . . . . . . . . . . 260 Ease In/Ease Out . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261 The Other Motion Tab Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268 The Crop Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269 The Distort Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272 The Drop Shadow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276 The QuickView Tool and Option-P . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277 Motion Blur . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279
Chapter 9
Effects Filters
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
Applying Effects: The Color Corrector 3-Way Filter . . . . . . . . 285 1. Picking the Master Shot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286 The Video Scopes: Luma and Saturation . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287 2. Correcting the Master Shot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289 Master Shot Correction: Set Contrast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290 Master Shot Correction: Pick Up the Blacks . . . . . . . . . . . 294 Master Shot Correction: Set the Whites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295 Master Shot Correction: Set the Mids and Gamma . . . . . 296 Master Shot Correction: Correct Color for White Balance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297 The Frame Viewer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299 3. Matching Shots to the Master Shot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299 Shot to Shot Copying . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300 Paste Attributes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300 Match to Master Shots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301 Match Hue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 302 Secondary Color Correction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305 Limit Effect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305 Setting the Matte . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307 Edge Thin and Softening . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307 Using the Limit Effect Matte . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308 Teamwork Equals Fast Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309 Composite Modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311 Mattes, Masks, and Stencils . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312 Setting the Travel Matte-Luma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313 The Travel Matte-Alpha: What Is an Alpha Channel? . . . . 316 Speed and Duration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318 Nesting and Effects, the FCP Way . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 320
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Why Nest? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323 The Render Manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324
Chapter 10
The Audio Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327 Fixing Audio Levels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Keyframing Audio Levels . . . . . . . . The Audio Mixer Tool . . . . . . . . . . . Using the Audio Filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Three Band EQ . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Parametric EQ . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Voice Over Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Setup and Things to Consider . . . . Setting the Offset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Rest of the Voice Over Window Using the Voice Over Tool . . . . . . .
Chapter 11
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 340 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 340 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 344 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 346 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 346 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 348 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 349 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 352
Getting Your Project Out of Final Cut Pro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 355 Output to Video Tape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 355 1. Output to Tape: Print to Video . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 356 Customizing Your Print to Video . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357 Color Bars and Audio Test Tone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357 Slate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358 Countdown . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359 Media . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360 Trailer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362 Duration Calculator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362 Print to Tape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362 2. Output to Tape: Edit to Tape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363 The Issues for Edit to Tape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363 Performing the Edit to Tape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 365 Exporting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369 Exporting for Distribution: Optimizing the QuickTime Movie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369 Choosing the File Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369 QuickTime Standalones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371 Choosing and Setting the Compression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371 Quality or Spatial Compression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 374 Keyframe Every or Temporal Compression . . . . . . . . . . . 374 Other Factors: Frame Size, Audio, etc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375 MPEG-4, MPEG-2, and You . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 376 Exporting with MPEG-4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 378
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Exporting for Loss-Less Transfer: The QuickTime Reference Movie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381 Special Limitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 382 The QuickTime Movie Dialog Box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383 Export for Metadata . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 386 The Edit Decision List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387 The Batch List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 389 Media Manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 392 The Other Offline/Online Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393 How It Works . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 395 The Offline/Online Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399
Appendix A What is Digital Video Anyway?
. . . . . . . . . . . . 403
How Video Works: Analog and Digital Video . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403 Generation Loss and Digital Video . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 404 Analog Video Formats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405 Where Does Digital Video Originate? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 408 How Light Becomes Numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 408 Sampling and Compression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 408 The Firewire DV System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 409 What Is a Codec? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 410 8-bit and 10-bit Uncompressed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 411 What about Digital Audio? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 413 Sampling and Digital Audio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 413 Analog Audio Recording and Double System Sound . . . 414 SDI Digital Audio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415 What About Timecode? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415 Firewire DV: Video, Audio, Timecode, and Device Control in One Cable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 416 Timecode: Analog and DV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 416 Why Use Non-Drop Frame?: Pulldown Issues . . . . . . . . . 418 Panasonic AG-DVX100: The 24P DV Camera . . . . . . . . . . 420 Device Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421
Appendix B Storage: RAM and Drive Solutions . . . . . . . . . . 423 RAM: Random Access Memory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423 How Much RAM? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 424 Hard Drives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 426 Issues: Storage Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 426 Issues: Drive Speed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427 Types of Drive by Location: Removable Disk . . . . . . . 427 Types of Drive by Location: The Internal Drive . . . . . 428
Contents
xiii Types of Drive by Location: The External Drive . . . . . 429 Types of Drive by Standard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431 Types of Drive by Standard: ATA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431 Types of Drive by Standard: SCSI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 433 Types of Drive by Standard: Firewire . . . . . . . . . . . . . 434 Types of Drive by Standard: USB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 436 The Input and Output Buses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 437 The AGP–Accelerated Graphics Port . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 437 The PCI–Peripheral Component Interconnect . . . . . . . . . . 437 RAIDs and You . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 440 RAID-0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 440 RAID-1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 442 RAID-10 or RAID 1/0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 442 Checking the Pieces: The Apple System Profiler . . . . . . . . . . 442 Regular Operating System Maintenance: The Care and Feeding of a Jungle Cat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 444 Repair Permissions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 444 Jaguar 10.2 and Single User Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 445 Panther 10.3 and Safe Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447 When Single User or Safe Mode Doesn’t Fix It . . . . . . . . 448 Cleaning House . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 448 Backing Up Your System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 453 Backing Up to CD-Rs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 453 Using Apple’s Disk Copy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 454 Using Roxio Toast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 457
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 459
This Page Intentionally Left Blank
Preface The DV Revolution Continues: What This Book Is and How to Use It The true digital video revolution that burst on the scene five years ago was not the result of a particular camera, computer, or other piece of technology. It was a convergence of the right pieces of technology at one time. Digital video recording formats were around much earlier than 1999, and we’ve been editing digital video on computers (with varying degrees of quality) for even longer. Using binary numbers to “make movies” wasn’t really breaking any new ground, even back in the late nineties. What was revolutionary was the development of an easy, convenient, systematic workflow. Instead of balancing a lot of extremely expensive and temperamental technology in pursuit of quality results, the integrated Firewire DV editing system that emerged, with its plug and play simplicity, allowed just about anyone to shoot video, then plug up and edit it. You didn’t need ultra high-speed drive solutions, big, ugly, complicated breakout boxes, and hundred-thousand dollar video decks to edit broadcast quality video. You got out your trusty portable Mini-DV camera, plugged it into the computer, and started editing. You also didn’t have to spend an exorbitant amount of time or money on a computer anymore. Although the average Joe blanches at the price of a decked out Apple Macintosh desktop or laptop, experienced editors know that this is a small fraction of what they had to pay back in the mid-nineties for far less functionality. When you think about getting a complete broadcast quality video editing solution for less than five thousand dollars, the cost of a Macintosh becomes much less monstrous. That was the substance of the heralded DV revolution—for comparatively little money, you could buy a camera and a desktop computer and get right to work. All the pieces worked together nicely. There were compact, high-quality, and low-cost acquisition camera systems matched by an equally high-quality and low-cost editing and delivery system. These two parts of the production process were integrated for consistency across the industry and for flexibility of the end-user. This revolution was about workflow. The DV system made shooting and editing part of a unified process, and in doing so launched thousands of new enthusiasts into the production community as artists and communicators. Revolutions do not stand still. They may mutate or disappear, but they do not remain rigid in time. This is particularly true with technologically-based revolutions, where development is usually more a result of a corporation needing a new product to sell than of
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consumers desiring more features in the latest-greatest camera or software. Hindsight is 20/20 and 24-carat golden, and we can look at just the past five years to find failed technological avenues the industry touted as the potential next-big-thing. They weren’t all bad, but they failed to lock-in that peculiar mix of feature, ease-of-use, and timeless potential that a revolutionary product requires. So what has happened with our DV revolution? It’s still there, humming away. Many Firewire DV editors who started in 1999 with a single DV camera and FCP 1.0 are still happily using that same DV camera and FCP 4 (although, hopefully they have updated to a newer Macintosh model in the interim!). It’s still as functional as ever. But the revolution IS evolving, and as the technology develops, even more functionality is channeled down to these very users who were blown away five years ago by how much they could accomplish for such a minor investment. The strategy of providing high quality to end-users without bankrupting them is still paying off. And where is that new functionality appearing? It is in the new accessibility of the highest quality uncompressed solutions for DV editing. Only three years ago, the cost of an uncompressed video editing suite, complete with drive solutions and capture card, would have been enough for a substantial down payment on a house (in Massachusetts, no less!). In the year 2003, however, acceptable storage and capture solutions for standard-definition uncompressed broadcast video can be had for less than the price of the computer workstation itself! From 1995 to 1999, an inexpensive broadcast quality editing station went from around $25,000 to around $5000. From 2000 to 2004, the price of an uncompressed video editing station took about the same dive in price. If that isn’t revolutionary, I’m not quite sure of the term anymore! This means one thing; more people of less means can work with video of much higher quality. The DV revolution continues! This book is intended to be a field guide for the continuing revolution. Although broadly about FCP 4, the book is also about the nuts-and-bolts of DV technology, the stuff under the hood that makes it all possible. The better informed you are about your tools, the better they will perform, and the more useful your investments will be. If you are still using FCP with Firewire DV technology, you will see it covered thoroughly in this book, since it still represents, by far, the largest group of editors using FCP. But if you are looking to upgrade the quality and range of technology you implement into your editing system, then this book will be tremendously exciting. The accessibility of uncompressed standard definition systems opens up new markets and expressive possibilities for the DV explorer. To be sure, not everyone wants or needs those new possibilities. New technology is not for everyone! But it certainly bears looking at. One of the primary foci of this book is to clarify the muddy water surrounding this new technology. Much of the confusion back in 2000 about Firewire DV solutions is occurring again with uncompressed solutions, and that is totally unnecessary. Do the homework (using this book to lay out the issues for you), decide if higher quality is worth it (or if it even applies to you!), and then choose whether or not you make the leap. This book attempts a difficult task of addressing intermediate level editors who want to improve their skills. It therefore assumes some editing experience (though not necessarily
Preface
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in FCP!). If you are looking for a way to take your editing skills and workflow to the next level, then this book will help. Coming from Avid or Media 100? This book will help you figure out how to do in FCP what you’ve been doing all along in those other applications. Experienced with previous versions of FCP but looking to maximize the new features in FCP 4? This book will do more than bullet-list those new features and show you where the pulldown menus are; it will show you how to implement them into a solid workflow. If you have absolutely no experience with either editing in general or FCP in particular, you might find it a bit of a bumpy ride. But provided you put in the work and practice along with the exercises, you should profit handsomely from the experience. I, frankly, wish there had been a book like this around when I learned to edit—that’s why I wrote it! How should you use this book? It depends on who you are. If you are new to FCP or the Macintosh entirely, you really want to start at the beginning and work through each chapter, step-by-step. The dependability and consistent performance of your system depends on using it like a professional editor, so you want to get the system set up correctly before you jump in. FCP’s settings and preferences are more critical than Avid users may remember, so don’t skip around; stick to the script! If you have previous experience with FCP, feel free to bop around the table of contents and look for new features. There are a lot of them. One of the great things about FCP is that the application is constantly growing and adding new features, but the workflow itself hasn’t changed. You can keep on relying on that great FCP process and pick up the new features and techniques that every passing version gives us. In particular, spend some time with the new audio tools. This is probably the most important, yet overlooked, new feature set in FCP 4. If you aren’t taking advantage of these new tools because of bad experiences with previous versions, well, prepare to be impressed. After working through the book, no matter what your skill level is, make sure you take a stroll through the appendices at the end. In addition to solid, jargon-free technical information about the DV you are working with, I have included a great deal of pertinent information about storage solutions, regular system maintenance, even bullet-proof back up systems. There is something for everyone back there. I really mean for this book to make you less reliant on expensive, middle-man ‘computer mavens’ and more self-reliant. You put these systems together to edit with, not to search the web or to pay value added resellers $100 per hour to guess your problems! So get with it. Learn to fix it yourself and keep it happy. Finally, use the book as a learning tool, not a reference book. FCP is a huge application, and there are things in the 1200 page manual that I haven’t covered. But the manual isn’t teaching you how to edit either, and that, to my mind, is the most valuable thing I can assist you with. Don’t just look at the pictures and learn the keyboard shortcuts; learn the structure of editing and see how it can streamline the way you work, letting you focus on the bigger questions about editing. In conclusion, I want to say thank you to the people who have made this little treasure possible. First of all Ken Stone, as usual, I thank you for the amount of labor lost and the vision and foresight you deliver to any instructional materials you take part in creating.
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The reading public will never know how much easier you have made it to conquer these software packages. My thanks, man. Thanks to Dan Berube for sticking it out with me in this process. On another level, thanks to Dan and Michael Horton and Kevin Monahan and Gary Adcock and the growing list of FCPUG Network leaders who keep the grassroots DV editing communities hopping. It wouldn’t work without our energy and drive, and FCP wouldn’t be the tool it is today without a million hours … and counting … of our attention. And speaking of Kevin Monahan, thanks, Dood. More than a few of the coolest tricks in any FCP book originated from your toolbox. You are a true mensch! Thanks to every editor out there that took a chance on FCP in the early days and didn’t give up in frustration when it seemed like a temperamental teenager around version 1.2. Apple may have written the code, but by asking for what we needed, we defined what they put into that code and built a great community in the process. Not a week goes by that I don’t communicate with a user in some far-flung land and feel an instant kinship and interest in their story, even though we come from as far apart socially and culturally as can be imagined. What a great community! Finally, thanks to the Communications Media Department at Fitchburg State College where I have the pleasure of teaching. I have the best colleagues, the best students, and the pride that I am a part of the scrappiest, most affordable, and accessible film school program in the world. We don’t care what your budget is, we just want to know if you are capable of contributing to the creation of great work. I know of no greater goal than that. Finally, thanks Elinor. We did it again, somehow…. And Theron, get that rib sandwich out of your mouth. This is a serious book….
1
The Initial Setup: Optimizing the Mac OS and FCP
FCP is a fully-functional nonlinear digital video editing application. It stands alone as the most feature-rich application on the market in its price range. With this functionality comes a degree of user responsibility. The user has to configure the application correctly and organize it for optimal performance and safety. FCP will function even if you configure it incorrectly. However, you will pay for such mistakes further down the road when you run across foul-ups that could have been easily avoided if you had set up the application and the project in an organized and safe fashion at the beginning. What follows is a tried-and-true path for setting up FCP. It is an especially effective method for multi-user editing stations that serve more than one project or editor. If you follow these steps, you will experience few nasty surprises; and the few surprises you do encounter will be much less disastrous than if you simply plug in and begin editing. The process for setting up your FCP station and project begins outside of FCP. The first thing we will do is take a stroll through your Mac OS system settings and make sure they are optimized for FCP. Although you only see what is going on on the computer’s Desktop, the Macintosh is constantly doing many things in the background, some of which can have a negative impact on FCP’s performance.
Macintosh OSX: The System Preferences In Mac OSX, System Preferences application replaces many of what were Control Panel settings in Mac OS 9 (see Figure 1-1). Like the old Control Panels, System Preferences is where you tell the Mac OS how to use many of its features. Access to System Preferences can be found in three different places. There will be an icon for the System Preferences on the Dock. Alternately, the Apple Drop Down Menu in the top left hand corner of the screen has a link to it. And finally, since the System Preferences window is actually an application, you can access it directly from the Applications folder inside the hard drive. The Energy Saver Preference After opening System Preferences, locate the Energy Saver Preference icon and click to open. Click the Show Details button in the bottom right hand corner to view all the possible options.
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Figure 1-1 System Preferences application replaces many of what were Control Panel settings in Mac OS 9. Access to System Preferences can be found in three different places: the System Preferences icon on the Dock, the Apple Drop Down Menu link, and the Applications folder.
You want to set System and Hard Disk Sleep to Never. You can also set the Monitor Sleep to Never, although you may want to check it for a separate sleep setting, for instance, at fifteen minutes, to prolong its life and save on bills and CRT-generated heat, as monitor sleep should have no effect on FCP’s performance (see Figure 1-2). In particular, some USB devices and expansion PCI cards may limit your Macintosh from entering or leaving sleep mode. For more information, refer to the appendices for a detailed treatment of expansion cards and buses. Once you have Energy Saver set, hit the Show All button in the top left corner of the window to return to the original System Preferences screen. The Displays Preference Next, from the System Preferences pane, click the Displays Preference icon. Here you can control not only how your monitors are set, but how multiple monitors are arranged with each other (see Figure 1-3). On the right side of the panel, make sure to choose a refresh rate of 75 Hz or higher. If such a rate is not available, select a lower resolution on the left side of the window and then see if 75 Hz is available. Make sure that Colors is set to Millions. If you are using an LCD screen for a monitor, the Macintosh OS will automatically set the refresh rate correctly, and you will not see an option for refresh rates. If you have to select a smaller screen size than you feel comfortable working with, look into purchasing a new, more efficient monitor that can support higher screen resolutions at the refresh rate of 75 Hz. Although you can work in FCP with a screen refresh of 60 Hz, be aware that FCP’s performance can suffer when run at this lower refresh rate. In addition, ou will soon find that 60 Hz can cause eye strain because of the perceptible flicker that accompanies it. Low refreshes like 60 Hz invariably lead to headaches and eye strain.
The Initial Setup: Optimizing the Mac OS and FCP
3
Figure 1-2 In Energy Saver, located in System Preferences, set System and Hard Disk Sleep to Never and set Monitor Sleep to either Never or 15 minutes.
Note: Never deselect “Show modes recommended by display” (see Figure 1-4). Although in rare cases you can get away with a higher refresh rate that is unsupported by Apple and the monitor manufacturer, it is quite possible to accidentally select a refresh rate that your monitor cannot support but which the OS will not reject! If you do this, you may lose your display, which will be replaced with a message from the monitor that reads something on the order of “Scan Rate Out Of Range.” Your computer is still working cheerfully away, waiting for you to respond, because it has no idea that you can’t see the screen it thinks it is displaying. If you choose a resolution that your monitor cannot display, give it at least fifteen seconds before beginning the process of correcting this dreadful error. When you change the resolution of your monitor through the System Preference Pane, usually you will be given a dialog box asking you to confirm the change. This is precisely to avoid the situation described in the previous paragraph. However, be warned that sometimes this message does not appear, and you will have to perform some interesting contortions to correct it. If you accidentally choose a scan rate the monitor cannot support, you’ll have to reboot
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Figure 1-3 In Displays, located in System Preferences, a refresh rate of 75 Hz or higher is preferable while working in Final Cut Pro. Colors should be set to Millions.
into Mac OS 9 to manually remove the system preference file and reset the display. ince Mac OS 9 is not an option on some newer Macintoshes, you need to be very careful with this. Software Update A final System Preference that should be visited is Software Update. Software Update is a feature that, when enabled, automatically connects to the Internet periodically to check for updates to the system’s software (see Figure 1-5). There are a few reasons to disable this automatic checking feature. First, if you are not on a WAN network or cable/ DSL connection, Software Update will engage the modem and try to call your ISP. It is just doing its job, but remember that it is likely to do so when you are not at home as well! If you keep Software Update disabled, you can manually run the Updater at more suitable times.
The Initial Setup: Optimizing the Mac OS and FCP
5
Figure 1-4 In Displays, located in System Preferences, NEVER deselect “Show modes recommended by display.” Doing so may lose your display.
Figure 1-5 Software Update is a feature that, when enabled, automatically connects to the Internet periodically to check for updates to the system’s software. Disabling Software Update prevents it from connecting automatically.
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Further, the capturing of video is a very system intensive activity. Network activity can have serious negative impacts on system performance, and checking, downloading, and installing software from the Internet is a particularly demanding set of operations. Since the default Software Update checking time varies, your machine may try and look for updates at the worst possible moment. Disabling Software Update will avoid this problem. Finally, disabling Software Update can eliminate a complication that has plagued video editors since the beginning of computer-based editing solutions. Although software updates generally deliver improved performance, it is an understood rule of thumb that you never want to make serious changes to your system’s software in the middle of a project. Nothing is more frustrating than allowing a system update to occur, then finding out that some small piece of it conflicts with your present third-party software. The time to upgrade your system is between projects, or at the very least, when you have some breathing space and the ability to patiently troubleshoot in the event that you do run into problems. Network Issues and AppleTalk Once again, click the Show All button in the upper left corner of the window and return to the System Preferences window. Find the Network Preferences button and hit it. When the Network Preferences window loads, change the dropdown bar from Internal Modem to Built-in Ethernet (see Figure 1-6) (the Network System preference pane in 10.3 Panther looks different, but operates the same way). Select the AppleTalk tab. Uncheck Make AppleTalk Active and hit Apply (if you use DSL to connect to the Internet, PPPoE must be deselected before you can turn on AppleTalk). One of the nicer things about Mac OSX is its incredibly sophisticated network capabilities. The operating system really does do most of the work for you if you need to set up a network. Simply plug up your Mac to a hub/router/switch and plug your other systems in and let the Mac OSX figure out and negotiate the protocols. Connecting with other computers and printers is effortless, even for a network novice. Unfortunately, there are some rare situations where being on a network while running FCP could cause problems. Whenever capturing or printing to tape, AppleTalk should be disabled. Some older printers and networks must be accessed through AppleTalk, so you may want to keep it enabled much of the time. Just remember that when you are performing critical operations like capture and print to tape, AppleTalk should be disabled. You should also always dismount any networked volumes before working in FCP (see igure 1-7). If you are accessing the drives of another computer through a network, you should emove them from the Desktop of your Macintosh before running FCP. It’s easy to forget that you’ve mounted another machine’s hard drive on your Desktop for a moment. But as you start working in FCP, any activity on the other computer that the mounted drive lives on could cause interruptions on your machine, leading to very annoying and unpredictable behavior. A final note about networks and FCP is that being on a network is not necessarily anathematic to editing video. In fact, many editors have to rely on networks as an important part of their workflow. Clearly, the ability of your Macintosh to operate properly in a networked environment is important. The precautions about turning off AppleTalk and networked
The Initial Setup: Optimizing the Mac OS and FCP
7
Figure 1-6 In Network Preferences, located in System Preferences, the AppleTalk tab in the Built-In Ethernet settings should be disabled.
Figure 1-7 Cut Pro.
Networked volumes should always be dismounted while working in Final
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drives is simply a warning that networks, especially when utilized at critical moments, can cause lousy performance. Printing a giant file to a Postscript printer while capturing is not going to yield positive results! The injunction is not to isolate your editor from the rest of the world, but to realize that your Macintosh will likely have fits if asked to capture video and audio to a hard drive and parse out 5 megabytes per second to a printer or a network drive at the same time. AppleTalk is becoming less and less of an issue these days as protocols such as PPPoE and Rendezvous come into play. AppleTalk is mainly useful for talking with older printers and Macs that network using the Chooser in Mac OS 9 and previous systems. If you are not using such network devices, you can probably disable AppleTalk for good and eliminate the possibility of such trouble.
Multi-User and Administrator Issues Mac OSX has really fantastic administrative and multi-user functionality. It’s possible to have many people using the same machine and allow each of them to contour the appearance and organization of their materials according to their own methods (see Figure 1-8) (again, though 10.3 Panther’s Account Preference pane looks different, it appears almost identical to the previous version). Mac OSX also protects individual users from their co-workers’ tendency to accidentally wipe all their hard work away or steal their materials. As a final bonus, it allows a system administrator to retain total control over the workstation, keeping individual users from getting access to data they shouldn’t or making changes to hardware or software without permission. In the past, this required additional software and some measure of professional expertise to keep running. But with Mac OSX, this level of administrative control is built into the system. When you get your Mac, or when you first install Mac OSX, you are installed as the Administrative User of the machine. The identity you create right then is the one that the Mac OS will regard from that point on as the User that can make changes to the system and install applications. After you configure your system the way you want, you can create new identities for each new user, and you can even allow administrative access for these new users if you choose. As the Administrator, you set permissions for these users, allowing them access to different applications and files based on what you believe they will need to use while working. Sound like a great thing? Well it is, with a few caveats. The administrator has such control over the system that it really can’t function optimally without relatively frequent oversight. The periodic maintenance and the rare emergencies that crop up will usually require an administrative password to be taken care of. If anything needs to be changed or re-installed, only the system administrator is allowed to perform these actions. If the administrator is difficult to track down, the system may be effectively out of service until they return! This can be anything from a lost password to the inability to access certain types of documents, folders, and hardware/software settings. It sometimes even limits the ability to empty the trash and delete files. Mac OSX is incredibly secure, but keeping everybody locked out of everything
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Figure 1-8 In Mac OSX, each editor can contour the appearance and organization of their User identity. The Macintosh is essentially a different machine for each individual user.
may not always be such a great idea. For more information about setting up Users in Mac OSX, consult the software manual and look into books and websites about Mac OSX. The more you know about the way multi-user functionality works, the more likely that you’ll set it up correctly and that it will function efficiently to meet your laboratory needs.
Installing FCP Software If you have now ascertained that the Mac OS is primed for editing, it is time to install the FCP software. Make sure you have plenty of drive space prior to installation. FCP 4, including Livetype, Soundtrack, Compressor, Cinema Tools, and all their library files, takes up an astounding 16 gigabytes of drive space! Simply insert the installer DVDs one by one, click on the install icon, enter the serial number, and let the installer go to work. If you try to enter the serial number that accompanies the FCP license but the OK button remains grayed out,
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Figure 1-9 Final Cut Pro serial numbers are almost always a letter followed by numbers followed by letters, etc.
emember that FCP serial numbers are almost always a letter followed by numbers followed by letters, etc. (see Figure 1-9). This should keep you from entering ones as Ls and so forth. At the end of the installation process, FCP will ask you to give it some initial preset information about your equipment setup. You will be faced with a dialog box entitled “Choose Setup.” This is simply FCP asking you to establish the initial parameters for a project (see Figure 1-10). You will later be able to change anything you enter at this time. If you are unsure, simply choose either DV-NTSC or DV-PAL (whichever system your country uses) and pass on to the next window. On choosing OK, you may be told that FCP is unable to locate a DV device. When FCP starts up, it will look for the DV device you chose in that initial setup box. The Setup ou just chose informs FCP which type of camera, deck, or capture device it will be capturing video and audio from. If your camera or deck is not connected to the Mac, turned on, and (if applicable) switched to VTR rather than camera, FCP will ask where it is. The two choices given are “Continue” or “Check Again” (see Figure 1-11). If you will not be capturing video or printing video back out to tape, you can choose “Continue” and get to work. If you indeed need to start out with a capture device, make sure that one is properly connected, powered up, and set correctly; then hit “Check Again.” Beware that if you choose “Continue” when you meant “Check Again,” you will have to manually tell FCP to access the device (by using the settings covered in the next chapter or by quitting the application and starting it up again). “Why bother with the capture device if you aren’t capturing from it or recording finished productions out to tape?” you might ask. Because we can also watch our editing progress, the final video output, by using the device patched through to a video monitor for preview. You should also attach your external audio speakers to the capture device (camera, deck, or capture card) to monitor your FCP audio (see Figure 1-12). This is always the prefererable way to work, unless you are in a car or on an airplane where such monitoring is impractical.
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Figure 1-10 At the end of the installation process, Final Cut Pro will ask you via the “Choose Setup” dialog box to establish initial hardware and project settings, which can always be changed at a later time.
Figure 1-11 When you start up FCP, it looks for the hardware you will be using. If the deck, camera, or capture is not present, it will give you a “Continue or Check Again” dialog box.
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Figure 1-12 Having an external video monitor and audio speakers attached to your capture device (camera, deck, or capture card) allows you to monitor your video and audio while editing in Final Cut Pro.
One of the greatest features of FCP for Firewire DV editing is that your deck or camera will convert the DV coming out of the Firewire tube into video that can be watched on a true video monitor—just the same way that editors using professional capture cards have been doing since day one. Although you can certainly edit using just the computer screen windows, you really can’t get a sense of the impact of your edits until you see them played back in all their glory on an external video monitor. Colors will be different, and playback on the computer screen may seem slightly stuttery, and, in general, what you see is not exactly what you get. However, what you see coming out of the Firewire connection or your capture card and displayed on an external video monitor is what your final product will look like. It is also very difficult to get a sense of audio and video sync when working only with the computer screen windows. Since audio follows video out through Firewire to the DV deck or camera, you can get timing down much tighter in your cutting when you base your editing decisions on what you see and hear in the external video monitor. Many new users are often confused by the fact that what happens on their computer screen window appears to be slightly out of sync with audio and video going out to the DV deck or camera and the external monitor. The best solution to this is to always monitor our editing progress by using your DV device hooked up to a video monitor with external audio speakers. New to FCP 4 is the ability to route video and audio out of FCP to different destinations (like video out to Firewire and audio through the computer speakers). Unfortunately, this is almost a guarantee of out-of-sync audio and video, since the different ports on the computer deliver audio and video with different ‘latencies’ or delays. Thus, you want to send audio and video out the same port whenever possible. If only working on the desktop, use the computer speakers for audio. With the release of FCP 4.1,
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an option has been introduced in the preferences to address this latency with a “Frame Offset.” That option will be looked at in Chapter 2. In addition, many users initially wonder why their text and graphics images look so bad on the computer monitor. The fact is that previewing these project elements in the Canvas and Viewer windows yields poor results, particularly with text, as compared to after the render of the text in the sequence. The Canvas and Viewer windows lower the quality level on the computer screen in order to salvage a little computer processing power. It is only on the true DV output to an NTSC or PAL monitor that you are able to make qualified judgments about the elements in your projects. You will also feel much better about your work when you see it the way it is supposed to look. Desktop previews in the Canvas and Viewer are exactly that— previews. They are meant only to get your project roughly in shape, not for critical judgment.
Project Setup: Do It Right the First Time and Every Time So, you have completed the necessary installation steps and given the setup information. The next step is to set things up so that the application works properly. Then we want to create and save a new project. Finally, we want to institute an archival backup process that will keep us working even in the unlikely event that something happens to our original project file. Starting Up FCP To start up FCP, double-click the FCP icon located in the Applications folder on your hard drive (see Figure 1-13). You can create an alias, or application shortcut icon, by Controlclicking the FCP icon, selecting “Make Alias,” and dragging the new alias to the Desktop of your Macintosh. You can also create a link to FCP by dragging the application directly from the Applications folder to the Dock. Whenever you want to start FCP, click on the alias or the icon in the Dock. If you have just installed FCP, when you start FCP for the first time it will open with a new Untitled Project. If, on the other hand, FCP was already installed and you had already created a project, it will open the project that was open when the application was last shut down. If you are looking at an Untitled Project in the Browser window, you will want to immediately name and save your new project. FCP will actually let you name and save your project using “Untitled Project.” But Untitled is never a suitable name for a project because every new project created will initially carry this name. To work safely and effectively you need to immediately give your project a unique name and save it, using the process described in the following section. There is one exception to the rule that FCP always opens the last opened project when starting up. If you start FCP by double-clicking a project file you have previously saved rather than the FCP application icon, FCP will open that particular project. Once you have begun working with a project, this will be the preferred method of starting the application because only your intended project will open, rather than an untitled one or someone else’s.
Figure 1-13 To start up Final Cut Pro, you may a) double-click the Final Cut Pro icon located in the Applications folder on your hard drive, b) Control-click the FCP icon to Make Alias, or c) drag the FCP icon directly to your Dock and click on it from there.
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But when beginning a new project from scratch, you must start from the FCP application icon and an Untitled Project. Now it’s time to save your project correctly and set up a solid system of archived backups. This process isn’t complicated or time-consuming, but it is very necessary. Unfortunately, by most editors unfortunately do not use such a system, and they are the ones who sweat the hardest when their project file is corrupted or gets trashed accidentally. If you are careful and organized, you will find not only that you never lose a project but that you can actually return to your project at any stage of its progress. And all it takes is a few seconds every couple of hours, and keeping your eye on the ball. If someone else’s project is open in the Browser window (more on this window momentarily), go to File > Close Project to return to a pristine state with no open projects (see Figure 1-14). When no project exists in the Browser window, go to the File drop-down menu and select New Project. Saving Your Project Correctly After you have a new Untitled Project in the Browser window, go to File > Save Project as … . In the Dialog box that follows, click the “Where” drop down bar and choose Desktop. You could also save it in your Documents folder in your Home folder, which is located in the Users folder assigned to you by the administrator, although keeping it on the desktop may make the CD-R back up process described in Appendix B simpler. You also want to save this project in its own folder rather than simply as a lone file sitting on the desktop. Before you name and click the Save button, choose the New Folder button (see Figure 1-15). (You may need to hit the small arrow button to the right of the Save As: field to access the New Folder button.) In the dialog box that appears, type the name “first_project_folder” and hit Create. Upon selecting Create, you will be returned to the Save Project As … dialog box; but, you should note that you are now inside the folder you just created, which will appear on the Desktop. Finally, type in the name “First_Project” and hit Save. You have now named and saved your project correctly. We want to save and run our project files from the start up drive, where FCP, our User folder, and the Mac OS System live. But we’ve only completed the first part of the naming and saving process. Although we have yet to actually do anything in our project, now is the time to start our archive of backups. You want to back up your project files to something safer and more permanent like a CD-R. All new Macintoshes ship with a CD and/or DVD burner, and you should take advantage of this to make your project as secure as it can be. For the particular methods for doing this with Apple’s included Disk Copy/Utility or with the fantastically flexible and inexpensive Roxio Toast, see Appendix B. You’ll want to backup this project folder to CD-R at least every couple of hours and whenever you complete work for the day. Now that your project is correctly named and saved, return to the application by bringing it up front (by clicking on any FCP window, or the FCP icon in the Dock).
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Figure 1-14 Selecting “Close Project” under the File Drop Down Menu returns Final Cut Pro to a pristine state with no open projects.
The Structure of FCP Now that the project has been named and saved correctly, let’s take a look around and see what all those windows are for. When you created your new project, more than a few windows should have spontaneously opened up. These windows, in clockwise order, are the Browser, the Viewer, the Canvas, the Audio Meters, the Toolbar, and the Timeline windows (see Figure 1-16). This is the Standard arrangement you see when you start the application. If you ever get mixed up and are missing windows that have somehow gone off screen, go to Windows > Arrange > Standard, or any of the other window layout options ou prefer (see Figure 1-17). This will return your screen to one of FCP’s several window
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Figure 1-15 You also want to save this project in its own folder, “first_project_folder,” rather than simply as a lone file sitting on the desktop.
layout presets. If any of your windows have closed and you need to access them, they are available from this Window drop-down menu as well. By holding down the Option key and accessing “Set Custom Layout 1 or 2,” you can create your own personal custom layout based on what the window layout looks like right at that moment. This custom layout will always be accessible by using the keyboard shortcut Shift-U or Option-U. Before beginning the discussion of FCP windows, it is important to note that most of the windows utilize what is referred to as tab architecture. A tab in an FCP window is an individual page inside the window. One FCP window often holds more than one tab, just as one filing cabinet can hold more than one folder. Tabs can also be “torn away” from a window to create a new window occupied only by the “torn-away” tab. If you need to look at two tabs from the same window, simply grab one tab and drag it away from the window to create a new window (see Figure 1-18). Tabs can be restored to the windows from which they originated by clicking on the tab and dragging it back into the window it came from. Simply let go of the tab when you see the heavy border appear around the tab you are inserting back into a window. The Browser Window The Browser window can be thought of as the command center and supply depot of FCP. All the various ingredients of your project are kept here. The Browser window contains the Project tab that represents your entire FCP project and all its contents. It also contains the Effects tab, which stores all the effects filters, transitions, and generators that you can apply in your productions.
Figure 1-16 The Final Cut Pro interface consists of the following windows (clockwise): the Browser, the Viewer, the Canvas, the Audio Meters, the Toolbar, and the Timeline.
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Figure 1-17 Final Cut Pro allows you to reset your window layout to a preset or customized layout at any time from the Window > Arrange menu.
The Project Tab The three objects used within the Project tab are the Clip; the Sequence, which is the editing timeline; and the Bin, which is an organizational folder (see Figure 1-19). As you capture or import video, audio, and graphics clips, they show up in this Project tab. There should initially be one sequence in the Project tab, because all new projects are created with one sequence. Any clips or sequences that go into the Project tab can be further organized inside bins. The two primary resources of an FCP project are the Sequence, the linear timeline into which we edit clips, and the Clip, the individual icon that represents the media we edit into the Sequence. They are easily organized through the Bin, a folder that is used to store and organize clips and sequences according to your organizational needs. Bins can also be organized within other bins to your organizational satisfaction. The Effects Tab There is another tab in the Project window that is always present, even when there are no open projects. This is the Effects tab (see Figure 1-20). The Effects tab contains FCP’s many different built-in effects such as transitions, special effects filters, color bars, audio filters, and video and title generators. When you have clips available in the sequence, you will
Figure 1-18
Tabs can also be “torn away” from a window to create a new window occupied only by the “torn-away” tab.
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Figure 1-19 The Browser window contains the Project tab that represents your entire FCP project and all its contents. The three objects used within the Project tab are the Clip; the Sequence, which is the editing timeline; and the Bin, which is an organizational folder.
be able to apply effects to them from this tab simply by dragging and dropping the effect filter you want to use on to the clip. We will return to the Effects tab in Chapter 7. Moving a Clip around the Windows As an example of the way the Browser operates, and to exhibit the way the windows work, let’s utilize a video generator from the Effects tab that behaves like a clip and pass it back and forth between the windows. As we don’t yet have any captured clips to work with, we’ll use the Bars and Tone clip that comes preinstalled with FCP. The Color Bars and Tone Generator Clip
This Bars and Tone Generator contains the standard PLUGE (Picture Line Up Generation Equipment) color bars used to calibrate the color and luminance of video monitors, as well as a standard audio tone. Bars and Tone will come into play in the final chapter of the book concerning output to tape. Since the preinstalled Bars and Tone clip acts just like a regularly captured clip, we’ll use it for sample footage. First, make sure that the Project window in the Browser is set to be viewed as a list, rather than as icons. To view as List, click on the Browser window so that the Project tab is
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Figure 1-20 The Effects tab contains FCP’s many different built-in effects such as transitions, special effects filters, color bars, audio filters, and video and title generators.
active, then go to View > Browser Items > As List. Alternatively, Control-click in the gray area of the Project tab and choose View as List (see Figure 1-21). Control-clicking almost anywhere in FCP will often reveal a contextual menu that offers shortcuts to common actions and settings. Switching to List View reveals a huge number of information columns for each clip or sequence, which we will take advantage of throughout this book. Moving the Clip from the Effects Tab to the Project Tab
Click the Effects tab in the Browser. Grab the tab, drag it away from the Project window, and drop it so that it becomes its own window. Locate the Video Generators bin and double-click it. The Video Generators bin will open up into yet another new window. In the Video Generators bin, locate the Bars and Tone clip. There will be two Bars and Tone clips available—one for NTSC and one for PAL (see Figure 1-22). Select the one that is correct for your video standard and drag it from the Video Generator bin into your Project tab in the Browser window.
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Figure 1-21 Control-click the Project tab to View as List. Control-clicking almost anywhere in FCP will often reveal contextual menus offering shortcuts to common actions and settings.
Figure 1-22 In the Video Generator bin, locate the correct Bars and Tone clip for your video standard. Drag it from the Video Generator bin into your Project tab.
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Creating a Bin and Using It as an Organizing Tool
With the Project tab active, go to File > New > Bin. Alternatively again, you could Controlclick the gray area of the Project tab and choose New Bin (see Figure 1-23). A new bin will appear in the Project tab. When a new bin is created, the name of the bin will be highlighted. Immediately type in the name “First Bin.” If the bin’s name is not highlighted, single-click the default name “Bin 1” and the name will become highlighted. You will then be able to change it. After renaming the bin, grab the Bars and Tone clip in the Project tab and drop it onto the First Bin icon. It will disappear inside (hold the clip on the bin until you see the bin is selected). If you double-click the First Bin, it will open into its own window, showing ou the Bars and Tone clip inside. You’ve just completed your first act of project organization! You also could have opened up the bin first and dragged the Bars and Tone clip into the bin’s window, although simply dropping the clip on the bin’s icon is certainly faster and does the exact same thing. Note that FCP uses a Mac OS feature called “Spring-loaded folders.” If you hold the clip over the bin for a couple of seconds, the bin opens automatically so you can see its contents before you drop the clip into it. There is no need to manually open the bin to see if ou want to put the clip in it. If you aren’t sure which bin you want the clip in, just hang on to the clip and drag and hold it over each bin icon until you find the one with the contents you want! The Viewer Window The Viewer window is where you begin editing individual clips (see Figure 1-24). This is where you review footage and assign In and Out points, defining how much of the clip is edited into the sequence. The tabs at the top of the Viewer window allow you to adjust features of the video and audio, as well as apply special effects. The Motion tab controls the size, position, scale, and many other attributes of the clip. The Filters tab is where you will work when using the enormous choice of special effects and plug-ins available in FCP. Moving the Clip from the Bin to the Viewer Open the Bars and Tone clip in the Viewer. This can be done in either of two ways. You can drag the clip physically from the “First Bin” into the Viewer window, or simply double-click the clip in the bin. When you do either, the title at the top of the Viewer window will change, revealing that the clip loaded in the Viewer is the “Bars and Tone” clip from your project (see Figure 1-25). Clicking the play button in the Viewer window will begin playback of the clip. You will hear the Bars and Tone clip’s 1 KHz audio test tone. A quick glance at the Audio Meter window will show that the 1 KHz audio test tone registers at –12 dB, exactly as it should. Although the color bars show no motion, the playhead near the play button at the bottom of the Viewer
Figure 1-23
Go to File > New > Bin to create a new bin. Alternatively, Control-click the Project tab and choose New Bin.
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Figure 1-24 The Viewer window is where you review footage and assign In and Out points, defining how much of the clip is edited into the sequence.
Figure 1-25 When you load a clip into the Viewer, the title at the top of the Viewer window will change to reveal the name of the loaded clip.
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window moves along as the clip plays. You can click anywhere in the “Current Time Indicator” bar, where the playhead is located, and drag to move back and forth in the clip. Clicking the tabs at the top of the window reveals other aspects of the clip. The Audio tab shows a solid gray mass for levels, because the clip is a test tone with no variations in audio level. In other video clips you will work with, the Audio tabs will contain an irregular spiky line that describes the variations in audio levels in your cup (see Figure 1-26). The Filters tab will currently have no Effects filters listed, because we have not yet applied any. These will be covered later on in Chapters 8 and 9 where we get into
Figure 1-26 When you click on the Audio tab in the Viewer, you can view and adjust the waveform, a graphic representation of a clip’s audio level.
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Compositing and Special Effects. The Motion tab, also detailed in Chapter 8, will present many options including the ability to change the size, position, rotation, and scale of the clip so that we can create professional-looking effects easily and naturally.
The Canvas Window The next window is the Canvas window, which displays a video preview of the sequence from the Timeline window and shows clips that have been placed there (see Figure 1-27).
Figure 1-27 The Canvas window displays a video preview of the sequence from the Timeline window and shows clips that have been placed there.
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Once again, there is a tab architecture to the Canvas allowing you to switch back and forth between different sequences as you work, since it is quite normal to have several sequences in one project. You can create as many sequences in your project as you wish, and they can all be open simultanteously. Both the Viewer and the Canvas have video windows through which you view your progress as you edit. You can—and should—adjust these windows for optimum performance. When playing back video, you should generally set the window size to ‘fit to window’ (keyboard shortcut, Shift-z), with the window’s frame size at the default size for the present layout. Using Window > Arrange > Standard (to set the windows into one of the pre-programmed layouts), along with choosing Fit to Window for the frame size, will keep you from getting scroll bars in your video windows which can cause severe performance problems. Scroll bars in these windows can even keep the application from outputting video to Firewire or your capture device! You should take care to make sure that no objects or other windows ever overlap a video window when attempting to play back video and that there are no scroll bars along either the side or bottom of the window. If there is any cramping of the Viewer or Canvas window’s style, you will get compromised performance or no performance at all. Because you can also have more than one project open at a time, it is easy to edit using resources from many different projects. Clips or sequences can easily be moved from one project into another by simply dragging them from project tab to project tab. Rather than spending time shutting down and starting up projects or exporting or importing huge files, you simply open whichever projects you want to access, move materials to or from them, and get right to work. The Timeline Window Next is the Timeline window (see Figure 1-28). The Timeline window is not an editing sequence in and of itself; it is merely a container window that holds sequences. As with the Project, Viewer, and Canvas windows, the Timeline is based on a tab architecture so that you can have more than one sequence available in the Timeline window. To switch from one sequence to another, simply click on the desired tab. The Timeline window is linked to the Canvas through the sequence; whichever sequence is active in the Timeline window will be the sequence that is displayed in the Canvas window. The current location of the playhead in the sequence is displayed in the Canvas window and out your capture device to your monitor. Moving the Clip from the Viewer Window to the Sequence To move the clip to a sequence in the Timeline window, we can once again choose from a few different techniques, each of which will produce the same result. First, click anywhere in the video window of the Viewer that has the “Bars and Tone” clip loaded. Continuing to hold down the mouse button (you will see a small ghost clip appear), drag the clip down into the beginning of the sequence in the Timeline window (see Figure 1-29). The clip will
Figure 1-28 The Timeline window is a container window that holds sequences. It is linked to the Canvas through the sequence; whichever sequence is active in the Timeline will be the sequence that is displayed in the Canvas.
Figure 1-29 When you click and hold down the mouse button within the Viewer, a small ghost clip or poster frame appears. Drag the ghost clip to the head of the sequence in the Timeline window.
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appear as a long linear clip and stay positioned wherever you drop it. You have just edited your first clip into a sequence in the Timeline. Another method of moving the clip to the sequence is to grab the “Bars and Tone” clip in the Viewer as in the previous example, but this time drag it instead into the Canvas window and continue holding down the mouse button. Doing so will reveal a graphic overlay box in the Canvas window proposing several different edit types for placing the clip into the sequence (see Figure 1-30). We will cover these in detail in Chapter 5, but for now, drop
Figure 1-30 Dragging a clip from the Viewer to the Canvas will reveal a graphic edit overlay box in the Canvas with seven different ways to edit clips into the sequence.
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the clip onto the red Overwrite box. The clip will appear in the sequence. It will be placed wherever the sequence playhead was positioned right before the edit took place. Having completed either of these actions, you will find that there is now a “Bars and Tone” clip in the sequence and that the Canvas window also now displays the “Bars and Tone” clip. Clicking the play button in the Canvas window will show the current time indicator moving forward and, once again, we will hear the 1 KHz audio test tone. These are not the limits of our ability to move clips around FCP, merely the basic methods meant to show how the windows work together in a project. For instance, we could have simply dragged a clip directly from the bin to the sequence or the Canvas if we had no need to work with it in the Viewer. There’s really very little limit on how you can work with clips and sequences inside your project.
The Audio Meters One of the three remaining windows is the Audio Meters (see Figure 1-31). These meters show rising or falling bars in the left and right channels based on the level of audio for clips in the Viewer and Canvas. This allows you to keep an eye on the decibel level of your audio, as well as troubleshoot your system’s audio. If you don’t hear audio but you see audio levels in the meters, or if you hear nasty distortion but your Audio Meter levels are acceptable, it may be time for a little system maintenance. Before suspecting problems in your system, though, make sure that you have our system put together correctly. If Firewire or capture device output is enabled
Figure 1-31 The Audio Meters window shows rising or falling bars in the left and right channels based on the level of audio for clips in the Viewer and Canvas.
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(View > External Video > All Frames) and you don’t have external speakers attached to your capture device, you won’t hear your audio. Audio generally follows video out to your capture device unless you specify otherwise, something you won’t want to do in almost all situations. Those with a background in analog audio should take special notice of these Audio Meters, which are based on digital audio. With digital audio, 0 dB is the highest possible audio level before clipping, or else unacceptable noise artifacting occurs. Unity, or the optimum reference level generally used by professionals, does not occur at zero as with common VU meters, but registers at –12 dB. Thus, we will use a –12 dB reference tone when mastering to tape in Chapter 11. The Toolbar The next window is the Toolbar (see Figure 1-32). This strip contains all the useful tools that come into play when editing. Some of the tools have several different variations, or Toolsets, which you can access by clicking on a tool and holding the mouse button down for an extra moment. These tools will be covered in the sections on editing and compositing later on in the book.
Figure 1-32 The Toolbar contains all the useful tools that come into play when editing. Some of the tools have several different variations, or Toolsets, which you can access by clicking on a tool and holding the mouse button down for an extra moment.
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Figure 1-33 The Tool Bench window is only opened when you call it up from the Window drop down menu, or when you choose certain window layout presets.
The Tool Bench The final FCP window is the Tool Bench (see Figure 1-33). This window is only opened when ou call it up from the Window drop down menu, or when you choose certain window layout presets. The various tabs that function inside the Tool Bench window are the Audio Mixer, the Frame Viewer, the QuickView, the Video Scopes, and the Voice Over tool. Each of these will be introduced in this book when they come into play in the editing workflow.
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Settings: Are Yours Correct?
Now that we have the operating system in good shape and have strolled through the windows and workflow of FCP, we need to make sure that FCP is configured correctly, both with regard to the video and audio we want to capture and also with the hardware you intend to use to capture and output that video and audio. Although this chapter may seem a little hairy and dense at first, realize that it is necessary. Ninty-nine percent of troubles encountered in FCP is user error, and a large chunk of that is incorrect settings. Once you get things configured correctly, most of these settings never change until your hardware does, meaning that this trip through could be the last time you have to deal with it. The Easy Setup window, to be encountered later in the chapter, will further streamline your workflow so that if you do need to make changes in a configuration, in most cases it will take only a few clicks of the mouse to take care of the whole situation. That said, there are a couple of settings that you need to visit each time you work. Doing so will keep you from running into problems with your captured video and audio assets; you want FCP to perform reliably and securely both for yourself and for anyone you may be sharing the editing station with. Keep your eye on the ball and you may never have to find out why such diligence is necessary! In this chapter, we will address the necessary System Settings and Audio/Video Settings to get all that hardware into line. Then, with three clicks of the mouse, we will take advantage of Easy Setup to make sure that our media comes into the project properly. Finally, we will go into the User Preferences and find out the ways in which they can help streamline our workflow and make FCP a safer, more comfortable place to edit.
The System Settings The System Settings are found under the Final Cut Pro menu (keyboard shortcut, Shift-Q). When you bring up the System Settings, you will encounter a tabbed window. We will start with the first and probably most important setting in all of FCP, Scratch Disk assignment.
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The Scratch Disks Tab: the Issues of Scratch Disk Assignment The first tab of the System Settings is perhaps the most critical setting in FCP. It is called Scratch Disks, and its name does not belie its importance. In the Scratch Disks tab you assign the media drive to which all the captured video, audio, and render files are written (see Figure 2-1). It is imperative that this setting be done correctly. There is no getting around the need to visit this setting each time you start to work. Before describing the proper procedure for setting up the Scratch Disk’s tab, it is important to take a moment and examine the physical issues at play here. The first issue is making sure that the Scratch Disk solutions you want to employ, i.e. Firewire drives, internal ATA drives, and external SCSI Raids, are fast enough to match the media we want to capture. FCP is a scalable application, and is just as suitable for working with high data rate media like uncompressed video as it is working with heavily compressed, low data rate Firewire DV. The only problem with this scenario is that this leaves it up to the user to match a storage solution and the media they are working with. See Appendix B for more detailed information about the various drive solutions and their appropriateness for the types of media you plan to work with.
Figure 2-1 In the Scratch Disks tab you assign the media drive to which all the captured video, audio, and render files are written.
Settings: Are Yours Correct?
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But we can say a few words here about what makes correct Scratch Disk assignment so imperative. Say, for example, you are working with MiniDV source tape and you want to capture through Firewire. Now, with Firewire DV, the footage we want to capture from the DV tape is already digital video, eliminating the need for a capture card or converter. It was digitized as it was recorded in the camera. All digital video contains a certain amount of data in every frame or data rate. For DV this data rate, or amount of data per frame per second, is just over 3.6 megabytes per second. As the camera or deck is playing the tape, it is also sending the DV data down the Firewire tube to the Macintosh. When it reaches the Macintosh, FCP writes that data to the storage solution you have set here as the Scratch Disk. For the data to be written to and eventually played from the Scratch Disk correctly, the hard drives will need to be able to ‘sustain’ this 3.6 megabytes per second data rate. Sustained data rates are to be contrasted with ‘peak’ data rates, which measure how fast a storage solution might be every so often when the planets are aligned and the data coming in is ‘just right.’ Sustained data rates, on the other hand, are data rates the storage solution can maintain indefinitely as the steady stream of DV frames come pouring into your system. In practice, this is relatively easy. The standard hard drives and buses on today’s Macintosh far exceed the 3.6 megabytes per second data rates required for Firewire DV. However, these inexpensive drives must be configured correctly, and you must access and assign them in FCP appropriately if you expect them to deliver satisfactory performance. Like anything else, the devil is in the details, and if you pay attention to the details, you will find that you never run into data rate related issues. Those working with high data rate media, such as low compression and uncompressed capture cards and devices, must keep their eye both on their Scratch Disk settings as well as whether or not their hard drives match the data rate requirements of the capture system they use. For much more information about such requirements and the capabilities of such solutions, consult Appendices A and B. The first issue to be addressed is that it is highly recommended that, even for Firewire DV editing, you use at least two separate physical hard drive storage solutions with FCP. One of these is your startup drive. This is the drive that contains your Mac OSX system, the Users folder, the Applications Folder, FCP, and any other software you want to install on your system, such as image or audio editing apps. This hard drive is dedicated to software only. The rest of the drives on your system will be dedicated as media drives. These media volumes will be used only to capture, render, and play back the digital files you bring in from the deck or the camera. Keeping your startup and media drives separate will keep FCP from fighting itself to maintain an acceptable data rate. DV’s 3.6 megabytes per second is not an astonishingly high data rate, but proper capture and playback still requires that FCP have unfettered access to the media files on the drive. That access can be compromised if a drive is busy accessing system files or application files from the same drive at the same time it is trying to access media files. Any interruption in the steady data rate of your video footage can result in unacceptable performance, dropped frames, and an interruption of capture or playback.
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A Note on Partitioning One method that some people use to try to wring more drive space from their Macintosh is to partition their single startup drive into smaller partitions. Partitioning involves creating two or more apparent logical drives from a single physical hard drive. The single physical hard drive is formatted into two or more distinct sections that are treated by the system as two completely different hard drives. If you had an 80-gigabyte startup drive, this might seem like a clever way to reclaim much of the wasted startup drive space for media purposes, since any given startup drive uses at the most 40 gigabytes. The problem is that this method does not really increase data rate performance on the single drive, since you are still dealing with one physical hard drive, however dissected. You will eventually encounter spotty performance as your startup partition and the media partition fight for dominance. Using two separate physical hard drives, on the other hand, ensures that if the system or application files need to be accessed while media files are in use, there will be no competition between the two. There’s nothing wrong with partitioning our startup drive or partitioning your media drive either, as long as you don’t use the same physical drive for your startup drive and for your Scratch Disk media drive. Can you get away with using your system drive for your Scratch Disk location? Sure, FCP will let you set any drive location as a Scratch Disk location. It will even let you specify hat an Iomega Zip Disk is your Capture Scratch! But using a Zip Disk will obviously not do, and frankly, using your start up drive to capture even lower data rate DV footage isn’t much smarter. You can work for a while without a dedicated media hard drive for your video, but eventually it will cause performance problems, and probably at the worst possible moment. If you don’t have a separate physical hard drive that you can dedicate to capturing video, start saving and looking for one so that you can rectify the situation. For help on figuring out hard drive solutions, refer to Appendix B. A Look at the Scratch Disk Preferences Tab To properly set your Scratch Disk, go to Final Cut Pro > System Settings and take a look at the top of the Scratch Disks tab (see Figure 2-2). From the left of the tab you will see four check boxes, two buttons, and a bit of text. The four check boxes are labeled Video Capture, Audio Capture, Video Render, and Audio Render. The two buttons are labeled Clear and Set. The information to the right of these items is a number describing the amount of free space that currently exists on the presently set Scratch Disk drive, followed by the directory path to that drive. The default drive assignment when you install FCP is the startup drive, and it should be changed before you begin work. You will see that there are a total of twelve lines of check boxes and buttons, which means that you can assign up to twelve different media drives or partitions. When you capture or render media, the check boxes on the left indicate what FCP will send to the presently assigned drive location. You will notice that the Audio checkbox is probably grayed out for each line, which is appropriate for Firewire DV. If you are using Firewire
Settings: Are Yours Correct?
Figure 2-2
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The Scratch Disks Preferences tab is located in System Settings.
DV, you should always have all four checkboxes enabled for each Scratch Disk location you assign; FCP likes to have DV audio and video in the same location. If you are using uncompressed cards or converters, you need to check the “Capture Audio and Video to Separate Files” just below the Scratch Disks assignment window (see Figure 2-3). This is because with their higher data rate captures, you need to send audio and video to separate locations, which is a method that requires super-high speed RAID storage solutions, as described in Appendix B. The Clear and Set buttons allow you to navigate to and change the media locations when necessary. Clicking Clear will remove the current media location from the right and replace it with the message
. The only exception to this is that there must
Figure 2-3 “Capture Audio and Video to Separate Files” should be checked when using uncompressed cards.
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always be at least one media location assigned. So, if you have only one line assigned, the Clear button will be grayed out and unavailable.
Scratch Disk Assignment: Follow the Next Steps Precisely 1. Click the Set button of the first Scratch Disk Assignment line. You will immediately be confronted by a dialog box named “Choose a Folder” asking you to select the appropriate location for designation as the Scratch Disk. Drag the bottom scroll bar all the way to the left so that you are looking at all the volumes available on your system (see Figure 2-4). 2. Single click the drive you want to set as your media drive. When you do, the pane to the right should show you what, if anything, already exists there (see Figure 2-5). Hit the New Folder button below the directory panes. In the New Folder dialog box, name the folder “1stProject_Media_Folder.” Click the Create button. 3. After clicking the Create button, you will see that the folder has been created and that it is selected in the dialog box. If you accidentally click something else and deselect it, simply single-click it again to reselect it. With the folder selected, hit the Choose button at the bottom right of the dialog box. Immediately after hitting this button, you will be returned to the Scratch Disk Preferences.
Figure 2-4 Navigate to the available volumes on your system to choose a folder when setting a Scratch Disk.
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Figure 2-5 Selecting the volume shows what, if anything, exists in it. For the Scratch Disk Location for a new project, create a new folder.
You’ve just set your first Scratch Disk, and if you are working solely with DV Firewire capture, you’ve done it correctly! If you are using a higher data rate capture card, first you’d need to check the “Capture Audio and Video to Separate Files.” Then, uncheck Audio and Audio Render for this first Scratch Disk location, and hit the Set button on the next line. After creating a capture volume specifically for audio and audio renders using the same preceding steps 1 through 3, uncheck the Video and Video Render checkboxes. When complete, you should have at least two Scratch Disk locations, one for Video/Video Render and one for Audio/Audio Render (see Figure 2-6). Note that you can only have one Scratch Disk assignment at one time for one volume. In other words, you could not have set the separate video and audio capture folders for the same volume, although you could have set them for different partitions from the same set of RAID drives. For more information about what RAIDs are and how and when to use them, refer to Appendix B.
Naming Issues When you name your media drive and your project’s media folder, make sure to give them distinctive names. FCP can miss the difference between “Media1” and “Media2,” for example. A better system is to actually number the drives, using a number at the beginning of the drive’s name (e.g., “1Media” and “2Media”). Another thing to remember is not to
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Figure 2-6 If you are using high data rate sources such as uncompressed cards, you need separate Scratch Disk locations for video and audio.
include the forward slash character (“/”) in any Scratch Disk name or directory, or, frankly, anywhere in your project. Since Mac OSX is a UNIX-based operating system, the forward slash has a unique meaning to the system’s directories. Using it for a folder, file, or drive name can cause huge problems. Restrict naming conventions to alphanumeric characters and underscores or hyphens. To rename a drive or partition, simply single click on its present name (don’t do this while FCP is running!). When the name becomes highlighted, type in the new name of up to 31 characters. You will want to take similar care when you name the Capture Scratch folder you will be selecting in the Scratch Disk Preferences tab. “1stProject_Media_Folder” may be a good idea for the folder you establish as your first Scratch Disk location, but you will want to name the next one something distinctly different. Take a look at the information next to the Set button, and you should see the amount of free space on your media drive displayed in gigabytes (GB), followed by the exact directory path to the place in which you saved the folder (see Figure 2-7). Every location that you have dedicated as a scratch disk will have one such media folder on it. It may seem a little strange to create a folder on the media drive rather than just selecting
Figure 2-7 The amount of media drive free space and the exact directory path is listed next to the Set button in the Scratch Disk Preferences tab.
Settings: Are Yours Correct?
Figure 2-8
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The Capture, Render, and Audio Render folders created within a Scratch Disk.
the drive itself, but understanding how FCP organizes its captured media resources will demonstrate how quickly media can get out of control and clarify how important it is to have media folders set up uniformly and consistently. Take a look at the media folder(s) you just created on your media drive (see Figure 2-8). When you assign a drive or folder as the Scratch Disk, FCP creates three folders inside of it: a Capture folder (for Video and Audio, which, unless you choose the “Separate” option, FCP captures them together as a single file), a Render folder (for rendered video from the project), and an Audio Render folder. If you chose the “Separate” option, each of the two selected Scratch disk folders will carry two folders, one each for capture and render of video and audio. These FCP-generated folders cannot be renamed without unlinking everything in your project. So don’t rename or even move them, especially while FCP is running. When you go to capture video or audio, FCP looks into the Capture folder in the Scratch Disk location you assigned. If it does not find a folder whose name matches the name of the current project, it creates a new folder for this purpose. Every time media is captured using a new project, FCP will create yet another project media folder in the Capture folder of the folder you have assigned as the Scratch Disk. So what you end up with is a folder within a folder within a folder. If your Scratch Disks are changed later by someone else and FCP doesn’t see the current project’s folder in the new Scratch Disk location, it creates yet another folder there. It is easy for this process to get out of hand, particularly if you are sharing your editing station with other users. The problem can be compounded by the fact that, when started up from the application alias, FCP always opens the last project that was open and always
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etains the Scratch Disk settings that were used the last time FCP was run (with the exception that logging in as individual users keeps these settings separate). This means that unwary users can start up another person’s project, capture a lot of media to the wrong drive or folder, and then walk away without realizing the damage they have done to both themselves and their colleague. These issues highlight the care that must be taken in the proper setup and maintenance of media resources in an FCP editing station. Setting up the Scratch Disk is not difficult, and if you follow the preceding method for setting it up, you may never have to find out why the process is so necessary. After you have set up a Scratch Disk folder for each media drive you want to use, you can get to work. When you return to FCP to continue editing our project, check to make sure the media folder you created the first time for your Scratch Disk is still assigned, rather than setting up a new media folder each time you edit. An important new feature of FCP 4 occurs whenever you start up FCP. If the media drives that are set in the Scratch Disk tab are not actually present, FCP will pause prior to opening our project and ask you what to do (see Figure 2-9). Previous versions of FCP just reset the Scratch Disk to the startup drive if the assigned disk was missing, a dirty trick if ever there was one, since the startup disk is the only one on your system you really shouldn’t use for capture! When FCP pauses because it can’t find the currently assigned Scratch Disk, you are given three options. You can either quit the application, Check Again (after checking things like whether the drive is on, cabling, etc.), or Reset Scratch Disks if you want to temporarily re-assign the preference to another disk that is present. If you work with a PowerBook portable and frequently use FCP without your primary Scratch Disk attached, this feature will be very useful; just remember to reset to the primary Scratch Disk assignment when it becomes available. To wrap up the settings on the Scratch Disk tab, look underneath the Scratch Disk assignment columns (see Figure 2-10). You will find six items that need to be addressed.
Figure 2-9 Dialog box, new to FCP 4, which appears during startup when previously-set media drives are not present.
Settings: Are Yours Correct?
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Figure 2-10 Additional settings which need to be addressed in the Scratch Disk Preferences tab.
Waveform and Thumbnail Cache Waveform and Thumbnail Cache locations are also set on this tab. Thumbnail and Waveform caches store the thumbnail and waveform data for fast screen redraws. FCP will function quite well with these caches defaulted to the startup drive, although choosing a very fast media disk can potentially improve the rubberbanding and thumbnail display performance, a subject to be encountered in Chapter 6. Autosave Vault Next, we encounter the Autosave feature, this time in determining what location FCP will use to save the autosave archive files. The Autosave Vault is the location where FCP saves automatic backups if you enable the feature. We will explore this feature in greater detail later in the chapter. The default directory path to the Autosave Vault is Startup Drive > Users > YourUser > Documents > FCP Documents, and is perfectly acceptable. If you ever need to reset this location, click the Set button and locate the Documents folder within the User’s directory on your startup drive. Simply pull the bottom scroll bar all the way to the left of the dialog box, then select the Mac OSX startup drive. In the next pane, select the Users folder and in the next pane, select the appropriate user (if more than one exists on that station). Finally, choose the FCP Documents folder and hit Choose. Minimum Allowable Free Space on Scratch Disks Another very serious issue for Scratch Disk settings occurs anytime you begin to approach the capacity of the Scratch Disk. As you approach a drive’s capacity, drive performance radically suffers. Consider this analogy: You are a parking lot attendant, and you have a certain number of parking spaces to use. At the beginning of the day, there are a lot of
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free parking spaces for you to choose from to park the incoming cars. It takes you almost no time to find a place to park a car. But as the lot fills up, the empty spaces get further and further apart and harder to find until it takes you several minutes to find a free space. The cars leaving the lot do not leave in an orderly fashion, but free up spaces based on where they were originally parked. As the cars pile up waiting to be parked in your lot, your performance as an attendant decreases. As the drive fills up from capturing, the free spaces get harder and harder to piece together to write large video files to. As the drive reaches full capacity, it takes longer and longer to write or read the file. As a result, we dip down below the necessary data rate. Correct playback and capture become impossible, and you start to get Dropped rames warning messages. Minimum Allowable Free Space On Scratch Disks is a setting that helps to eliminate the problem of poor disk performance originating from nearcapacity drives. Adjust the Minimum Allowable Free Space on Scratch Disks to at least 10 percent of your media drive capacity (if you have more than one, base this on the smallest drive). This means a setting of 2 gigabytes (or 2000 megabytes) for a 20-gigabyte drive. When a Scratch Disk fills up and has only the assigned value of remaining storage space, FCP either switches to your next assigned Scratch Disk, or, if another Scratch Disk has not been assigned, aborts the capture. We want to set a healthy buffer here to avoid eaching a situation in which an overcrowded drive might deliver compromised drive performance. Limit Capture/Export File Segment Size This setting contains a couple of options, a couple of implications, and a bit of history. The options of the setting are to disable it completely or to enable it with a specified limitation to the size of the file either captured or exported using FCP. If enabled, the default file size limitation is set for 2000 megabytes or 2 gigs. In the old days of Mac OS version 8 disk formatting, file sizes larger than 2 gigabytes would result in a file error. In order to capture DV clips that were longer than about ten minutes (about five minutes to the gigabyte for DV compressed material), the solution was to segment the capture files so that no individual file size reached this 2 gigabyte file size limit. The segments were linked together for correct playback, but they were individual files on their own. All video editing applications had to deal with the file size limit of 2 gigabytes in some proprietary way. With the arrival of Mac OS 9.1 and the Mac OS Extended format, the 2-gigabyte file size limitation was eliminated, allowing the capture or export of file sizes up to 2 terabytes! ile segmentation is no longer necessary, and this option may be safely disabled, with an important rare exception: Files larger than 2 gigabytes require the drive to which they are written to be formatted with the Mac OS Extended Format. If you have a disk in your system that is formatted using the original Mac OS Standard Format, or that is PC-formatted (quite possible if you purchased the drive bare from a company that
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Figure 2-11 The Get Info-General Information window indicates whether a disk’s format type is Standard or Extended.
sells both Macs and PCs), you cannot write files larger than 2 gigabytes to it. If you are receiving file errors whenever you capture or attempt to export large files, this may be the cause. If you are not sure about the type of format of a disk, select the disk at the Desktop level, go to File > Get Info (keyboard shortcut, Command-I). The General Information window will describe the format type as either Standard or Extended (see Figure 2-11). If the drive shows Standard, you will want to reformat at your earliest convenience to Extended using Mac OSX’s Disk Utility tool. Be aware that this reformatting will wipe the drive and irrevocably delete any data on it.
Limit Capture Now The setting Limit Capture Now can be disabled or set to limit the length of the capture to a specified number of minutes. An important use of this feature is that it avoids long hang-ups between the time you hit the Capture Now button and the time the capturing process actually begins. When FCP captures a clip, it has to prepare a space for
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the clip’s media on the Scratch Disk drive. If you are using Capture Clip or Batch Capture, this is quick and simple. FCP knows exactly how much drive space will be necessary for the clip to be captured, since it knows both the data rate of the capture and the length of the capture (for instance, ten second clip × DV’s 3.6 MBs per second = 36 MBs capture file). If you are using Capture Now, FCP has not been informed of the ultimate length of the capture and assumes that the resultant clip will use up all the available disk space on the Scratch Disk! It can take time to arrange this, which leads to a rather long hang-up as you wait for FCP to actually begin capturing. If you have very large Scratch Disks (in excess of 120 gigabytes) or several assigned Scratch Disks, you might have to wait for as long as several minutes, while watching your footage pass by with FCP not beginning the capture. Timing the beginning of the capture so that it begins where you want it to begin can be frustrating as well. If you are not using timecode to log and capture your clips and must rely on Capture Now, the Limit Capture Now To can correct this problem. If you set it to, say, 5 minutes, FCP will know that the captured clip will need only so much Scratch Disk space, and the capture process will begin almost instantly. The default time, if enabled, is 30 minutes, but ou can choose a limit that suits your purposes.
The Memory and Cache Tab The next tab in the System Settings is the Memory and Cache tab (see Figure 2-12). This tab controls how much of the available RAM FCP allocates for itself. Unlike Mac OS 9 and before, Mac OSX controls RAM resources. Whenever an application like FCP asks for more RAM, the OS provides it, no questions asked. The problem is that when the OS runs out of real physical RAM, it will start doling out ‘virtual memory,’ a sort of unlimited fake RAM. The problem is that this fake RAM is derived from your much slower start up disk drive. For more information about the perils of not having enough real RAM, refer to Appendix B. In this tab, you may want to limit Application usage to 75–85%. This will leave plenty of extra RAM free for any other applications you may start up, as well as extra in case the OS’s needs increase while you are working. The smart way to work is to start out with plenty of real physical RAM (768 MBs or more) and then set Application usage for 75%. Thus, the portion of RAM you are telling FCP it can use is more than enough for its operations, and it isn’t choking the rest of the system and pushing into the use of virtual memory. Still, Cache is used to give real time, or RT, previews of still images. Set this for 10%, unless you are using an inordinately large number of still images in your sequences and need to have more in RT. For the Thumbnail Caches, the defaults are fine, although if you are getting lots of very slow performance when loading sequences, you might boost the RAM Thumbnail Cache and select a faster volume for the Disk Cache.
Settings: Are Yours Correct?
Figure 2-12
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The Memory and Cache tab is located in System Settings.
The Playback Control Tab The next tab is for Playback Control (see Figure 2-13). This tab is almost entirely concerned with RT performance. In FCP 3, RT effects were limited to display on the computer screen. With FCP 4, Apple included not only new RT-enabled effects, but the ability to send those RT effects out to Firewire for NTSC or PAL preview. This is a great feature that will speed up your potential workflow many times over. Unfortunately, such RT Firewire output requires significant hardware resources. The number and quality of RT effects out to Firewire is determined by many factors, not the least of which is the speed and number of processors in your Mac. And even with the fastest dual processor Macs, there are limits to how many effects you can invoke at one time. The Playback Control tab lets you set the default quality and type of RT effects a sequence will be asked to perform. This can also be changed within the Timeline window for individual sequences. The RT menu, when set at Unlimited (also known as RT-Extreme), makes all effects in the application RT-enabled, acting as if your machine had unlimited processing power (see Figure 2-14). Of course, your machine doesn’t have unlimited processing power, so for many effects you will suffer lots of dropped frames in playback. Safe means that FCP will
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Figure 2-13
Editing with Final Cut Pro 4
The Playback Control Tab is located in System Settings.
only RT-enable the effects that your Mac is capable of delivering without dropping frames (all other factors being equal). Safe is obviously the preferred preview method. The Video Quality pulldown menu is for precisely what it says: determining the video quality of the RT previews (see Figure 2-15). Because of RT effect’s previously stated eliance on processor power, it is possible to increase the number of RT effects available to our machine by decreasing the quality of those previews. At Low, you will be surprised at
Figure 2-14
The Default RT menu in the Playback Control tab.
Settings: Are Yours Correct?
Figure 2-15
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The Default Video Quality menu in the Playback Control tab.
the number of RT effects available, even on your two-year-old Mac. However, looking at the quality of the preview will balance your surprise. Medium is probably the best balance between quality and quantity in RT previews. If you have a single processor G4, it’s quite likely that you will only be able to support Medium quality. The Pulldown Pattern pulldown menu is related to the way that a sequence handles 24P material as captured from sources such as the Panasonic AG-DVX100 24P DV camera, telecined film, or even High Definition. There are three different pulldown patterns that the sequence can use, 2:3:2:3, 2:3:3:2, and 2:2:2:4 (see Figure 2-16). How this should be set and how 24P or film material is handled in FCP is detailed in Appendix A. Play Base Layer Only allows you to temporarily playback only the lowest layer in your sequence to avoid rendering complex effects when you don’t need to see them. This switch is best set in the Timeline window. Likewise, the Record pulldown menu allows you to choose whether the output to Firewire or capture device is at fully rendered quality or at the quality setting you chose in the above pulldown menu, which may be at the lower draft quality. Once again, this can be set on the fly in the Timeline window. Below Play Base Layer Only is the Frame Offset field mentioned earlier in the discussion on latency and audio/video sync between playback on desktop and out to your video monitor.
Figure 2-16
The Default Pulldown menu in the Playback Control tab.
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Giving a value of 4 here will sync playback between the viewer or canvas windows and your external DV deck or camera. Other capture devices, like uncompressed cards, may require testing to determine the proper frame offset. The External Editors Tab The External Editors tab allows you to set a default application for processing video, audio, or graphics media while still in FCP (see Figure 2-17). For instance, you might set hotoshop as the External Editor for still images. While working in your sequence, you might choose to make a slight change to a still image that can’t be performed in FCP. Choosing Open in Editor with the clip selected will open it up in that application directly. The Effects Handling Tab The final tab in the System Settings window is for Effects Handling. This lets you determine what is doing all the work in providing RT-effects processing (see Figure 2-18). You can assign different methods depending on what you are using. If you are simply using a Firewire DV capture, you will be letting FCP process everything, and you will only have
Figure 2-17
The External Editors tab is located in System Settings.
Settings: Are Yours Correct?
Figure 2-18
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The Effects Handling tab is located in System Settings.
the choice of FCP or None. If you are using a capture card such as Blackmagic Decklink or Pinnacle Cinewave, you may have access to enhanced on-board processing on the card, and you would select it here as necessary.
The Audio/Video Settings The next settings that need to be addressed are the Audio/Video Settings. Go to Final Cut Pro > Audio/Video Settings (keyboard shortcut, Command-Option-Q) (see Figure 2-19). These settings concern the way that FCP interacts with your video hardware and then how it deals with the media you have captured and are editing with. Although you may not need to alter these very frequently, you do need to get them set properly at the get-go. If your Audio/Video Settings are not properly configured, your system will function erratically, and it may not function at all. The Issues Involved in the Audio/Video Settings The Audio/Video Settings are the control link for all your system’s hardware and the media you intend to input and output through it. This is where you tell FCP what type of digital
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Figure 2-19
Editing with Final Cut Pro 4
The Audio/Video Settings are available from the Final Cut Pro menu.
video is coming in and how to deal with it. It is also where you tell FCP how to process the video you are editing in any given sequence and how to output it as you are working and when you are finished. What will happen if you do not configure the Audio/Video Settings correctly? You may find, for instance, that everything you capture requires rendering when inserted into a sequence, even though this is definitely not necessary. You may find that your audio goes out of sync with your video as you work. You may find that you begin dropping frames the instant you try to do anything. All of these things and more are possible if you don’t take a few moments whenever you work to check and make sure that your system is still configured correctly. And what are the correct settings? That depends. The great thing about FCP is its scalability; that is, its ability to use whatever approved third party hardware you want, be it uncompressed capture card, DV converter box, or simply an inexpensive DV deck or camera connected through Firewire. The price for this fantastic scalability is the responsibility of the user to set it up properly. The general rule of thumb is as follows: the type of audio and video you are trying to capture determines your Capture Preset, and your Capture Preset determines your Sequence Preset. The other two Audio/Video Settings tabs are more specific to what you are using to control your deck or camera and how you want to monitor your video as you work.
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The Summary Tab In order to proceed with this section, you need to have a Firewire cable hooked up to a deck or camera that is turned on, or your capture card or DV converter box hooked up. We will not capture anything right now, but to see the options you have to have a DV source that FCP can identify. When you are in the Audio/Video Settings window, you may notice the video output of the system goes blank. This is because while you are adjusting the inputs and outputs, FCP suspends all output. It will return when you get the window set correctly. The Audio/Video Settings window contains five tabs (see Figure 2-20). The first of these, the Summary tab, is just that: it shows a summary of the currently selected presets for the other tabs in the window. If you have created or installed presets that are suitable for your hardware and what you are trying to do, you may never have to go any further than this tab. But if you have never created or altered a preset, it’s a good idea to take a step or two through preset tabs. Becoming more familiar with the inner workings of your editing station will allow you to make the most out of it if your needs change or if your system gets out of whack at some point.
Figure 2-20
The Audio/Video Settings Window in Final Cut Pro 4.
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The Capture Presets Tab nstead of immediately moving to the Sequence Preset tab, skip to the third, Capture Preset tab. The Capture Presets tell FCP what it is you are capturing when you bring video and audio into your project (see Figure 2-21). The only catch is that FCP relies on the user to decide on the proper Capture preset. If you give FCP bad information when it captures media, it will not deal with the media correctly once you begin to edit. This is where a lot of new users get caught up, especially Firewire DV editors, because they tend to assume that all video and audio is the same. This is an assumption that will bite you, but very likely only after you have wasted tons of time working with flawed captures. Take a look at the left-hand side of the tab and you will see a long list of available Capture Presets. You will find plenty of DV capture presets. Unfortunately, unless you did a little digging into the installer CD, you probably don’t have a preset for DV NTSC or AL 32K audio. DV cameras and decks can record using either 32K or 48K sampling rates. If your Capture Preset is incorrect for the sample rate of the footage you are capturing, you will experience terrible sync issues without the slightest indication of the reason why. It is
Figure 2-21
The Capture Presets Tab is located in Audio/Video Settings.
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always important to know the details of how your footage was recorded to tape. For more details on sample rates for audio, refer to Appendix A. Since there is likely no preset for DV footage with 32K audio, let’s step through the process of creating a new preset. Select the DV NTSC or PAL 48K audio preset, based on your local video standard. In the pane to the right of the tab, you will see all the details of the preset, including the codec used by it, the resolution, the type of audio, its sample rate, and much more. If any of that information is confusing to you, be sure to spend a little time with Appendix A at some point to get a better handle on what it all means. Notice that there is a lock to the right of the name of the preset. The lock means that this is one of the standard installed presets that cannot be altered or deleted (see Figure 2-22). However, we can use it for the basis of our new DV 32K preset, since other than sample rate, DV 48K and DV 32K are identical. Hit the Duplicate button in the lower part of the window. When you do, a Capture Preset Editor window will open. This window is where you will establish the preset you want. Since we duplicated the DV 48K preset, all you need to change is the name (change “48K copy” to “32K”), the description, and then, in the appropriate location below, change the QuickTime Audio Settings Rate pulldown menu from 48 to 32. Hit OK and you will return to the Capture Preset tab. Your new Capture Preset is automatically selected with a check to the left, meaning it is enabled. You can deselect it by putting the check by any other preset in the list. Almost all DV camera and deck variations are included in FCP installs, since they are the most widespread in use (excepting, of course, the 32K preset we just created!) If you are using a third party capture card or converter device, it will very likely ship with special Capture and Sequence Presets that you may need to install before using the device. See the manuals of these devices for particulars. The Sequence Preset Tab The next tab we need to look at is the Sequence Preset tab (see Figure 2-23). The Sequence Preset tab is very similar to the Capture Preset tab because it has a list of presets to the left which have identical names to the Capture Presets list. This should come as no surprise. Remember the words earlier: “the audio and video you are trying to capture determines the Capture Preset, and the Capture Preset determines the Sequence Preset.” Basically, when you capture media using a Capture Preset, FCP tags the captured file with the information from the preset. When the time comes for you to put the captured clip into a sequence, FCP compares the clip information with the sequence settings. If there is a mismatch, FCP will insist that the material be rendered so that they match. If you place captured video and audio into a sequence and you immediately see the red render line, it’s a pretty safe bet that either your Capture Preset or your Sequence Preset was incorrect, and that FCP wants you to make things right. Rendering at that point is not the correct choice, because you lose a generation of quality and waste a lot of time and drive space doing so. If you set the Capture and Sequence Presets appropriately prior to capturing and editing, you will never have to worry about such situations.
Figure 2-22 A lock to the right of a preset name denotes a standard installed preset that cannot be altered or deleted. Custom presets are established in the Capture Preset Editor.
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Figure 2-23
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The Sequence Preset Tab is located in Audio/Video Settings.
The creation of a DV 32K Sequence Preset is exactly the same as creating a DV 32K Capture Preset. Select the DV 48K preset and hit Duplicate. In the Sequence Preset Editor window, change the name, description, and QuickTime Audio Rate setting. The Video Processing Tab
There is another tab in the Sequence Preset that does not exist in the Capture Preset. This tab, called the Video Processing tab, has generated some confusion among editors (see Figure 2-24). The controls here determine the rendering method that FCP will use in sequences. At the top of the tab are radio buttons for RGB, YUV 8-bit, YUV 10-bit High Precision, and All YUV at High Precision. A further option below is for the “Superwhite” versus “White.” The RGB/YUV controls depend on what codec you are working with in your sequence. That, of course, is determined by what you captured! For instance, with Firewire DV captured clips, you would want to select 8-bit YUV, since the DV codec is component YUV and uses an 8-bit color space (see Appendix A for more about color space and 8 bit vs. 10 bit). If you use an uncompressed or low-compression capture solution, chances are
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Figure 2-24 The Video Processing tab appears only in the Sequence Preset tab in the Audio/Video Settings window.
ou will be able to choose 8 bit or 10 bit based on your particular needs (8 bit requires less drive space for the same amount of media, but doesn’t capture with as much resolution in the video frame as 10-bit formats like SDI). The point is that if you capture in 8 bit, you need to render in that color space as well; and likewise for 10 bit. Under certain circumstances, rendering 8-bit material in 10 bit can deliver better results. However, it takes oughly four times longer to render and may not be worth the effort. High Precision rendering for either 8-bit or 10-bit YUV is possible. This option is mostly relevant for those using 10-bit video from SDI, but it is also suitable for those using 8-bit DV or uncompressed with many different effects filters on a single clip. It is much slower rendering, particularly on older G4s, but it is a much more precise rendering engine and will deliver more accurate results. The Super-White versus White option lets you determine where White and Black occur when you render (see Figure 2-25). This has to do with the way that YUV, which is a component video encoding system, translates into RGB, an altogether different method used by computer displays and some video codecs. The YUV encoding system actually limits the range from White to Black in video to an area smaller than RGB (since YUV broadcast
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Figure 2-25 Super-White versus White option determines where White and Black occur during rendering.
television encoding cannot display all of the 16,000,000+ colors that exist within the RGB scale). This means that when you render something using the wrong “White” setting, you can generate White and Black values that are different from the stuff you haven’t rendered (like material you shot with a camera and simply captured). A good example of this is a rendered transition, where you see a “luma pop” or brightness shift as you enter or leave the transition. In most cases when you see this, it is because the video you are working with is mapping white to the wrong value. The camera used YUV white levels when shooting the video, but when you rendered the material in a sequence, FCP used possible higher white levels. In reality this is pretty easy to keep a handle on, if you are careful with your tapes from the shoot to the edit. If you use zebra bars in the camera and you are absolutely sure that there are no instances where the video exceeds 100 IRE, keep Process Maximum White as set for White (the default for all but the Offline RT presets). If you check out your tapes and see that some them have totally illegal Super-White values above 100 IRE, you will need to create a new Sequence preset that has Super-White selected here. Note that if you select a non-YUV preset type, such as the Offline RT presets, the White Point value is listed as N/A, because there is no YUV to RGB conversion taking place to screw up! After setting the audio in the Sequence Preset Editor tab to 32K and changing the description and any other details, hit the OK button to create it. When you return to the Sequence Preset window, you will see the new 32K preset checked and ready for action (see Figure 2-26). What is the correct Capture or Sequence Preset? Only you can determine that for each capturing or editing situation. It depends on many things: whether you are using DV Firewire capture or a third party capture device, what the audio sample rate is, and what type of compression was used. In general, you will rarely have to visit these two tabs because you will use the Easy Setup window that is described in the next section as
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Figure 2-26
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Results of customized settings preset in Sequence Preset Editor.
a souped-up, one-click Audio/Video Settings window. But you really do need to be aware that all of this is going on in the background of your editing station. The Device Control Presets Tab Rather than being concerned with the video or audio being captured, the Device Control Presets tab defines how FCP accesses and controls any deck or camera you are using for capture or output of video and audio (see Figure 2-27). Even if you aren’t using a deck that FCP can control, such as a DV Converter box, it’s important to understand what is happening with the Device Control Presets so that you can choose the correct one for your uses, particularly if you interface with a lot of different capture scenarios in your normal workday. The Device Control Presets tab contains far fewer presets than the Capture and Sequence Presets tabs. This is because the Capture and Sequence Presets are mostly concerned with codecs, frame sizes, frame rates, and audio sample rates, the variations upon which are legion. With the Device Control Presets, there are much simpler variations which are based on the Timecode (or lack thereof) of the decks or cameras you are working with. The first variation is for the type of Timecode. This refers to whether you are using DV timecode (called Firewire here), either of the SMPTE variations (LTC or VITC), or the lack of Timecode entirely. There is the further variation of NTSC or PAL, and for NTSC users there are the further variations of Drop Frame and Non-Drop Frame Timecodes. If you draw a blank at the mention of Timecode, it is strongly suggested that ou venture into Appendix A for a little lesson in the basics. FCP and its relationship with Timecode are of central importance, and the more you know about it, the less time you will
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Figure 2-27
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The Device Control Presets tab is located in Audio/Video Settings.
spend fighting your system or wondering why it is doing exactly the opposite of what you asked for. Let’s take a look at the possibilities for Device Control Presets. As with the Capture and Sequence Preset tabs, select a DV Preset and hit the Duplicate button. Once in the Device Control Preset Editor window, take a look at the options (see Figure 2-28). First, there is a pulldown menu for Protocol, which is the wiring or data structure used in the device control system your deck uses. For Firewire DV deck control, either Apple Firewire or Firewire Basic will be suitable (consult the Apple FCP compatibility chart on the Apple website for which of these two is more suitable for your device). Editors who employ analog and professional-grade decks such as Sony Betacam and Digital Betacam, professional S-VHS decks, Panasonic DVCPRO and DVCPRO50 decks (to name but a few), will control them through “serial deck control” which uses a 9-pin connector and a serial port on the computer. Serial deck control utilizes one of the many RS-422 or RS-232 protocols. Still other editors will control decks and cameras using the LANC pin connector, and you will find a protocol available for that as well. The correct RS-232 or RS-422 protocol is determined by the particular serial deck controller, adapter, and deck that you are using. Consult the equipment manual for particulars.
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Figure 2-28 Device Control Custom presets are created and adapted in the Device Control Preset Editor.
The Time Source pulldown menu refers to the type of Timecode employed, either DV Time, LTC, or VITC. This will, of course, depend on your particular needs, because in some cases you may want to capture through Firewire but use serial deck control LTC Timecode for frame-accurate insert editing. The limits are only the capabilities of your equipment and having the proper settings engaged. The Frame Rate pulldown menu offers 29.97 and 25 frames per second of NTSC and AL, respectively. There are also the 30, 24, and 23.98 frame rates of HD, Film, and NonDrop Frame Timecodes that FCP also supports with the appropriate configurations. The Default Timecode pulldown will be available only when NTSC’s 29.97 fps is selected in the rame Rate pulldown, because all other frame rates use Non-Drop Frame Timecode. For more information on the uses of Non-Drop Frame Timecode in NTSC video, consult Appendix A. Further controls available for refining your equipment allow you to set a Capture Offset, a Handle Size, Playback Offset, the Pre-Roll and Post-Roll that your deck requires, and whether or not to allow Auto-Record when using Print to Video on output to tape. Capture and Playback Offset deal with whether or not your deck responds to FCP’s deck control commands accurately. Particularly with Firewire, the device control for many
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decks carries a certain amount of ‘latency,’ meaning it starts a task like recording or capturing after a very short delay. Because this delay is almost always identical for every capture or record, you can set an offset to compensate for it. Check the Apple FCP Compatibility Page for the appropriate offsets for your device. If your deck is not listed, there is a simple method in the FCP manual for determining deck offsets. Handle Size, which accounts for the extra frames of video you want to have captured on either side of your logged In and Out Points of the clips that you are going to capture, is very important. Not only do you commonly need a little more video than you thought when you get to the editing tasks, but there are rare instances where the first few frames of video captured can be damaged or captured incorrectly. Using handles in capture will avoid this problem entirely. Give it at least 1 second. Pre-Roll and Post-Roll have to do with how your deck cues up to frames of video on tape. Professional and Prosumer decks are able to use Timecode because they are precise. This precision is possible because the deck is guaranteed to be moving at an exact unvarying speed. When you hit play, the deck speeds up until it hits that speed and then locks the deck servo, meaning that it locks in the tape speed. Unfortunately, it takes different amounts of time for different decks to lock servo, so you may need to have a longer Pre-Roll than the default 3 seconds in the Device Control presets. If you receive “Unable to lock deck servo” dialog boxes during capture, you are being told that the Pre-roll is insufficient. In most cases, this means you need to select another frame for the In point of the capture that is further away from the first frame on the tape or the reel. But you might need to create a new Device Control preset with a different Pre-roll setting. Finally, ‘Auto-Record after X seconds’ automates the Print To Video command we will deal with in Chapter 11. Rather than hitting the Record button on your deck manually, FCP will put the deck into Record mode for you. This feature is disabled by default, because it would be very easy to accidentally record over important tapes left in the deck if you aren’t forced to engage with the system first. The A/V Devices Tab The final tab in the Audio/Video Settings is the A/V Devices tab. This tab lets you specify how audio and video go out of your system, either while you are editing or when you are sending out to tape (see Figure 2-29). FCP 4 now allows you to specify a different output for playback and for Edit to Tape/Print to Video after you have completed your edit. And because FCP now supports more than two channels of simultaneous audio outputs (on the appropriate hardware), you have more options in determining where that audio goes! Playback Output determines where the video and audio is monitored while you edit. This could be Firewire DV output, a capture card if present, or None if you are working entirely on the computer screen. Audio and Video can be routed or sent to different destinations, such as sending Video to Firewire but sending Audio to speaker/headphone jacks of your Mac. Be aware that sending video and audio to different outputs will almost always result in outof-sync audio, because of the difference in latency for the various outputs. Use of the Frame
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Figure 2-29
Editing with Final Cut Pro 4
The A/V Devices tab is located in Audio Video Settings.
Offset Control on the Playback Control tab of the System Settings described earlier can be used to overcome the latency introduced by sending video and audio to different outputs. In the box below Playback Output, you can select a “Different Output for Edit to Tape/Print to Video.” This is for editors who may be working using desktop preview, but who want to use a capture card or Firewire DV for output. If the option is checked, the selected output will be used for output to tape. The remaining two check boxes are overrides for normal warning behavior. The first is an override in the case that you start FCP before having it connected to the A/V Device ou listed in the Playback Output. If the box is unchecked, when you start up FCP without the device, you will get a message asking if you want to work without it (this is the “Continue or Check Again” warning message discussed at the beginning of the chapter). This gives you the option of going ahead without the device or checking again until you get it. Enabling this checkbox can be useful, for instance, if you are using a PowerBook that is often used without a Firewire deck, but which you need to access occasionally. Rather than go into three tabs in the Audio/Video Settings to change them, simply leave the PowerBook set for Firewire DV output and then tell it not to bother you at start up about the missing deck.
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The other checkbox here is to override a warning that will pop up if you tell FCP to monitor more audio output channels than actually exist using the Playback Output device you have selected. Whether or not you even need this depends on a setting in another area of the application, so we will move on for the moment and address this when we get to it. Back to the Summary Tab After completing the four Audio/Video Settings preset tabs, return to the Summary tab and make sure the various presets are the ones you want to use and that the correct outputs for video and audio are selected. Understand that these presets are not written in stone once you set them here. They are simply the defaults that are invoked whenever you go to capture or edit in a sequence. You can change most of these settings from within the specific windows during capture and edit without having to return here, though for most people, it’s easier to get it set once and rely on the default.
The Easy Setup Lastly, we will use the Easy Setup to make all the work that we just did accessible with two clicks of the mouse. Instead of having to go through that clunky process every time you want to choose a new hardware setup, FCP allows you to reset everything with the equivalent of a profile. FCP calls this profile an Easy Setup. To create a specialized Easy Setup based on a specific type of configuration, first get the Summary tab set the way you want the special Easy Setup to work. Let’s make one that uses the DV 32K presets we just created in the Audio/Video Settings window. On the Summary tab, choose DV 32K for both the Capture and Sequence Preset pulldown menus. For Device Control select Firewire DF and for Video and Audio Playback choose None and Built-in Audio Controller (see Figure 2-30). In the bottom of the Summary tab, find the Create Easy Setup button and click it. You will be transported to a dialog box that wants you to name and describe the Easy Setup. It is important to be specific here, because your new Easy Setup will be in a long list with all the other pre-installed Easy Setups. Name it “DV 32K with no Deck.” In the Description, add text that identifies this Easy Setup as Firewire DV using 32K audio that will not look for a deck when in place (perfect for PowerBooks!). Click Create and you will be asked to save the setup in a Custom Settings folder. Make sure you do not stray from that folder, because Easy Setups will not be available unless they are located in the Custom Settings folder! Finally, hit Save and return to the Audio/Video Settings tab. Choose Cancel in the Audio/Video Settings tab. Rather than put our Audio/Video Settings in place from here, let’s take advantage of the Easy Setup we just created. Go to Final Cut Pro > Easy Setup (keyboard shortcut, Control-Q). In the box that pops up, you
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Figure 2-30 On the Summary tab, set the presets for DV 32K for Sequence and Capture, Firewire DV for Device Control, and None and Built-in for Video and Audio Playback, respectively. Then hit the “Create Easy Setup” button.
will see three things (see Figure 2-31). On the upper left you will see a pull down menu. On the right you will see a “Show All” checkbox. Underneath, you will find a description of the Easy Setup currently showing on the pulldown menu. If Show All is unchecked, clicking on the pulldown menu will reveal only the DV and Offline RT presets as well as the Easy Setup you just created! If you check the Show All box, the pulldown will list many more Easy Setups that have been prepared for you. As you build your system, check for Easy Setups to see if the one you need already exists. Choose “DV 32 with no Deck,” hit etup, and your system is instantly converted to all those presets from the Audio/Video ettings! In the future, rather than go through all five tabs in the Audio/Video Settings to change your configuration, simply visit the Easy Setup to change it. Now hit Control-Q again to bring the Easy Setup dialog box back and choose a more suitable Easy Setup, since it’s very likely you will not be working with 32K audio! Choose whichever Easy Setup is appropriate for your hardware. If the maker of the capture card did not provide an Easy etup, simply go back into your Audio/Video Settings, create the presets for the card or
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Figure 2-31
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The Easy Setup window in Final Cut Pro.
device, and then make your own Easy Setup for it. Many capture card manufacturers include Easy Setup profiles for their capture devices in their driver installers. Read the documentation to make sure.
The User Preferences User Preferences are mostly concerned with the toolset and functionality of FCP and, generally speaking, won’t require changing until your working methods themselves change. Preferences define the workflow of FCP and allow you to focus the way you approach editing. These settings are generally not application-critical. Changing them, in most cases, would not cause FCP to malfunction. However, there are a few that can cause problems, so we will go through them now; preferences that are not application-critical will be referenced later in the book where they affect workflow. To access the User Preferences, go to Final Cut Pro > User Preferences (Keyboard shortcut, Option-Q). The General Preferences Tab The first tab is General settings. Take a look at the following items that need to be addressed for optimal system perfomance (see Figure 2-32).
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Figure 2-32
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The General Preferences tab is located in the User Preferences window.
Real-Time Audio Mixing
The Real-Time Audio Mixing setting allows you to put a limit on the number of audio tracks on the timeline that FCP will attempt to play back without rendering. You can have up to 99 tracks of audio in any timeline, but your system hardware determines how many of these can be played back simultaneously without having to be mixed together in a rendering process. The default value of eight tracks is the maximum for Firewire configurations of FCP. Eight tracks of real-time mixed audio should perform fine in a system that has the recommended amount of RAM and is using a hard drive configuration that isn’t below par or overly fragmented. If you use more than eight tracks of audio at a time, you will likely hear a beeping alarm warning you that you have exceeded the possible number of tracks. In most cases, simply rendering the audio sections in question, using one of the Render options to be described hereafter, will allow them to be played back correctly.
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Audio rendering is incredibly fast. If you hear beeping and you only have a couple of audio tracks, you will want to check your settings as well as the sample rates of your clips to determine whether you have other problems, such as seriously non-standard sample rates—an issue to be described in the Audio Playback Quality pulldown next. Audio Playback Quality
The exact function of the Audio Playback Quality drop-down bar is a little different from what it probably sounds like (see Figure 2-33). We all want the best in audio quality, right? What Audio Playback Quality really does is determine the quality of the playback of audio that has to be resampled on the fly in a sequence. In almost all cases, this will be the resampling of audio tracks with other sample rates, such as Audio CD tracks that have not been converted to match the sample rate of the Sequence Settings as we have described them in the Audio/Video Settings. If all sample rates of all clips are the same as the sequence’s sample rate, then this pulldown menu is irrelevant; quality will always be the highest since no resampling must take place! High means that the best quality resampling is taking place, and the processor takes a correspondingly large performance hit, potentially causing FCP to beep and ask for a render. Low means that FCP is doing a sloppier job of re-sampling the audio on the fly. The audio quality will be lower (unacceptably lower for most purposes other than quick preview), but the processor is taxed less and FCP will allow more real-time audio tracks to be mixed. Later on in this book, you will be shown the method for converting sample rates manually to avoid the need for resampling on the fly. Typically, the only time this resampling will occur is when you have gotten the Easy Setup incorrect or if you bring in Audio CD tracks without properly prepping the sample rate of the files. In such cases, you will see a light green line at the top of the audio clip in the sequence (see Figure 2-34).
Figure 2-33 The Audio Playback Quality drop-down menu is located in the General tab in the User Preferences window.
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Figure 2-34 If the sample rate of a clip doesn’t match the sample rate of the sequence, you will see a light green line at the top of the clip and quite possibly hear beeping if your Audio Playback Quality is set too high.
These are situations you will want to avoid by setting things up correctly, rather than using Audio Playback Quality to patch things up after the fact. Set this drop-down bar to High and forget about it. It should never really come into play if you do things correctly. This is more important than it sounds. Although there are better ways to get your finished projects out to tape (to be seen in Chapter 11), some editors will output to tape directly from the sequence. If your Audio Playback Quality menu is set to Medium or Low and you have material that must be resampled (such as 32K or 44.1K material in a 48K sequence), you will experience less-than-perfect resamples on playback. The solution would be to keep the Audio Playback Quality at High and do the Audio Mixdown render that is required. In the next chapter you will be shown a way to import Audio CDs correctly to avoid the resampling and Audio Playback Quality issue entirely.
Warn if Visibility Change Deletes Render File
As with all “alarm” switches, this preference should be left enabled. It refers to a situation in FCP in which previously rendered sequence clips can become unrendered simply by turning off track visibility. Doing so can accidentally eliminate hours and hours of rendering with the push of one button. This preset forces you to go through a dialog box before committing to that action. Leave it enabled.
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Prompt for Settings on New Sequence
This preset is another setting that should be enabled for safety purposes. Whenever you create a new sequence in the Timeline window, FCP will ask you to pick a specific Sequence preset. This ensures that you choose the right ones instead of simply using whichever sequence settings are currently set in the Audio/Video Setting Summary tab. Sequence settings are some of the most critical ones, so having FCP put this reminder in front of you is a good way of making sure you never forget to use the correct settings.
Report Dropped Frames During Playback
This setting is an “alarm” switch to let you know that playback performance was impaired and FCP was unable to play back at the required frame rate. Dropped frames is a situation in which, for whatever reason, FCP was not able to process the video and/or audio data quickly enough to provide the 29.97 or 25 frames per second demanded by NTSC or PAL. Many different things can cause dropped frames. Sometimes they are hardware-related (e.g., fragmented drives, etc.), but most often they are the result of not having your settings in order. This is the primary reason for doing your settings! Another potential cause for dropped frames is having “Unlimited RT” set for your Timeline and asking FCP to provide more real-time effects than your Macintosh can deliver. While Unlimited can offer some great preview functionality, you will need to turn this alarm switch off if you use it, since it’s a pretty safe bet that you will drop frames eventually as you go beyond your Mac’s native abilities! Otherwise, dropped frames are not acceptable. FCP is fully capable of playing back NTSC and PAL video at the proper frame rate, given that your hardware and settings are in order. If you are receiving reports of dropped frames, go through your settings first and make sure that you haven’t missed something. You want to keep the Report Dropped Frames During Playback switch enabled so that you become aware the instant that FCP is not performing properly. Disabling the Dropped Frame report is like trying to put out a fire by removing the batteries from a smoke alarm. If you receive a Dropped Frame warning while playing back, eliminate the problem, not the alarm.
Abort Capture on Dropped Frames
This alarm setting is similar to the one discussed above. The application will halt what it is doing if it encounters impaired performance and dropped frames. The only difference here is that it is occurring during capture and not the playback process. That distinction is unimportant. Dropped frames are unacceptable in either situation. This setting should be enabled. If you are not capturing and playing back at the full frame rate, then you are not exercising the true value and potential of the FCP editing software. The caveat about Unlimited RT does not apply here since that is only applicable to playback in the Timeline window.
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On Timecode Break
FCP 4 has instituted a new method of dealing with Timecode breaks during capture (see Figure 2-35). You have the option of breaking off the clip being captured prior to the timecode break and beginning a new clip after the break (“Make New Clip”), aborting the capture (“Abort Capture”), or continuing the capture with a warning of broken timecode after the capture is complete (“Warn After Capture”). What are the issues here? Each frame of video on a timecode-striped tape has a unique number that never changes, unlike the time counter you may have seen on consumer VCRs. In addition to allowing you to automate your capturing and editing process, timecode allows ou to easily and effortlessly reconstruct your project from the original tapes. Unfortunately, if you have timecode breaks in your captured clips, recapturing them becomes difficult, and in some cases may be impossible. If you originally capture a clip that has broken timecode, you will not be able to automatically recapture that clip. There are ways to get around the problem of DV tape footage with timecode breaks, but the main thing to remember here is that you need Timecode, ou need to know when it is flawed or broken, and you should not simply accept broken timecode. For much more detail about timecode, see Appendix A. Generally, you will want to keep this set to Make New Clip. That will make sure that even if you have timecode breaks on your tapes, you can complete the captures you need and get to work. When you finish such a capture, clips where FCP encountered timecode
Figure 2-35 The On Timecode Break option menu is located in the General Tab in the User Preferences window.
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breaks will simply be split into two clips, each with intact timecode. Although you will likely have to manually cue up the tape to re-capture around the breaks, at least each of the clips will have complete, intact, and usable timecode. Autosave Vault
The Autosave Vault is a pretty nice functional short-term backup system that you will want to have enabled. Although it should not replace the backing up of your project files to CD-R, as described earlier and in Appendix B, Autosave Vault is another method of making your project bullet-proof from accidental loss in the event of a crash (see Figure 2-36). Autosave Vault actually has two parts: there is a check box for enabling it and three boxes for entering some specifics about how you want to configure the automatic backups of your project. There are two important things to remember with the Autosave function. First, Autosave is an automatically timed function that does not wait until you have completed a task before beginning a timed save. It begins its saving operation whether you are in the middle of a complex series of edits or simply staring at the screen. As such, it can be a very interruptive function, particularly since a highly complicated project file can take up to 30 seconds to completely save. If you are concentrating on your editing, having the whole application lock up every five minutes to save itself can ruin your concentration. The way Autosave works is that, every so often, at the predetermined intervals that you specify in the Preferences, the application saves a copy of your project file into a special backup archive folder called the Vault. This Autosave file is an exact copy of your project as it is at that moment, and is named with the date and the time of the autosave. If you ever need to return to your project as it was at the time it was saved, you have only to “Restore Project” from the File menu, which will show you a list of all the autosaved copies of the project it sees in the Vault. Autosave never actually saves your original project file; it merely creates copies in a separate folder for safety. You need to manually save (File > Save Project) to your project file to save it. Since it can only help, the only reason one would consider disabling Autosave Vault would be to eliminate its interruptive behavior. But when doing so, one must be very careful to
Figure 2-36 Autosave Vault has a check box for enabling it and three boxes for entering specific backup information.
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develop excellent project backup behavior. Most people aren’t so diligent and have to learn the hard way that regular saving, whether through Autosave, manual backup, or both, is a must. What should your settings be? Although it will differ for each user, a good place to start is: Autosave enabled; “Save a copy every” set for 30 minutes; “Keep at most: X copies per project” set for 100; and “Maximum of: X projects” set for 25. “Keep at most: X copies per project” defines when FCP stops adding new copies to the project’s Vault folder and begins removing the oldest copy and replacing it with a newer one. Even so, FCP never actually deletes any copies; it simply moves the oldest one out of the Vault folder and into the Trash, intending for you to save it to another disk before deleting. The Audio Outputs Tab The final tab in the User Preferences is the Audio Outputs tab (see Figure 2-37). For many users this tab will never have to be referenced. Its purpose is to tell FCP how you want to
Figure 2-37
The Audio Outputs tab is located in the User Preferences window.
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distribute multi-channel audio to your audio outputs. This is a variable that can only be determined based on your particular Mac hardware. If you are using Firewire DV capture and output, then the “Default Stereo Preset” is likely all you will be able to use, since Firewire DV only supports two channels of audio. One of FCP 4’s new features is that it supports up to 24 discrete audio tracks going out of the Mac, provided you have the appropriate hardware. If, for instance, you have a capture card or other device that supports more than two channels of audio output, you will have the option here of creating presets that distribute those multiple tracks of audio to the available outputs in any manner you like. In actuality, you can create a preset for more than two channels using Firewire DV, though FCP will ignore the extra channels unless you tell it to do a mixdown of those extra tracks, which effectively outputs them as two stereo tracks. This is a preset, very much like the Audio/Video Settings tabs. When you create a preset on this tab, it will only apply to new sequences you create after selecting the new preset. You can actually change a sequence’s Audio Output preset after it has been created, as we will see when we get to editing in Chapter 5. If you need more than two channel mixes of audio in your project (even if you are limited to Firewire DV stereo two channel output), hit the Duplicate button to go to the Audio Outputs Preset Editor (see Figure 2-38). In this window, you name the preset and describe it. Then, in the area below, you enter the number of outputs the preset will provide (i.e., an 8-channel MOTU 828 Firewire Audio Interface would want the output
Figure 2-38 Customized project setting for Audio Outputs can be set in the Audio Outputs Preset Editor, available via the Audio Outputs tab.
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Figure 2-39 “Do not show warning when audio outputs are greater than audio device channels” checkbox is located in the A/V Devices tab of Audio/Video Settings.
pulldown set to 8). In the box below this, you will see a column for each discrete channel. The Grouping radio buttons tell FCP whether these output pairs will be individual discrete mono or linked stereo files (i.e., four stereo pairs or eight discrete mono tracks). Finally, there is a Downmix level control. Frequently, when channels are mixed on output that have very similar levels, there is a subsequent unintended boost in levels based on the interaction of merged audio waves. The Downmix lets you set a level reduction to compensate. This is the Audio Outputs that were referenced on the A/V Settings tab of the Audio/Video Settings window. Underneath the “Do Not Show External A/V Device Warning...” checkbox is a checkbox for “Do not show warning when audio outputs are greater than audio device channels” (see Figure 2-39). This would come into play if you had selected such a multi-channel audio output preset but you were only attached to a two channel Firewire DV camera. For Firewire DV editors, the choice, more than likely, will always be the default twochannel stereo mix, although multi-channel output devices such as the above mentioned MOTU 8-channel Firewire interface can easily be implemented. Capture card users may have access to more than two channels natively, since many cards support SDI and the ability to carry four channels of audio with the video signal.
3
Media Acquisition: Logging and Capturing
In order to build a project, you need media to work with. Media is much more than just the video or audio that you capture. The term media refers to any content that you use in a project. This can be video and audio captured from tape, audio imported from an audio CD, or anything else you bring into FCP to use in your sequences. You can also use image files created in such applications as Adobe Photoshop or image sequences from compositing applications such as Adobe After Effects, Discreet Combustion, or Pinnacle Systems Commotion. You can even import special vector-based files such as the Macromedia Flash file format. In short, you can use nearly anything you can create elsewhere.
How Do We Get It Inside FCP? Anything that you bring into an FCP project is media. This seemingly simple concept is an important one. There is a tendency among “right-side-of-the-brain” users of nonlinear editing applications to think of the objects in the Browser window or Timeline as the actual media files themselves. This is an intuitive conclusion that, unfortunately, oversimplifies what is actually going on when you capture or import, and can lead to problems. When you bring resources like video and audio into FCP, you are allowing FCP to access video, audio, or other such media files that exist somewhere on your hard drives. The clip that you see in the Browser, Viewer, and in the sequence, is not the actual media but is really just a reference or pointer to the media. Clips are simply graphic icons that point to a media file (see Figure 3-1). When you edit, you are telling FCP how much of the original media file to display. The Clip icon in the project tab is just computer code and is a part of your project file. Its code is used to determine how much of the captured media file is accessed and the way it is to be displayed. When you use an effect or you trim a clip for use in a sequence, you are not really affecting the media file on your hard drive. You are simply telling FCP how to display the media file in your project: shortened or lengthened, and arranged in any order or repeated endlessly. The ability of the application to arrange play back of media in any sort of order is the origin of the term nonlinear editor. This concept is also referred to as nondestructive editing because you are making changes to the clip in your project file (the pointer) and not to the actual media.
Figure 3-1 The clip that you see in the Browser, Viewer, and in the sequence is not the actual media but is really just a reference or pointer to the media. Clips are simply graphic icons that point to a media file.
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The reason for belaboring this point is that a safe and secure capturing process depends on our understanding of what media is, the distinction between our clips and the actual media files, and where those media files go when we capture or save them. In this chapter, we will investigate the proper procedure for getting media into our project. We will first address the necessary Settings, Preferences, and the Easy Setup to make sure that our media comes into the project properly. There are three basic techniques to bring media in: capturing individual clips, capturing Now, and Batch Capturing logged offline clips. These three methods have different requirements and come into play based on differing situations. Capturing individual clips requires not only that you use a deck or camera that FCP can control, but also that you use timecode. Capture Now, on the other hand, simply captures whatever is currently streaming through the Firewire connection regardless of the presence or lack of timecode data or Device Control. Finally, Batch Capture allows you to recapture either all or a selection of previously logged offline clips.
Pre-Log and Capture Techniques: The Paper Log and Timecode Window Burn Now some inexperienced users would jump right in and begin capturing using one of the three methods described in the previous paragraph. But if you take nothing else away from this book, let it be an understanding that the business of editing is not about pushing buttons, loading up your drives with footage, and magically generating interesting edits. Any editor worth their salt will tell you that you can’t edit with footage you don’t know you have. Even if it means slowing down a little bit, you’ve got to know every frame of your footage to make the most of it. There are a couple of practical benefits to reviewing all of your footage before capturing, only one of which is increased familiarity with your footage. What may be a more important benefit is that going through your footage and isolating the material you definitely want to use can help you limit the amount of footage that you load onto your drives. Although Firewire DV carries a very low data rate (roughly 5 minutes to the gigabyte), and suitable ATA drives for use with Firewire DV are inexpensive, you will find out rather quickly that there is never enough drive space if you do not plan out your projects in advance. This is even more relevant if you are using uncompressed, high data rate solutions, where drive space is at a much higher premium. What can you do to address this? There are a few simple techniques that can help you in this process. The first is referred to as a Paper Log (see Figure 3-2). This old but reliable system involves simply watching your tapes and writing down the timecode numbers of areas of the tapes you are going to want to use when editing. Simply jot down the beginning and ending timecode numbers for each section of footage you know you need to capture and edit.
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Figure 3-2
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Example of a Paper Log.
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What if you are collaborating with someone in a project and you both need access to the tapes to create paper logs? You have only one set of source tapes, and moving them around makes you a little nervous, not to mention the fact that constantly playing back and shuttling around on the source tapes increases the likelihood of damage to the tapes themselves. The solution is another time-tested one. Create what is referred to as a Timecode Window Burn Dub (see Figure 3-3). Many decks and cameras will let you display the timecode numbers of a tape’s footage on screen in the bottom corner as the tape plays. To create a Timecode Window Burn Dub, simply record a copy of your source tapes to VHS tape with the timecode display turned on in the deck or camera. Then you can use this VHS dub to get the numbers you want by pulling them right off the television screen without having to jeopardize your precious source tapes. Since the displayed timecode numbers will exactly match the timecode numbers on the source tape, you will have an accurate log display of timecode on your VHS tapes. This will eliminate excess playing of the source tapes. Dub off your tapes with timecode window burns, and then create a paper log of everything on the tapes, including material from the tapes that you think is less relevant. You never know when you might use a take you had forgotten you even shot! After paper logging your tapes, you will be ready to step up to FCP knowing what you need to capture for your editing session, as well as all the extra material that may be useful to you at some later point.
Figure 3-3
Example of a Timecode Window Burn Dub.
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Logging and Capturing Do you have to use paper logs to capture? Not at all. You can easily manually log and capture your clips from right inside FCP. Either system is good, although you will find that, once again, your particular source material decides which method is most appropriate. aper logs are most useful when the shooting ratio is very high and when your necessary footage is spread over many source tapes. Manually logging your tapes from inside of FCP is more useful when very precise and instant logging and capturing is necessary over a limited amount of source material, and, of course, when paper logs do not exist for whatever easons. Manual Logging is a very simple act. Simply shuttle back and forth around your footage in the Log and Capture window, locating the footage that you want, setting In and Out points, and naming each of the clips that you intend to create. After setting an In and Out Point for a clip, you simply hit the Capture button and FCP will roll up and capture exactly what you want, right down to the frame. Let’s go through and capture a single clip. As you might expect, there is a recommended process for this. Although FCP will allow you to log clips in a sloppy, haphazard manner, doing so really negates the safety, security, and reliability you are gaining through the process of capturing with timecode. Setting up and organizing your project will save headaches later on. Create a Logging Bin irst we will create a Logging Bin, which is simply a bin in your project. It is the specified bin that all clips will be placed in as they are captured. If you have not established a Logging Bin yet, FCP assumes that the project tab itself is the Logging Bin (see Figure 3-4). This might be okay for the first few clips you create, but very quickly you will have masses and masses of clips cluttering your project tab, making it difficult to find anything at all. Don’t make that mistake. Start out with good organizational habits. FCP offers really strong tools for organizing your project, so take advantage of them. Start by creating and naming a separate Logging Bin for each source tape you capture from. As you get the hang of logging, you will find that certain types of projects want different organization techniques, and you will find that FCP is flexible enough to accommodate them. 1) Go to File > New > Bin (or Control-click the project tab and choose New Bin). When the bin appears in your project tab, change the name of the bin to “#1_Tape_Logging_Bin” and hit Enter. 2) After changing the name of the bin, make sure it is still selected and then Controlclick the bin and select Set Logging Bin. When you do this, a little film slate clapper icon should appear next to the bin’s icon in the project tab (see Figure 3-5). This clapper icon identifies the bin as the current
Media Acquisition: Logging and Capturing
Figure 3-4
By default, Final Cut Pro assigns the project tab as the Logging Bin.
Figure 3-5 The film slate clapper identifies the selected bin as the current Logging Bin.
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Logging Bin. Any clips that you capture will be automatically sent to this bin for storage, rather than just dumped into the project tab. The Log and Capture Window If using Firewire DV, make sure that your deck or camera is connected through Firewire to the Macintosh, is powered on, and that the camera is set to the VTR mode. If using a capture card, take a moment to make sure that your Easy Setup is correct for your PCI card or capture device. Also, for the purposes of this exercise, make sure that there is no tape inserted in the deck or camera just yet. Although it is not technically necessary to remove the tape before going through the next few steps, in a moment you will see the rationale for doing so. Go to File > Log and Capture (keyboard shortcut, Command-8). On doing so, a window will appear that bears the name Log and Capture. From this window, you will create and capture clips (see Figure 3-6). Firewire DV users may notice that when the Log and Capture window appears, the video signal from your deck or camera jumps a little and switches from whatever was showing before to a blank screen. This is because, despite Firewire’s amazing flexibility, it can still send data in only one direction at a time. When you initialize Log and Capture, FCP reverses the direction of this data from going out of the Macintosh and into the DV device, to going out of the DV device and into the Macintosh.
Figure 3-6 Cut Pro.
The Log and Capture window is where you create and capture clips in Final
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For this reason, you have to remember to close the Log and Capture window when you are finished working in it. Otherwise, you will not be able to switch back to Firewire output from the Macintosh. The Log and Capture Video Preview Window
The Log and Capture window is divided into two halves. On the left is the Video Preview window, which initially displays color bars when not being fed a video source. Ignore the Preview Disabled message. It will be enabled as soon as you feed it some video. More important, below the preview window and underneath the Play transport button, you should see the message “Not Threaded,” which means that the DV capture device is present but no tape is inserted. If you see “VTR OK,” this means that a deck or camera is connected, it currently has a tape loaded, and FCP sees it. Either of these messages indicates that FCP is, in fact, communicating with the deck or camera. Any other messages in this location when opening the Log and Capture window could be an indication of misconfigured settings or even hardware problems. Setting your Audio/Video Settings Device Control Preset to Non-Controllable Device (as we will in the Capture Now section of this chapter) will yield a “No Communication” message, as if you had a Firewire device connected but turned off. If you are using a converter box without timecode or device control, you will have to get used to the “No Communication” message. Do not be concerned that the video quality in this window is relatively low. Firewire capture is simply a data transfer, and your footage will look exactly the same in FCP as it does on the source tape. Obviously, uncompressed video captures will look fantastic. Both Firewire DV and Uncompressed Video captures will result in (theoretically) lossless copies from tape to hard drive. The low quality in this window is simply a result of FCP saving a little processing power for the capture process. If you need to see higher quality as you scan your tapes, you can watch the footage on a video monitor coming from the video outputs on your deck or camera. The frames you choose will be the same ones whether you select them by viewing the monitor outputs from the deck or from the Log and Capture window. The Log and Capture Tabs
The first tab on the right half of the Log and Capture window is the Logging tab. The Logging tab contains information fields that we need to fill out for each clip as we log it (see Figure 3-7). The information you include in this tab when you log a clip will stick with it even after you have captured it. While most of the information you enter here is basically gratuitous and is necessary only for your own organizational purposes, some is critical to your ability to later recapture the media you associate with the clip. You can never have too much information about a clip. Be as thorough as possible when filling out the fields. You might not think some items are important, but keep in mind that you will be able to organize or perform searches for clips based on the information you put in these fields. For instance, you could stratify a bin based on which clips were
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Figure 3-7 The Logging tab contains information fields that need to be filled out for each clip as that clip is logged.
originally marked Good, or alphabetically by name, description, date, or Reel Name. The more information, the better. Because most of this sort of logging work is often repetitive, FCP will automatically repeat information in some fields, such as the Reel Name and the Clip Name, from one clip into the next as you go. The Reel Name
The most critical field for you to address here is the Reel Name. The Reel Name refers to the particular tape that relates to the timecode numbers you assign with the clip you are logging. The Reel Name is the special link between the real-world source tape and the FCP clips you are capturing. Different source tapes can and will have the exact same timecode numbers you are associating with this clip, particularly with DV, since almost all DV cameras start their timecodes at 00:00:00:00. The only way to differentiate one tape’s timecode numbers from another tape’s identical timecode numbers is by giving their clips different Reel Names based on the different tapes they were captured from. If you wanted to recapture clips based only on their timecode numbers and then were unable to remember which particular tapes all those clips were originally captured from, you’d be in a lot of trouble very quickly. It is imperative that you develop a system of individually naming your tapes and labeling them in a durable and easily recognizable fashion. Then you must consistently change the Reel Names as you log and capture clips from different named tapes. We initialized the Log and Capture window without a tape inserted in the Deck for a eason. This is because we want to get into the habit of giving each separate tape a distinct
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Figure 3-8 Every time a new tape is inserted into a connected deck or camera, Final Cut Pro will remind you to change the corresponding Reel Name.
Reel Name. Although FCP will happily allow you to go to the Log and Capture window with a tape already queued up in the deck or camera, doing so causes a default Reel Name of “001” to be inserted in the Reel Name field of the Logging tab. This obviously will not do, because all your clips will appear to originate from one single tape named 001! If you get into the habit of inserting tapes only after initializing the Log and Capture window, FCP will greet you each time with a message, “A new tape has been inserted in the VTR. You may wish to change the Reel setting” (see Figure 3-8). Although FCP will not change the Reel Name for you, you will find that you never forget to stop and change it as necessary if you are alerted by this message. The message will reappear anytime you insert a new tape in the deck or camera with the Log and Capture window open. If you found that you accidentally set the wrong Reel Name for your clips, you do have a way to correct this. If your Browser window is set to display in List view with columns, scroll the window all the way to the right until you find the Reel Name category for the clip(s) (see Figure 3-9). You can always select the clip’s Reel Name and change it here. It will wisely ask you if you are sure you want to do that, since the Reel Name is so critical. When you go to recapture, FCP will ask for the correct Reel Name, based on the current information in the Reel Name field of the clip in the Browser window. Look above the Reel box and you will see a broad button labeled Log Bin (see Figure 3-10). Inside the button should be the name “#1_Tape_Logging_Bin,” which you
Figure 3-9 The Reel Name category is located in the Browser to the right in the columns section while in List View.
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Figure 3-10 The Logging Bin button is located at the top of the Logging Tab in the Log and Capture window.
assigned as the Logging Bin earlier in the chapter. Although you cannot directly change the Logging Bin to another pre-existing bin from the Log and Capture window, you can create a totally fresh Logging Bin by clicking on the New Bin button to the right. You can also open the current Logging Bin into a new window by clicking on the Logging Bin button. You can have only one Logging Bin set at a time, no matter how many projects you have open at one time, so you have to be a little careful about where you are sending your logged clips. Keeping your eye on the ball will keep your clips in order and your project free of clutter and lost work. The Name, Description, and Marker Fields
Below the Reel field is the Name field. You have two choices here, since for some reason ou cannot type directly into the Name field. You can type the name into the Description field, and when you hit Enter, you will see the information appear as well in the Name field. The other method is to wait until you have selected your Timecode In and Out Points and are ready to actually capture the clip to name it. Next to the Name field is a small checkbox labeled Prompt. If you check this box, on starting the log or capture of a clip you will be greeted by a dialog box that asks you to name it (see Figure 3-11). The box will provide fields to describe it with logging notes and mark it as Good or Not Good. Although this method does not give you the option of giving the clip Scene or hot/Take designations or Markers, you may find it more useful because it forces you to make choices about the naming of your clip, rather than letting FCP simply add a number onto the end of the name of the last clip name you logged. Click the sideways triangle to reveal the area labeled Markers (see Figure 3-12). As you log each clip, you can leave special Markers at various points in the clip to help you remember where specific sections are. The Markers are associated only with the timecode of the clip and do not affect your footage at all. But they can make it very easy to divide larger clips into smaller ones, as well as remind you where important parts of the clip are (once you bring the media into FCP), as we will see later in the book. As you log the clip, just hit the Set Marker button when the playhead is parked on a frame you want to mark, making sure that you enter both the first frame and the last frame of the marked sections. If you want to mark only a single frame, make that frame’s
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Figure 3-11 Checking Prompt in the Logging tab of the Log and Capture window generates a dialog box with note fields when you log a clip.
Figure 3-12 Clicking the sideways triangle in the Logging tab in the Log and Capture window reveals the Markers area.
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Figure 3-13 Capture Clip, Capture Now, and Batch Capture refer to the different possible methods by which FCP can capture media.
timecode value both the beginning and end timecode value for the Marker. If you want to mark a range of frames, add a Mark In point, then move to the end of the range of frames ou want to mark and add a Mark Out point. Add as many Markers or ranges of marked frames as you want. Name each Marker. You’ll be able to go in and change any information in the Marker after the clip is captured. The Capture Buttons
inally, at the very bottom of the tab you will find three buttons of great importance. The three buttons to the right are enclosed in a box labeled Capture (see Figure 3-13). They efer to the different possible methods by which FCP can capture media. The three buttons are named Clip, Now, and Batch. Each one has a different value in the production process. There are instances where Capture Now will be the smartest option, whereas in other situations, Capture Clip will be the most effective. In most cases, you will find that Batch Capture, using the offline logging process, is the most efficient. Capture Clip
The first method, Capture Clip, functions by capturing one clip at a time based on the present values in the Timecode In and Out Points in the Log and Capture window. You can get only one clip at a time this way, although you must still log your footage to get the timecode values you need to capture with. This option will be most useful if you have paper logs with the timecode right in front of you and very few clips to capture. Capture Now
The second method, Capture Now, is probably the most frequently used method of capturing clips into FCP because, to the new user, it often appears more intuitive. Push the button and the capture starts. Capture Now begins capturing whatever happens to be streaming into your capture device when you press the button. It will continue capturing until you hit the Escape key, or until it reaches the time limit you specified in the Scratch Disk Preferences. The most important feature of Capture Now is that, unlike Capture Clip and Batch Capture, it does not require timecode data for Capturing Clips. If you specify that no timecode is present by choosing the “Non-Controllable Device” Capture preset in Audio/Video
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Settings, Capture Now will capture anything coming down the Firewire tube, including a blank blue video screen from a deck with no tape inserted! Of course, if you are capturing from a deck that does have timecode, Capture Now will capture and use the timecode that is there. But if you are using any of a number of solutions that do not pass timecode data, such as DV converter boxes or Digital 8 camcorders that are playing back video originally recorded on a Hi8 camera, Capture Now will be the only way that you can capture directly into FCP.
The Process of Capturing Let’s log and capture a single clip, using the Capture window to the left of the tabs. We will go through both methods for capturing, first using Capture Clip. Incidentally, if the Capture window is too large and takes up too much of the window, close it and reduce the size of your Canvas and Viewer windows. The size of the Log and Capture window is based on the size of these two windows. Keep the Viewer and the Canvas set at 50% (see Figure 3-14), and then tighten up the window up around the edges of the video frame by clicking on the “minimize (+)” Aqua button in the top left corner of the Viewer and Canvas windows (or Fit to Window/Shift-z). This will ensure that you don’t accidentally end up with scroll bars and that your windows are not too large. Then reopen the Log and Capture window, and you will see that its size is minimized as well. The left side of the Log and Capture window is dominated by the Capture screen. Unless FCP is currently receiving video data, the Log and Capture screen will simply show color bars. Insert a source tape in the deck. As soon as you do so, you will receive a message
Figure 3-14 Reduce the size of the Canvas and Viewer windows in order to reduce the size of the Capture window in Log and Capture.
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ecommending that you assign a Reel Name to the new tape that has been inserted. Do so, using the Reel Name “Tape_#1,” which corresponds to your Logging Bin name. Scratch Disk Info After you name the reel, take a look at the left side of the Log and Capture window. At the very top of the window you will see two phrases—Total Free Space and Total Free Time (see Figure 3-15). The values for these designations are the amount of free disk space on the current Scratch Disk-assigned drive and the amount of footage that free drive space can accommodate. This is merely another warning for you regarding your Scratch Disk Preferences. If you see anything unusual here, such as a drive space figure that is too high or low, or a capture limit that is too short, you may have committed an error in assigning the Scratch Disk location. FCP can’t fix this for you, but it can help you catch our own errors. Current Frame Timecode Field
Moving to the top right-hand corner of the window, you will see a small watch dial followed by a field containing a timecode value. This field is the timecode for the video frame from the source tape that the play head is currently parked on. If you have a tape in your deck that contains timecode, and FCP is configured correctly, this window will always eport the exact timecode number of the frame the tape head is currently parked on. You can also use this field to shuttle around the tape. Because the Log and Capture window actually controls the deck as well as receiving video from it, this field works both ways: it tells you which frame is queued up on the tape head, and you can tell it to go to a certain frame by entering the timecode number into the box and hitting enter. The Tape Transport Controls and J-K-L Support
Moving below the video window, you will see the playback buttons, referred to as “Transport Controls.” Using these controls you can shuttle back and forth, remotely controlling the deck from inside FCP. There are five buttons for controlling playback as well as two knob-wheel-type controllers that mimic physical deck controls.
Figure 3-15 Total Free Space and Total Free Time designate the amount of free disk space of your Scratch Disk and the amount of footage that free drive can accommodate.
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FCP makes using this—and other windows—easier by using a keyboard shortcut convention called J-K-L support. J-K-L means that the J key initiates rewind, the K key pauses the playhead where it is, and the L key initiates play. Beyond this, J-K-L has the flexibility of variable-speed playback. If you hit either the J key or the L key repeatedly, you will find that the playback speed increases, while K always stops the playback entirely. Using J-K-L means that you can leave the mouse alone and forget about looking at the keyboard to find the right combination. Resting your hand on the keyboard with your middle three fingers spread over the J-K-L keys is very natural. Practice using it to move back and forth to find frames you want, and you’ll quickly get addicted to using it. The other two buttons on the transport are Play Around Current and Play In to Out. Play Around Current simply plays a certain number of frames before and after the frame that the tape head is currently paused on. The number of frames played is determined by the settings in the General tab of the User Preferences, where it is referred to as Preview Pre-roll and Preview Post-roll. Play In to Out is simply a preview of the In point to the Out point based on what is currently entered in the In and Out point fields. The Jog and Shuttle Wheels
The other two controllers hearken back to the world of physical decks. They are referred to as Jog and Shuttle controls. The control on the left-hand side is the Shuttle controller. If you click on the Shuttle knob and drag it in either direction, you will find that the deck responds by moving in that direction. The speed of playback corresponds directly to how far in either direction you tug the knob. Shuttling is a great variable-speed method of moving around. The controller on the right-hand side is called a Jog controller. The difference between Jog and Shuttle is that with Jog, a complete turn of the knob results in a limited number of frames playing on the tape, no matter how much force you use to tug the controller. Unlike the Shuttle controller, which can be pulled only so far in either direction, the Jog controller turns a complete 360 degrees, after which a number of individual frames have been advanced. The keyboard shortcuts for frame advance and retreat that correspond to the Jog controller’s frame by frame navigation are the Left and Right Arrow keys, which will advance or retreat one frame at a time. Hold the Shift key down when doing so and it advances or retreats one second instead. Although you can certainly use the onscreen Jog and Shuttle wheels, you will soon wear out your wrist trying to use them. Master the J-K-L shortcuts to dramatically increase your speed and relieve carpal tunnel stress. Set the In and Out Points for a Clip
Once you have decided on the In and Out points, look below the transport controls to find two timecode data fields, each of which is accompanied by two buttons. These are the In and Out points you will establish for your clip. Prior to setting any In or Out points, these fields will read “Not Set.”
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Remember that you have to leave enough room for the deck to Pre-roll, or lock the deck servo, before the capturing starts. The default Pre-roll setting is three seconds. That means that if you have the default Device Control Preset setting of 3 seconds, you can’t eally set your first In point for your clips before 00:00:04:00 on your tape! This issue is usually only related to the first clip on each Reel number, although it may also apply if you are dealing with broken timecode. When you have selected a suitable frame for an In point, locate the timecode field on the bottom left-hand side of the window. Click on the button to the right of this timecode field. This button is the Mark In point (see Figure 3-16). The button to the left of the In point field is the Go To In Point button, which will simply return the tape to the currently established In point should you need to get there quickly. Now shuttle a little further into your tape. When you have found a good location for the end of the clip, look over to the timecode data field on the bottom right-hand side of the window. You will find an Out point button on the left side of this field. Clicking the Out point button inserts a value into the Out point field. As with the In point field, the button on the right of the Out point field is the Go To Out point and will quickly roll the tape to that frame if engaged. With the establishment of an In and Out point, you now have a valid, though as yet uncaptured, cup in the Capture window, yet not captured, clip in the
Figure 3-16 The Mark In and Mark Out buttons and their corresponding timecode fields are where you can set In and Out points prior to capture in the Log and Capture window.
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Capture window. If you don’t like the In or Out points you created, simply go to a new frame and hit In or Out again to reset the position. As always, there is a much faster way to insert In and Out points using convenient keyboard shortcuts. The I key and the O key will insert In and Out points into these fields. The convenience is reinforced by the fact that these keys are directly above the J-K-L keys that you use for shuttling. You rarely need to look at keyboard. Simply keep your hand poised on the J-K-L keys and when you find either an In or Out point, move your fingers a half inch up and strike the key. There’s no faster way to log clips, nor one that is less stressful on the wrist. The Clip Duration Timecode Field
Now that you have entered a valid In and Out point for the clip, look in the top left-hand corner of the window where you will find another timecode data field. This is the Clip Duration Field, which calculates the duration of the current clip based on the In and Out points. You should see a value here now that you have entered an Out point that follows an In point. Of course, as with the Current Frame field in the upper right-hand corner of the window, this field can actually affect the other fields. If, for example, you have already set the In point and you know that you need to log 10 seconds following that In point, there is no need to shuttle forward and find the frame number or even to calculate the Out point in your head. Simply type +1000, which is a shorthand for the timecode value of 00:00:10:00, or 10 seconds, into the Clip Duration field and it will automatically update the Out point timecode field based on the In point and the Duration timecode value. Capture Using Capture Clip Now that you have entered the required information for the clip, you are ready to capture. Click the Clip button in the Capture box on the Logging tab side of the window, and FCP will begin the capture process. If you selected the Prompt checkbox on the Logging tab, you will be presented with a box asking you to name the clip (see Figure 3-17). Do so, click OK, and FCP will wake up the deck and begin searching for the In point. You will see a black screen with a message at the bottom telling you what FCP is doing at that moment. When it finds the In point on the tape, it will begin capturing and continue to do so until your clip is completely captured. The clip is now located in your Logging Bin and available for editing. If you take a moment and look back into the Log and Capture window, you will see that it has set a new In point that is one frame later than the Out point of the clip you have just finished capturing. The new Out point is one frame later than the new In point, because you will need to log a new Out point, no matter what the new In point is. This means that FCP is now ready for you to log the next clip you want to capture. Make sure
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Figure 3-17 Initiate Capture Clip, name the clip, and then FCP will find the timecode values and begin capturing.
that you save your project after any captures; until you do so, the clip and its connection to the media you captured are not safely stored in your project file! Capture Now Logging your clips with timecode is definitely the safest and most efficient method of capturing media. But some hardware configurations do not have access to timecode. And in some situations, capturing a quick clip will be more productive than logging a clip manually as described in the previous section. In these instances, Capture Now will be more effective. Capture Now and Its Relationship with DV Timecode
irst, you need to determine that you are sending timecode data to FCP. Remember that just because video and audio are getting captured doesn’t mean that timecode data is being captured as well. For Firewire DV, there are a few specific things to check. If you are using a Digital 8 camera, only footage that was shot using the Digital 8 camera has valid DV timecode written into the data of the footage. If you are using a tape that was recorded in a standard Hi8 or 8 mm video camera, the footage will not have DV timecode. Although you can still easily capture this footage using Capture Now, you cannot do so using the standard Easy etups and you will have to use the “Non-Controllable Device” Capture preset. If you are using a DV converter box, there will also be no DV timecode accompanying the DV data stream through Firewire. Also, remember that this refers to any device that offers pass-through (also known as EE-In-Out) operation. Many DV decks and cameras will allow you to connect an analog device to the inputs of the DV deck or camera, which will convert the analog signal to DV on the fly and pass it directly to FCP through the Firewire connection. Such pass-through connections also do not carry DV timecode and act precisely like a DV converter box.
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Figure 3-18 If your Easy Setup and Device Control preset is set for a controllable device but your device doesn’t have it, you will get a hang on initiating capture.
For those using capture cards and other sorts of converters, you are essentially in the same situation as those using the DV solutions described in the last two paragraphs, unless you are using a method of machine control such as the RS-422 and RS-232 9-pin serial control. Without deck control you will have to select Non-Controllable Device as well. Either situation will require visiting the Audio/Video Settings and the device control Presets tab. You will not be able to get timecode data for the clip when you capture it. The Non-Controllable Device preset will keep FCP from looking for timecode that does not exist. If you do not switch this preset, the attempt to Capture Now will result in a long system hang (see Figure 3-18). On disabling Device Control, you would see that the Clip and Project buttons have gone gray and become unavailable. This is because they require Device Control and timecode to operate, meaning that you will have to cue up the footage that you want to capture on the deck by hand. This is a slightly awkward way of working in which you hit play on the device, hit Now in FCP, and hope that it begins capturing before the first frame you wanted to work with passes by. Although it may work in a pinch, it becomes frustrating rather quickly in larger jobs. The Capture Now Process
On the other hand, if you have Device Control, make sure that you fill out the Logging tab information to the right as if you were performing a logged capture. In particular, make sure to enter a Reel Name and clip name, since your clip will carry valid timecode data and should be associated with a specific tape. Start the tape rolling, using the J-K-L keys. If you have no Device Control, simply hit play on the deck or camera. You will need to cue up your tape a few seconds ahead of the place you want to start capturing, because it takes a moment for FCP to prepare the Scratch Disk for your media. Think of this as a Pre-roll and add at least five seconds so that you are sure you get the In point you wanted, plus a little extra. If you have rather large media drives, be warned that you will need to start the tape rolling much earlier than you think. Setting the “Limit Capture Now To” field in the Scratch Disk Preferences to a reasonable number (like 30 minutes) will help speed up the beginning of Capture Now a great deal. As the tape is rolling, hit the Now button in the Capture options. When you do so, the Currently Capturing window will pop up and you will watch what is being captured stream in. When you are ready to stop the capture, simply hit the Escape key. The Escape key is
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Figure 3-19 Logging Bin.
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Once the capture is complete, the newly captured clip will appear in the
the only way to stop Capture Now, with the exception of reaching the Capture Now limit ou set in the Scratch Disk Preference tab in the Preferences. When the Currently Capturing window disappears, you will see that a new clip has appeared in the Logging Bin (see Figure 3-19). If you did not name the clip in the Description field of the Capture window, the clip will carry the name Untitled (or Untitled 2, Untitled 3, and so on as you accumulate clips). Now your clip is available for editing, just as is the clip we logged and captured earlier. When was the last time you saved and backed up your project? After you complete our capturing is the right time to save the project that you have created the clips in. Although the actual media files have been properly saved to the media drive, the clip, which is now associated with the project, has not yet been saved as part of the project file. If our system had crashed for any reason, the clip would not be there when you re-opened and you would need to find the media files in your capture Scratch folder and manually import them. Using DV Start/Stop Detection
In the preceding description of Capture Now, it was stated that Capture Now is a very inefficient system for getting lots of different clips into a project. Although that is generally accurate, there is one example in which it can be even more efficient than capturing logged clips. FCP includes a feature called DV Start/Stop Detection, which can easily break up our camera’s Firewire DV footage from a huge single captured clip into individual clips automatically. Although it won’t work in all situations, it bears mentioning since for some it may dramatically decrease the amount of time one has to sit in front of the computer scrolling through their footage.
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When you are shooting with a DV camera, it includes data in each frame based on the time and date that the recording took place. When you hit pause, and then start recording again later, the camera records data about the date and time. Although there is no timecode break between these pause and record actions, the fact that the recording action started a little later than previous material on the tape is retained by the video frames as a scene break on the tape. If you need to bring in a clip that has a series of takes or pauses and you have no timecode breaks on the tape, use Capture Now to capture the entire section of tape, pauses and all. After the Capture Now is complete and the clip is loaded into the Viewer (or selected in the project tab), you can go to the Mark drop-down menu and choose DV Start/Stop Detect (see Figure 3-20). In reality, it is not necessary that you use Capture Now for DV Start/Stop Detection; clips captured from the log process will work just as well, since the tool is only concerned with the clip no matter how it got into FCP. It is mentioned here, because the workflow of DV Start/Stop Detection is extremely useful for those with long camera-recorded tapes which may be more easily captured and chopped up in this way rather than through laborious logging of individual clips. When you choose this option, FCP will examine the clip and automatically insert special markers everywhere that it sees evidence that the camera was paused while in the midst of shooting. The great news is that the markers it inserts are treated like clips themselves, independently manipulated from the master clip they were captured as a part of (we will explore subclips in greater detail in Chapter 6). If you keep good shot logs while acquiring your footage, you can save yourself the hassle of shuttling through your footage to organize your clips and let FCP break it up into scenes for you. As an example, find a clip you have just captured (or capture another such clip) that has scene breaks as described above. This time, double-click the clip to load it into the Viewer window. After it is loaded into the Viewer, go to the Mark drop-down menu and select DV Start/Stop Detection. After a short progress bar, you will see a series of yellow markers appear in the Viewer window’s timeline. Each of these markers indicates a scene break. Even better, look back at the original clip in the project tab and you will see a small widget next to its icon (make sure you are in List view mode) (see Figure 3-21). If you click on this widget, you will see it drop down to reveal a number of these same markers. Double-click any of the markers and you will see that only the section delimited by that particular marker loads up into the Viewer, and not the entire original clip. Batch Capture Now that we have explored both Capture Clip and Capture Now, we will look at the most efficient method of getting your video and audio into Final Cut Pro. Batch Capture uses the logging techniques we used in Capture Clip, but rather than immediately capture the clip you log, you create ‘offline’ clips. The ‘offline/online’ logging and capturing technique we use in this process is standard for the video editing industry, and will be familiar to anyone who has prior experience with digital non-linear editing.
Figure 3-20 With a suitable clip containing scene breaks loaded into the Viewer, go Mark > DV Start/Stop Detect. FCP will scan the clip and insert markers dividing up the clip using the start and stop data in the frames.
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Figure 3-21 Click the widget next to the Start/Stop Detected clip to see all the divisions of the clip. These marked divisions can be treated like clips.
What Is Offline/Online?
For those unfamiliar with offline/online, it bears discussing for a moment. Online and Offline refer to a logged clip and whether or not any media is yet linked to it on the Scratch Disk. The normal workflow is to create clips based on the In and Out points we created in the Capture Clip exercise earlier. Then, rather than immediately capture and ‘online’ them, we log the clips as ‘offline’, symbolized by a red slash through the clip icon (see Figure 3-22). Later, after logging as many offline clips as we need, we select the ones we want to use and Batch Capture them all, or ‘online’ them. FCP automates
Figure 3-22
An Offline clip is symbolized by a red slash through the clip icon.
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the entire process, using the clip timecodes and reel names to find the material on the source tapes. The Process
In Log and Capture, enter the requisite information in the Logging tab for the Offline clip, particularly the reel name. Make sure that the Prompt checkbox is enabled. Once that is set, navigate your tape using the J-K-L controls to locate suitable in and Out points for the Offline clip. Of course, you can manually enter timecode values In the In and Out fields as well. This much of the process is exactly similar to Capture Clip. However, instead of hitting Clip after getting your In and Out points set, hit Log Clip (keyboard shortcut, F2). When you do, a dialog box appears asking for a name and description of the clip you are logging. Name it and hit OK. When you do, a clip appears in the Logging Bin with a red slash through it, the designation that the clip is offline, as shown in igure 3-22. Any time you see the red slash, it means that there is no media connected to the clip. This occurs not only with logging offline clips, but also when your media is forced offline for any reason, such as by choice (using the Make Offline command in the Modify menu) or by accident (starting up your FCP project when your Scratch Disk-assigned drive is not attached or turned on!). You continue to log offline clips until you are ready to capture them. When you have finished logging your clips, do a Save. In the Browser, you can select a limited number of the group, select them all, or select none of them, which has the effect of selecting them all. The Batch Capture window, to be explored subsequently, will let you refine the selection even further. There are things you can do to speed up your clip logging. One popular speed logging technique is to skip the multiple steps of stopping playback to insert an Out point. During playback, you set an In point on the fly as the tape plays. Then, when you get near the frame you want for your Out point, just hit the F2 button to pause the tape and log the clip. The Log Clip command stops playback, inserts an Out point, and gives you the naming dialog box. When you hit OK to name the clip, playback starts again automatically, without your having to initiate it with the Spacebar or L key. This radically speeds up the offline logging process. When you have many tapes to get through, shaving off a couple of actions per logged clip can really make a difference over the course of a day! It should be noted that you can offline log without the tape and/or deck even being present. If you have the timecode numbers and reel name designations for the source tapes ou will want to capture from, say, for instance, from a shot log, you can start up the Log and Capture window without a deck present and manually enter In and Out points and names for your clips and log them offline. Later, when you have the deck and source tapes available, just go back into that project and capture them all. In Chapter 11, we will even see how those savvy with spreadsheet software can use shot logs and the Batch List import command to get all your offline clips in with a few clicks and no visits to the Log and Capture window!
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After you have created the offline clips, all that remains is to capture them and make them online. Click on at least one of the offline clips to select it. We will want to capture all of them but we need at least one selected to see the benefit of one of the pulldown menus in the Batch Capture dialog box. Go to File > Batch Capture (keyboard shortcut, Control-c). The Batch Capture dialog box opens (see Figure 3-23).
Figure 3-23
The Batch Capture dialog box.
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The Batch Capture dialog box is divided into two sections. The upper half tells FCP what you want to capture and a few specifics about how to do it. The lower half is basically an idiot check to make sure that the capture you initiate is what you think it is. At the top is a pulldown menu specifying which clips you want to batch capture. Depending on what ou selected prior to the Batch Capture window, you might choose “Selected Offline Clips” or “All Offline Clips.” If nothing was selected, All Offline Clips is the only choice. Next, “Use Logged Clip Settings” allows you to force FCP to use a different capture preset if you wish. Checking it tells FCP to use whatever settings were embedded in the clip when it was logged offline. Unchecking it allows you to use a different capture preset, as specified by the capture preset pulldown menu just below. Underneath this is a checkbox and timecode field for Handles. Handles are extra frames of video captured beyond the In and Out points of the logged clip. Handles are very useful in editing situations, as will be described in the editing chapter, but they are also quite necessary in capturing with QuickTime files. You always want to capture at least a second of extra footage to avoid a rare quirk where the first captured frame is accidentally repeated a few times (called a long frame). That situation can be completely avoided by adding handles onto each clip captured in batch operations. Enable Handles and enter 00:00:01:00 or more. Finally, set the pulldown menu that lets you specify another capture preset if you chose to disable “Use Logged Clip Settings.” There are a couple of scenarios where this might come into play. The first is the one we have been discussing, wherein you log clips offline and then capture them. This is a very straightforward capturing process. There are other scenarios that you will likely encounter in your work. For instance, you might accidentally offline log an entire tape of clips with the wrong preset, say, for instance, when you are logging tapes on a red-eye flight or on a train. It doesn’t matter what capture preset you logged them under as long as when you go to capture them, you tell FCP not to use the capture preset that was active when it was logged and to use the substitute from this pulldown menu. The Idiot Check
Below the Capture Preset pulldown is a set of idiot check items to make sure you are getting what you want, the way you want, and that it is going where you want. First is a description of the above capture preset in the pulldown menu, both in video and audio details. After this are the Scratch Disk and Media details. FCP lists the duration of the total capture being proposed in the Batch Capture dialog box. Finally, FCP calculates how much disk space is needed for the capture based on the duration and the data rate of the capture preset you chose. It also lets you know how much space is available on the currently selected Scratch Disk volume, so that you can avoid any disconnects between where your footage is going and where it should be going. After evaluating the Idiot Check, hit the OK button to begin the Batch Capture. You will receive a dialog box asking for the reels/source tapes that correspond to the offline clips. Under some circumstances, you might also encounter a dialog box called “Additional Items
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Figure 3-24
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The Additional Items Found dialog box.
Found” (see Figure 3-24). If the clips involved in the Batch Capture refer to the same reel/source tapes and timecodes as other clips in any open projects, these are referred to as Additional Items. If you hit Add, those other clips will be linked to the newly captured media after the Batch Capture operation. If you choose Continue, the other clips are ignored and any media relationships they may already have are unaffected. Obviously, Abort shuts down the entire operation. This situation is likely to be encountered if and when you engage in another type of online/offline editing workflow using the Media Manager tool to be explored in Chapter 11.
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4
Importing Media
Capturing footage from tape is not the only way of acquiring media to work with in FCP. This chapter is concerned with the process of importing the large range of file formats that FCP is capable of accepting and using as media. A very common misconception for beginners is that opening a file is the same as importing. This eventually leads to confusion over what needs to be backed up, what applications can deal with which sorts of files, etc. This misconception is totally unnecessary. This chapter’s aim is to give the reader a clear understanding of the Import process. Although we will only be working through two of the most common examples, importing Audio CD tracks and Photoshop image files, the import process in theory is universal. Master these import techniques and you will be able to apply what you do here to every other file format FCP is capable of working with, including the following formats. Graphic Still Formats BMP, FlashPix, GIF, JPEG/JFIF, MacPaint (PNTG), Photoshop, PICS, PICT, PNG, QuickTime Image File (QTIF), SGI, Targa (TGA), and TIFFS Video Formats AVI and QuickTime Audio Formats AIFF, Audio CD data, Sound, and Wave
What Importing Is and What It Is Not In the video editing world, there are two types of files: project files and media files (see Figure 4-1). A project file is created by FCP and contains all the code that describes what happens with media. The project file itself is not video or audio footage; rather, it is a sort
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Figure 4-1
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A project file icon and a captured video Quicktime media file.
of blueprint for all the footage you use in the project and what FCP is going to do with it. You open it, and then you work inside it. A Media file, on the other hand, is your video footage or other elements, like graphics from Photoshop or CD audio, that you use inside our project. It is what is controlled by the project file. Some of the preceding file formats may seem obscure, but they all have one thing in common: FCP can import them into your project and use them as clips for editing purposes. Such importing is very common. Graphics applications such as Photoshop have tools that are much more suited to developing beautiful text and other visual elements. Audio applications such as Digidesign Protools, Bias Peak DV, and Soundtrack are often used to create, mix, and clean up audio tracks. Further, if you deal with clients who provide you with standard graphics or sound elements, you’ll have to deal with importing their materials.
Audio CD Import the Right Way: Using QuickTime Pro to Import and Convert Sample Rates To import Audio CD Tracks, we have to take a couple of things into account. Getting your Audio CD tracks into FCP isn’t complicated, but you have to take care of a few things along the way. First, we can’t simply put the CD in the Macintosh and select Import from the File menu. That is a rookie mistake that will backfire on the user. If you put the CD in and select Import, your project will link itself directly to the CD. The problem is that as soon as you remove the CD from the Macintosh, the audio track would become unavailable to your project! Worse still, even if the CD is still inside the player, when you tried to play the clip in the timeline, you would likely end up receiving a Dropped Frames warning. CD-ROMs, though reasonably fast, are generally not fast enough to keep up with
Importing Media
Figure 4-2
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The Dropped Frames Warning dialog box in Final Cut Pro.
the demands that FCP will place on playback. The result would be the CD-ROM drive spinning at top speed, but not being fast enough, thus yielding Dropped Frames warnings (see Figure 4-2). Importing by saving your music tracks as files to your hard drive is very important. But there is still one more complication for importing Audio CD tracks to FCP. Standard audio recorded in DV cameras and for use in professional formats—and, therefore, the appropriate audio sample rate for our sequences—is either 48K, and, in rare instances, 32K. The standard sample rate for Audio CD’s is 44.1K. You should never mix audio sample rates in our sequences, since that effectively delivers a performance hit to FCP, as described in Chapter 2. So how is it possible to get the sample rate of a 44.1K Audio CD track up to the 48K or down to the 32K that will be required by FCP sequences? One of the nice things about OSX is the degree to which Apple’s own applications are designed to work with each other and augment each other’s functionalities. One useful application that Apple distributes free with FCP is QuickTime Pro, a version of Apple’s ubiquitous QuickTime Player. QuickTime Player is an application that Apple distributes for free so that people on both PCs and Macs can access various QuickTime files and formats (see Figure 4-3). QuickTime Player is very limited in its functionality, mostly giving the ability to playback QuickTime files downloaded from the Web or distributed via CD-ROMs. However, each FCP license ships with a complimentary QuickTime Pro license. Using QuickTime Pro, you can open almost any file format and then export it in a QuickTime format at the drop of a hat. Before you can access that functionality, you need to unlock Pro functionality in the Player application. To unlock QuickTime Pro, go to your Applications folder and start the QuickTime Player application. When QuickTime Player has finished
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Figure 4-3 QuickTime Player is an application that is freely distributable on both PCs and Macs and can access various QuickTime files and formats. QuickTime Pro, which comes free with FCP, is a more functional version.
loading, go to QuickTime Player > Preferences and select Registration. In the window that follows, be careful to enter your serial number correctly (ones aren’t Ls and Os aren’t zeroes) (see Figure 4-4). With your CD mounted on the desktop and while in QuickTime Pro, go to File Import. In the following dialog box, pick the track you want and hit Open. A moment later, the track will open up in a Player window. Because it is only a stereo audio track, there will be no video window. In the Player window, you will find the usual transport controls: play, rewind, fast forward, beginning of track, and end of track (see Figure 4-5). In the Timeline you will see a playhead triangle on the top, and two smaller triangle shapes underneath. The two triangle shapes underneath the track are actually another very useful reason for going through QuickTime Pro. Here, you can actually set an In and Out point for the audio track you are about to convert. Thus, if you only wanted about ten seconds of the song, you can specify instead of converting and importing the entire song and having to trim it down later in FCP.
Importing Media
Figure 4-4 Preferences.
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The QuickTime Pro Registration window is available in QuickTime
To set the In and Out points, click the right triangle and drag it to the right. You will see that it is repositioned wherever you drop it, which gives your Out point. Go back and click and drag the In point to a new position (see Figure 4-6). To listen to only the selection you have created with the In and Out points, go to Movie > Play Selection Only. If you have made a very short selection and you need to hear it repeatedly,
Figure 4-5
An Audio CD track opened into a QuickTime Pro window.
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Figure 4-6 Clicking the left or right triangles underneath the track set your In and Out points, should you desire to import a specific portion of the audio track in to Final Cut Pro 4.
Figure 4-7 Choosing the right export options is critical to converting the sample rate of an audio track for use in Final Cut Pro.
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toggle Loop from the same menu. When you have set your In and Out points, go to Edit > Trim. After you are satisfied with your selection, the time has come to convert the sample rate and make the audio track available to FCP. Go to File > Export > QuickTime Movie Export. Click the Export bar and select Sound to AIFF. Then choose the Options button. In the next box, make sure the setting is for no compression (we never compress audio for editing with video) and switch the sample rate to 48K (unless you will be using 32K sequences in your project). Choose 16 bit and Stereo, hit OK, and return to the dialog box (see Figure 4-7). Finally, you need to name the file and choose the correct folder on your media drive to save it to. You want to save this file in a dedicated “imported audio files” folder in your project’s Scratch Disk folder; after all, it is a media file. Choose your Scratch Disk folder (if you are using separate video and audio volumes with uncompressed cards, you will want to send this to the audio Scratch Disk location). Name the file, including “48” in the name to identify that its sample rate has been corrected for use in FCP and click Save. Once that process is complete, all that remains is importing the correct audio files into your project. Start up FCP, go to File > Import, then navigate to the audio file you just saved into your Scratch Disk folder. If you did all your QuickTime Pro exports to a dedicated “audio imports” folder, you can choose File > Import > Folder, rather than File > Import > File, and get all the files in the folder at once. Beyond this you can actually grab the audio files from your Scratch Disk folder and drag and drop them directly into your project tab (see Figure 4-8).
Importing Photoshop Graphics Files Graphics files created in Photoshop are easy to integrate into your FCP project. Why settle for the limitations of FCP’s built-in Title Generator, when you can come up with well-designed graphics files that incorporate image content as well as stylistic text? Best of all, it’s easy to get these into your project. As with audio files, there are a couple of important steps in the import process that must be taken into account. With image files from Photoshop, the two issues are: square vs. non-square pixels and accessing Photoshop Layer effects in FCP. Failure to take these into account will result in distorted images and/or missing features on completion of the import process. Square vs. Non-Square Pixels The first issue, that of square vs. non-square pixels, calls for a little explanation about the way in which different systems display images. A digital image is broken down into individual dots of image detail called pixels, short for picture elements. It is an atomic model in which the pixel is the smallest indivisible section of an image. We measure all digital images
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Figure 4-8 Final Cut Pro supports “drag and drop” import functionality of supported media files into the Browser, Viewer, Canvas, or Timeline.
using pixels (with the exception of vector-based images, which are addressed in the section that follows), whether that image is a still digital video frame or a scanned image. If computer and digital video pixels were both square, this would make things very simple. All computer-driven display systems use square pixels to interpret digital imagery. Most computer applications, like Photoshop, also use square pixels. Video that is to be viewed only on computer screens, such as Web and CD-ROM multimedia codecs, uses square pixels as well. But the problem is that most professional digital video editing systems, including FCP, use video codecs that require images to be processed using rectangular pixels (taller than wide), which are commonly referred to as ‘non-square pixels’. If your images are not prepared in advance to deal with the difference in the shape of the pixels, the images will be stretched vertically and appear tall and thin (see Figure 4-9). The square pixels of the image that was created in a square pixel graphics application such as Photoshop are interpreted in the non-square pixel shape of the codec FCP is using, be it DV from Firewire or the D1 designation for pixel shapes in most standard definition capture cards. There is a way around this problem. Create your images in your square pixel graphics application using a squeezed frame size that FCP will stretch back to the proper pixel shape
Figure 4-9 Images that are not correctly prepared in advance using non-square pixels will be stretched vertically upon import and appear tall and thin.
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for mixing with non-square pixel video. The process involves prefiguring the dimensions of the video frame in the graphics application slightly larger than it would normally be. Then, right before importing into FCP, you squeeze the image down in the equal and opposite direction that you know it will be stretched when the square pixels get interpreted as non-square. When you import to FCP, the squeezed image will automatically be stretched back out as the square pixels are converted into non-square pixel shapes. No detail or data is lost or gained. The pixels are just shaped a little differently. This process will be covered later in the exercise. Getting Photoshop Layer Effects into FCP Intact The other thing to understand about importing images is the way that FCP deals with hotoshop layers. Photoshop files can be flattened single-layer files or stacked multilayer files. Each layer of a Photoshop multilayer file can be viewed as an individual still image, but they are composited together, one on top of the next, so that you see them as a composite image. This just means that you see the multiple layers of the file from the top down as if it were one image. Anything on the upper layers covers whatever is beneath on the lower layers. FCP integrates with Photoshop in a special way. It accepts single-layer flattened hotoshop files as you would expect, simply translating the still image into video frames. But it can also import multilayer Photoshop images with the individual layers still separate, so that each layer is regarded as an individual still image, including transparent backgrounds. When a layered Photoshop file is imported into FCP, it comes in as a sequence with each layer of the Photoshop image acting as an individual clip in the sequence stacked one above the other, each in their own video layer (see Figure 4-10). The problem is that many of the really excellent effects that can be applied to image layers in Photoshop cannot be directly accessed when a multilayer file is imported to FCP. Because many of these effects are Photoshop’s proprietary vector-based effects, they are lost when the image is directly imported into FCP, which cannot understand them. On the other hand, if you convert the multiple layers to bitmapped layers while still in Photoshop, the layer effects cease to be vector-based and become a part of a rasterized bitmap, or raw pixel data. This means that they will still be present when you import the image into FCP. The issue for our two applications here is that Photoshop performs some of its image editing effects using vector-based calculation and display methods. At present, video applications, with only a couple of fairly limited exceptions, use a bitmap format, in which every space in the image contains a colored pixel. A video frame is simply a still image composed of a certain number of pixels. The series of these still frames creates video, and those still images are all bitmaps. Photoshop has many applications and tools that were not created strictly to address creating images for video applications. For this reason, some of the more interesting visual effects, like Drop Shadow or Bevel and Emboss, that you can create with text and image are vector-based and unavailable for direct use in FCP.
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Figure 4-10 Final Cut Pro accepts both single-layer flattened and multilayer Photoshop files. Imported multilayered Photoshop files open up as a sequence, each layer acting as an individual sequence clip with their own video layer.
This does not mean that we have no way of taking advantage of such vector-based effects. It just means that we have to, at some point, convert the vector-based effects into a bitmapped image data. This is a process called “bitmapping” or “rasterizing.” When you bitmap a layer that has vector effects, you take all the geometric vector shape information and turn it into raw pixel bitmaps that describe the shape that the original vector-based effects looked like. The Process In Photoshop, create a new image that has a resolution of 72 pixels per inch (the native resolution for video). For DV NTSC use 720 × 534 for the frame size. For D1 NTSC capture cards, use 720 × 540. For PAL DV and D1, use 768 × 576. Since we will want to be able to use this text image over a video clip as a superimposed element, select Transparent for Background. Photoshop will record transparency information in the empty areas of the image. The Title-Safe Zone and Overscan
Before creating text in the image, we need to make sure we stay within what is called the Title-Safe Zone (see Figure 4-11). The Title-Safe zone is a rectangle slightly smaller than the actual frame size of the video standard you are using. All video monitors and television have a frame running around the front edge of the screen, cropping what the cathode ray tube displays into a nice, tidy 4:3 rectangle. Unfortunately, this crop is not only slightly different
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Figure 4-11
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The Title-Safe Zone.
on all video monitors and TVs, it is also a good deal smaller than what the television tube is actually capable of displaying. The area that is cropped from display is called the overscan. When you are working in Photoshop, you have to imagine where this title-safe area ectangle should be and get your text inside of it. There is no law about the size of the Title-Safe zone any more than there is a law about the individual cropping of the television screens by television manufacturers. A safe bet is to use 10 percent of the screen height and width to determine the distance in pixels from each side. For instance, with DV NTSC this would be a centered rectangle in the Photoshop image of 576 pixels wide and 384 pixels high. You can easily set up guides in the Photoshop image window to keep you in the safe area. Once you have the Title-Safe zone set up, select the Text tool. Click near the center of the image and type in the word “Text.” If the text is very small, you can select it and increase the font size on the Character palette. You could also switch to the selection tool and then choose Edit > Transform > Scale. Until we commit the step of rasterizing, any eshaping or resizing of the text will not harm its quality. When you are happy with the size of the text, move on to the next step. Select the text layer in the Layer palette, go to Layer > Layer Style > Bevel and Emboss (see Figure 4-12). Tweak the settings to your amusement and hit the OK button. This will add a nice 3D rounded edge and some shading to give the text a little depth.
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Figure 4-12
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The Bevel and Emboss dialog box in Adobe Photoshop.
Now is the time to save a copy of the image. The next two steps will perform actions that make it impossible to change content like the spelling of words or the size of the text. If you need to go back in and change something, you can always open the file you have saved at this point, make the change, and perform the following steps to get it ready. That’s a lot faster than starting from scratch everytime you need to make a little change. Simply save the file as a Photoshop document and include some indicator in the name that it is a production image, not the image you are going to actually use in FCP. Prepping the Image for FCP
We now have some nice looking text to take into FCP. But there are two steps left that are necessary if we want the image to look this good once it gets there. First we have to resize it to account for the non-square pixel issue we described. Then we have to convert the vector-based effects to rasterized bitmap so that we get the Bevel and Emboss effect on import. Although it is not necessary to complete these steps in the following order, you’ll want to to maintain the highest quality, since the resizing might degrade the image if committed after rasterizing. First, go to Image > Image Size (see Figure 4-13). Immediately uncheck Constrain Proportions, since we need to squeeze the image vertically and not horizontally. Leave 720 for
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Figure 4-13 Select the appropriate height in pixels for your project to resize properly for Final Cut Pro.
the width. For DV NTSC projects, type in 480 for the height. For D1 NTSC, use 486. For DV and D1 PAL projects, use 546 for the height. Hit OK. The Image should resize itself, gently squishing the text slightly out of shape. It is now ready to be interpreted by FCP as a correctly ratioed non-square pixel image. Unfortunately, the Bevel and Emboss shading effects, being vector-based layer effects, will disappear if we import this Photoshop file as it is into FCP. The easiest way to change ector-based effects into bitmapped information is to merge two layers into one. When two hotoshop layers are merged, all the separate layer information is bitmapped into the one layer. It becomes a flat group of pixels, rather than a range of vector data. We could do this by going to Layer > Merge Down or Flatten. But there’s a complication. If we flatten this text layer, we will lose the transparency of the areas surrounding our text and be left with a white background. The easiest way to get around this problem is to create an empty layer just beneath the text layer and merge down. That way, the text layer gets bitmapped with an empty layer and the transparency (background) areas stay intact. Go to Layer > New > Layer (see Figure 4-14). Click OK in the Layer dialog box that follows. Go to the Layer palette, grab the text layer, and drag it up above the new empty layer in the palette. Make sure the text layer is selected. Go back to Layer > Merge Visible. When you choose Merge Visible, the text layer will merge with the empty layer directly underneath it, converting the nice shading effects of the text to bitmapped image data.
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Figure 4-14 Create an empty layer just beneath the text layer and Merge Down to preserve transparency in the background area.
Now we need to save the Photoshop image for import. Go to File > Save As. In the Save As dialog box, navigate to the Desktop and select New Folder. Name the folder “Production Graphics folder,” and click Create. Name the file “Text.psd,” making sure that it is followed by the .psd suffix. Click Save. Quit Photoshop and start up FCP. Importing and Using the Photoshop Image
Importing Photoshop files into FCP is simple. You can go through the File menu dropdown process of importing the individual file, but it is much easier to simply pick up the folder your Photoshop files are in and drag it directly into the project tab or individual bin of the Browser (see Figure 4-15). The folder you drop into your project becomes a bin, and FCP automatically imports all the files it contains. With no fuss, FCP instantly recognizes the files and creates icons for them. The actual Photoshop files do not move from the Production Graphics folder; FCP merely creates a link to them from the icons representing them in the project tab. Unlike the audio file we imported and the video clips we captured, still images need not be saved to a special media drive. This is because the image file will not actually come
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Figure 4-15 Grabbing the graphics folder from the desktop and dragging and dropping it into the project tab creates a bin and imports all its contents.
into play when the clip referencing it is played. Instead, imported still image files must be endered to play back correctly. The render files that will be created during the render process will be played back from the Scratch Disk location. Thus, the original graphics file will not be directly accessed during playback. Still, if it helps you to keep your graphics folder in a unique location like your Scratch Disk folder to maintain order and organization, then by all means do it. Just remember not to move the image file’s location after importing it to the project, or you will break the link between the graphics files themselves and the clip in the project. Open the new “Production Graphics” bin in your project tab. Take a look at the icon used for the “Text.psd” Photoshop image file (see Figure 4-16). Instead of your Photoshop image file being imported as a clip, it is imported as a sequence. When FCP encounters a hotoshop image that contains multiple layers, FCP interprets it as a nested sequence, a concept we will discuss later in the book. For now, take a look at what is in this sequence. Double-click the “Text.psd” icon in the project tab; it opens as a sequence in the Timeline/Canvas (see Figure 4-17). You will see that there is one video layer, which contains the text image. If you had created more layers of text in the Photoshop file, each would be on its own video track in this sequence. This is the best part about importing Photoshop multilayer images. Because the Photoshop layers are still discrete, you can manipulate them as individual clips. This sequence can be used just like a clip in another sequence. To see its transparency, you’ll need to superimpose it on a video layer above another clip, which is one of the subjects of the upcoming chapters. As a last note, there are a couple of things to keep in mind to avoid potential problems after importing. Images used in FCP should be RGB only. Black and white and CMYK images can cause problems. Avoid JPEGs, which suffer compression artifacting more acutely. inally, do not import Photoshop files with empty layers, since this almost always results in error messages upon insertion in a sequence.
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Figure 4-16 Instead of your Photoshop image file being imported as a clip, it is imported as a sequence, as indicated by the sequence icon representing the Photoshop file.
Figure 4-17 Imported Photoshop multilayer images open in Final Cut Pro as a sequence in the Timeline/Canvas.
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Organize and Backing Up Your Project’s Imported Media Much was said in the preceding chapter about ways of organizing the various media in your projects, and for good reason. The project tab is an open slate at the beginning of a project, but it quickly gets confusing as the many different forms of media crowd in. Simply employing unique naming conventions is not enough. It is important to use the many tools FCP offers for keeping your project clean. Make sure to establish bins early, separating not only different types of media, such as imported audio and graphics files, but also the different Reel Names and tapes utilized in your projects. A more important issue for any media you import rather than capture is that such media will most likely not have timecode data the way that a clip captured from tape does. Any file that does not carry timecode should be backed up to an archive format, such as CD-R or removable disk (see Figure 4-18). If anything happens to your drives, you can use
Figure 4-18 Files which do not carry timecode data, such as Photoshop files or audio tracks from Audio CDs, should be backed up to an archive format such as CD-R or removable disk.
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Timecode to recapture your video clips. But without timecode, your production graphics and CD audio tracks would have to be prepared all over again from scratch. Most audio files and production graphics files are relatively small in comparison to video files; and since they cannot be recaptured the way that video can, backing up copies is good insurance against accidental loss. This is especially easy in view of the fact that all new Macintosh models ship with CD and DVD burners as the stock CD-ROM drive. A good idea at the end of each work day would be to pop in a CD-ROM and burn a copy of all new or changed graphics, audio tracks, and project files. See Appendix B for specific instructions on using CD burning tools.
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5
Editing: the Business and Pleasure of Final Cut Pro
FCP is a very flexible editing application. It is open-ended enough to allow for many different editing styles. Your own working style will ultimately develop as you get used to the different tools available to you within the interface. Unlike the project setup process, which is very rigid and defined by your video capture hardware and Macintosh configuration, your editing style depends on how you feel most comfortable working and on the type of projects you work on. As we saw earlier, the various windows in FCP are linked together based on the clips and sequences passing through them. We load clips into the Viewer to trim them with In and Out points prior to editing them into a sequence. The Canvas displays what is currently active in the sequence. And the Timeline is the linear window, displaying the order of clips as they are played back in the sequence (see Figure 5-1). But this is only one way to view the usefulness of these windows. The Timeline window is not only useful for arranging the horizontal linear order of clips, but it can also be used to stack many vertical layers of video. We can thus control exactly which layer is seen and how much of each layer is seen. Clips can be loaded into the Viewer window for further manipulation directly from the sequence instead of being loaded from the project tab in the Browser. You can trim or cut the length of a clip directly from where it sits in the sequence rather than trimming it in the Viewer. The Viewer can do more than simply load and manipulate clips from the project tab and the sequence. You can load up whole sequences as if they were individual clips and manipulate them in the Viewer as well. So many options to choose from.
Working in the Viewer Window The Viewer Window Determining the duration of a clip is initially performed by setting In and Out points in the Viewer. Double-click one of your captured clips in the project tab to load it into the Viewer, then glance up to the Viewer transport controls. You will be happy to find that the playback controls of the Viewer utilize the exact same conventions as the Log and Capture window (see Figure 5-2). The Viewer, and all other windows in the FCP interface, use the same keyboard
Figure 5-1 The Canvas window displays what is currently active in the sequence. The Timeline displays the order of clips as they are played back in the sequence.
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Figure 5-2 window.
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The Viewer utilizes the same playback controls as the Log and Capture
navigation conventions (J-K-L for playing and I and O for In and Out points). In addition, the Right and Left Arrow keys advance and retreat a single frame on the Timeline (holding the Shift key down while using the Arrow keys advances or retreats a full second as an option). As with the Log and Capture window, the top left timecode field displays the duration of the clip loaded into the Viewer. The top right-hand field displays the frame the playhead is currently parked on in the clip. Below the Viewer’s video window, you will see that there are no timecode fields for In and Out points, which have been replaced by a few buttons as described next. Match Frame Button The first button on the left is the Match Frame button (keyboard shortcut, F). If a clip loaded into the Viewer window is already being used somewhere in a sequence, the Match Frame button will call up the sequence in the Canvas and Timeline windows and place the sequence playhead on the same frame of the clip in the sequence that the Viewer playhead is parked on in the Viewer window. It is used for quickly finding the exact same frame that is being used elsewhere in a project. It also works in the other direction from the Canvas window. If you park the playhead on a frame in a sequence and hit the Match Frame button in the Canvas window, FCP will load its original master clip into the Viewer. Mark Clip Button The next button, Mark Clip (keyboard shortcut, x), is like a quick reset button for the In and Out points of a clip. Clicking it immediately places In and Out points at the beginning and end of a clip. If you want to quickly clear the In and Out points you have already placed in the clip, or if you know that you want them to encompass the entire clip, click this button. You will see two sideways triangles appear in the clip’s timeline area, defining the duration of the portion of the clip to be used in an edit. Of course these points are totally malleable, and setting them is as temporary as you want it to be. You can grab the points themselves and drag them manually, set them using the In and Out point commands to be described in a moment, or simply Mark Clip them back to the beginning and end limits of the media file associated with the clip. Mark Clip is more useful while editing on the sequence, as we shall see shortly.
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Add Keyframe Button Add Keyframe, the next button (keyboard shortcut, control-k), allows you to manipulate the clip’s physical attributes over time for use in visual effects. These attributes are located in the Motion tab of the Viewer window. Keyframing will be addressed in more detail in Chapter 8 on Compositing and Special Effects. Add Marker Button Add a Marker (keyboard shortcut, m) applies a Marker to the frame on which the Viewer playhead is currently parked. Markers are very useful tools for editors, as we have seen in Chapter 4 on capturing. Although they do not affect playback at all and are visible only in the Viewer, Canvas, or Timeline window, Markers allow you to insert detailed information about a frame or sections of your clip. Do not confuse the Markers with the Mark Clip button. Mark Clip addresses In and Out editing points for the clip, while Markers are just accessory information about the clip that is linked to a frame or range of frames. Look under the View drop-down menu and make sure that Overlays is enabled. The Marker is an overlay element that you will see in the Viewer window, rather than seeing it on the output to Firewire and your NTSC or PAL monitor. Click the Add Marker button to add a Marker (see Figure 5-3). If you do not see a “Marker 1” in the Viewer’s video window, make sure you see a little yellow triangle in the Viewer timeline. If you do, move the playhead around the Marker point in the Viewer playhead timeline until you see ‘Marker 1’ appear in the Viewer window. An even quicker method of getting to a Marker is the keyboard shortcut, Shift-Arrow Up key or Shift-Arrow Down key, which takes you to the previous or next Marker, respectively. When you see the word “Marker 1” in the video window, press the M key again. This brings up the Edit Marker dialog box (see Figure 5-4). The usual method for adding a marker to a frame or group of frames is to hit the M key twice in rapid succession. The first M keystroke creates the Marker, then the second brings up this dialog box for renaming, etc. Once in the Edit Marker dialog box, you can rename the Marker anything you want, give it a duration so that the information you include in the Marker can be viewed on more than one frame, and type a message about the area covered by the Marker. All this information will be displayed in the Viewer window whenever the Viewer playhead is in the marked area of the clip. Best of all, the Marker does not affect your edit at all. It only provides another means of adding information about the clip so that you can be better organized. Adding Markers to clips is especially useful when two or more editors collaborate on a project. Since they may not be working at the same time, it’s often critical to leave notes about specific footage that cannot be missed as the editing process moves forward. Markers, it will be recalled from the last chapter, can also be set in the clip during the Capture process. Those Markers will still exist within the clip after capture, being available to the editor long after the process of logging tapes is completed. This is an excellent way for producers to communicate their desires for a clip’s manipulation to the editor, who may start working on a project long after the producer has become unavailable for questioning.
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Figure 5-3 Add Marker applies a Marker to the frame on which the Viewer playhead is currently parked.
A further benefit of Markers is that they are reflected in the project tab. If your project tab is in List view (Control-click the project tab and select View as List) and your master clips have Markers, you will see a small widget next to the clip (see Figure 5-5). Clicking the widget will reveal all the included Markers. The unique thing about this is that any footage between two Markers (or one Marker and the end of the clip) is treated as a subclip, or a smaller subdivision of the entire clip. Thus, setting Markers while logging offline allows you to trim your long clips into bite-size, usable pieces even before you capture the media! Markers can also be added to selected clips in the sequence itself after the clips have been
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Figure 5-4
The Edit Marker dialog box.
Figure 5-5
Markers are reflected in the project tab in the Browser.
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edited into it. These are the same markers you would get in a clip after using the DV Start/Stop Detect feature described in Chapter 3. In and Out Point Buttons The remaining two buttons are for setting In and Out points. The In and Out points will determine the first and last frame to be used when the clip is edited into the sequence. The idea of master clip and affiliate clip is important here. The clip you capture or import and then load into the Viewer from the project tab is what is referred to as a Master clip. What you select to place between the In and Out points is what you edit into the sequence. Once this marked master clip is dragged from the Viewer to a sequence, it ceases to be a master clip. Instead of the master clip itself moving to the sequence, a new version of the master is created, called an Affiliate. This edited and shortened version of the master clip, is what is edited into the sequence. This affiliate is exactly like the master clip in the Viewer it was created from, with one exception. The new affiliate in the sequence utilizes the In and Out points you applied in the Viewer to determine the beginning and end of the clip in the sequence. Thus, playing a master clip from beginning to end will show all the captured frames regardless of where the In and Out points are (or even the handles). When playing the affiliate in the sequence, FCP will only play what is included between the In and Out points of the newly created affiliate. You still have access to the handles of the affiliate through trimming, but in sequence playback you only see what is between the In and Out points. The use of master and affiliate here is standard usage for describing the way that nonlinear editing systems relate an initially captured clip to subsequently edited versions of that clip. The reason for belaboring the point is to make the reader aware that the clip edited into the sequence is not the same clip as the one in the project tab, although they relate back to the same media file on the media drive (see Figure 5-6). You can create as many affiliates from a master clip as you wish, and indeed you do so each time you drag a master clip from the Viewer into a sequence. Applying changes to the affiliate in the sequence will not affect the original master clip in the project tab! Remember that the capture keyboard conventions apply in the Viewer as well, so use the I and O keys to set the clip’s In and Out points and the J-K-L keys to shuttle around the clip quickly. Hitting an In or Out point clears and replaces the previously selected In or Out point, so you can constantly reset them to your heart’s desire. You really want to avoid having to search out the little buttons on the Viewer and Canvas with the mouse; learn to use the keyboard shortcuts early and often.
Drag and Drop to the Sequence: Insert/Overwrite Once you have set an In and Out point for the clip in the Viewer window, it’s time to edit it into your sequence. There are a couple of ways to do this, and the best way really depends not
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Figure 5-6 A clip edited into the sequence (Affiliate Clip, the lower of the two images in the figure) is not the same clip as the one in the project tab (Master Clip), although both clips relate back to the same media file on the media drive.
only on how you like to edit but what sort of project you are working on. Once you master the two main methods, you’ll be able to judge which is best suited to any particular situation. The first and most basic method is to simply drag the clip from the Viewer video window into the sequence in the Timeline. Click in the video window of the Viewer, and drag the clip down to the sequence without releasing the mouse button. Keep the mouse button pressed as you move it around the sequence, and watch the mouse pointer change direction (down or to the right) as the sequence prepares to receive the clip. Notice as you drag the mouse pointer around the faint gray line in the center of the track, that this is where the arrow changes direction. Below the gray line, the arrow points down, and above the line, the arrow points to the right (see Figure 5-7). As you drag the clip around the sequence, a ghosted image of the clip’s video and audio tracks appears there, showing you which sequence tracks the clip will be dropped into if ou let go. Notice that the ghost clip may also appear to sit outside the visible tracks in the sequence. This is because FCP will allow you to drop a clip in the blank area outside the existing tracks, creating a new track automatically to accommodate it. Continue to hold the ghost clip so that it appears to sit in Video 1 and its audio tracks sit in Audio 1 and 2. Move the mouse pointer up and down the base line of the tracks in the sequence, and pay close attention as the arrow cursor changes direction. This indicates whether the edit you accomplish here will be an Overwrite edit with the arrow pointing down or an Insert edit with the arrow pointing to the right.
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Figure 5-7 As you drop a clip into the Timeline, move the mouse pointer until the arrow pointing downwards indicates an Overwrite edit, while an arrow pointing to the right indicates an Insert edit.
An Insert edit, represented by the “right arrow” mouse pointer, neatly slips your clip into a sequence. If the sequence already contains clips occurring after the position where you are placing your new clip, an Inserting edit will ripple or move all the following clips over to the right to make room for the incoming clip. No frames or clips are removed from the sequence because clips occurring after the edit In point are merely moved further down the Timeline. An Overwrite edit, represented by the “down arrow” mouse pointer, lays the clip down wherever you drop it in the sequence regardless of what is currently sitting on the Timeline. If any clips occupy an area of the sequence where the incoming clip will sit, it overwrites them. The fundamental difference is that Insert editing changes the duration of the sequence (see Figure 5-8). Since the new clip moves everything over to the right and adds its duration to the sequence’s total duration, the result is more footage in the sequence Timeline. Overwrite, on the other hand, keeps the duration of the sequence exactly the same, since it is replacing whatever clip it overwrites with itself. No clips are moved over to compensate, and the duration stays the same unless the overwrite clip extends beyond the clips it is overwriting. Using either the Insert or the Overwrite arrow, drop the clip you dragged from the Viewer onto the first frame at the beginning of the sequence so that there is only one clip in the sequence. If the clip is long and you can’t see all of it, press the keyboard shortcut
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Figure 5-8 An Insert edit is different from an Overwrite edit in that it changes the duration of a sequence based upon the duration of the incoming clip.
hift-Z, for “Fit to Window”, to rescale all the clips to fit everything in the Timeline. Although the time durations of the clips is no different, the scale of clips you are looking at in the Timeline is shorter so you can see more clips at once. If there are no clips present in the sequence, the effect of Insert and Overwrite is exactly the same, since there is no clip to overwrite or insert into. Notice that the clip, once dropped in the sequence, appears in the Canvas. Wherever the playhead is moved in the sequence, the playhead in the Canvas moves there as well. Conversely, when you click and drag the playhead in the Canvas timeline (just below the video preview window, as in the Viewer), the playhead in the sequence moves in concert, mirroring the action in the other window. We say that the Canvas window is a video preview of the sequence in the Timeline window. For this example, we will edit in the same clip already loaded into the Viewer window, although you could load another clip and set In and Out points for it just as easily. Until ou load another clip into the Viewer, the previous clip you loaded will still be sitting there. lay through the clip in the sequence and park the playhead on a frame somewhere halfway through the clip (see Figure 5-9). The position of the playhead in the sequence sets the location, or In point, for the new incoming clip. Return to the Viewer where your previous clip is still loaded. Once again, click and drag the clip from the video window and move it down to the sequence without releasing the mouse button.
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Figure 5-9 Park the playhead somewhere in the clip you have already edited into the sequence. Then perform the same action again, editing the clip in when the arrow points right. The result is an Insert edit, as opposed to an Overwrite edit.
When you bring the ghost clip down to the area where you previously parked the playhead in the first clip, the mouse pointer will snap to the playhead in the sequence. If the clip does not snap to the playhead in the sequence window, hit the N key to enable Snapping, which may have been disabled. The Snapping feature will be more thoroughly described further on in the chapter. Continue to hold the mouse button down, and as you move the mouse pointer around this area, you will see the Insert/Overwrite-down arrows appear. When the arrow is pointing to the right, indicating an Insert edit, let go of the mouse button to perform the edit. You will see that the first clip is split in two and that the second incoming clip is inserted between the first and second half of the initial clip. Hit Command-z (the shortcut for “Undo”) to undo the Insert edit from the last step so that you are once again looking at a single clip on the sequence. You can always quickly
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undo the last action performed by hitting the Command-z shortcut (up to a maximum number of undo steps specified in the User Preferences). Once again, play through the clip in the sequence and park the playhead on a frame somewhere halfway through the clip. Return to the Viewer where the previous clip is still loaded. Click and drag the clip from the video window and move it down to the sequence without releasing the mouse button. When you bring the ghost clip down, drag it around until it snaps to the playhead in the sequence. Move the mouse pointer around until the arrow is pointing directly down, let go to perform an Overwrite edit. When you do, the clip you brought in overwrites the clip(s) that were there previously.
Drag and Drop to the Canvas: Insert/Overwrite with a Transition There is another way to perform Insert and Overwrite edits that includes the option of adding another important element, the transition. Instead of dragging the clip from the Viewer directly to the sequence, we will use the Canvas window. As we perform the edit using the Canvas, we will also address the second important issue in the process of editing: the transition. Transition editing allows for a different sort of cut between clips. A transition is a juncture between two clips. But unlike the previous overwrite or insert edit, the transition lets us see a portion of both the outgoing and the incoming clip simultaneously. This can be a common Dissolve, a Wipe, an Iris, a Page Peel, or any other sort of edit between two clips where both are in view for the duration of the transition. Here we encounter the most important and most commonly confused component of the transition: the handle. An overlap is used between the two clips to allow us to see the two clips simultaneously (see Figure 5-10). This required overlap is the handle, or the extra unused footage that lies beyond the In and Out points of the clips we edited into the sequence. Each clip needs handles in order to create a transition. If you attempt the following exercise and you receive “Insufficient Content for Edit”, you do not have enough handle frames for the length of the transition you are creating between the two clips. Once again, we will take advantage of FCP’s drag-and-drop technique to create this transition. On the sequence, move the playhead a little further down to an area where there are presently no clips. Now go back to the Viewer where your clip is still loaded. This time, create new In and Out points, making sure that there are at least 30 frames before the In point. Likewise, make sure that there are at least 30 frames after the Out point. These 30 frame handles on either side of the In and Out points will provide plenty of overlap frames for our transition. Click the clip in the Viewer video window and drag it into the Canvas without releasing the mouse button. As you hold it over the Canvas, you will see that overlay windows appear offering the choice of Insert, Overwrite, Replace, Fit to Fill, and Superimpose. In addition, the Insert and Overwrite areas will have an optional extra window for including a transition (see Figure 5-11).
Figure 5-10 In order to create a transition, each clip needs handles, or the extra unused footage that lies beyond the In and Out points of the two clips at an edit point. The handles can be seen in the Viewer as the darker regions on either side of the In and Out points.
Figure 5-11 The Edit Overlay in the Canvas window offers seven different ways to edit a clip into the Timeline, including two with transitions.
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Because there is currently no video clip in the sequence, we could choose either Insert or Overwrite with equal results. You will perform the exact same edit as you did when dragging directly to the sequence earlier. This time, however, instead of determining the frame to edit into the sequence by dragging the clip, you will edit to the place in the sequence where the playhead is currently parked. When using the Canvas window to add clips to the sequence, the position of the playhead in the Timeline will determine the In point, which gives the location that the new clip will be placed. Hold the clip over either Insert or Overwrite (do not choose the transition option just et), and you will see the choice highlighted. Release the mouse button, and you will see the clip appear on the sequence exactly where the playhead is parked (you will probably have to Shift-Z again to see everything). To add a second clip with a transition, first make sure that the playhead is parked at the end of the clip you just inserted into the sequence. When you edit a clip into a sequence, the playhead immediately moves to the last frame of the edited-in clip, since it assumes your next edit will follow that clip. If the playhead has been moved, drag it back to the end of the clip you just added to the sequence, making sure that it is on, and not following, the last frame of the clip. Pick a new clip from your project tab that looks substantially different from the clip ou have just edited into the sequence. Double-click the new clip in the project tab to load it into the Viewer window. Once again, set In and Out points, making sure that you leave at least 30 frames on either side of the In point and the Out point to provide adequate overlap space for the transition. Pick up the clip in the Viewer and drag it into the Canvas, this time releasing it as it hovers over the Overwrite with Transition area (see Figure 5-12). nstantly, the clip appears on the sequence following the first clip, but this time there is a small gray bar connecting the two clips. The small gray bar between the two clips is the transition. It is an area in which footage from both clips is present, although it is actually composed of footage that exists beyond the previously established In or Out points of the clips. The benefit of adding frame handles in the capture process of Chapter 3 becomes more obvious now that footage beyond our In and Out points becomes valuable as transition overlap footage.
A Few Words About Realtime and Rendering Effects When we introduce transitions, we encounter the first need for rendering, whether through Realtime or manual. Depending on your system setup and its processor power, you will have a few different viewing experiences here. You may see a red, green, olive, orange, or ellow bar along the top of the Timeline window above the affected clips (see Figure 5-13). These different colored bars represent varying degrees of Realtime performance with FCP 4. The first type of RT is, of course, no RT. For instance, if you are using a 350 MHz Macintosh G4 you will likely see a red line above the transition, because that machine, as
Figure 5-12 This time drag the clip from the Viewer to the Canvas and drop it on the Overwrite with Transition. The small gray bar that appears between the two clips is the transition.
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Different colored bars represent varying degrees of Realtime performance
well as Powerbooks below the 667 MHz processor, do not support RT effects. This will be epresented by the red bar, meaning that a render is required. The second type of RT effects is called Desktop Preview. This is the least processorintensive RT setting. This means that when editing using only the computer display (rather than sending video out to Firewire or a capture card), you will be able to apply effects before FCP requires you to render them for playback. All Macintoshes that have RT capability can
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Figure 5-14
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The RT drop-down menu in the Timeline defines different quality levels.
deliver RT in the Desktop Preview mode. The problem, of course, is that this preview is far from accurate, since colors and luma values are very different between computer and video monitors. Desktop Previews are only useful for rough previews. To toggle between Desktop Preview and video output to Firewire or capture card, go to View > External Video > and set to either Off or All Frames (keyboard shortcut, Command-F12). The next type of RT effects are quality levels defined in the Timeline window. Look to the upper left corner of the sequence for an RT drop-down menu (see Figure 5-14). Clicking it will reveal several different settings. We will address Safe and Unlimited RT in a moment, but take a look at the next three choices: High, Medium, and Low. The first level of RT effects is Low. Unlike Desktop Preview, Low quality actually can be used to send a preview of the effects you’ve applied out to Firewire or capture card. Because this draws a lot of processor power, you will get fewer effects out to video than you will in Desktop Preview. The bonus, of course, is that the fewer effects will at least be in the right YUV color and luma space. That can be very important. Even if you aren’t sending your preview out to video, using Low for RT still increases the number of RT effects you can apply before you reach FCP’s processor limit. The problem with Low is that Low quality isn’t just a setting name, it’s a description. Low quality is draft in the truest sense of the word, and many editors are going to find Desktop Preview more useful all-around. The second level of RT effects is Medium. Like Low, Medium can send previews out to video. And as you would expect, the quality over Low is much improved, making even
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some detailed color correction possible. If you will be working with RT effects previewed out to video, this is very likely the mode most G4 owners will use. Even the fastest dual G4s will be limited to at most one or two effects in the High setting before a render is equired. Medium will allow much preview work to be done. Unfortunately, the Medium setting is still a little messy for precision work, although it’s great for judging timing for things just like the transitions we are doing here. As stated in the last paragraph, the High setting, and third level of RT, is likely to be too much for most G4s. Although the G5s promise to deliver vastly improved RT performance, the G4s tend to be limited to the Medium setting. If you are using one of the many capture cards compatible with FCP, check the card’s documentation for details on how it handles RT in FCP 4. Some capture cards, such as the Blackmagic Decklink series, can use the Macintosh processor and the native Apple QuickTime uncompressed codecs for more flexibility in RT processing, as well as the built-in effects capabilities of the capture card itself (see Figure 5-15). Each individual card manufacturer will have specific settings and recommendations for your particular usage. Now, if you have no RT capabilities, or if your RT menu is set for too high a quality, ou will see a red bar above the transition. When you try to play this back, you will notice that when the playhead crosses the transition, the footage disappears and the word Unrendered appears (see Figure 5-16). The red bar indicates that with the current hardware and RT setting, manual rendering is required.
Figure 5-15 Some capture cards, such as the Blackmagic Decklink series, can use the Macintosh processor and the native Apple QuickTime uncompressed codecs for more flexibility in RT processing, as well as the built-in effects capabilities of the capture card itself.
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Figure 5-16
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An Unrendered warning as it appears in the Canvas window.
Rendering the transition is simple. Make sure the Timeline window is active, then go to Sequence > Render All > Both (keyboard shortcut, Option-r). There are other choices available for rendering in this drop-down menu. What choices are available depends on what clips, if any, are selected on the sequence. If an individual clip or transition is selected, you can choose Render Selection > Both (keyboard shortcut, Command-r) to avoid rendering all clips or transitions you may not be presently concerned with. If no clips or transitions are selected, then Render Selection will render all clips in the sequence. You can also further refine by toggling what is included in the Render All or Render Selection, based on the type of RT the clip(s) are.
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Regular RT clips show up in the sequence as a bright green bar, meaning their RT quality is based on the setting in the RT menu. A darker olive green bar means that these clips do not have to be rendered at all; the RT quality is exactly the same as the quality if it were endered (usually this is only available when you have a video card with exceptional RT enhancements, such as the Pinnacle Cinewave solution). However, some filters, like the Color Corrector 3 Way, are built to deliver ‘olive green’ performance even on modest G4s. Another rendering option is orange, which stands for use of “unlimited RT” effects. Remember the Safe and Unlimited settings in the RT drop-down menu. Safe means that FCP will judge how many effects your machine is capable of delivering without dropping frames, based on things like the number and speed of your processors, the amount of RAM, etc. When you reach this limit, FCP will show a red line in the sequence. If you chose Unlimited in that menu, FCP would simply regard your machine as having unlimited processor speeds and other system resources that it doesn’t really have (see Figure 5-17). This means that every effect you apply will register as an RT effect. That’s pretty powerful. Unfortunately, you don’t really have all those system resources, and ou will very likely drop frames immediately. Unlimited can be very useful, especially on an older Mac that has no other RT capabiliity. In some cases, you might only drop a couple of frames per second, something most folks will never be able to see. But as you start piling on the effects, your frame rates will go from frames per second to seconds per frame. Unlimited must be used judiciously.
Figure 5-17 Unlimited can be very useful, especially on an older Mac that has no other RT capability.
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Once you have started a render, a progress bar will appear showing you the time remaining. After the render is complete, the red bar will be replaced by a barely perceptible light gray bar, indicating that the material has been rendered. Go back to the sequence and play through the transition. You will now see the dissolve properly played back out to video. Refining the Transition Of course you are not limited to the way this Cross Dissolve performs. You are looking at the default settings. You can easily change the parameters of the transition itself, being limited only by the handles available past the In or Out points of either the outgoing or the incoming clip. To change the parameters of the transition, go to the sequence and double-click on the gray transition itself. Make sure that you click on the gray transition and not the edit point between the two clips (if a Trim Edit double video window appears, close it and try again; you may need to change the scale of the Timeline to more accurately click on the transition). When you successfully double-click on the transition, it will load up in the Viewer as if it were a clip with a single tab containing transition parameters (see Figure 5-18). You can adjust how long the transition lasts by entering a new value in the duration field at the upper left. You can change when the transition begins, with respect to the edit point, by selecting one of the three “on Edit” buttons in the center of the window. You can grab the transition itself in the transition editor window and drag it to reposition the edit point. You will also see that the Canvas window shows you two windows, as you adjust where the transition occurs, that display where the beginning and end frames of the transitions are relative to your change. You will see that as you adjust the parameters in the Viewer, the transition in the sequence is updated. These are only a couple of the many parameters you can change in any given transition and that depend on the type of transition you have created. You can also change the transition type itself. With the Viewer active (or the Timeline window active and the transition selected), go to Effects > Video Transitions > 3D Simulation > Cross Zoom (see Figure 5-19). The transition changes to Cross Zoom and the Viewer tab lists the parameters for that particular transistion. Yet another way to change the transition is to drag and drop directly from the Effects tab in the Browser. Click on the Browser window, then click on the Effects tab. Look for the Video Transitions bin. Double-click that bin, then look for the Dissolve bin and open it. Finally, in the Dissolve bin, pick up the Dip to Color Dissolve and drag and drop it directly onto the edit point where the previous transition is sitting. The transition converts to Dip to Color Dissolve, and the Viewer instantly updates to reflect this. Finally, you can change the default transition that is used when you Overwrite or Insert with Transition from the Canvas (or use the keyboard shortcuts, Shift-F9 and Shift-F10, respectively). In the Effects tab, select the transition you want for the default, then go Effects > Set Default (see Figure 5-20). You will be able to apply this default transition to any edit point (that has enough handle length), not only through the Canvas and
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Figure 5-18 Double-clicking on the gray transition itself will open the transition into the Viewer to make further adjustments.
Effects tab drag-and-drop methods, but also simply using the keyboard shortcut, Command-T for apply Transition. The super quick workflow is to get your playhead in the neighborhood of the edit point you want to transition, then hit Shift-E or Option-E for Next or Previous Edit, then hit Command-T to apply the default transition. The ‘Oroborous’ Transition Sequence Trick You can use all these tools to do in a little less than a minute what would take much longer to do manually. This ‘oroborous’ (or snake eating its tail) transition trick was concocted by FCP editors as a way of applying one transition type to many clips at once in a sequence. Say, for instance, you have a series of still images and you want to dissolve from one to the next. Once you have them edited and trimmed onto the sequence,
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Figure 5-19 Transitions are also available from the Effects drop-down menu and the Effects tab in the Browser.
there’s a better way to apply your transitions than going to each edit point and adding a new one. Edit a series of several clips into the sequence, making sure that they all have enough handles to support the default transition you have set. Once the clips are edited in, move the sequence playhead to the beginning of the series of clips. Select all the clips, and pick up and drag them to the Canvas. When the Overlay appears, drop the clips onto the Overwrite with Transition box (see Figure 5-21). Instantly, the sequence updates to show that the clips have overwitten themselves, this time with transitions in the breech between each clip. If you don’t like the transition you’ve chosen, pick a new one for the default and run it through again. If you want to change just a few transition types, use Shift-E and Option-E to scoot around to the edit points you want, doubleclick to load into the Viewer, and then change them on the fly. This is but one example of how you can make FCP’s tools work for you in ways that the manual doesn’t even hint at! Creating Customized Transition Favorites Let’s say that in your day-to-day editing, you use extremely long Cross Dissolves and extremely short Dip to Color Dissolves that use White instead of Black (to create a ‘flash frame’ open-shutter-type effect). Instead of setting the parameters each time you use that transition, you can create and name a Favorite that uses those settings. In the sequence, double-click one of the Cross Dissolve transitions so that it loads into the Viewer window. In the timecode field to the upper left of the window, change the value from 00:00:01:00 (1 second or 29.97 frames for NTSC and 25 for PAL) to 00:00:03:00.
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Figure 5-20 You can change the default transition that is used for Overwrite or Insert with Transition with a toggle in the Effects pull-down menu or by control-clicking on the selected transition.
Figure 5-21 It is possible to edit a sequence of clips into the Edit Overlay in the Canvas window and apply a transition between each clip.
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The transition will automatically grow both in the Viewer and in the sequence (hopefully you have enough handles for this transition!). Now that the transition in the sequence has a new customized parameter that differs from the one in the Video Transitions bin, go to the top right corner of the Viewer where the transition is loaded, and grab the hand icon and drag it to the Favorites bin in the Effects tab (or use the keyboard shortcut, and Option-f ) (see Figure 5-22). The transition appears in the Favorites bin. Quickly, before you forget, single-click the transition name and change “Cross Dissolve” to “Cross-3:00” so that you know this Cross Dissolve lasts 3 seconds. In the sequence, use Shift-E to move the playhead up to the next transition. Again, double-click to load the present transition into the Viewer. This time, go Effects > Video Transition > Dissolve > Dip to Color Dissolve. When it is applied, make a couple of changes. First, set the duration to 00:00:00:07 or 7 frames. Then, change the color in the color box at the bottom to White. Play back the subsequent transition and tweak it as needed until you have a pretty good flash frame effect. Now, once again, hit Option-f to
Figure 5-22 The Favorites bin in the Effects tab is where you place customized transitions that see repeated use.
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Figure 5-23 Using the Keyboard Layout tool, you can set up to 9 transition favorites and map them to keys of your choice.
Make Favorite. Quickly, look into the Favorite bin and rename the “Dip to Color” there to “Flash Frame-7.” So, now you have two Favorites. But how do you apply them? The long method would be to get the playhead on the edit point and go to the Effects drop-down menu, choose the Favorites sub-menu, and then choose the transition. But that’s way too hard on your wrists. imply move your playhead to the edit point and hit the keyboard shortcut, Control-Shift-1. This applies the first Favorite in the bin. To get at the subsequent Favorites, use the Control-Shift-q for the second, Control-Shift-a for the third, and Control-Shift-z for the fourth. Using the Keyboard Layout tool, you can actually set up to 9 transition favorites (see Figure 5-23), as well as add them to the button panel.
Trimming Those Edits Once you have clips edited into the sequence, you’re going to want to trim them. Setting In and Out points in the Viewer before editing into a sequence is all fine and good, but you can’t judge how cuts are going to work until you see them cutting from one to another in a sequence. At this point, you will want to trim them. There are a few ways of trimming clips on the Timeline. These include directly grabbing the edge of the clip and moving its In or Out point, using the dedicated Trim Edit window, or using certain dedicated tools that live on the Toolbar. These different methods offer differing conveniences. One is less precise but easily accessible, one is more precise but must be accessed in a separate window, and another is a unique mixture of both. Mastery of the various Trim functions will turn your FCP station from a nice editing package into a real professional editor. It will give you control over every aspect of the
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sequence and allow you the ability to make quick changes that dramatically alter the nature of your production without having to rebuild entire edited sequences from scratch. Trim is the secret weapon of all good editors and is an essential tool to grasp. The Easiest Trimming Technique The simplest trim function you can perform involves trimming the In or Out point of a clip directly on the edges of the clip itself in the sequence (see Figure 5-24). This trim is so basic it does not require more than one clip. You are simply changing the In or Out point for the clip in the sequence. Start with a fresh, clean sequence by selecting and deleting all the clips (Command-a, then Delete). Overwrite edit a clip onto the sequence. Move the mouse pointer near either the beginning or end of the clip until you see it change from the generic Selection arrow to two vertical lines with an arrow pointing left and right. When the mouse pointer is shaped like this, it has assumed a trim function.
Figure 5-24 Trimming a clip directly in the Timeline involves selecting either the In or Out point of a clip and dragging left or right based upon trim handle length.
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Click the end of the clip and drag in either direction. You will see that the length of the clip adjusts following this tool. When you let go of the mouse button, the new In or Out point for the clip will stick and you will have changed the duration of the clip. Also notice that as you adjust the trim, a small text box appears next to the clip indicating the number of frames you have added to or subtracted from the clip in the trim operation, and the new total length of the clip measured in duration. In addition, the Canvas window will change as you trim the clip, showing the current last frame as it changes. Click the clip edge again and perform the same drag motion, dragging as far to the left or the right as the tool will allow. At some point, you will reach the limit of the actual media file that the clip refers back to. Obviously, you cannot extend a clip beyond the limits of the media file that the clip refers to, so this is the media limit of the trim for the clip. Whenever you see “Media Limit”, you know you have reached that frame (see Figure 5-25). Although easy to grasp, this tool can be very limiting for a couple of reasons. When ou trim a clip, you are usually doing so to refine an edit point, something that you want to approach with precision because it may require removal or addition of only a single frame. Unfortunately, this direct trimming action can be very unwieldy for precise editing. Much of the time, you will be looking at your Timeline scaled out so that you can see several seconds or even minutes at a time. In such situations, trimming a single frame using the direct method is practically impossible, like using your entire fist to dial a number on a touch-tone telephone. Although it can be done, the edit may take several hair-raising and frustrating moments, during which all your creative juices leak away. Another problem with using the direct trimming tool is that you can trim only one end of one clip at a time. This may not seem limiting at first glance. But what if you have two clips abutted as a straight cut in a sequence and you want to take one frame away from the first and add one frame to the second? Using the direct trim method described above would
Figure 5-25
“Media Limit” reached while trimming a clip directly in the Timeline.
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require clicking on both clips, probably more than one time. And if you weren’t sure that’s what you wanted, you’d have to go back through the same motions to change it back. To perform more intricate trims involving both sides of the edit point and all the special, more advanced Trim tools available in FCP, we must move onto the next chapter and explore Advanced Trimming Techniques.
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Advanced Editing Tools
More Trimming Precision: the Trim Edit Window When the trimming gets tough, good editors head to the more advanced trimming tools that separate FCP from the other inexpensive editing applications on the market today. The first such tool is called the Trim Edit window, and it is a dedicated window for allowing extreme precision in selecting the exact point at which two adjoining clips meet each other (see Figure 6-1). Using the dedicated Trim Edit window, you will be able to quickly add or remove frames from the Out point of the first clip and the In point of the second clip. You will also be able to easily preview the trimmed edit from inside the window so that you can adjust it again before committing to it. And best of all, you can choose to adjust the first, the second, or both clips simultaneously. It is very flexible.
Figure 6-1 The Trim Edit window allows for extreme precision in selecting the exact point at which two adjoining clips meet.
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Calling Up the Trim Edit Window To use the Trim Edit window effectively, you need to have two abutting clips. Clear off the sequence of clips using Select All and Delete so that you start with a fresh sequence. Perform two edits so that you have two clips with generous handles abutting on the sequence in a straight cut with no transition. Go to the sequence and double-click the edit point between the two clips. Doing so will immediately open a large double video window called the Trim Edit window. In similar fashion to the Log and Capture window, there are two sizes for the Trim Edit window. If it appears too large, you can adjust this by making the Canvas window 50% or smaller respectively, since its size is determined by the size of the Canvas window. The two video windows of the Trim Edit window each correspond to one of the video clips: the left window is for the first or outgoing clip and the right window is for the second or incoming clip. Inside the Trim Edit window are all the tools you need to prepare a frame-specific edit between any two or more adjoining clips. Some of the navigation tools will appear familiar, but make no mistake—this window functions according to its own rules. What you do here updates the sequence it was opened from, as one would expect. Until you are familiar with the functioning of the Trim Edit window, make sure to keep the Timeline window in view so that you can monitor the effect the Trim Edit window has on the sequence it originated from. On the top left-hand corner of each video window in the the Trim Edit window, you will find the familiar clip duration fields. These give the present duration of their respective clips, based on the current In and Out points of the clips in the sequence. The duration will change as you trim the clips. The Track Drop-Down Bar In the center of the top of the window is a Track drop-down bar that lets you select which video or audio tracks you are basing your trim adjustments on. You can actually apply the same trim action to more than one track at the same time, which can be a big help in keeping two or more clips on different video tracks equal in duration or alignment (see Figure 6-2). There are many reasons for trimming multiple edit points at once. Chances are that ou will encounter situations in which you need to extend or retract the edit points for more than one clip to keep a group of clips aligned with each other. By Command-clicking the additional edit points between two abutting clips on different video tracks in the sequence, those edit points are added to the choices in the Track drop-down bar at the top of the Trim Edit window. The only two restrictions on this activity are that there can be only one edit point selected per video or audio track (you can only trim one edit point per video track at a time), and that the trim applied in the Trim Edit window is applied equally to all selected edit points, regardless of which edit point is selected in the Track drop-down bar. This lets you base the trim effect of many different edit points across all the video and audio tracks on how you trim one critical edit point in any one of the video or audio tracks.
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Figure 6-2 Trimming multiple edit points on separate tracks using the Trim Window is possible in Final Cut Pro using the Track dropdown bar.
Leave the abutting video clips in the V1 track. Next, edit in a new clip from the Viewer window; but this time, drag it from the Viewer and drop it into the sequence in the space above the V1 track so that it creates a new V2 track. As soon as you move the playhead in the Sequence or Canvas window from the presently selected edit point, it closes, since the Trim Edit window is only open during the current trim operation. Make sure that the new clip’s edge is not vertically lined up with the edit point of the two clips you have abutted on the V1 track. Double-click an edge of the new clip in the V2 track, then Command-single-click the original edit point division between the other two clips in V1. You will see that each edit point becomes brown as it is selected. Go to the Trim Edit window and click on the Track drop-down bar at the top and center of the Trim Edit window (see Figure 6-3). You will see that you now have an option between using the V2, V1, or any of the accompanying audio tracks as the basis for the trim. Any trimming that takes place will be applied to all the clips that are selected. And since any trim is applied to all these edit points, this also means that any clip with media limits will shorten the amount of trimming that can be applied to any of the clips. If you had more tracks and you wanted to add additional edit points to the group already selected and present in the Track drop-down bar, just Command-click in the sequence to add them to the selection. You will also notice that as you switch between the choices in the Track drop-down bar, the timecode value just below it changes and the playhead moves from edit point to edit point in the sequence. This center value always reflects the sequence frame number that the edit point currently selected in the Track drop-down bar is positioned on (see Figure 6-4). As you trim the edits, this number will likely change as you move the In and Out points back and forth. Make sure that the Track drop-down bar is set on V1, so that there is both an outgoing (left) clip and an incoming (right) clip. Look directly below the two video windows in the Trim Edit window to find a little timeline track containing a couple of items. The playhead of the track is a little vertical line topped with a yellow triangle. Accompanying this in the
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Figure 6-3 After Command-single-clicking additional edit points in other tracks, the Track drop-down menu will show the new edit points and allow you to base your trims from these choices.
Figure 6-4 The timecode located below the Track drop-down bar represents the actual sequence frame number of the edit point currently selected in the Track drop-down bar.
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Figure 6-5 In the Trim Edit window timeline, you can scan through the outgoing or incoming clips to search for the optimal new edit frame for each.
track will be an Out point marker on the clip in the left outgoing window, and an In point marker on the right incoming window. Move the playhead around in this little timeline and you will see that it is previewing the media available for use by the clip, giving you the opportunity to quickly scan for the optimal new edit point. Make sure that as you move the playhead around, the mouse pointer is shaped like an arrow; otherwise, you are probably adjusting the trim. Do not touch the In or Out points just yet. Use Command-Z or undo to quickly negate an accidental trim action (see Figure 6-5). The range of frames you can preview for the new edit point is equal to the limits of the media file associated with the clip. The lighter area of the little timeline is the range of frames that are already in the clip in the sequence. The darker area is the range of frames that exist in the master clip but are not yet included in the clip in the sequence. Navigating the Clips in the Trim Edit Window Underneath this track bar are the familiar tools for navigating around a clip. There is a Jog and a Shuttle for moving around. Predictably enough, there is J-K-L support for each separate window. There is also a Play button and an Advance and Retreat one frame button. You will also find a checkbox labelled “Dynamic Trim.” Leave this unchecked for the moment. Beneath each of the video windows is an Out Shift or an In Shift button for the outgoing or incoming video windows, respectively. This button will move the Out or In point to where the playhead is parked in the Trim Edit’s little timeline. It is accompanied by a timecode value that displays how many frames the new Out or In point is from the original edit point position when the Trim Edit window was first opened. Of course, this In Shift and Out Shift uses the I and O keys as keyboard shortcuts, moving the In or Out point to wherever the playhead is parked in the little timeline of the Trim Edit window, just as with the In and Out functions in the Viewer and the Log and Capture windows. You do have to tell FCP which of the incoming or outgoing clips you want to trim, or if you want to simultaneously trim both (see Figure 6-6). It is pretty easy to identify which clip is to be affected by the trim action you initiate. The Trim Edit window will show a long green bar at the top of the window for the clip that is active. If the bar is present above a video window, trimming actions will affect the clip in that window. You can choose to have one, the
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Figure 6-6 When trimmming in the Trim window, you can choose to have the outgoing, incoming, or both clips enabled by mouse-clicking within either window or between the two video windows. A green bar located above the windows indicates which one (or both) is active.
other, or both clips enabled. To enable the green bar and trim actions for a clip, click in its video window. You will notice that clicking in one video window enables it while disabling the other. To enable both video windows so that trim actions are applied to both clips, either Shift-click the second video window or click in the thin space between the two video windows. Hitting the U key toggles between the outgoing and incoming edits as well. The gist of this is as follows: If you only want to trim frames on the outgoing left clip, ou click the left video window to select the outgoing edit point and the cursor will turn into the Ripple Edit tool, a tool from the Toolbar we will look at shortly. If you want to trim frames on the incoming right clip, click on the right video window to select the incoming edit point. If you want to trim from one clip and add to the other so that you move the edit point between the clips without changing the duration of the two clips together, click in between the video windows, which will select both edit points and the Roll Edit tool. You can easily tell which window is enabled for trimming by seeing which window, if not both, has the green bar on top. You can cycle through each of the three trim functions using the U key once the trim edit window is open. Click the left video window to enable the outgoing edit. Position the mouse pointer over the Out point triangle in the timeline track of the outgoing video window. Clicking and dragging it will trim the outgoing clip and ripple all the subsequent clips in the track to keep from creating gaps between any clips (see Figure 6-7). Such editing is referred to as ripple editing. Continue to drag the tool in either direction and watch the sequence update as you adjust the trim.
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Figure 6-7 Clicking and dragging the Out point triangle of the timeline track of the (left) outgoing video window in the Trim window will trim the outgoing clip and ripple all subsequent clips in the track.
Click the right video window to enable the incoming edit. Grab the In point in the timeline track of the right incoming video window. As with the outgoing ripple edit, clicking the In point and dragging it will trim the incoming clip and ripple all the subsequent clips in the track to keep from creating gaps between any clips. Continue to drag in either direction and watch the sequence update as you adjust the trim. When you perform a Ripple edit, you are changing the duration of the sequence, just as you did when you performed an Insert edit. The trimming you perform adds or takes away from the total number of frames in the sequence. If you need to maintain the same duration in the sequence but alter where the cut occurs between two clips, you will need
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a Roll edit which adds frames from one clip and takes away from the other. When you click in between the two video windows, the cursor turns into a Roll Edit tool, and the green bar is active over both windows (see Figure 6-8). Position the mouse pointer over the In or the Out point in either of the two little timeline tracks. Clicking the edit point for either the outgoing or incoming clip and dragging will trim both clips. Continue to drag the Roll trim in either direction and watch the sequence update as you adjust the trim. As you trim using these tools, watch the Out Shift and In Shift numbers in the bottom left- and right-hand corners of the Trim Edit window, respectively, to see how far you have adjusted in either direction as you drag. As you will notice, this sort of click-and-drag trimming is a bit imprecise. Once you’ve moved the edit point for either clip, it’s difficult to get the Out Shift and In Shift numbers back to zero such that the points are in the exact
Figure 6-8 When you click in between the two video windows, the cursor turns into a Roll Edit tool, and the green bar is active over both windows.
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Figure 6-9 The amount of multiple frames displayed in the Trim Forward or Back buttons in the Trim window can be set in the Multi-Frame Trim Size listed in the General tab of User Preferences.
same position as they were when the Trim Edit window was opened. If you made a change to the edit points and then decided you didn’t like it, it could take you all day to get the original edit points back. FCP has a much more precise method. At the bottom and center of the Trim Edit window, you will find four buttons with the values −5, −1, +1, and +5. These buttons perform the same trimming action described previously, but for the value of the button. The −1 button, for example, will move the edit point one frame to the left for either clip or both clips, depending on whether a Ripple or a Roll is enabled. The +1 button will move the edit point one frame in the opposite direction. The −5 and +5 buttons move the edit point more quickly. These values are actually user-definable in the General tab of the User Preferences (see Figure 6-9). You can set the larger of the two buttons up to 99 frames, although that would be a bit extreme. In most cases, either the default 5 or perhaps 10 frames is best for this value. You will in all likelihood find that using the precise buttons is easier and faster than the click-and-drag technique. Since it’s pretty easy to count as you mouse-click, you can always quickly click in corrections without having to struggle. To make things even easier, there is a keyboard shortcut for these precise trim buttons. The bracket keys, [ and ], correspond to the −1 and +1 buttons respectively. Shift-[and Shift-] correspond to the −5 and +5 buttons. Previewing the Trim before Leaving the Trim Edit Window Finally, there are a few buttons for previewing your edit before leaving the Trim Edit window. Remember that when you close this window, the Out Shift and In Shift values will be set in the sequence. Once the In or Out Shift value in the Trim Edit window has been applied to the sequence and the Trim Edit window has been closed, it can be difficult to get your edit point back to where it was before you changed it. If you catch a mistake before leaving the window, it’s easy to make the adjustment based on the number of frames that the new edit points have shifted from what they were when the window opened. Previewing the edit to make sure it is what you want is a good way to avoid having to go back and piece together your previous edit points. There is a tool specifically for this purpose. Just below and between the two video windows are a few play buttons (see Figure 6-10). The one in the center is called Play
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Figure 6-10 Previewing an edit in the Trim window is accomplished with a set of five play buttons located below and in between the outgoing and incoming video windows.
Around Edit Loop (keyboard shortcut, Space Bar). When you press this button, FCP previews the edit by playing from a few seconds before the edit to a few seconds after it. ou actually customize the amount of Play Around either before or after the edit by changing the values for Preview Pre-Roll and Preview Post-Roll in the General tab of the User Preferences. Just to the left of this is the Play In to Out (keyboard shortcut, Shift-\). This button plays from the In point of the outgoing clip to the Out point of the incoming clip. This can help when you have really long preview pre-roll and post-roll settings and are trimming very short clips. The furthest left of the five buttons, Previous Edit, is for moving from the current edit point loaded into the Trim Edit window to the previous edit. Be careful, because it efers to the previous edit point that occupies the same track as the current edit point. If you were looking for the previous edit point on another track, you might end up quite far from where you expected to be. The furthest right button of the five, Next Edit, performs the same function, except that it moves forward in the track rather than going backward. This is useful if you need to trim a whole series of edit points on the same track. Instead of trimming an edit and then going out of the Trim window to select a new edit point, just hit either of these buttons to directly move to the next or previous edit. Trimming is fast and easy using the Trim Edit window. Just double-click on the edit point you want to trim in the sequence. When the Trim Edit window pops up, select which clip you want to Ripple edit, or choose to perform a Roll edit of both clips. Click the plus or minus frame buttons, or the [ and the ] bracket keys, to define the points the way you want them. Preview the cut to make sure it performs the way you want it to. Then close the window (with a quick Command-W) and you’re done. An even faster method is to start up the loop preview immediately on entering the Trim Edit window and trim as it plays back. You get to use both the In and Out point keystrokes (I and O keys) and the Trim Frames keystrokes ([ and ]) on the fly as the preview plays back. The I and O keystrokes perform as In and Out commands and will reset the trim to whatever frame you are on at that moment, and the bracket keys, [ and ], will trim single frames from the current edit point. The difference is that you do this while the preview is playing so that you instantly see the results rather than start, stop, start, stop, etc. Typically, I might have to view an edit point previewed up to ten times before deciding on the proper frame to cut on, so this “trim during preview” method saves a lot of keystrokes and time.
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Figure 6-11 Dynamic Trim, a new feature in Final Cut Pro 4, allows use of the J-K-L keys to update a trim when the Dynamic Trim box is enabled.
Finally, FCP 4 added a new feature called Dynamic Trim (see Figure 6-11). This feature can be a little confusing, particularly if you are not used to the way the Trim Edit window works. When Dynamic Trimming is enabled and you are using J-K-L to move through the clips, hitting the K key to stop will also update the trim, moving the In and/or Out points to where you paused with the K key. If Dynamic Trim is not checked (either in the Trim Edit window or, to initiate default behavior, in the User Preferences), pausing like this would simply park the playhead.
The Timeline and the Toolbar A lot of the material that has been discussed previously has been about how FCP allows you to edit in the Timeline from other areas of the application. We created In and Out points in the Viewer to edit clips into the sequence. We saw Insert and Overwrite editing from the Canvas window. We learned to trim our sequence’s edit points from inside the Trim Edit window. We’ll even see later on how to load up a sequence in the Viewer as if it were just another clip. Nevertheless, the sequence and the Timeline window it lives in are also powerful tools. Many of the preceding advanced trimming actions can be accomplished directly on clips within the sequence itself, and some other advanced trimming techniques are only easily and consistently available from the Timeline. It’s necessary to include the Toolbar in this discussion as well, because, with only a few exceptions, the Toolbar tools work directly within the Timeline window. Although editing on the Timeline can sometimes feel a little sloppy and imprecise, there are times when quickly grabbing a clip and nudging it into place will do the trick. And some cool tricks like assymmetrical trimming and split edits are best addressed there. The Timeline Tracks Let’s quickly go through the Timeline window and take a closer look at its features and controls (see Figure 6-12). From the top left-hand corner of the window, the tabs for the open sequences are displayed. You will notice that when you switch tabs, the tab in the Canvas window switches to match. Every sequence loaded in the Timeline has a sister tab in the Canvas window.
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Moving down into the sequence itself, we find tracks. The default number of tracks when you create a new sequence was set back in the Timeline Options tab of the Preferences. Unless you changed that Preference, the default for a newly created sequence will still be one video and four audio tracks. The video track area is separated from the audio track area by a thick gray double line. ou can adjust how much of the window is dedicated to the video tracks versus the audio tracks by clicking this line and dragging it up or down. If you have only a few tracks curently in a sequence, you won’t see much difference from moving it around. But when you have 10 tracks of video and audio, you’ll see that being able to scale the window for video or audio tracks will make a big difference. A further cool trick is called Track Prioritizing. In this feature, you can specify that your base video and audio tracks always stay in the center of the Timeline window, even when you are scrolling through many other tracks. For instance, expand your Timeline window very wide using the grip tab in the bottom right-hand corner of the window. To create new tracks, Control-click in the area outside the already existing tracks and select “Add Track” (see Figure 6-13). Continue to do this until you have created 10 new audio and video tracks. Then close down the window so that you are no longer able to see all the video and audio tracks without using the scroll bars on the right. Next, on the right-hand side of the Timeline window between the video and audio track scroll bars, look for the two darker tabs that meet at the end of the thick double line separating the video and audio tracks (see Figure 6-14). Grab the upper tab and drag up about the distance of one track, and then drop it. You should instantly see the V1 track pop into the space, regardless of where the scroll bars are for the rest of the Timeline window. Likewise, grab the lower tab and drag down a couple of track heights and let go. ou will now see that A1 and A2 occupy space between the center of the line. This is called Track prioritizing, because no matter how much you scroll the video and audio scroll bars, the tracks in this space will always stay right in the center of the
Figure 6-12
The Timeline window in detail.
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Figure 6-13 To add or delete video and audio tracks to the Timeline, Control-click in the gray area outside the already existing tracks.
window. You can grab the center grip between the two grip tabs and drag to see that you can reposition the track prioritize area anywhere in the window you want. To remove the Track prioritizing, simply grab the grip tabs and drag them down to zero height again. The Track Routing Selection Area On the far left of the Timeline window, there is a green circle for each track called the Track Visibility switch. Clicking off this green light grays out the track and makes it invisible in the Canvas. It’s basically a way to hide a track’s contents in the Canvas temporarily.
Figure 6-14
An example of Track prioritizing in the Timeline window in Final Cut Pro.
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ome care must be taken with this because turning tracks off irrevocably breaks the link between a clip and its render files. If you have rendered a clip, you want to avoid turning its track off. The next item in the target track selection area is the Track Routing tabs (see Figure 6-15). These are new to FCP 4. The two parts of each track’s routing tabs are the Source and Destination buttons. To the left, using lowercase letters, is the Source tab. The track that the ource button is on identifies which track will receive incoming edited clips when using drag-and-drop Canvas edits. The Destination is in uppercase letters and identifies each track existing in the sequence. To assign the routing, you simply click on the Destination tab for a track and FCP puts the Source tab there before you make the edit. The Source tabs are routing tabs. They correspond to the clip currently loaded in the Viewer. They function essentially like a patchbay in an edit controller. Imagine that you are connecting cables between a source VCR and one of a number of Destination VCRs (the Destination tabs). When you line up the Source tab with a Destination tab, you are telling FCP to patch the source video to the Destination track(s). This is also used to disable editing to a track. If, for instance, you wanted to edit only the audio portion of a clip into a sequence (without including the video), single-click either the ource or Destination tab and the tabs will disconnect, meaning that the Destination track will not receive any incoming clips. Single-click either one again and they will become reconnected. The main reason this was instituted is because of an excellent new feature in FCP 4, Merged Clips. FCP is now able to merge a single video clip with up to 24 audio clips into
Figure 6-15 The Source and Destination buttons comprise the two parts of the Routing tabs in the Timeline, a new feature in Final Cut Pro 4.
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a new single clip containing all the elements. The ability to edit with more than two audio clips per clip requires the ability to route the incoming tracks into the sequence. To illustrate this behavior, we will need some new audio tracks to work with. We will use some of the Soundtrack loops that should have been installed on your system when you did the full Final Cut Pro 4 application installation. If you did not, you might want to go now and install them because you are missing out! To bring in the audio clips, go File > Import > Files. In the dialog box that follows, navigate to the startup drive all the way to the left of the box. Then follow this path: Startup Drive > Documents > Soundtrack Loops > PowerFX Loops > Complete Music Beds. In the Complete Music Beds pane, Commandclick any three of the files and hit Choose. The three audio files will be imported into your project tab. Notice that because they are audio-only clips, they have a speaker rather than a film frame icon. Three files will be enough for six tracks, since they are two-track stereo files. Next, create a new sequence (keyboard shortcut, Command-n) and edit each of these audio clips into a new audio track, starting at the first frame of the sequence by dragging and dropping. For now, edit the first one into the A3 and A4 tracks, and then, as you need new tracks, simply drop the clip where the new track would be; FCP will create a new track for you if one does not already exist. When you have the six audio tracks loaded with the audio clips, go back to the project tab in the Browser and double-click a normally captured clip with video and two audio tracks. When it loads into the Viewer, take a look at the sequence and see that there is only the one video and two audio source buttons that correspond to the Viewer clip (see Figure 6-16). Drag and drop this clip into the V1 track at the first frame of the sequence. There should now be one video track and eight audio tracks with contents. We are going to merge the contents of all these clips into a single clip. Click and marquee-drag the mouse pointer to select all video and audio items in all nine tracks, and then go Modify > Link. When you do this you are telling FCP that these clips are all now linked together, and that any trimming or cutting actions will apply to all of them. To finish the Merge, pick them up by grabbing any one of them and drag back to the project tab. Quickly select the name of the new clip and rename it “newmerge.” To illustrate what has happened, double-click this “newmerge” clip to load in the Viewer (see Figure 6-17). At first it may appear normal until you notice that it has four different audio tabs, each corresponding to two stereo tracks! Furthermore, a glance at the Track Routing buttons will reveal that there are now eight separate Source Routing buttons for audio. This is because all those audio tracks have to go somewhere. Finally, hit F10, the shortcut keystroke for Overwrite edit, and you will see the merged clip edit all of those tracks into the sequence! Next, there is a Track Lock feature to the right of the target track selection area, symbolized by a padlock. Normally, this is in the unlocked position because you want to be able to work in the tracks, which locking them would disallow. But Track Locking can be very useful. No matter how experienced you are with FCP, it can sometimes be tricky to see all the consequences of a single action. One false move could undo hours of precise cutting through an accidental series of edits. Locking tracks in these instances is a good way of
Figure 6-16 After editing in two stereo audio tracks into a3, a4, a5, a6, a7, and a8, load a normally captured clip into the Viewer and look for the Source tabs in the sequence.
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Figure 6-17 An example of a new merged clip in Final Cut Pro. In the Viewer, there are four audio tabs, each corresponding to two stereo tracks. In addition, the Timeline displays eight separate Source Routing buttons for audio.
making sure that nothing happens to a track or tracks when you are sure they are complete. It’s also a good way to lock two tracks that have been manually synced so that they cannot be accidentally shifted by subsequent edits. The final feature of the track Routing selection area is yet another new feature in FCP 4, the Auto Select (see Figure 6-18). This tool may seem a little wonky at first, but it can add amazing precision and speed to your workflow. Auto Select allows you to select ranges of frames along the length of your sequence, rather than selecting whole clips at a time as
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Figure 6-18 Auto Select lets you select an in-to-out range of frames in a sequence for more than one track.
we have been doing with the General Selection tool (the arrow). But this is not all, because, as we shall see shortly, this is also possible using a toolbar selection tool, the Range Selection tool. Yet the Range Selection tool is limited to frames within a single track! Auto Select goes a step further and lets you select a range of frames for more than one track. To see Auto Select in action, we need to set a couple of In and Out points in the sequence. equences, just like clips, can have edit points. The difference here is that In and Out points in the sequence specify the range of sequence frames where actions will occur. In the present sequence, overwrite edit a few more copies of the merge clip from the last exercise with the video source this time routed into the V2 and V3 tracks so that there are plenty of tracks to work with. When you have overlapping clips in three video tracks and several audio tracks, deselect all clips and hit the spacebar to start playback in the sequence. As it plays, hit the I key to set an In point, then the O key to set an Out point. At the top of the Timeline window, ou will see a couple of large In and Out point markers appear. Frames between the two markers are lighter, indicating the range of frames affected by the In and Out points (see igure 6-19). Make sure that no clips are selected in the sequence by clicking anywhere in the gray area outside the existing tracks. Since Auto Select is enabled for all tracks by default, you should see something pretty interesting in your sequence clips. The areas between the In and Out points in your clips are also lighter, indicating that anything you do now to the sequence will only affect the lighter areas of each clip. Reach up and grab either the In or Out point of the Timeline window and drag it to extend the range. The lighter areas of each clip extend to follow it. Now click the Auto Select toggle for a few of the tracks. As you toggle them off, those tracks cease to be lighter and will not be affected by any actions (see Figure 6-20). There are
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Figure 6-19 When an In and Out point is selected in the Timeline with Auto Select enabled for all tracks by default, the area in-between is of a lighter color, indicating the portion of the timeline to be affected.
only a few caveats to using Auto Select. If you have anything currently selected, either a clip or range of frames in a clip, Auto Select is ignored. Likewise, if two audio clips are stereo clips (rather than being two linked mono clips, a subject about which we will discuss much more in Chapter 10), then any change in Auto-setup status affects both clips equally, overriding the Auto Select button. Option-clicking any of the Auto Select toggle controls will turn off Auto Select for all other tracks of either video or audio. Since copy-and-paste operations now rely on Auto Select to determine destination, Option-clicking is the fastest way to tell FCP where to paste clips.
Figure 6-20 Toggling Auto Select off for a track will cause it to cease being lighter and prevent it from being affected by any actions.
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The Timeline Customization Controls Below the tracks are various controls for customizing the appearance of the Timeline and how much of the sequence’s contents are visible at a time. Audio Controls The first Timeline Customization control might not even be visible, depending on how you have your User Preference Timeline Options tab set. If the Track Options box there was set to Show Audio Controls, you would have seen a couple of extra buttons for each track on the far left of the Target Track Routing area of the Timeline window. If not, you can enable these audio control buttons (see Figure 6-21) by clicking the Audio Controls button at the extreme left of the bottom of the Timeline window (the button is identified by a small speaker). When you engage the Audio Controls toggle button, you are given another layer of control over what you do and don’t hear when the sequence is played back. FCP 4’s audio capabilities mimic any professional mixer with the inclusion in each track of Solo and Mute buttons. For those not familiar with it, the Solo effectively mutes or turns off audio in all other tracks. The audio in the other tracks is still there, it has merely been silenced during the preview playback. More than one track can be marked Solo, and the result is that you heard all tracks that are marked Solo. The Mute button preforms the exact opposite action. The Mute button silences the track it is enabled on, leaving the other tracks playing. Just like the Solo button, you can mute more than one track at a time, and the result is simply that the muted tracks are not heard. You might wonder why there is a Mute button available when we saw earlier that there is the Visibility/Audible button in the Track Routing area which appears to do the same thing. The difference between the two is that the Audible button actually disables audio output for the track when you are Printing to Tape or Editing to Tape, two professional methods of outputting your sequence to tape that we will explore in Chapter 11. Mute simply affects previews of the tracks when played from the sequence as you edit. While you are editing, use Mute to kill tracks for a moment or two while you hone in on an edit. When the time comes to output to tape, if you need to leave an audio track out of the output, use Audible from the Track Routing area.
Figure 6-21 You can access the Solo and Mute buttons for each audio track by clicking the Audio Controls button at the extreme left of the bottom of the Timeline window (the button is identified by a small speaker icon).
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Clip Keyframes Button The next button to the right of the Audio Controls button is the Clip Keyframe button. Clicking this button allows you to perform intricate keyframing of your video and audio clips from directly in the Timeline window (rather than from the Viewer tabs). Clicking it opens up a larger area to work in underneath each track in the Timeline window (see Figure 6-22). As with the Audio Controls, there is an option in the User Preferences Timeline Options
Figure 6-22 Clicking the Clip Keyframe button opens up a larger area to work in underneath each track in the Timeline window.
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tab to have it automatically enabled by default on all new sequences. We will explore the usefulness of this in Chapter 8. Until then, keep it disabled. Clip Overlays Button The next button is called the Clip Overlays button in FCP parlance, but it’s popularly known as a rubberband tool. Rubberbanding allows us to alter audio levels and video opacity, or transparency, within a clip in the sequence. In addition, when used with another tool to be discussed with the Toolbar functions, the Pen tool, rubberbanding allows us to keyframe, or change these audio and opacity levels over time. This is a quick creative way to customize video and audio fades and to even out audio tracks that exhibit too much variation in audio levels. When the Clip Overlays button is engaged, all clips within a sequence display a thin horizontal line—black for video tracks and purple for audio (see Figure 6-23). These lines describe audio level or video opacity in a video clip. Open a new sequence on the Timeline, edit a clip into it, and enable the Clip Overlays button so that horizontal lines appear in the clip. Move the mouse pointer over the Clip Overlays lines in the clip’s audio tracks. The mouse pointer will change into two parallel horizontal lines with arrows pointing up and down. While the mouse pointer is shaped as such, click the line and drag it up and down without releasing the mouse button. As you drag the line up and down, you will see a small box appear with a dB value that changes as you move the mouse position. Release the mouse button when the dB box reads –12 dB. Now perform the same action for the other audio track in the same clip (if the audio tracks for a clip are stereo, changing the level of one track will change the other track as well). When you adjusted the levels, you probably noticed that the entire line for the clip adjusted evenly across the clip. This means that the level adjustment evenly affects the
Figure 6-23 When the Clip Overlays button is engaged, all clips within a sequence display a thin horizontal line—black for video tracks and purple for audio. These lines describe audio level or video opacity in a video clip.
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entire clip. When we cover the Toolbar, we will discover a way to vary the change in level within the clip itself through keyframing. Video opacity can be affected the same way that audio levels are adjusted. This is easier to see when the adjusted video clip is superimposed, or occupies the video track directly above another video clip. Using the Canvas window Drag-and-Drop edit method, we will perform a Superimpose edit of a new clip into a V2 track. Make sure you don’t use the same or similar clips for both video tracks or you will fail to see much of an opacity change after rubberbanding. Create a new sequence, edit a new clip in, and park the sequence playhead at the beginning of a clip in the V1 track. Set the Source/Destination Routing indicator for the V1. Load a new clip into the Viewer that is longer than the clip already occupying the V1 track (or you will get an “insufficient content for edit” message, we’ll see why in a moment). Then drag the clip to the Canvas and drop it into the overlay box named Superimpose (see Figure 6-24). The Superimpose edit sends the video portion of the clip being edited into the track above the currently routed Target Track. The newly edited clip should be in the V2 track, so that it is positioned exactly above the original clip in the V1 track. The incoming superimposed video clip is also automatically trimmed down to the exact length of the clip it is being superimposed above. This is why you needed a longer clip than the one already present in V1; if it were shorter, it could not exactly match the length of the clip on V1. Move the mouse pointer over the line in the video portion of the superimposed clip in the V2 track. When the mouse pointer changes to the familiar parallel line/ arrow shape, click the mouse button and drag the line down. The same box will appear next to the mouse pointer, this time giving a percentage value for the opacity of the clip. A value of 100 means completely opaque, or visible. A value of zero means completely transparent, so that anything on a layer underneath the video track is completely visible. Track Height Switch To the right is the Track Height switch. Track Height simply gives you four options for the vertical size of all tracks within a sequence. This setting can be switched on the fly and has no effect on your sequence or clips other than making them more or less visible in the Timeline. Actually, this switch is less necessary than in previous versions of FCP, because now you can resize tracks individually right on the sequence. Simply position the mouse pointer on the line dividing two tracks in the Track Routing area, and when you see the parallel lines, click and drag (see Figure 6-25). This affects only the track you are dragging. If you need to resize all tracks equally like this, perform the same action with the Shift key pressed. The chief benefit of the Track Height switch is as a quick reset for all track heights if you have changed them all and it is bugging you!
Figure 6-24 The Superimpose edit sends the video portion of the clip being edited into the track above the currently routed Destination track.
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Figure 6-25 Track heights can be resized individually by dragging the track boundary lines. All tracks can be adjusted simultaneously by Shift-dragging the track height of any one track.
The Zoom Control Meter Because Timeline navigation is so important, FCP provides a couple of other tools for quick and precise Timeline redefinition. The next tool to the left of the navigation bar is the Zoom Control (see Figure 6-26). It is shaped like a meter and redefines the time scale based on where the marker is in the Zoom Control box. When the marker is further to the right, the time increments will be larger, meaning that you will be looking at whole minutes and can see more of the sequence at a time. Moving the marker to the left makes the increments smaller and more precise. The Time Scale Bar The last zoom scale controller is the Zoom Slider (see Figure 6-27). The Zoom Slider is a manual scrolling bar control with a handle on either end. The Zoom scroll bar only works when there is a clip on the Timelime. If you grab either one of the edge handles and drag it, you will see that the increments above the tracks become larger or smaller. Drag the bar out longer and you will be looking at seconds—even minutes—depending on the length of the clips in the sequence. Drag either of the handles in to make the bar shorter and you will be looking at smaller increments, down to single frames of video. Adjusting the time scale allows you to put as little or as much of your sequence contents into the viewing area as you need.
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Figure 6-26
The Zoom Control meter.
This bar can actually move the viewing area of the Timeline as well. Grabbing the bar anywhere between the handles and dragging moves the whole viewing area forward and back along a sequence’s length, allowing you to move to areas quickly without having to get there by moving the playhead. Remember that this movement does not move the position of the playhead itself and that you will need to move it up to the window by clicking within the view area. Navigating on the Timeline efficiently is a skill in itself. There is no correct timescale. The appropriate timescale depends as much on the relative lengths of your clips as it does on the type of editing you need to do at the moment. A bonus addition of FCP 4 is that there is now support for the scroll wheel that many third party mice contain, and, in fact, the Zoom Slider works with scroll wheel mice as well. Playhead Timecode Field Above the Track routing area and to the right of the RT menu is the sequence Playhead Timecode Field. This field has two major functions. The first is to display the frame that the playhead is currently parked on. Since this is a timecode value for the sequence and not for the clips within it, the first frame of the sequence will be the Timecode value 01:00:00:00. The second function of the field is to manually move the playhead to a specific timecode location. Entering values into this box is simple—you don’t even have to click the box to do so. Because this box is only one of two places you can enter numeric information into
Figure 6-27
The Zoom Slider bar.
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the Timeline window, simply typing numbers when the Timeline window is active (with nothing selected) will enter them here. That said, you do need to make sure that nothing is selected in the sequence when you begin typing numbers. If a clip is selected when you begin entering numbers, the Move functionality is enabled (see Figure 6-28). Instead of changing the position of the playhead, the selected clip will be moved the number of frames you enter. Before typing numbers in the Timeline window, always either click in the gray area outside the tracks to deselect any clips, or hit Command-Shift-a for Deselect All. FCP makes things easy for entering timecode values. Although timecode values require colons or semicolons to delineate hours, minutes, seconds, and frames, FCP can insert these for you. All you need to do is type in the numbers and make sure that you enter zeros where applicable—for example, type 300, and FCP will convert this to 00:00:03:00, or the third second of the Timeline. It can even tell that the earlier values should stay the same if you enter only a few. For example, typing in the above value lands the playhead on 00:00:03:00. Then typing in 15 will move it up to 00:00:03:15. Typing in 215 will then move it to 00:00:02:15.
Figure 6-28 If a clip is selected when you begin entering numbers, the Move functionality is enabled. Instead of changing the position of the playhead, the selected clip will be moved the number of frames you enter.
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To make things even more convenient, you can type in a certain number of frames to etreat or advance. Instead of having to do the math to figure which frame to move to, simply type in + or – followed by a number on the numeric keypad, and the playhead advances or etreats that many frames, seconds, minutes, or even hours. For example, if you are at 00:00:02:00 and you want to move up to 00:00:03:00, simply type in +100, or plus one second and zero frames. But what if you want to advance or retreat only one frame? The keyboard shortcut for advance/retreat one frame is the Left and Right Arrow key. Holding the Shift key and hitting the Left and Right Arrow key changes this to advance/retreat one second. Combine this with the Up and Down Arrow keys that move the playhead from the In point to the Out, or any edit points, of each clip in the sequence, and you’ve got pretty awesome tools for flying around the Timeline without ever touching the mouse. Using each of these three tools, it is possible to quickly jump around your sequence and hone in on the areas you need to work with at the timescale you need to work with. While general and imprecise, the Zoom Bar is a quick-and-dirty method of getting your sequence in roughly the area and scale you want. The Zoom Control meter provides a more precise method of choosing the timescale. Using the timecode field is the most precise way of moving our playhead around to new locations.
Toggle Snapping Button Looking to the upper right corner of the Timeline window, there are two buttons that allow further customization. The Toggle Snapping button contains a small doubleheaded arrow with flash marks. Snapping is a behavior that enables quick editing on the Timeline by accurately snapping like a magnet to the beginning or end edge of clips, or to the position of the sequence playhead (see Figure 6-29). Its chief usefulness is as a tool for avoiding gaps between clips and accidental Overwrite and Insert edits from imprecise drag-and-drop operations. Snapping is enabled by default. Clicking the Snapping button or hitting the N key toggles it on and off. A nice bonus is that the N key toggle actually works while you are holding a clip with the mouse button pressed. If you realize that Snapping is disabled right before you drop the clip, simply hit the N key with your other hand to enable it.
Toggle Linking Button The button to the left of the Toggle Snapping button is called the Toggle Linking button (see Figure 6-30). Linking involves the way a single clip behaves in its relationship with other clips that are connected (linked) to it. When clips are linked, any trimming edits applied to one part of the clip will be applied to the other linked clips. When linking is enabled, the Toggle Linking button is green. Before learning to efficiently utilize the Toggle Linking button, let’s get a sense of what linking does in general.
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Figure 6-29 Snapping is a behavior that enables quick editing on the Timeline by accurately snapping like a magnet to the beginning or end edges of clips, or to the position of the sequence playhead.
Figure 6-30 The button to the left of the Toggle Snapping button is called the Toggle Linking button. Linking involves the way a single clip behaves in its relationship with other clips that are connected (linked) to it.
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What is linking? FCP treats captured video and audio as a linked clip from inception, and unless you change that relationship it will always do so. But the video and audio are eally not one integrated clip. The clip really contains one video clip and two audio clips that are linked by FCP at capture. Although FCP does this linking at capture, audio and video clips do not have to stay linked to each other, and they can be in turn linked to other clips. Although two video clips cannot be linked together, we have already seen that up to 24 audio tracks can be linked with one video clip through Merge Clip. Linking is a completely artificial state. You can enable or disable it for clips in a sequence at any time by selecting the linked clips and going to Modify > Link. Toggling this command creates or breaks links between any selected clips based on their current link status. This means linked clips will become unlinked and unlinked clips will become linked if they fit the restrictions (you can break multiple clip links at once, but you can only create links between one video clip and two or more audio clips). The Toggle Linking button in the Timeline window allows you to temporarily disable linking for all clips in the sequence. Using clip linking, it’s easy to link-’n-sync up a video track with other audio sources. This is useful if you are using audio recorded by another device such as a DAT or Nagra ecorder instead of the camera, a technique called ‘double-system sound’. It is useful also if ou want to sync up music tracks from an audio CD and make sure they stay locked over time to the video clip. Linking Operations Demonstrated Let’s quickly perform a bit of linking and unlinking. We will take the video portion of one clip and link it to the audio portion of another clip. We will break all the links between two separately captured clips, and then we will delete the video clip for one and the audio clips for the other. Finally, we will link the video clip from the first and the audio clips from the second together to form an artificially linked clip that contains the audio and video we want, regardless of what those clips were captured with. First, clear off the sequence by selecting all clips and deleting them. Next, edit two different captured clips into the sequence. Select both clips using the marquee selection technique or by hift-clicking them. When they are both selected, go to Modify > Link to toggle off the links between the selected clips. Modify > Link controls linking as does the Toggle Linking button, but with different and more permanent results. For the moment, use the Modify menu. Note that after you kill the links between the clips, the names of the newly unlinked clips in the sequence are no longer underlined (use Undo and Redo, keyboard shortcuts Command-Z and Shift-Command-Z respectively, over and over for comparison). Although all the clips are still brown, because they are still selected, they are no longer formally linked to each other (see Figure 6-31). Click anywhere on the Timeline to deselect all the clips. Now that all the video and audio clips are completely unlinked, Shift-click to select the two audio tracks of the first of the clips and then return to Modify > Link to reinstate linking for the selected audio tracks.
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Figure 6-31 Modify > Link kills the links between selected video and audio portions of clips in the sequence. When this occurs, the names of the newly unlinked clips in the sequence are no longer underlined.
Note that the underline returns to the name of the audio tracks when you relink them. If the tracks were originally part of a stereo pair as well, you can also select Modify > Stereo Pair to reconnect them in that manner as well. If you reenable the Stereo Tracks toggle for them, little green triangles appear in the audio clips, indicating the special stereo relationship between the two (see Figure 6-32).
Figure 6-32 Two linked audio clips displaying little green triangles that face each other indicate an audio stereo pair.
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Figure 6-33 Delete the audio clips from the second clip and the video clip from the first clip. Then line up the remaining video and audio clips using Snapping to make sure they line up perfectly. Then select both and Modify > Link.
Click anywhere on the Timeline to deselect the relinked audio clips, then click on the video clip above them that they were originally captured and linked with to select it. Hit the Delete key to remove that video track from the sequence. Marquee-select or Shift-click to select both the audio tracks for the other clip that was also just unlinked and delete them as well, leaving the video portion of the second clip still sitting in the sequence (see Figure 6-33). Now click on the remaining video clip in the sequence, and drag it above the two remaining elinked audio tracks. Use Snapping to make sure that the beginning of the video clip you are moving lines up with the beginning of the two linked audio clips. When the video and audio portions are lined up, marquee-select or Shift-click to select the video clip and the two relinked audio clips. When all three are selected, return to Modify Link to formally link the video and audio clips together. Notice that the underline has also eturned to the name of the video clip, signifying that it is now linked with an audio track(s). This exercise should demonstrate the malleability and artificiality of Linking. Although editors often take video and audio captured and linked clips for granted, they really are individual pieces that can be broken up and reassembled on an as-needed basis. Why then offer a Toggle Linking button in the Timeline if Linking can be toggled in the drop-down menu? Sometimes it will be necessary to quickly unlink a clip or clips to make
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a minor adjustment. Rather than physically unlinking many clips and then having to go in and relink them individually in the long process just described, FCP allows you to suspend the links for all clips in a sequence for the moment. When you’ve completed your adjustment, switch Toggle Linking back on, and everything functions as before. The link between the clips was never lost; it was simply disregarded for the moment until you chose to reinstate it. The Split Edit This ability to quickly unlink and relink clips becomes very useful when performing what is referred to as a split edit. This popular sort of edit involves audio clips beginning before or after their linked video clips in an edit (see Figure 6-34). Often an editor will need the next clip’s audio to precede or follow the edit by a short duration. Because we can unlink our clip, extend the In points for the audio clips as much as we want, then relink them to the video clip, it is very easy to deliver this effect. Audio and video tracks do not have to line up to be linked. In fact, they can be minutes apart from each other on the sequence. To perform a split edit, simply toggle Linking off on the Timeline (keyboard shortcut, Shift-l), and then Command-click the two audio track’s edit points, leaving the video track’s edit point unselected. Double-click either audio edit point to load them up into the Trim Edit window. Then use the Trim Edit tools to preview and adjust the audio edit points
Figure 6-34 An example of a split edit. This popular sort of edit involves audio clips beginning before or after their linked video clips in an edit.
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with the I and O keys. Although you didn’t load a video edit point into the Trim Window, it will still show the visible video in the Trim Edit window as you preview, thus allowing ou to see and hear the split edit you are creating. When you get it the way you like, simply leave the Trim Edit window and toggle Linking back on. Sync Issues with Linking and Unlinking Clips You may be a little alarmed about the ease with which FCP allows you to link and unlink clips. If one didn’t know better, this would be an invitation to audio and video sync disaster. If you unlink a clip and change the position of the video or the audio slightly and then elink, your sync would be off. As long as the two are linked, you cannot move the video or audio without moving the other portion of the clip equally. In truth, the main reason that clips are linked at capture is to avoid such situations, maintaining a rock-solid link between video and audio from capture to mastering to tape. Fortunately, FCP throws in another feature as a guarantee against loss of sync, even in the event that your unlinked clips are adjusted and relinked. When audio and video clips
Figure 6-35 When audio and video clips are linked together from capture or import and are placed in a sequence but forced out of sync, you will see a small red box at the head of each clip stating the number of frames by which the two are out of sync.
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Figure 6-36 Control-clicking on the red “out-of-sync” box of a captured clip forced out of sync will display a contextual menu offering to Move or to Slip the item back into sync.
are linked together from capture or import and are placed in a sequence but forced out of sync, you will see a small red box at the head of each clip stating the number of frames by which the two are out of sync (see Figure 6-35). Clear off the sequence by performing a marquee-select or Shift-click select of all clips and hitting Delete. Edit a captured clip into the sequence. If Linking is not currently toggled off, hit Shift-l to disable it for this exercise. Click either a video or an audio portion of the clip, and move it over slightly so that its edges still overlap the items that it was previously linked to. You will see a small red box appear in each of the items that were previously linked (if an item is selected, its color switches to brown, and the red box will also change, appearing blue). The number in the red box reveals how many frames and seconds out of sync the items that were originally captured together are. In such situations, FCP offers you a quick tool to get these clips back into sync. Control-click on the red “out-of-sync” box for a moment. A contextual menu will appear offering to Move or to Slip the item back into sync (see Figure 6-36). For the moment, select Move Into Sync. When you do, the Control-clicked
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clip will move right back into place with the other clips it is linked to. We will discuss lipping techniques in the next section, which focuses on the Toolbar.
Button Bars A final topic here is the Button bars that are present in each window in FCP, with the exception of the Toolbar and the Audio Meters. Button bars essentially allow you to put ‘action shortcuts’ in every window (see Figure 6-37). If you find yourself committing the same action over and over again, particularly those actions that do not have a default keyboard shortcut, you might consider inserting a Button in the bar of the window(s) where it comes into play most frequently. In fact, the Toggle Linking and Toggle Snapping buttons you just used are such Buttons. But the coolest thing about Button bars is that you can add any FCP action you like to them. And if you find that the Buttons you added are just wasting space, you can remove them even more easily. To add Buttons to the Button bar, you need to call up the Button List Tool (see Figure 6-38). Go to Tool > Button List. When you do, a window will appear. At the top of the window is a search field. This field allows you to quickly locate any action, either by keyword or by its keyboard shortcut if it has one. Click in the Search field and type the words “View tem.” When you do, three actions will come up: View Item and View Item in Editor and View Item in New Window. Grab the View Item in New Window and drag it to the area next to the Toggle Linking and Toggle Snapping buttons. The Button bar bookend will ease over to make room; drop the button and it will remain there. What does this new button “View Item in New Window” do? FCP allows you to have more than one Viewer open at a time (see Figure 6-39). Many times it is advantageous to quickly access a clip in a window while not disturbing the clip already loaded into a Viewer. To see this in action, select a clip in the sequence (make sure that the Toggle Linking button is re-enabled so that you get the video and audio resources when you select it).
Figure 6-37
Button bars essentially allow you to put ‘action shortcuts’ in every window.
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The Button List Tool, new to Final Cut Pro 4.
Then click the “View Item in New Window” button. The sequence clip will open in a new Viewer window, leaving the old Viewer window and its clip intact. What do you do if you decide you don’t want the button in the window anymore? It’s even easier than adding the button: click and drag the button out of the button bar and it will vanish literally in a puff of smoke. Take a quick look around the application. Each window has this same set of bookends in the upper right corner for you to insert buttons. You can save and reload Button Bar configurations if you are sharing your station with other editors who don’t want the same shortcuts you prefer. To do so, Control-click any of
Figure 6-39 Final Cut Pro 4 allows you to have more than one Viewer open at a time, which is useful when you do not wish to disturb a clip already loaded into a Viewer.
Figure 6-40 layouts.
Control-click any button to access Button bar options or save Button Bar
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the buttons on the Button Bar and select Save Main Button Bars… (see Figure 6-40). You can load previously saved configurations from the same contextual menu. If you rely on keyboard shortcuts as I do, Button bars don’t come into play as frequently as one would think. I tend to use Button Bars for actions that I always take immediately after double-clicking a clip; essentially the actions that would require me to put the mouse down right after using it. Say, for instance, I double-click a clip to load into the Viewer, but then have to let go of the mouse to hit Shift-Z for a Fit to Window action. Its easier to double-click the clip, then single-click the Fit to Window button just centimeters away.
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Trimming in the Timeline: The Toolbar
The small vertical strip referred to as the Toolbar is full of tools that will make your life more interesting in FCP4 (see Figure 7-1). Many of the tools are operational within the Timeline window, although some also have functionality across the application. Some functions cannot be performed without switching to the proper Toolbar tool. Either way, using tools located in the Toolbar, you can open up even more trimming functionality in the Timeline window, pulling off trims directly on the clips without using the Trim Edit window.
Toolbar vs. Keyboard Shortcuts Does this mean that you should constantly be clicking back to the Toolbar window to switch tools? Absolutely not. Using the mouse to access that thin tiny little window will do a number on your wrists and isn’t a particularly fast way to work either. The solution is the keyboard shortcut. For every tool in the Toolbar, there is a simple keystroke that will change
Figure 7-1 Many of the Toolbar tools in Final Cut Pro 4 are operational within the Timeline window, although some also have functionality across the application.
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Figure 7-2 For every tool in the Toolbar, there is a simple keystroke that will change the mouse pointer to the tool you want to access.
the mouse pointer to the tool you want to access (see Figure 7-2). As you are given keyboard shortcuts, memorize them through use and avoid using the mouse wherever possible. If you are just beginning your editing life, memorizing all those shortcuts may seem daunting. There are a couple of options that make that process much easier. Each copy of FCP comes with a set of keyboard overlay stickers that you can use to learn the shortcuts. Each overlay sticker shows the primary tool that the keystroke will enable. Because the stickers are translucent, you can still see the letters underneath the stickers, allowing you to use the keyboard normally. With all due respect to Apple, using the stickers is a pretty bad idea, as they tend to stick to everything except the keys they are intended to fasten to. Invariably, they end up in a big gummy pile in front of the keyboard. What other options are there? There are free keyboard layout charts available that show where the keystrokes are, and if you are willing to spend a few dollars, there are a couple of other options. Loren Miller, of Neotron Design, distributes the great, inexpensive Keyguide (see Figure 7-3), which is a laminated sheet with color-coded references to every single shortcut in the application, including the Command/Option/Control/Shift key shortcuts missing from the gummy stickers. For quite a bit more money, some companies manufacture special FCP/Pro-dedicated keyboards. Since they are basically just normal Macintosh keyboards with specially colored and labeled keys, they perform without extra software or hardware. Beginning editors can quickly pick up the functionality of the keyboard in a fraction of the time it would take to learn from accessing the manual. Either way, learning the shortcut keystrokes is very important and will save lots of time searching for tools in the menus or the Toolbar. The easiest and cheapest method of learning the keyboard shortcuts, though, is to keep the Button List window available as a button
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Figure 7-3 Loren Miller, of Neotron Design, distributes the great, inexpensive Keyguide, which is a laminated sheet with color-coded references to every shortcut in the application, including the Command/Option/Control/Shift key shortcuts.
on the Button Bar of your Browser window (since it will almost always be open when you work). Can’t remember the keyboard shortcut for an action? Hit the Button List button, then type in part of the name in the Search field (as described in Chapter 6). The action and its shortcut, if there is one, will appear!
The General Selection Tool (Keyboard Shortcut–A) Let’s take a look at the Toolbar. The first tool on the Toolbar is the General Selection tool. This is the generic mouse pointer arrow that is enabled when you start FCP. The Selection tool is simply used for selecting items and moving them around. This tool, as contrasted with the following set of selection tools, is used for selecting individual items. When you want to pick up, move, or load up a clip in the Viewer, this is the tool to engage.
The Selection Toolset and Accessing “Hidden” Toolsets The Selection toolset button below the General Selection tool on the Toolbar engages a different set of selection tools that are more specific to particular tasks (see Figure 7-4). Although there is only one position for each toolset on the Toolbar, FCP uses a click-andhold method of choosing the particular tool from any toolset. Click and briefly hold the button. You have a choice of three specialized selection tools here. Edit Selection Tool (Keyboard Shortcut–G) Click the first button of the Selection toolset. If you move the mouse pointer over the Timeline window, you will notice that the mouse pointer has switched from the arrow to
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Figure 7-4 The Selection toolset, available in the Toolbar, is composed of three specialized selection tools: the Edit Selection tool, the Group Selection tool, and the Range Selection tool.
a small crosshair. This button activates the Edit Selection tool, which performs the same action as double-clicking an edit point between two clips on a sequence. When you click an edit point, it automatically opens up the Trim Edit window containing the edit point ou clicked. Why use this tool instead of simply double-clicking with the General Selection tool as we did earlier? First, recall that we can have more than one edit point in the Track drop-down bar within the Trim Edit window if more than one edit point was selected. With the General Selection tool, this meant Command-clicking each additional edit point to add it to the Track drop-down bar for use in the Trim Edit window. The Edit Selection tool makes this task easier. Clicking anywhere around the edit points you want to use and marquee-selecting them selects any edit points and adds them to the Trim Edit window. Instead of Command-clicking around your tracks and then double-clicking to open the Trim Edit window, simply choose this tool and marquee-select around the edit points you want to work with (see Figure 7-5). If you forgot a couple of edit points and want to add them to the current tracks loaded into the Trim Edit window, simply return to the sequence, Command-click and marquee the other edit points, and they will be added to the Track drop-down bar in the Trim Edit window. Group Selection Tool (Keyboard Shortcut–GG) The middle tool in the Selection toolset is the Group Selection tool. Once again, the mouse pointer will assume the shape of a crosshair. This tool behaves very much like the Generic election tool. When you click and drag a marquee with this tool, it selects everything it touches, as well as any clips or items linked with whatever it touches. If the crosshairs of
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Figure 7-5 Instead of Command-clicking around your tracks and then double-clicking to open the Trim Edit window, use the Edit Selection tool to marquee-select around the edit points you want to work with.
the marquee you drag with touch any part of a clip, that clip and its linked clips become part of the active selection. Range Selection Tool (Keyboard Shortcut–GGG) The final tool on the right of this toolset is the Range Selection tool. This unique little tool performs a slightly different version of what we saw with the Auto-select behavior. Auto-select lets you work on a range of frames based on the In and Out points in the sequence for all tracks that had Auto-select enabled. The Range Selection does the exact same thing, except it limits the selection to a single track. Once again, as with the Edit and Group Selection tools, the mouse pointer displays as a crosshair. To make a selection using this tool, click and drag a marquee over an area inside one or more clips within a track. Like Auto-select actions, the Range Selection tool does not see clip edges and allows you to select a section of a single clip and/or a range of clips (see Figure 7-6). This means that you can select a smaller part of a clip rather than the whole thing. You could, for example, select the last half of one clip and the first half of the next clip.
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Figure 7-6 Like Auto-select actions, the Range Selection tool does not see clip edges and allows you to select a section of a single clip and/or a range of clips, with the exception that it limits the selection to a single track.
What is the difference in their application? You will find that Auto-select is most useful when you need to delete a range of frames from all tracks in the sequence (known as a lift edit). Its importance is largely involved in editing decisions, such as when choosing which tracks should be affected by Razorblade actions (about which is discussed more later). The Range Selection tool can be used to load up just a section of a clip from the sequence into the Viewer window for manipulation, instead of loading up the entire clip. When you select only a portion of a clip, you can selectively apply effects filters to just the section of the clip, rather than applying them to the entire clip.
The Track Selection Toolset (Keyboard Shortcuts–T, TT, TTT, TTTT, TTTTT) The next button below the Selection toolset is another toolset dedicated to selection, but this time the selection criteria is for clips ahead of or behind the sequence playhead within a track. Clicking and holding the button reveals five possible track selection types (see Figure 7-7).
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Figure 7-7 The five possible track selection types available by clicking and holding the Track Selection tool.
The arrow pointing to the right will select all items in a track occurring to the right of the frame the playhead is currently parked on. The next tool performs the same action, but to the left of the frame the playhead is currently parked on. The middle tool choice selects all clips in the track. The fourth and fifth choices on this toolset, symbolized by the double arrows on the button, allow you to select all clips on all tracks to the right or to the left of the selection point, respectively. This tool does not override the Linked Selection button in the sequence. So, if all your video clips are linked with audio clips, as they will after initially being captured, selecting items in the video track using a track selection tool will also select their linked audio clips in the audio tracks.
The Roll and Ripple Edit Toolset The next toolset below the Track selection tools contains the Ripple Edit and Roll Edit tools (see Figure 7-8). We have already briefly encountered these Ripple and Roll trimming functions in the Trim Edit window. The difference is that this toolset allows you to Ripple and Roll trim edits directly on clips in the Timeline rather than from within the Trim Edit window. The Roll Edit Tool (Keyboard Shortcut–r) The Roll Edit tool moves the In and Out frames of the edit points for the two clips chosen in the sequence, as if both sides of the Trim Edit window were enabled. When you use the Roll Edit tool, the Canvas window itself switches to a mini Trim Edit window,
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Figure 7-8 The Ripple Edit and Roll Edit tools, located in the Toolbar, allow you to Ripple and Roll trim edits directly on clips in the Timeline rather than from within the Trim Edit window.
showing the Incoming and Outgoing edit points as you adjust them (see Figure 7-9). hould you wish to use the Trim Edit window for greater precision at any point, doubleclicking the edit point with the Roll Edit tool will open it up just as the Generic Selection tool did.
Figure 7-9 When you use the Roll Edit tool, the Canvas window itself switches to a mini Trim Edit window, showing the Incoming and Outgoing edit points as you adjust them.
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Edit two abutting clips into the same track on a sequence so that they have an adjoining edit point and handles to trim into. Disable Snapping in the Timeline temporarily (keyboard shortcut, n) so that you can engage the Roll Edit tool from the toolset without imprecise jumping from edit point to edit point. Select the Roll Edit tool (keyboard shortcut, r) from the Toolbar. Click the mouse pointer on the edit point and drag in either direction. As you drag, keep an eye on the Canvas window, watching the Out and In points change as you move the pointer. Also note that in the Timeline window, as you move the edit point around the clip, there is an indicator line demonstrating where the current Out and In points for the two clips are. Release the mouse pointer, and observe that the clips now meet at different Out and In points respectively. The Ripple Edit Tool (Keyboard Shortcut–RR) In the Trim Edit window, the clip being Ripple Trimmed is determined by which video window shows the green indicator bar at the top. With the Ripple tool in the Timeline window, an edit point will only show either the In or the Out point selected (see Figure 7-10). Clicking near the edit point of either the Outgoing or the Incoming clip will switch the edit point that is selected to be trimmed. Then, moving the mouse pointer over either the
Figure 7-10 With the Ripple tool in the Timeline window, an edit point will only show either the In or the Out point selected. The Canvas window will show a continuous update of the new Out or In points the trim action is producing.
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outgoing or incoming clip will switch directions of the Ripple Edit tool’s “tongue,” indicating which clip of the edit point the trimming action will be applied to. Go to the edit point, move the mouse pointer over the clip you want to shorten or lengthen, click and drag, and your clip will be trimmed. As with the Roll Edit action, the Canvas window will show a continuous update of the new Out or In points the trim action is producing. Not surprisingly, the keyboard shortcuts that applied in the Trim Edit window, the [ and ] or Shift-[ and Shift-] keys, will work on the Timeline as well, provided the Ripple or Roll tool is activated and an edit point is selected. Just click on the edit point, then start tapping away at the trim shortcut keys. Similarly, the U key toggles the side of the edit point that is being rippled or rolled, just as it did in the Trim Edit window. The Asymmetrical Trim: Split Edit/L-Cut with the Ripple Tool While we are on the subject of trimming edits in the sequence, we should briefly address split edits again. Although with Toggle Linking we can perform split edits directly on the sequence, a more elegant and flexible method is to use asymmetrical trimming to do this. Asymmetrical trimming does two things: 1) it creates a split edit, this time using the ripple function, which changes the duration of the sequence, and 2) it allows you to trim in two directions at once with one drag of the mouse. If you are creating split edits and are still in the process of selecting both the video and audio frames to cut on, the asymmetrical trim moves all your edit points an equal number of frames. This is no different than other trims we have seen, but it allows you to trim equally from different sides of the edit point at once! To put it more simply, asymmetrical trimming means setting trimming points for the video portion of an outgoing clip and then setting matching trimming points for the audio portion of an incoming clip, or any similar arrangement, thus setting trims on opposite sides of the edit point (see Figure 7-11). Doing so allows you to simultaneously trim the audio of the incoming clip back into the area of the outgoing video clip, resulting in a split edit. This is quite easy to demonstrate and, frankly, sounds more confusing than it eally is. Line up two clips in the sequence such that they share an edit point. Make sure that you have ample handles. Switch to the Ripple Edit tool (keyboard shortcut, RR), then move up to the edit point. Hold down the Option key and single-click the right side of the video portion of the edit point. Notice that the linked audio of the incoming clip is not selected when you hold the Option key down, which generally reverses the effect of a keyboard shortcut. Next, hold the Option key and the Command key (to add to the trim selection), and single-click the left side of the edit point of both the audio tracks of the incoming clip. Once again, notice that the linked video of the outgoing clip is not selected. Also notice that your selected edits face in opposite directions, because they are asymmetrically selected. Next, click the audio track edit points and drag to the left a couple of seconds. When ou let go, you will see that you are trimming the audio tracks of the incoming clip into an area still occupied by the outgoing video clip. This is the definition of a split edit, where either the video or audio of the incoming clip precedes the Out point of the outgoing clip.
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Figure 7-11 Asymmetrical trimming means setting trimming points for the video portion of an outgoing clip and then setting matching trimming points for the audio portion of an incoming clip, or any similar arrangement, thus setting trims on opposite sides of the edit point.
Because you are rippling, the overall duration of the sequence changes. You may want to Fit to Window (keyboard shortcut, Shift-z) so that you can see this graphically in the Timeline window. Such split edits are also identified in the Viewer, where the different In and Out points for video and audio assets are separated by a red line (see Figure 7-12). Hit the A key to switch to the General Selection tool, then double-click the outgoing clip with a split edit to load into the Viewer. You will see that the Out points in the Viewer’s timeline are split, with the upper, video, Out point occurring after the audio Out point. Do you always have to use asymmetrical trimming to arrange a split edit? Not at all. If you have already decided the proper video frames you want for the edit point, you can use
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Figure 7-12 Split edits are also identified in the Viewer, where the different In and Out points for video and audio assets are separated by a red line.
the General Selection tool with the Option key to load just the audio edit points into the Trim Edit window, or use Option-Roll to do the same thing in the sequence. As usual, for FCP there are at least three different ways to do any given task so that an action is always easy to perform no matter where you are.
Gang Synced Windows Another fantastic tool that was introduced in FCP 4 is the inclusion of Gang Synced windows. This feature allows you to link up your Viewer, Canvas, and Timeline windows so that, as you edit, you see much further into the editing possibilities at any given time. The Gang Sync Control can be engaged from either the Viewer or Canvas windows via a small pulldown menu in the upper middle of either window (see Figure 7-13). By default, gang syncing is turned off. Click the menu to look at the options. The middle option, Open, is chiefly useful for effects work and will be addressed in the next chapter. The remaining two options, Follow
Figure 7-13 The Gang Sync Control can be engaged from either the Viewer or Canvas windows via a small pulldown menu in the upper middle of either window.
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and Gang, are what we want to focus on here. Gang syncing ties together the playheads of Canvas and Viewer such that the frames crossing the playhead in the Canvas are linked to the frames crossing the playhead in the Viewer and vice versa. For instance, load three adjoining clips into the sequence, making sure to include healthy handles. Somewhere in the middle of the second clip, park the playhead and double-click to load it into the Viewer. Next, go to either Viewer or Canvas and select Follow. Nothing happens when you do this, because when you loaded the sequence clip into the Viewer, the Viewer’s playhead was located on the same frame that the sequence playhead was on. With Follow still selected, in the sequence, click and drag the playhead back through the clip. As you do, the Viewer will update as its playhead moves in sync with the playhead in the sequence. Continue dragging into the first or third clip in the sequence. Notice that the second clip is still loaded into the Viewer. Once you go past its In or Out points in the sequence, the Viewer continues in lockstep with the sequence, moving up into the handles of the second clip. It only ceases following the sequence playhead after it runs out of handles. Return the sequence playhead to the second clip. Now double-click and load the first clip into the Viewer. Look at the position of the playhead in the sequence and the Viewer. The sequence playhead is just where you left it in the second clip. But the Viewer playhead is located in the handle region outside the Out point of the first clip (see Figure 7-14)! This is where the synced playhead is located with relation to the frames currently located in the Viewer.
Figure 7-14 Look at the position of the playhead in the sequence and the Viewer. The sequence playhead is just where you left it in the second clip. But the Viewer playhead is located in the handle region outside the Out point of the first clip.
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There is no default keyboard shortcut for any of the Gang Sync modes, so I use the button bars to store them in the Timeline window. Although there are many possible uses for the Follow gang sync, here’s one of my favorites. Whenever I want to quickly look at the available trim handles for a clip preceding or following a clip I am currently cutting (but without having to enter the Trim Edit window), I simply double-click the surrounding clips to load them into the Viewer and hit the Follow Gang Sync button, and then scrub inside the clip I am concentrating on in the sequence. This lets me quickly see what frames I am currently using, as well as which frames are available in the handles of the other clip, and how much usable cutaway I have available if I need it. Gang mode is even more useful and lets you efficiently time your cuts based on the length of an action in either a Viewer or sequence clip. The only difference between this and the Follow mode, technically, is that any offset between the frame the Viewer playhead is on and the frame the sequence playhead is on prior to invoking gang sync is maintained. Reset the Gang Sync mode to Off. Double-click a clip from the project tab to load it into our Viewer. So that you can sync your edit to an action, move the playhead in the Viewer to the end of an event that involves movement and set an Out point. In the sequence, position the playhead in a clip in the sequence, again choosing a frame that is the end of an event involving movement. Then, in either the Viewer or Canvas, set the Gang ync mode to Gang. If you Left and Right Arrow advance through either window, you will see that they advance in lockstep, and the Canvas is showing you the action that you are timing the In and Out point in the Viewer to. When you get to the beginning of the action you are timing to in the sequence, set an In point on the clip in the Viewer window and edit it into our sequence. You just sync edited two actions without having to calculate durations! Since the windows are in lockstep, you could use an event in either window to use for timing the edit.
The Slip and Slide Toolset (Keyboard Shortcuts–S, SS) The next toolset below the Roll and Ripple tools is another combination of convenient editing tools, the Slip and Slide tools. These two tools can make quick, one-stop adjustments that would otherwise take several steps and a couple of windows to perform. The Slip and Slide tools allow you to adjust either the range of frames an affiliate clip efers to from its master clip or the In and Out points of one clip between two other clips without affecting the overall duration of the sequence (see Figure 7-15). They allow you to quickly shuffle the edit points of a clip so that you see the range of frames you want without changing what can often be a sequence duration predetermined by other factors, such as a client’s wishes or the length or rhythm of a musical score. The Slip Tool (Keyboard Shortcut–S) What if you edit a clip to a sequence and then realize that you wanted to use an earlier part of the master clip than the part you set In and Out points for? Instead of reloading the clip
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Figure 7-15 The Slip and Slide tools allow you to adjust either the range of frames an affiliate clip refers to from its master clip or the In and Out points of one clip between two other clips without affecting the overall duration of the sequence.
in the Viewer and manually setting new edit points, you can simply “slip” the contents of the affiliate clip you already have on the sequence (see Figure 7-16). An affiliate clip in the sequence that was edited from the latter part of its master clip in the Viewer window could be “slipped” so that the earlier part of the master clip is now used in the sequence. The duration of the clip itself will not be changed, only the material between the In and Out points.
Figure 7-16 Instead of reloading a clip in the Viewer and manually setting new edit points, with the Slip Tool you can simply “slip” the contents of the affiliate clip you already have on the sequence.
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The Slip tool’s effectiveness as a fast-and-dirty editing tool is best displayed with a group of several adjoining clips. To line up four clips quickly in a sequence, we will use a technique referred to as storyboard rough cutting. Storyboard Rough Cut Technique toryboards, the comics panel-styled drawn models used in film and video production, are useful for production activities. They can also be helpful later to visually aid in the construction of the edit, since they generate a linear progression of the storyline through the series of shots being edited. Once you’ve captured all the clips from a shoot and they are gathered in a bin in your project, you can simply order them based on their occurrence in the storyboard and create a quick rough cut of the entire project. Capture four video clips, each of which is at least 15 seconds in duration, making sure to include handles of at least 5 full seconds for each clip. In normal practice, such long handles might not be necessary, but having shorter handles might make it more difficult for you to see the slipping action this exercise is investigating. Don’t forget to figure this long handle time in with the necessary pre-roll time when you log the clips to avoid “unable to lock deck servo” messages. Also don’t forget to use a special Logging Bin for these clips so that they get stored in a bin of their own. To use the Storyboard Rough Cut technique, we will use the Large Icon view of the Logging Bin to create a storyboard of our clips. We will arrange them in the order that they should occur, left to right and top to bottom. Then we will take the whole group of clips and deposit them in order in the sequence in a rough cut. Finally, we will use the Slip and lide tools to hone our clips and their order in truly nonlinear fashion. After the capture process is complete, open the Logging Bin and look at the four newly captured clips. With the Logging Bin active, go to View > Browser Items > As Large Icons, or Control-click the Bin itself to change the mode. Normally, the View as List is most effective because all the detailed information about your materials is available. But when you choose As Large Icons, you are given a thumbnail of each item (see Figure 7-17). This thumbnail by default shows the first frame of a video clip, although you can change which frame it displays by scrubbing the clip and setting the Poster Frame, which is discussed subsequently. Now that your clips are all displayed in large icons in the Browser, arrange them left to right and top to bottom (see Figure 7-18). With only four clips, you’ll only be able to create two rows of two columns, so if you really want to see this as a functional storyboard ough cut, feel free to add more clips to the Logging Bin. Once all your thumbnailed clips are in order, create a new sequence and load it into the Timeline window. Click in the Logging Bin and drag a marquee selection so that all the thumbnail clips are selected. Then pick up any one of the clips and drag it to the sequence. When you do this, you will see that all the clips are carried over simultaneously and laid down on the sequence with no gaps between them. You could also simply pick up the Bin itself from the project tab and drop it in the sequence for the same effect.
Figure 7-17 When you choose As Large Icons, the clips in the Logging Bin are displayed as large thumbnails which by default show the first frame of each video clip.
Figure 7-18 The Storyboard Rough Cut technique involves arranging captured clips in the Browser window from left to right and top to bottom.
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Figure 7-19 The ghost master clip shape is there to let you visually know how far you can slip the clip within the current In and Out points of the affiliate in the sequence.
The Trim Edit window or the Ripple and Roll tools are perfect for editing these clips. But in some circumstances, the fastest way is simply to slip the contents of the sequence clip from within its master clip (see Figure 7-19). Go to the Toolbar and make sure that our Slip tool is enabled (keyboard shortcut, s). Then, go to the sequence where your roughcut sequence of clips is sitting. Click either clip that is surrounded by two other clips, and drag to the left and right. Overlaying the clips in the sequence, you will see a ghost image of the master clip; the “slipping” affiliate clip is following the mouse pointer. The ghost master clip shape is there to let you visually know how far you can slip the clip within the current In and Out points of the affiliate in the sequence. Move the ghost clip around a bit and then release the mouse button. You will see that the duration of the clip in the sequence has not changed. However, the portion of the master clip that these In and Out points relate to has changed. This is much faster than eloading the master clip into the Viewer window, setting new In and Out points for the clip, and then replacing the old clip in the sequence (or even using the trim tools we’ve covered). The Slip tool is primarily useful for B-Roll footage. B-Roll, for those not familiar with the concept, refers to relevant footage you might use to break up long static cuts (see Figure 7-20). B-Roll footage is absolutely necessary to demonstrate what your subjects are talking about, particularly in news production and documentaries. With a quick clip adjustment using the Slip tool, all you need initially is your subject footage, long extended B-Roll clips, and a sense for when to cut away from and back to your main content. The duration that the B-Roll clips should last will largely be determined by your content. If you capture lots of separate B-Roll shots from a single tape in an initial single master clip, all you need to do is use the same trimmed B-Roll clip frequently in your sequence. When you need a specific shot to appear in the B-Roll cutaway, just slip the B-Roll clip around until you get to the specific section of the clip you need and trim to taste.
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Figure 7-20 B-Roll refers to relevant footage you might use to break up long static cuts. B-Roll footage is absolutely necessary to demonstrate what your subjects are talking about, particularly in news production and documentaries.
Slipping in the Viewer To be fair, there is another ‘slip’ technique that offers nearly the same flexibility in the Viewer window that some may prefer. Double-click this same sequence clip that we have just slipped so that it loads into the Viewer. You will see the In and Out points and handles on either side. Hold down the Command-Shift, click either In or Out point and drag. This forces the other edit point in the clip to slip and maintain the clip’s duration. And because this is the affiliate loaded into the Viewer window rather than the master clip from the Browser, your adjustments are applied in the sequence. As elsewhere in FCP, two different methods, one common result.
Slip into Sync As a final note, it should be remembered that we already encountered the Slip function earlier in the chapter. When we Control-clicked the red “out-of-sync” box in the linking example, we found the “Move into Sync/Slip into Sync” contextual menu. We originally chose “Move into Sync” to force the clip back into sync with its related clips. The “Slip into Sync” choice would have performed an interesting variation on this (see Figure 7-21). Instead of moving the out-of-sync clip to a new position in the sequence to resync it, the “Slip into Sync” would perform a slip action to the content of the out-of-sync clip such that it is correctly synced, but its In and Out points are structured like a split edit. The resynced audio and video clips do not change their position on the Timeline, but the clip’s contents are slipped so that the frames that overlap are in sync.
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Figure 7-21 “Slip into Sync” will slip the content of an out-of-sync clip. The re-synced audio and video clips do not change their position on the Timeline, but the clip’s contents are slipped so that the frames that overlap are in sync.
The Slide Tool (Keyboard Shortcut–SS) The Slide tool is a very convenient tool that also does not change the duration of a sequence when it is applied to a clip. But where it differs from the Slip tool is that it actually moves the sliding clip itself around between the clips surrounding it, lengthening (or shortening) the preceding clip and shortening (or lengthening) the subsequent clip so that the edit points of the sliding clip’s edges remain intact and no gaps are created between any clips (see igure 7-22). It’s like performing trim actions on two edit points of the same track at once! The In and Out points of the clip you click and drag with the Slide tool stay exactly as they are. In fact, the clip you click and drag is not changed at all, except with regard to where it sits in the sequence. But in order for the clip to occur earlier or later in the group of clips of which it is a part, the clips preceding and following must have their outgoing and incoming edit points simultaneously trimmed to accommodate the sliding clip. Select the Slide tool on the Toolbar (keyboard shortcut, ss) and click on a clip that is surrounded by two adjoining clips. Drag it back and forth, and you will again see a ghost image of the clip you are moving, but this time it will maintain its affiliate length and instead show its new changed position within the surrounding clips. When you release the mouse button, the clip will jump to the new position you have moved it to, and the edit points for the surrounding clips will adjust so that no gap is introduced. This sort of tool will also be very useful with B-Roll footage, but this time for maintaining the exact length of the B-Roll clip. If you wanted to make sure that a 3-second and 15-frame B-Roll shot of a school bus is used in its entirety and that we cut to it as the school
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Figure 7-22 The Slide Tool moves the sliding clip itself around between the clips surrounding it, lengthening (or shortening) the preceding clip and shortening (or lengthening) the subsequent clip so that the edit points of the sliding clip’s edges remain intact and no gaps are created between any clips.
administrator says the words, “school bus,” this would be the perfect tool. Just “slip” the B-Roll clip until the footage of the bus is present and then “slide” the clip right into position at the frame in which the administrator begins the words. Nothing could be simpler or faster. Monitoring the Slip and Slide Tools in the Canvas Window When you use the Slip or Slide tools, the Canvas displays the now-familiar small double video window to show you the frames of the clip that you are adjusting (see Figure 7-23). With the Slip tool, the first video window shows the new frame used for the In point of the clip, and the second window shows the new Out point frame, since the Slip tool will change both In and Out frames of the “slipped” clip. With the Slide tool, the first window shows you the new video frame used for the Out point of the preceding clip, and the second shows you the new frame being used for the following clip’s new In point. This is because the changing frames will be the preceding and following clips, and not the “sliding” clip itself.
The Razorblade Toolset (Keyboard Shortcuts–B, BB) The next toolset on the Toolbar is referred to as the Razorblade tool. The Razorblade is a very intuitive tool that can be picked up very quickly. The Razorblade simply adds an edit, or divides a clip into two separate clips in the sequence at the point where the tool is clicked.
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Figure 7-23 When using the Slip or Slide Tools, the Canvas window will display a small double video window to show you the frames of the clip that you are adjusting.
This toolset consists of the tool itself and its one variation: the single Razorblade (keyboard shortcut, B), which performs the cut just described for the single track that is clicked; and the Razorblade All (keyboard shortcut, BB), which performs the same sort of cut across all clips in all tracks (see Figure 7-24). Using the Razorblade Tool To illustrate the Razorblade tool, we will cut a clip. Then, using a shortcut called the Ripple Delete, we will delete the part of the razorbladed clip we don’t want and snap the clip(s) following it up to the razorbladed edge, eliminating any gap in the sequence.
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Figure 7-24 The Razorblade Tool consists of the single Razorblade (keyboard shortcut, b), which divides a clip into two separate clips for the single track that is clicked; and the Razorblade All (keyboard shortcut, bb), which performs the same sort of cut across all clips in all tracks (images).
Select all clips in the sequence and delete them. Next, perform the storyboard rough cut technique again so that there are contiguous clips in the sequence. Using the J-K-L shuttling, find a frame in one of the clips where you want to introduce a cut, making sure that the playhead is parked on the frame you want to make your cut. Select the Razorblade tool (keyboard shortcut, B) on the Toolbar, and then return to the sequence. Make sure that Snapping is enabled in the Timeline, and then move the mouse pointer along the track of the clip you want to cut. As you move the Razorblade mouse pointer along the clip in the track, you will see a small vertical line indicating which frame the tool will cut if it is clicked (see Figure 7-25). Notice that the line appears in both the video and the two audio clips as you drag over it. This is because the Linked Selection forces the Razorblade to perform the Razorblade action on all linked items. When the Razorblade is near the playhead position in the clip, it snaps to it, enabling you to cut precisely on the frame of the clip. Click that frame, and the Razorblade will cut the clip in two. There is a somewhat faster method of doing this called Add Edit. Instead of using a mouse pointer to find the frame and slice the clip, use the J-K-L and Left and Right Arrow keys to identify the frame you want to cut on. Then hit Control-v, for Add Edit. This will neatly slice the clip just as the Razorblade tool did. The workflow difference is really in where you happen to be at the moment. If you are using the mouse to skim through many clips, hitting the b key with your other hand and cutting a clip is the fastest way. If, on the other hand, you are playing from the sequence and reviewing your edit, Add Edit can be hit on the fly without stopping playback! To see this, go to the beginning of your sequence (keyboard shortcut, Home key) and hit the Spacebar to begin playback. Whenever you feel like it, hit Control-v. Notice that playback does not stop, though a little red marker appears above the Timeline. Keep Adding Edits as it plays. When you get near the end of your sequence, hit the Spacebar
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Figure 7-25 When using the Razorblade Tool, you will see a small vertical line indicating which frame the tool will cut if it is clicked. On a linked clip, the line appears in both the video and the two audio clips as you drag over it. Linked Selection forces the Razorblade to perform the Razorblade action on all linked items.
again to stop play. Instantly, all the red marks are converted to edits. This is a great method of cutting to the beats in a music bed. Simply plop your audio track and a base video layer of either footage or slug (black filler footage) in the sequence and hit play. Then Control-v/Add Edit to the beat as the song plays. When the song is finished, go back and eplace all those cuts with footage from your tapes. What could be easier? You will have noticed that when you Razorblade or Add Edit to a clip, a little red bowtie appeared at the edit point. This bow-tie is called a Through Edit (see Figure 7-26). Through Edits are edits in which the Out point of the outgoing clip and the In point of the incoming clip are recognized by FCP as being sequential frames from an original master clip. Whenever two such frames in separate clips are abutted, this bow-tie will announce the fact. To quickly rejoin such Through Edits, Control-click the bow-tie. You will see several choices, one of which is Join Through Edit. Select Join Through Edit and the edit is removed. Performing a Ripple Delete Now that the Razorbladed clip has been divided into several separate clips, we need to get rid of some of the clips that contains footage we don’t want. At the same time, we want to
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Figure 7-26 When applying the Razorblade Tool or an Add Edit to a clip, a little red bow-tie or Through Edit appears at the edit point, indicating that the Out point of the outgoing clip and the In point of the incoming clip are sequential frames from an original master clip.
have clips occurring later in the track to ripple back to the newly cut clip to eliminate a gap in the track. Move the mouse pointer over the second part of the clip in the track that we want to delete and Control-click. You will be presented with a contextual menu with many options (see Figure 7-27). Choose the option Ripple Delete (keyboard shortcut, Shift-Delete). When you do so, the second clip will disappear and the subsequent clips in the track will ripple back to fill in the gap created by the deleted clip.
Figure 7-27 Choosing Ripple Delete (keyboard shortcut, Shift-Delete) when you Controlclick over a clip will cause that clip to disappear and all subsequent clips in the track to ripple back to fill in the gap created by the deleted clip.
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The Zoom Toolset (Keyboard Shortcuts–Z, ZZ, H, HH) The final toolset we will be looking at in this chapter is the Zoom toolset. This toolset is a pretty common feature in most image-editing applications. If you click on the toolset button in the Toolbar, you will see four options: Zoom In (keyboard shortcut, z), Zoom Out (keyboard shortcut, zz), Hand (keyboard shortcut, h), and Scrub Video (keyboard shortcut, hh) (see Figure 7-28). These tools allow you to customize and navigate the windows of FCP in ways that do not affect the clips and sequences of your project. They help you refine the way the various windows appear and how much of them you can see at a given time. The Zoom In and Zoom Out Tools The primary Zoom tool, shaped like a magnifying glass with a plus sign, simply increases the scale of whatever object it is applied to. If you click on a sequence with this tool enabled, the scale increases as if you had adjusted the various scale controls of the Timeline window itself. The Zoom Out button next to the Zoom In button provides exactly the opposite effect, shrinking the scale of the window, so that you can quickly adjust the exact scale of any window you are working with. Holding the Option key down while the Zoom In tool is enabled converts it to the Zoom Out tool, making it a quick and precise customization tool. Just hit the Z key to enable the Zoom In tool, then the Option key to pull back out if you Zoom In too far. The Zoom In and Zoom Out tools have uses outside the Timeline window as well. The Viewer and Canvas windows can be boosted or shrunk in scale based on a percentage of the actual size of the frame. This number is located in the top center of each window. Generally speaking, this number should be left at the default size with the window size tab set to Fit to Window (keyboard shortcut, Shift-Z) for optimized playback. This will keep you from getting scroll bars in the Viewer and Canvas, which can hamper or even stop playback.
Figure 7-28 The four Zoom Tools in the Toolbar allow for customization of and navigation between the windows of FCP without affecting clips and sequences in a project.
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The Hand Tool (Keyboard Shortcut–H) Sometimes it’s important to get a closer look at an image you are working with, as we will be doing in the following chapter on compositing. So it’s possible to Zoom In and Out much further than you would normally think necessary. But once you Zoom In to 800 percent in the Canvas or Viewer, how do you navigate around the image to get to the section you wanted to look at? There are scroll bars on the edge of the window, but that will frustrate you as you try to get to a place you can’t see using only up-and-down or left-to-right scroll bars. The Hand tool simply moves the video frame around so that you can go directly to the part of the window you want without fooling with scroll bars (see Figure 7-29). It does not
Figure 7-29 The Hand tool does not make any adjustments to clips or sequences; it functions only to move what is visible around the FCP interface windows.
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make any adjustments to clips or sequences; it functions only to move what is visible around the FCP interface windows. The Scrub Video Tool: Scrubbing a Clip’s Thumbnail (Keyboard Shortcut–HH) The last tool of this toolset is a really handy tool called the Scrub Video tool (see Figure 7-30). Although its use is very specific, it can be a lifesaver if you are doing a lot of clip duplication from one Master clip. The Scrub Video tool offers a fast efficient way to set Poster rames for your clips in the Browser window as well as a quick way to preview your clip by scrubbing through it in the Browser window. A Poster Frame is the image in the clip you see when your Browser Items are set to display as Large Icons (see View > Browser Items Large Icons or Control-click in the bin). It’s also the frame that appears with the clip in the Timeline when thumbnail is enabled in the Timeline tab of the Sequence Settings. The default Poster Frame for any given clip’s thumbnail will be the first frame of video in the clip. This can be very confusing if a lot of your footage looks very similar, especially near the beginning of the clip. If you have five clips that all start with roughly the same shot, the oster Frames in the thumbnails will all look exactly the same. Changing the image of the Poster Frame to some other more distinct frame from the clip can make it much easier to identify clips at a glance.
Figure 7-30 The Scrub Video tool offers a fast, efficient way to set Poster Frames for clips as well as a quick way to preview a clip by scrubbing through it in the Browser.
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There are a couple of different ways to set the Poster Frame for a clip. If a clip is loaded into the Viewer, you can set it by finding the frame you want to use with the playhead, then going to Mark > Set Poster Frame (keyboard shortcut, Control-p). But doing this requires that the clip be loaded up into the Viewer window. Using the Scrub Video tool on the other hand, allows you not only to look through the footage of the clip without loading it into the Viewer, it allows you to set the Poster Frame there as well. Open the bin with your storyboard-style thumbnailed clips. If you have reset the bin to display as a list, or with smaller thumbnails, set it to show the bin as Large Icons. Your clips need to be visible as large thumbnails for this example. Go to the Toolbar and select the Scrub Video (keyboard shortcut, hh). Now return to the Logging Bin and pick a clip that has a fairly wide range of imagery. Click in the center of the thumbnail, and drag to the left and right. As you do so, you should see the thumbnail scrub through the video frames of the clip. This is a good way to quickly preview a clip before working with it, but it isn’t radically faster than loading the clip into the Viewer window, where you could get a much better view of the contents of the clip. The main value of the Scrub tool is not in previewing the footage in the clip but in selecting the Poster Frame. But when you scrub with the tool and release the mouse button, the Poster Frame snaps back to the first frame of the clip. To actually change the Poster Frame, first click and drag the thumbnail in the Browser as you did previously, scrolling through the frames of video in the clip until you find the frame you want to use as the new Poster Frame. When you find the frame, press the Control key while still holding the mouse button on the frame. Finally, release the mouse button while still holding the Control key. Then, release the Control key and your Poster Frame will have changed to the frame you selected. All this may seem like gratuitous effort to get a little unique thumbnail to look at in the bin window. And with Large Icon view, you lose access to all the great detailed information in the columns that you get in List view. Furthermore, you will find that it is far easier to mentally organize master clips and subclips in the infinitely customizable List view rather than the loose arrangement of the Icon views. Creating Thumbnails in the List View You may find yourself asking, “Why can’t I have a clip thumbnail in the List View?” All the foregoing processes occurred in the List View mode, where by default there is no clip thumbnail. And although thumbnails are just icing on the cake for the really well organized, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t help ourselves to as much icing as we can get. There is a way to enjoy the convenience of the Large Icon view’s thumbnails in the List View mode (see Figure 7-31). Although using List view will not allow you to arrange your clips in storyboard fashion as is possible in Large Icon view, many editors find that the List view combination of thumbnails and informational columns, along with the ability to arrange clips by any criteria you can think of, is far more important than assembling storyboard panels. If you need to look at things from a storyboard perspective temporarily, there’s no reason you can’t switch View modes briefly, then switch back.
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Figure 7-31 Many editors prefer using the List view instead of creating Storyboard Rough Cuts, as it offers a combination of thumbnails and informational columns along with the ability to arrange clips by nearly any criteria you can think of.
With your storyboard bin set to View items as List, Control-click on the first column header of the List view, which by default is Duration (see Figure 7-32). A small menu list appears, at the bottom of which is an option for Show Thumbnail. Select the Show Thumbnail option and release to add a Thumbnail column to the lists. The Duration column simply moves one space to the right to make room. You can now set the Poster Frames for the thumbnails of your new subclips. The Scrub Video tool from the Toolbar will function precisely the same for this thumbnail as it does for the Large Icon view.
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Figure 7-32 With your storyboard bin set to View items as List, Control-click on the first column header of the List view, which by default is Duration. A small menu list appears, at the bottom of which is an option for Show Thumbnail.
Master Clips and Affiliates What are master clips and affiliates? A master clip can be thought of as a clip that is associated directly to the entire media it references, including handles, just as you captured it (see Figure 7-33). When you capture video footage, FCP creates a QuickTime Movie media file and then links it to a clip in your project. Such clips in your project tab are Master Clips. When you load the master clip from the project tab into the Viewer and give it an In and Out point to edit into a sequence with, the master clip in the Browser retains these In and Out points until you change them. If you later wanted to use a different section of the same master clip in the sequence, you would need to load the master clip into the Viewer again and change these. This is the way that master clips work. They retain edit points until we change them. But our minds generally do not work this way. It’s usually easier to organize a project if you have isolated the various parts of your project in such a fashion that you can look at them en masse. How could you possibly storyboard rough-cut edit, for example, if all your material was contained in one master clip? Clearly such a method will work only in very small, uncomplicated projects. A much better way to organize a complicated project with master clips is to create specific subclips and treat them as clips of their own, even though they ultimately reference the same media files as their fellow subclips and the master clip from which they originate. FCP certainly doesn’t care; media files are media files, clips are clips, and “parts is parts.”
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Figure 7-33 A master clip can be thought of as a captured or imported clip that is associated directly to the entire media it references, including handles, just as you captured it.
In fact, you are creating a sort of subclip every time you edit a master clip into a sequence. FCP calls all subsequent uses of a master clip in a sequence affiliates (see Figure 7-34). This means that the affiliate is derived from the master clip. Although it doesn’t use all the frames from the master clip (only what was between the In and Out points when it was created), it still has access to those extra frames. The extra frames outside the In and Out points are the handles we have made so much use of in this chapter. The master and affiliate relationship runs deeper than this. Changes you make to certain features in the affiliate are rippled back to the master clip, as well as other affiliates derived from the same master clip. The name of the clip, for instance, or its reel name, are all interlinked between clips associated with a specific master clip. To illustrate this, in the sequence, Control-click a clip and choose Item Properties > ormat. Item Properties allows us to check any of the features of a clip, such as its name, size, source file location, frame rate, and data rate (see Figure 7-35). In addition, certain fields can be changed here. For instance, single-click the clip’s name such that it brings up a bounding box. Type in a new name for the clip and hit enter. Then hit OK to exit the tem Properties box. Look at the sequence clip and you will see that its name has been changed. But look back into your Browser and you will see that the master clip you edited this affiliate from has also been renamed. Unlike previous versions of FCP, changing the name of an affiliate actually ripples through the project updating all related clips. Now in some cases this is a great thing. If you needed to change the reel name of a clip in the sequence, and you wanted to make sure that all other uses of the master clip in the entire project were updated to match the new reel name, it would be as simple as the action ou just took. This can make cleaning up little accidents much easier.
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Figure 7-34 An affiliate clip is derived from a master clip. Although it doesn’t use all the frames from the master clip (only what was between the In and Out points when it was created), it still has access to those extra frames.
The Subclip Unfortunately, it also complicates a common workflow for many editors, called Subclipping. We want to break up large master clips into smaller clips and rename the contents of these smaller clips to reflect what is contained within them, using a command called Make Subclip. Load a master clip into the Viewer window and set In and Out points. Rather than immediately edit with this In and Out pointed master clip, we can make a subclip based on the In and Out points you added. Go to Modify > Make Subclip. A new clip with
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Figure 7-35 Item Properties allows for checking of any of the features of a clip, such as its name, size, source file location, frame rate, and data rate. In addition, certain fields can be changed here.
shaggy edges appears in the Browser (see Figure 7-36). Immediately go to the new subclip and name it “subclip1.” This new subclip is limited to just the In and Out points you specified in the master clip. While the master clip is still loaded in the Viewer, you can continue to create other subclips from other parts of the master clip until you’ve completely divided and organized the master clip into workable clips. Double-click one of the new subclips to load it into the Viewer. You will see that the length of the clip is exactly the length of the In to Out points you set when you created it from the master clip. If you edit it into a sequence, you will further see that the subclip cannot be trimmed out beyond the frames you established as the In and Out point, because it has no handles. FCP regards anything created with the Make Subclip command as if it were a captured master clip rather than a clip carved from a larger master clip. FCP offers an override for this limit to the subclip’s ability to access the rest of the master clip it was created from.
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Figure 7-36 Subclips are limited to just the In and Out points you specify in the master clip. While the master clip is still loaded in the Viewer, you can continue to create other subclips from other parts of the master clip until you’ve completely divided and organized the master clip into workable clips.
At any time, you can select the subclip and go Modify > Remove Subclip Limits. This restores the original access to all of the media to which the master clip had access. So, using this process you can divide your master clips up however you like. Trim your master clips and generate lots of subclips that refer specifically to areas of the master clip you want to access individually. Then edit these into your sequences as if they were master clips themselves. Finally, if you find that you need to access more of the master clip than you shut out by choosing Make Subclip, double-click the subclip in the sequence to load into the Viewer and go Modify > Remove Subclip Limits. Another workflow that many users will find valuable is DV Start/Stop Detection. To use this feature, you have to start while shooting. When you shoot footage with DV cameras, each time you pause or stop the camera recording, the frames of video recorded on tape register this as a “scene break.” Don’t worry, this is not a timecode break. It is really only relevant for Start/Stop Detection and won’t affect normal capturing at all. Now, when you capture this footage, FCP can analyze all the frames in the captured media file. Each time that it sees the scene break tags, it inserts a marker into the clip, just like the markers that we looked at in the Log and Capture window. Thus, after capture, your footage is automatically broken up into “takes” based on the camera pause/stop data.
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Figure 7-37 With DV Start/Stop Detect, FCP will analyze the media for each captured clip, inserting markers for any scene breaks created while shooting. When applied, you will see a widget next to the clip name in the project tab, which, when clicked, will show the list of markers dividing up each take on the reel.
Here is the simple workflow. Shoot your footage, using pause and stop to record scene breaks (be careful not to accidentally cause timecode breaks when you stop recording!). Then capture the entire shoot in one clip into FCP, usually just using Capture Now rather than logging the whole tape. After the capture, load the clip into the Viewer, go to Mark > DV tart/Stop Detect. FCP will analyze the media for the clip, inserting markers for the scene break (see Figure 7-37). When it is done, in the project tab you will see a widget next to the clip name. Click the widget and you will see the list of markers dividing up each take on the reel. As a final step, you can either treat these markers as subclips since they load up into the Viewer as subclips, or you can simply marquee drag and select the markers and hit Command-u, the keyboard shortcut for Make Subclip. Dupe Detection ou may have noticed a feature in the User Preferences General tab called Dupe Detection (see Figure 7-38). Dupe Detection, when enabled for a sequence, identifies any frames from clips in a sequence that are being used twice or more. In other words, if you edit from a master clip into a sequence twice, and accidentally use the same frame or frames in two places, Final Cut Pro will let you know.
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Figure 7-38 Dupe Detection, when enabled for a sequence, identifies any frames from clips in a sequence that are being used twice or more.
To enable Dupe Detection for all subsequent sequences, go Final Cut Pro > User Preferences > Timeline Options, which will include the feature in all subsequent sequences. In the Track Display box on the lower left, enable Show Duplicate Frames. On the General tab of the same User Preferences, you will find a further tweak for the feature. You can set a specified handle size; in other words, how many frames into the clip’s handles will FCP go to determine that duplicated frames are being used (remember that affiliate clips in the sequence have access to the entire master clip). You can also set the threshold, which makes the instance of duplicated frames more extreme before calling your attention to it. When Dupe Detection is enabled, if you have duplicate frames in a sequence, the sequence clip will have a red line through the frames in the clip that are duplicated in other clips elsewhere in the sequence (see Figure 7-39).
Figure 7-39 When Dupe Detection is enabled, if you have duplicate frames in a sequence, the sequence clip will have a red line through the frames in the clip that are duplicated in other clips elsewhere in the sequence.
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Dupe Detection will be of interest mostly to editors who intend to have their edits matched back to film negatives rather than simply distributing as video. Re-using a negative that has been cut is impossible, and you absolutely have to know that you are re-using frames so that you can either eliminate the duplicate frames or make optical copies. It is extremely useful for editors who will be using very expensive online suites to make their cuts based on their offline edit in FCP, a process described in much greater detail in Chapter 11. The Sequence Settings Window ince Dupe Detection is a preference that is set for all new sequences as you create them, any new sequences that do not have it enabled must be changed in the Sequence Settings window. Select a sequence in the Browser and go Sequence > Settings. On the General tab of this window are all the settings that you addressed in the Audio/Video Settings preset window in Chapter 2 of this book. You can change all those here if necessary, with one caveat. If you have already placed clips in the sequence, its editing timebase, or sequence frame rate, cannot be changed. You must start from scratch to change this setting. The third tab of the Sequence Settings, the Timeline Options tab, is where you change what is shown in the sequence (see Figure 7-40). In the box on the lower left of
Figure 7-40 The third tab of the Sequence Settings, the Timeline Options tab, is where you change what is shown in the sequence.
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the window are some checkboxes to enable functionality. If you need to see duplicate frames, enable the checkbox. Other options here can be enabled from the Timeline window itself.
The Crop/Distort and Pen Toolsets The two remaining toolsets in the Toolbar, Crop/Distort and the Pen toolset, are best covered in the next chapter, since they relate almost entirely to image manipulation rather than the cutting and trimming functions that define editing.
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8
Compositing and Special Effects
Compositing, in its most literal sense, means taking a stack of items and making them into one item. Compositing in FCP involves the process of taking more than one clip and integrating or combining them into one single video frame. As one FCP guru put it, “Compositing is everything above Video Layer 1.” FCP allows up to 99 separate video tracks and it gives you fantastic flexibility to customize the way those separate layers work together. Compositing is one of those tasks in which there is never only one right way to accomplish a goal. This is, in part, because compositing requires a mental vision of the results. No two compositors generate the same results, just as no two painters use the same brushstroke. Your uniqueness as a human being and an artist cannot help but shine through. To be successful at compositing, you really have to rework the way you think about making a visual image. Why must you undo your prior knowledge of image making? Because, sometimes, adding red to an image is more about taking away green than it is about painting with red. FCP gives you the ability to obscure or reveal imagery using not only the various features of light—such as opacity (visible to invisible), hue (the shade of the color), and saturation (density of the color)—but also the way that these changes occur over time, also known as keyframing. We’ll start with an exploration of layering, track opacity, and other keyframeable effects. In the course of setting up and using these effects, we will also learn to use Wireframe, Keyframe Interpolation, and the Text Generator.
Compositing Layers From our definition of compositing, we already know that we need more than one layer in a sequence in order to create a composite. Layers in a sequence are stacked, one on top of the other. What you see in the Canvas window is actually what lies in the sequence as seen from the top layer down. Imagine that your sequence of video layers is a messy stack of different types of paper. Some sheets cover others while some are more transparent, allowing you to see through them to the next layer underneath. Others may have holes cut in them like a stencil. When you edit video clips into a new layer on the sequence, you are inserting a new sheet of paper onto the stack.
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Setting Up a Sequence for Compositing Layers Create a new sequence in your project. Edit an initial video clip into the sequence in the V1 track. Choose another video clip, drag it to the sequence, position it in the V2 track, and drop it, making sure to perform an Overwrite rather than an Insert edit. Position the sequence playhead somewhere within the clips. A glance at the Canvas window will reveal that the video clip in the V2 layer is covering the clip in the V1 layer. This is because, by default, all video clips have 100% opacity. We have already explored this opacity feature with the Clip Overlay button. Setting a static, unchanging opacity level in a clip, as we did in the Clip Overlay exercise earlier, might be useful in some situations; but in most, we need to be able to control the level of opacity over time within the clip. To do so, we need to introduce the concept of keyframing. Keyframing in the Sequence Keyframes come into use with many visual effects in FCP, as well as other popular editing and compositing applications. Keyframing means that for a certain quality in a clip, such as opacity, a certain value exists at a certain time. A typical example of keyframing would be transitions in movies where the image slowly fades in from black or fades out to black. ome quality of the video is changing over time. In the digital universe, everything has a value. The example we are working with, opacity, has a value at any given time of between 0 and 100%. At 0%, the clip is completely transparent; at 50%, it is half transparent; and at 100%, the clip is opaque. No keyframes are necessary for a clip to have an initial value; all clips do. But establishing a keyframe and giving a specific frame a value gives us the ability to change that value over time. For example, if we assign a first keyframe in a clip and set an opacity value for that keyframe, the opacity value will be reflected as our clip plays, although the opacity will not change over time. The lesson is that one keyframe in a clip expresses only one value. To express a change in values in a clip, you must have two or more keyframes, each one having a different value. We set a keyframe for the value we want the clip to have initially, say 100% opacity, then we set additional keyframes further down the Timeline for the change in values we wish to see over the duration of the clip, say 50%, then 25%, and then 0%. If we do not want a value to change over time, there is no reason to insert a keyframe at all. To insert keyframes into a clip’s opacity in a sequence, we need to have two features enabled. First, we need the Clip Overlay button to be enabled in the Timeline window, since this is where our keyframes will be inserted. Next, we need to go to the Toolbar and select the Pen tool (keyboard shortcut, p). If you click on the Pen tool and hold the mouse button briefly, you will see three options: the Pen tool, the Delete Point tool, and the mooth Point tool (see Figure 8-1). We will discuss the Smooth Pen tool subsequently, but for now we are concerned with the Pen and Delete Point tools. Select the Pen tool. You may want to go Sequence > Settings, and in the Timeline Options tab change Thumbnail Display from Name plus Thumbnail to Name (see Figure 8-2). This will
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Figure 8-1 The Pen tool has three options: the Pen, the Delete Point, and Pen Smooth. Select the Pen.
Figure 8-2 Change the Thumbnail Display to Name in the Timeline Options tab of the Sequence Settings.
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remove the thumbnail from the clip in the sequence, and will make it easier for you to work with the rubberband line at the beginning of a clip. Look to the clip in the V2 track. Move the mouse pointer to the beginning of the clip and place it near the rubberband line. When you move to the beginning of the clip near the Clip Overlay line, the mouse pointer will change from the familiar arrow into the shape of the Pen tool. This indicates that the Pen tool is able to assign a keyframe for the frame you are presently hovering over. Click on that rubberband line and drag the keyframe up and down. As you do, the alue box appears next to the mouse pointer informing you of the current value of the keyframe you have just created by clicking on the rubberband line. Hold down the Shift key and the box shows you both a timecode value and the value. Now, without releasing the keyframe, drag it from left to right and back (see Figure 8-3). As long as you have the keyframe under the thumb of your mouse button, you have total control of the value it represents and the time it occurs within the clip. If you let go of the mouse pointer, but want to change the keyframe’s value or position, simply grab it and drag again. After you have established a keyframe, the Pen tool displays as a crosshair when suspended over it. Drag the keyframe all the way to the left, so that it occurs on the first frame of the clip. Then, before releasing it, drag it all the way up to the top of the clip, so that its value is 100% (see Figure 8-4).
Figure 8-3 As you drag the new keyframe up, down, and side-to-side, you are given an information box telling you the new value and position.
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Figure 8-4
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Reposition the keyframe at the first frame of the clip and set its value at 100%.
Now we have one keyframe set on the first frame of the clip. But, as we mentioned earlier, having one keyframe is really no different than having none. To establish a change in value, we need to add a second keyframe that occurs after the initial keyframe. Since our first keyframe is at the beginning of the clip, move down the Timeline several seconds to add a second keyframe. With the Timeline active (and nothing selected), type in “+300”, which will move the playhead up 3 seconds from its present position. Position the Pen tool on the playhead and click to set the second keyframe. Then grab it and drag down until it hits 0%. If you didn’t quite get your keyframe directly on the playhead, pick it up and move it, and it should snap right to it (see Figure 8-5). Now you will have two keyframes, each of which contains a different value. Between the two keyframes is a long slanting line denoting the change in value of opacity for all the frames in between the two keyframes. FCP will create all the images that fall between the two keyframes. This slanting line is referred to as “keyframe interpolation.” Interpolation is a process by which the computer generates all the values between the two known values, saving you a lot of calculation. We give FCP the values we want the clip to have at the beginning and ending keyframes, and it figures out the values for each intermediary frame in less time than it would take you to remember where you left your calculator. If you move the playhead through the area of the clip that is between the two keyframes, you will see that the V2 layer clip slowly and evenly goes transparent as the opacity keyframe values go from 100 to 0% over 3 seconds. Each frame between the two keyframes
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Figure 8-5 Set the second keyframe 3 seconds from the first one and drag the value down to 0% to create a long slanting line between the two keyframes.
is displayed with a progressively smaller percentage of opacity. And all you need to have for this is the two opacity keyframes that change in value. Although we have been talking opacity throughout this section, the same keyframing techniques work with most Motion tab attributes, like scale, position, and rotation, among others. Adding Type: The Text Generator To explore further with compositing, we need a small graphic element to work with. Although any of the effects that we will apply in this lesson could also be applied to video clips, we will be able to see the results a little more clearly using the Text generator. Adding motion and other effects to text is a pretty common practice, so learning to use these techniques is fundamental to taking your productions to the next level. FCP ships with BorisFX’s excellent free text generator, Calligraphy. Calligraphy is a much more flexible text generator than the native one we will be using in this lesson. But the additional options and abilities also makes Calligraphy a little more complex to learn. You are encouraged to install and use Calligraphy. See its user manual for specifics. To generate text using FCP’s native Text Generator, we need to bring the generator into the sequence. Create a new sequence in the project tab, double-click it to load it into the Timeline and Canvas. Edit a video clip into the V1 track of the new sequence so that we will have a video
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Figure 8-6 In the bottom right corner of the Viewer, look for the Generator tab. Click it, choose Text > Text. The Text Generator will load up automatically into the Viewer.
background for our text. Next, click the Effects tab of the Browser window. Make sure you are in View as List mode by Control-clicking inside the Effects tab and choosing View as List. In the Video Generator bin, click the triangle to look at the contents. You will see: Crawl, Lower Third, Outline Text, Scrolling Text, Text, and Typewriter. To use the Text Generator, we want to use it just like a clip, very similar to the way that we accessed the Bars and Tone clip in Chapter 2. But this time, rather than load it into the Viewer window by double-clicking as with the Bars and Tone clip, we will access it from yet another location that doesn’t require using the drop-down menus or the Effects tab. In the Viewer, look for a pulldown tab with the letter A in the bottom right corner of the window (see Figure 8-6). Click this tab and you will find a shortcut to all the various generators available in the Effects tab, including the Bars and Tone mentioned above. We want to work with the FCP Text Generator, so scroll down to Text > Text. The Text Generator automatically loads into the Viewer. You will see the words SAMPLE TEXT appear in the Viewer. SAMPLE TEXT is the default text for the clip until you change it. Master/Affiliate Clips and the Viewer Before we begin monkeying with the Text Generator’s parameters, we need to address an issue that is central to effects work in FCP. This has to do with the Master/Affiliate relationship we encountered in the last chapter. When you load a clip into the Viewer to
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Figure 8-7 A master clip loaded from the Browser, such as this generator, has a clear timeline occupied only by the playhead and possibly In and Out points.
begin effects work, you have to be careful to load the affiliate version from the sequence that you want to change, rather than the master clip from the Browser. This is pretty easy to identify in the Viewer. Now that you have loaded the Text Generator, take a look at the timeline in the bottom of the Viewer (see Figure 8-7). Notice that it is clear of everything except for In and Out points and the playhead. This indicates that this is a master clip, rather than an affiliate, or sequence clip. This matters because of the way FCP handles rendering. Rendered frames are organized on your storage drives by their frame location in the sequence. If you try and render something that has no frame location in a sequence, i.e., a master clip, you will find it’s not possible. Thus, you have to put your clips in the sequence prior to applying effects to them. To address this, we will once again perform a Superimpose edit of this clip above the clip already in the V1 track, this time accessing Superimpose without having to drag the Text clip into the Canvas or the sequence. Look in the bottom left corner of the Canvas for three colored buttons (see Figure 8-8). These correspond to the Overwrite, Insert, and then all the remaining edit modes. Since we want to Superimpose (keyboard shortcut, F12), we need to switch the third button to Superimpose mode. Click and hold the small side-widget and you will get a strip with the remaining edit modes. Click the purple mode and let go. Now Superimpose is the choice for the third button. Click this button, look to the sequence, and you will see the Text clip ‘super-ed’ over the V1 track. Once the Text clip is in the sequence, double-click it there to open it in the Viewer. Notice immediately that the timeline in the Viewer window now contains little sprocket
Figure 8-8 To access the Superimpose shortcut in the Canvas, click the third colored button and hold, then select the purple mode. Clicking it will now initiate a Superimpose edit.
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Figure 8-9 An Affiliate clip loaded from the sequence shows sprocket holes in its timeline. You should only apply effects and/or parameter changes to Affiliate clips.
holes all along its length (see Figure 8-9). This is the indicator of an Affiliate clip from a sequence. Now we are prepared to change the parameters on the clip. In the Viewer window, you will find the Controls tab (see Figure 8-10). The parameters of the Controls tab will be familiar to anyone who has spent any time using a word processor. At the top is a text entry field where you can enter the text you want included in the frame. This text entry field acts just like a word processor. Remember that if you hit the Return key, it will include a line break in your text rather than get you out of the entry field. To apply your text changes, either hit the Tab key or click anywhere outside of the text box. To change the size, font, or any other aspect of text you have already typed, you have to select the text first and then make the change. Let’s make some changes to the default text already in the entry field. First, select the words SAMPLE TEXT in the entry field. Before typing in new text, click the Font bar underneath the field. For this exercise, we want a rather blocky piece of text with very thick lines, so choose Arial Black. Take a look over in the Canvas, where you will see that the Canvas window is being updated globally. Keep the Canvas in view as you work in the Controls tab to monitor how your text looks as you make changes. In the Size field, type in 75 numerically. As this enlarges the text considerably, we need to check and make sure we haven’t exceeded the Title Safe zone, as described in Chapter 4. To see the Title Safe zone in the Canvas, look under the Overlays menu just to the right of the Gang Sync pulldown menu (see Figure 8-11). There are a number of options; first make sure that Show Overlays is toggled on. If it is not, other overlay options will be grayed out. When Show Overlays is toggled on, once again, pulldown the menu and select Show Title Safe. When you do so, you will see the Action and Title Safe rectangle zones appear in the frame. Although a value of 75 takes the edges of our text slightly out of Title Safe in the Canvas, we will make further changes when we type in our real text content, so leave it alone for now. For Style, click the drop-down menu and look at the options. Since we want to emphasize the blocky nature of the Arial Black font, choose Bold. For Alignment, choose Center. Leave Color set to White. Origin refers to the position of the text in the frame as seen in the Canvas. This value can be anywhere in the frame and uses two number values corresponding to the X and Y coordinates.
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Figure 8-10
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The Controls tab of the Text Generator clip.
We want to use the coordinates 0 and 0 for our text, which will place the baseline, or the bottom of the line of text, directly in the center of the frame. Tracking refers to how close the letters are to each other horizontally, and Leading refers to the spacing between lines of text. Leading is only a critical issue if you have a line break, and thus two or more lines of text in the field. Aspect refers to how squeezed or stretched the letters appear (leave set to a value of 1 to maintain a normal aspect). Finally, the AutoKerning and Use Subpixel checkboxes simply tell FCP to use its own judgment in positioning and spacing the individual letters of the text, just like any good word processing application does. Leave them checked. After you have ventured through all of those parameters, change the text by typing “Text Clip!” Take a look over in the Canvas window and notice that there is quite a bit of
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Figure 8-11 Look in the Overlays menu to toggle on Show Overlays, and then select Show Title Safe in the Canvas.
space now. Return to the Controls tab, make sure that the text in the text entry field is selected, and change the Size value to 100. We now have a piece of text for use in the Motion Effects exercises (see Figure 8-12).
Special Effects: Motion Effects We have experimented with keyframing of Opacity in the sequence, but we have yet to fully explore the functionality of FCP with regard to the many other physical parameters for a clip, and the ability to keyframe them to achieve interesting effects that change over time.
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Your Text clip settings should resemble this display.
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We will now move a little further with each of these ideas, learning to fully manipulate a clip within a sequence. To begin with, we will use the Text clip we just created. The Image + Wireframe Viewing Mode In order to be able to manipulate an image in the Canvas, we need to first turn on Image + Wireframe Viewing Mode. Because we will be changing the physical position and appearance of the objects in the Canvas, we need to switch to a viewing mode that allows us to directly adjust them. In the Canvas Overlay menu, there are three viewing modes: Image, Image + Wireframe, and Wireframe (see Figure 8-13). The default viewing mode is Image, which is the mode that you have probably been using. When a window is in Image mode, you can grab the center of the Viewer window and drag an entire clip into the Canvas or sequence. You are not adjusting anything in the clip itself; you are just telling FCP to use the clip in another window. In Image + Wireframe mode, when you grab the clip you can move its physical position around within the Canvas. You are actually changing its position on an X axis and Y axis, X values being horizontal and Y values being vertical. In practice, you don’t have to agonize over the geometry of this. With the Canvas in Image + Wireframe mode, you simply click and drag the object to where you want to place it. In the Canvas, click the Overlay Viewing Mode menu and select Image + Wireframe. Next, go down to the sequence and single-click to select the text clip, making sure that the sequence playhead is somewhere inside the clip. In the Canvas, you will see that a blue bounding box with a white X through the center has become visible (see Figure 8-14). This is the wireframe for the text layer. It is not visible on your NTSC video monitor; it is only a visual aid. Think of the wireframe as a sort of grip handle that allows you to reposition or in other ways modify your clips in the Canvas window. At the center of the white X, you will see a number that identifies which video layer is selected.
Figure 8-13 The Overlay menu gives three viewing mode options: Image, Image + Wireframe, and Wireframe.
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Figure 8-14 Switch the Overlay Viewing Mode to Image + Wireframe, select the text clip, and make sure the sequence playhead is in the text clip. In the Canvas, you will see the Wireframe of the text clip.
Make sure the General Selection tool is active (keyboard shortcut, a), then go to the Canvas, and move the mouse pointer around without clicking. You will see that the mouse pointer has changed into a shape with four arrows pointing in each of the cardinal directions (see Figure 8-15). This is the Move tool and indicates that clicking and dragging will change the position values of the selected clip. Click the center of the X and drag in any direction. When you drag, the wireframe moves around and follows the pointer. If you pause for a split second, the frame updates to show you the clip’s new position. You can drag the wireframe anywhere, even outside the edges of the Canvas’ windows! And as long as you see that wireframe, you can grab the layer and drag to reposition it again. You have to be a little careful as you play though, because of the way that wireframe works. When you switch to Image + Wireframe, it allows wireframes for all objects in the Canvas and sequence. Any object that is selected in the sequence will have a visible wireframe.
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Figure 8-15 The General Selection tool becomes the Move tool.
Clicking on the object in the Canvas will select the clip in the sequence. Such is the global nature of FCP. You have to be a little careful when you access the Canvas so that when you click, you actually select the clip you intend to select. It’s usually faster to select the clip in the sequence, and then manipulate it in the Canvas. In addition to changing the position of the clip in the Canvas, you can change other aspects of it as well. You have to pay special attention to the shape of the mouse pointer as you move around the wireframe. Move it to one of the four corners of the blue bounding box. As you move it around the four corners of the bounding box, it will alternate between three different shapes: the four-arrow shape, a thin crosshair, and a circular arrow (see Figure 8-16). The thin crosshair is used to change the scale of the clip. Place the pointer on any one of the four corners of the blue bounding box. When you see the crosshair, click and drag. As you drag in, the scale shrinks, and as you drag out, the scale increases. You can take this scaling a step further by holding down the Shift key as you drag the scale to change its Aspect Ratio, or to shrink either the vertical scale or horizontal scale separately. As an interesting combination, holding down the Command key while dragging the scale crosshair
Figure 8-16 Moving the General Selection tool around the edges of the wireframe, you get two other tools: the Scale crosshair and the Rotate circular arrow.
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will yield corresponding adjustments for both the scale and the rotation values, resulting in a sort of spinning appearance. This can yield interesting effects when we get into keyframing of actual motion. The other cursor shape, a circular arrow, is for setting rotational values. Move the pointer to any one of the sides of the blue bounding box. When you see the circular arrow, click and drag in a circular motion and you will see the clip rotate in the direction that you are dragging. If you hold down the Shift key while dragging the rotational tool, the rotation is constrained to rotations of 45 degree angles. But where are all these values ending up? As you manually adjust these clips, the Motion tab in the Viewer window reflects the exact numerical values of the changes you make. Make sure the Sequence Text clip is loaded into the viewer, then select the Motion tab, then return to the Canvas and move the clip around as we just did (see Figure 8-17). As you make changes in the Canvas window, you will see the values in the Motion tab reflect these changes. There are also Drop Shadow and Motion Blur features below these attributes which we will leave disabled for the moment, but we will return to them after completing a motion path. Note that there is a red X to the right of each attribute on the Motion tab (Basic Motion, Crop, Distort, Opacity, Drop Shadow, and Motion Blur). This is a eset switch that will reset the values of each parameter to the original default value. Reset the Basic Motion attribute so that we start with a clean slate in the next exercise (see Figure 8-18).
Figure 8-17 Choose the Motion tab in the Viewer, then continue to adjust the clip in the Canvas, noting that the Center, Scale, and Rotate values update as you change them.
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Figure 8-18 attribute.
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The red X in the Motion tab next to the attributes resets all values for the
Creating a Motion Path All of this adjusting has been for a single value on each attribute. Although you could change the scale or position, we have yet to add keyframes. Just like the opacity keyframing we visited earlier in this chapter, we must set keyframes for the attributes we want to change. The only real difference here is that the opacity keyframes were set in the sequence; the keyframes we will set in this exercise will be set in the Canvas and the Motion tab. Setting the Keyframes for Motion To create a motion path, we have to set an initial keyframe for position in the Canvas. With Overlays turned on, the Canvas set to Image + Wireframe, and the General Selection tool enabled, single-click the text clip in the sequence so that its wireframe becomes active in the Canvas. Next, go up to the Canvas, grab the now visible wireframe, and drag its center into the upper left corner of the video frame. Hit the Home key to go to the first frame of the sequence. Then make sure the Motion tab for the text clip is showing in the Viewer (see Figure 8-19). Go to the Basic Motion parameters and click the small diamond just to the right of the X and Y Center parameter fields. That creates a keyframe for that parameter on that frame, and the diamond becomes green, identifying that there is a keyframe on the frame where the playhead is parked. There is a keyboard shortcut, Control-k, for Add Keyframe, however, that shortcut adds a keyframe for all main Motion tab attributes except for opacity, which only needs one or two specific keyframes. You can also set individual keyframes in the Video tab of the Viewer, but with an added control. By Control-clicking and holding the Add Keyframe
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Figure 8-19 With the playhead at the first frame of the text clip, on the Motion tab, click the diamond just to the right of the Center’s X and Y parameters to create a keyframe for this position.
button, then selecting the attribute you want, the keyframe is only applied for that particular attribute (see Figure 8-20). Since we are addressing each parameter in order, we will add a keyframe for each parameter as we encounter them in the Motion tab. After setting that initial Center keyframe, move your playhead further along your sequence to the third second (00:00:03:00). Rather than use the Canvas window to manually position the text back to the center of the frame, this time directly enter the X and Y alues in the Motion tab. Use “0,0”, which are the values for the center of the frame (see igure 8-21). Notice that without clicking the diamond, entering the value has turned the keyframe diamond green. Whenever you make a change in the Canvas or Motion tab to an attribute that already has an initial keyframe somewhere else in the clip, FCP will add the new keyframe automatically. If a keyframe already exists on the frame you change the value of, it simply updates that keyframe to what you want. A couple of things will happen after you create the second keyframe (see Figure 8-22). irst, you will see a bumpy, purple line appear on the screen between the first and the second keyframe you just created (you won’t see it if the clip is not selected). This line is your motion path. It is the direct path the text clip will travel over the three seconds between the first keyframe at the beginning of the clip to the second keyframe at the third second, which was created as soon as you moved the clip. There are bumps, or “ticks,” on this line that epresent the position of the clip as it travels through the motion path in your sequence.
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Figure 8-20 Control-click the Add Keyframe button on the Video tab of the Viewer and hold for a second. A tab shows up giving you the option of setting a keyframe for individual parameters.
Figure 8-21 With the playhead parked at the third second of the clip, directly enter the X and Y values for the center of the frame, “0,0”, into the Motion tab.
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Figure 8-22 After creating the second Center keyframe, a bumpy purple line appears, called the motion path. If the bumps are further apart, the motion is faster, and vice versa.
Each frame is not represented as an individual “tick” but they are there to give you an idea of the speed of the clip moving through the frame. When the ticks are very close together, the clip moves slowly; when they are far apart, the clip moves quickly. Make the sequence active and begin stepping back, frame by frame along the motion path, using the Left Arrow key. As you step back through the frames, you will see the text clip in the Canvas inching upwards as it returns to the first keyframe position in the upper left corner of the frame. Also note that as you step back frame by frame, the Center value in the Motion tab of the Viewer changes each time to reflect the new position of the clip for each frame between the two keyframes. Grab the playhead and drag through the clip in the sequence. To add additional motion keyframes for Scale and Rotation, return to the first keyframe (keyboard shortcut, Option-k). Make sure that the Motion tab for the Viewer window is upfront. Set the first keyframe for Scale at 25% and click the diamond. We want the text to start out smaller and grow up to 100% over the three seconds. To get the text clip up to 100%, we set the keyframe at the third second. Move up to the second keyframe using the keyboard shortcut, Shift-k. Once there, in the Motion tab, insert 100% in the Scale field, making certain the small diamond turns green, denoting that FCP has set a keyframe. If you scrub the playhead around the sequence, you will see that the text clip grows to 100% over the course of the motion path.
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Figure 8-23 When scaled down to 25%, the initial Center value is no longer correct for the text to be centered in the top left corner. Just make sure the playhead is on the first keyframe and reposition the clip in the frame as necessary.
The only problem is that, now that the text clip begins at 25% scale, it is no longer in the proper position at the beginning of the clip (see Figure 8-23). But you don’t have to go through a lot of hand-wringing to correct this issue. Remember that whenever you change a value where there is already a keyframe, FCP simply updates the keyframe there with the new value. To fix this problem, make sure you are on the first frame where the initial keyframe is, then reach into the Canvas and manually move the clip into place a little tighter into the upper left corner of the Canvas. Next, we will add a Rotation to the motion. Once again, use the Option-k to return to the first keyframe if you are not already on it. Go to the wireframe in the Canvas and float the mouse pointer around the outer corners until you see the circular arrow of the Rotation tool. Once you see it, click and rotate the clip about 45 degrees counter-clockwise. Not sure how far 45 degrees is and which direction is counter-clockwise? Easy; make sure the Motion tab in the Viewer window is visible (see Figure 8-24). In the Rotation field, a negative value is always counter-clockwise, and, of course, you can simply type the value in. Also, remember that rotating in the Canvas with the Shift key pressed constrains rotation to 45 degrees. To get half a right angle is as easy as Shift-click, drag slightly in the correct direction, and let go. Set the first keyframe here by clicking in the diamond. As with the Scale keyframes, getting the second keyframe for rotation requires no further work here other than entering the second value. Shift-k to move up to the next keyframe and insert “0” into the rotation field. To see what this keyframing looks like in motion, your options will depend on your machine. Many users will have reached the end of their Safe RT potential. You can either set the RT menu in the Timeline window for Unlimited and risk a few dropped frames, or quickly render up the clip.
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Figure 8-24 To get exact rotation angles, including counter-clockwise rotations, directly enter the numbers into the Rotation parameter field of the Motion tab. Counter-clockwise rotation values are simply negative numbers.
After the short render, play the clip back. Notice that, although the clip is traveling in a straight line, it actually appears to slightly curve because of the combination of the three attributes changing over time. Nonlinear Interpolation—Adding a Curve Although the clip appears to curve a little in the motion path, we can actually add a much more pronounced curve to the motion path. For this, we need to bring out the Pen tool again. Not only does the Pen tool allow us to create keyframes in the sequence for Opacity, it is also very functional in the Canvas window itself for adding precision to your motion paths. Make sure the text clip is selected in the sequence, and navigate the playhead to the first keyframe of the clip again. Switch to the Pen toolset (keyboard shortcut, p). In the first use of the Pen tool, we used it to create keyframes on the sequence where there were none originally. To adjust keyframes that already exist in the Canvas, we need to choose one of the other two tools in the Pen toolset. The second Pen tool in the Pen toolset is the Delete oint tool (keyboard shortcut, pp). Its function is to simply remove errant keyframes from our motion path. But to add a curve to the motion path, we need the third Pen tool, called mooth Point (keyboard shortcut, ppp). You may want to briefly switch to the Zoom tool (keyboard shortcut, z) to increase the scale of the Canvas to 100% so that you can see the motion path a little better. It may also be a good idea for the moment to switch off visibility for the V1 track so that you can observe all this on a clear black background (click the green filmstrip icon to the left of the V1 track to toggle track visibility). Select the Smooth Point tool, then move up to the Canvas window. Move the mouse pointer up to the beginning of the motion path where the first keyframe is located.
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Figure 8-25 When you single-click the keyframe with the Pen Smooth tool, two extra bumps appear. These are Bezier handles that allow you to add nonlinear direction and speed to motion paths. Click the larger of the two and drag in any direction to create a curved motion path.
When you see the mouse pointer turn into a Pen tool with a small widget shape, singleclick the keyframe (see Figure 8-25). When you single-click the keyframe, two extra bumps will appear on the motion path line. The first one we are concerned with is the larger one, furthest away from the keyframe. Move the mouse pointer over the bump until you see it turn into a crosshair, then click and drag in any direction. The bump you grabbed will extend out in the direction you tugged and the motion path will extend out into a broad curve. The bump is actually what we call a Bezier handle, which describes any tool used to create curves in a line. After you have dragged it into a curve, let go and frame advance through the motion path with the Left and Right Arrow keys to see how the motion path has changed. If you want to further change the curve, just grab the same bump on the Bezier handle again and tug further. You may notice that the curve is restricted mostly to the first keyframe we clicked with the Smooth Point tool. To make a completely round curve, you would also have to perform the same Smooth Point tool action on the keyframe at the other end of the motion path. Tug on the Bezier handle of that keyframe until you have a soft, even curve between both ends of the motion path (Figure 8-26).
Ease In/Ease Out There is another type of nonlinear interpolation that you can apply to motion paths to make your motion more natural looking. If you play the motion path back now, you will see that the curve and other motion effects look quite good. But there is one more concept that we see in the real world that is not present in our motion path; change in speed.
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Figure 8-26 Adjusting the Bezier handle on both keyframes is required to achieve a completely circular motion path.
In the real world, nothing travels at a constant speed all the time. Things start off moving slowly, speed up, then slow down as they approach a stop. In the world of keyframing, this is usually called Ease In/Ease Out to describe the fact that your object eases up to speed then slows down as it gets ready to stop, just like an object in the real world. It’s very easy to get this sort of speed change in your motion path. In the Canvas, Control-click the keyframe you want to have that sort of speed variation and you’ll see a contextual menu (see Figure 8-27). Set it to Ease In/Ease Out and it will adjust the speed for you. Do a render and check out how this affects the motion of your text clip. If you find that you don’t like the speed up and slow down, just Control-click the keyframe again and choose “Linear” instead.
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Figure 8-27 Control-click the keyframe and choose Ease In/Ease Out to apply nonlinear speed to the motion path automatically. To reset it to normal, Control-click again and choose Linear.
You can also manually add nonlinear speed by using the second Bezier handle bump that appeared when you clicked the keyframe with the Pen Smooth tool. Unlike the other bump, this one doesn’t change the angle of the curve. Rather, as you move the bump up and down the Bezier handle, the ticks on the motion path shift position (see Figure 8-28). Just as with the Ease In/Ease Out, as the ticks get further apart the speed increases and vice versa, with the distinction being that the speed only increases or decreases when approaching the next keyframe. Ease In/Ease Out both speeds up and slows down between the keyframes.
Figure 8-28 Moving the second bump on the Bezier handle adds a nonlinear speed change to the motion path, similar to the Ease In/Ease Out, but only with an increase or decrease. Ease In/Ease Out combines both increase and decrease automatically.
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Figure 8-29 Return the playhead to the first frame in the sequence where the other initial keyframes are and use the Pen tool to create an initial Opacity keyframe.
Ease In/Ease Out is also available on the sequence, where it is referred to as “Smooth”. When we keyframe Opacity there, we have the option of making its change nonlinear as well. Let’s add a curved change in visibility for the text to match the speed change of the motion path in the Sequence. Return the playback head to the first frame of the clip and make sure the Clip Overlay is toggled on. Select the Pen tool (keyboard shortcut-p), then go to the first frame of the clip, and click to set your first keyframe. Drag the keyframe down to give it a value of zero opacity (see Figure 8-29). Our next move is to find out when the clip should come back to complete opacity. Scroll through the sequence and watch the Canvas wireframe and Scale values in the Motion tab. We want the text to be totally visible when the Scale is about 50%. Depending on how you set your curves, the exact frame will vary, but it should be roughly the one second mark. Reposition the playhead at the one second mark in the Timeline, make sure the Pen tool is selected, then click on the Clip Overlay line and drag the Opacity value up to 100%. Now we will add nonlinear interpolation to the keyframes. Control-click the first keyframe. You will see two options: Clear, which will delete the keyframe, and Smooth, which will add a Bezier handle (see Figure 8-30). Choose Smooth. Once you choose mooth, you will get the Bezier handle for the keyframe. Notice that, like the the handle for the Motion Path, the handle here only affects the curve from the keyframe you changed. If you want to make a completely even curve between these two keyframes, you have to make them both Smooth. Control-click the second keyframe and select Smooth (see Figure 8-31). Now you have two handles and can make the curve exactly the way you want it. Try rendering both an upper curve, which esults in the opacity appearing sooner, and a lower curve, which results in the opacity coming
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Figure 8-30 Control-clicking the Opacity keyframe yields the options Clear and Smooth. Smooth adds Bezier handles for the keyframe.
Figure 8-31 To get a satisfactory smooth curve between two keyframes, you have to apply the Smooth action to both keyframes.
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in more slowly at first. You will probably find that in this instance the latter is the more successful curve, since it allows a more gradual opacity change that synchronizes with the Scale change more effectively. You may also have noticed an unfortunate restriction in the clip overlay method of keyframing. As soon as you create the first Opacity keyframe with the Pen tool, the entire clip needs to be rendered, even if you left the value at 100% (technically the same as no keyframing)! Since we only want about a second of keyframed Opacity changes, this results in a lot of unnecessary rendering for the rest of the clip that is basically untouched. How to deal with this? Actually, there is a pretty easy workaround. Before you set your Opacity keyframes, choose the Razorblade tool and razorblade the clip just past where your last Opacity keyframe will be. That way you won’t have to render the bulk of the clip you aren’t keyframing (see Figure 8-32). Before leaving this subject, we should look at a little bit more of Bezier handle behavior on the sequence. This concerns handle interaction between three keyframes rather than two. When you have Smooth selected for a keyframe, unless you override it, FCP assumes you want the same Smooth curve on both sides of the keyframe (i.e., interpolation approaching and departing the keyframe). Thus, if a keyframe is surrounded by two other keyframes, when you choose Smooth, you get two bezier handles. And they work in unison because tugging on one handle makes an equal and opposite change to the other Bezier handle. To see this in action, move the playhead up to second two (00:00:02:00) in the clip (perform a quick Trim to give yourself more room if you razorbladed your clip too short in
Figure 8-32 To avoid having to render an entire clip because of opacity keyframing, razorblade the clip a frame or two after the intended location of your last keyframe.
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Figure 8-33 When a Smooth keyframe is surrounded by other keyframes, it has two Bezier handles. They are linked initially, and tugging in one direction yields an equal and opposite result in the other direction.
the last action). Choose the Pen tool and create a new keyframe here, this time dragging the value down to 50%. Drag the keyframe in the middle down to 50% as well. Control-click this new keyframe and convert it to a Smooth keyframe. This gives you two handles for one keyframe, each one corresponding to the previous or following keyframe. Now grab either of its handles and move it around. As you adjust the curve for one, you get an equal and opposite angle from the handle on the other side. This can produce some pretty interesting results, but it isn’t always totally useful either (see Figure 8-33). I usually find that I need to adjust each Bezier handle independently. To do this, you can use either of two different shortcuts. If you Command-click one handle and change the angle, the other handle’s angle doesn’t change, though its duration does (see Figure 8-34). If you Command-Shift-click and adjust the handle, you get a completely independent control of each handle. After looking at that behavior, delete the third keyframe so that it no longer interferes with our motion path. Control-click and choose Clear, or switch to the Delete Point tool (keyboard shortcut, pp) and click it. Reset the second keyframe at 00:00:01:00 to 100%. What about controlling curves for the other parameters from the sequence? FCP 4 now has the ability to do this. On the bottom left of the Timeline window, toggle on Clip Keyframes button. Control-click the Clip Keyframe toggle button and you will see a few options: Video, Audio, Select All, and Select None. Choose Video, and make sure Keyframe Editor is checked (see Figure 8-35). When you enable Clip Keyframes, you will see the Opacity curves you have already completed there. To access other keyframes, go to the Keyframe trough (the area underneath the video clip), Control-click and choose Basic Motion > Scale (see Figure 8-36). The Keyframe area will switch to the Scale keyframes. Control-click the Scale keyframe at the third second and choose Smooth. You can now adjust the curve for Scale. Use the same method to access and manipulate other parameters in the sequence as well.
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Figure 8-34 Command-clicking changes the angle of the curve on the side of the Bezier handle you drag, while increasing the duration of the present curve on the other side. Command-Shift-clicking makes adjusting the Bezier handle completely independent of the other side of the keyframe.
When you are working with the sequence keyframe control, you may find that this keyframe trough is too small to work in effectively. You can resize it on the fly by moving the mouse pointer to the thin, vertical strip between the Auto-select toggle and the track. When you see the mouse pointer switch to thin, parallel horizontal lines, click and drag up or down (see Figure 8-37). Let go and the size will stick. You can apply different resizes to the Keyframe troughs of other video tracks, and you can actually apply the same resizing to all video tracks by Command-Shift-clicking and dragging.
The Other Motion Tab Tools There are a few other effects tools on the Motion tab that you will find useful. These are the Crop, Distort, Drop Shadow, and Motion Blur tools (see Figure 8-38). The first two
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Figure 8-35 Make sure that Keyframe Editor is toggled on, then Control-click the Toggle Clip Keyframes, and in the Video menu toggle on Keyframe Editor.
are actually available from the Toolbar as well as the Motion tab. The second two need to be set up in the Motion tab. Double-click the text clip to load it into the Viewer. The Crop Tool The Crop tool is interesting in that it allows you to hide a section of a clip from view without having to insert a special matte of any kind. This can be convenient for operations such as displaying only a section of a larger graphic image or video clip inside the frame. Rather than change the scale of an image to make it smaller, which would still include detail you may want to leave out, the Crop attribute simply limits how much of the frame of the
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Figure 8-36 Control-click in the Keyframe trough (the area underneath the video clip) and choose Basic Motion > Scale to see your Scale keyframes directly within the sequence.
Figure 8-37 To increase or decrease the size of the Keyframe trough, click and drag in the small vertical strip between the Auto-select toggle and the track itself. Resize all Keyframe troughs by Command-Shift-clicking and dragging the same control.
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Figure 8-38 The remaining effects controls on the Motion tab are Crop, Distort, Drop Shadow, and Motion Blur. Crop and Distort also are available from the Toolbar for use in the Canvas and Viewer.
clip is visible. The parameters for this are adjustable as a square or rectangle, based on the left, right, top, and bottom edges of the clip. Move the sequence playhead up to the third second. Switch the Viewer to the Motion tab and click the widget to drop down the settings parameters for the Crop tool (see Figure 8-39). Click and drag the slider for either the left or right edge and drag it to around 50%. You will see that half of the text clip has been obscured. The other half is not resized, as it would if be you had changed the actual width or scale of the clip with the Distort tool we will be looking at in a moment.
Figure 8-39 In the Crop parameters, drag the sliders around and watch the frame edge crop in the Canvas.
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Figure 8-40 If the crop edge is directly over one of the letters and you add Edge Feather, the cutoff of the crop softens.
The final parameter for the Crop tool is Edge Feather. This allows you to soften the edge you are cropping the clip with so that the image being cut off with the tool fades into the background now visible on the outside of the crop line. This can be displayed by moving the crop line directly over one of the letters in the text clip we are adjusting (see Figure 8-40). Drag the left or right slider such that one of your letters is seemingly cut in half. Set the Edge Feather at 50% and you will see the cutoff soften such that the letter seems to disappear into the background. Click the red reset X for Crop. The Crop tool is available on the Toolbar as well. On the Toolbar, choose the second to last toolset button (keyboard shortcut, c). The mouse pointer turns into the common shape of a cropping tool that many different applications use (see Figure 8-41). After changing to the Crop tool, go to the Canvas and click on an edge (not a corner—it must be an edge) of the text clip and drag into the center of the clip. You will find that this has the same effect as moving the slider for that edge in the Motion tab settings for Crop, and indeed, if you look at that tab, you will find it updated to the change you just made using it. All transparencies, including the Crop tool, are an effect of unseen integrated alpha channel matting. The soft, feathered edge you are witnessing is the result of FCP allowing some pixels to be seen and others to become transparent along the edge of the crop. The alue you enter into the Edge Feather field simply informs FCP how far outside of the crop edge to apply the gradual mixture of visible and matted out pixels. Once you have the grasp of the tool, reset the Crop by hitting its red X in the Motion tab or drag the text clip’s edges back out manually with the Crop tool. The Distort Tool The next attribute, Distort, is a powerful tool for altering the very shape and aspect ratio of a clip. Unlike the Crop attribute previously described, the Distort parameters change the actual size and shape of the clip in the frame by altering its physical dimensions (as opposed to
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Figure 8-41
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The Crop tool on the Toolbar.
covering them up). The effect is rather like having an image imprinted on a rubber balloon. If you blow up the balloon, the image on its surface changes its shape. The Distort tool creates very precise distortions based on the amount of stretch applied to the edges of the material. The first four parameters of the Distort attribute are Upper Left, Upper Right, Lower Right, and Lower Left (see Figure 8-42). These parameters correspond to the corner points of the clip’s frame. There is no slider adjustment to these parameters because the points exist as X and Y coordinates and, therefore, can be assigned to any location in the frame.
Figure 8-42
The five parameters of the Distort tool in the Motion tab.
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Figure 8-43 Giving the Lower Right parameter the value of 0, 0 distorts the shape of the entire frame, warping the image in the frame to compensate for the change in the frame’s shape.
nterestingly, they can even be set between other points, so that the clip appears to double back on or fold up into itself. To display this type of clip distortion, enter 0 and 0 as the new X and Y coordinates for the Lower Right parameter. The Lower Right corner of the clip will jump to the center of the video frame (see Figure 8-43). Not only has the shape of the clip changed, but the text within the clip now appears curved and scrunched as a result of its position in the frame and based on the amount of virtual squeezing of pixels to adjust and fit them all inside the new frame shape. Notice that, although we are still looking at a two-dimensional text image in the frame, the simple change in shape and curvature suggests three-dimensional depth. This is an example of using the alteration of two-dimensional shapes to suggest natural depth perspective. The Distort parameter allows us to mimic the real-world perception of change in size and shape that tells our brain that an object is nearer or farther away. To remove the Distort effect, hit the red X reset button just to the right of the attribute’s name. Just like the Crop tool, there is a Toolbar version of this Motion tab attribute. Click and hold the Crop tool button on the Toolbar and you will get the Distort tool option (keyboard shortcut, d). Choose the Distort tool and move the mouse pointer around the bottom right corner of the wireframe (see Figure 8-44). When you see the mouse pointer assume the shape of the Distort tool, click the point and begin to drag it back towards the center of the frame again. Drop the point periodically on the way to see it reshape the entire clip as the angle of distortion becomes less extreme. The last parameter of the Distort attribute is called Aspect Ratio. It is adjusted by a slider, with a default value and unaltered setting of 0. The Aspect Ratio changes the degree to which the clip in the frame is distorted two-dimensionally. Dragging the slider to the left educes the Aspect Ratio of the clip, making it appear shorter and fatter evenly across the
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Figure 8-44 Choose the Distort tool and move it to any corner of the frame to directly adjust the shape of the frame.
horizontal plane. Dragging the slider to the right increases the Aspect Ratio so that the clip appears taller and skinnier once again, evenly distributed across the vertical dimension. The reason this parameter is referred to as an Aspect Ratio instead of a Short/Fat–Tall/ Skinny tool is that it was initially most useful in taking footage shot anamorphically to yield a widescreen, cinematographic look with letterboxing. As described in the Easy Setup section, many cameras allow you to shoot in a 16×9 mode, which introduces letterboxing at the top and bottom of the frame. FCP can use and display 16×9 footage correctly. However, the problem for people using such footage is that (once the 16×9 footage leaves the camera) it will appear anamorphically stretched when it hits analog devices like TVs and VCRs, which have no idea that the original video needs to be squeezed to be display, correctly (with the exception of video production monitors containing aspect ratio switching). Unless you are using a production monitor, you will very likely have to manually squeeze your footage before sending it out to video, recording to an analog VCR, or simply watching it on a TV. In fact, the best way to get 16×9 footage out of a Firewire DV editing arrangement to analog tape is to put your finished 16×9 sequence into a regular old 4×3 sequence (a concept called ‘nesting’, which we will talk about shortly) and then render. When you have occasion to do so, you will find that the Aspect Ratio is changed for you on the
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Figure 8-45 When the Aspect Ratio is set to –33.33, the frame is squeezed into a 4:3 ratio that converts letterboxed 16x9 footage for use with VCRs or TVs.
fly by FCP to a value of –33.33, which is the aspect ratio reduction necessary to fit the 1.66 screen shape of 16×9 letterboxed video into a 4:3 aspect ratio (see Figure 8-45). Don’t let these numbers scare you. FCP is fully equipped to handle anamorphic video correctly, and if you do your Easy Setup settings, Audio/Video Settings, and User Preferences, it will do most of the conversion process for you. You are only responsible for the render! The Drop Shadow The next attribute following Distort and Opacity is Drop Shadow (see Figure 8-46). Drop shadows are nearly essential for almost all text used in video. In addition to adding depth to text, a soft drop shadow also tends to counteract the crawling edges and interlace artifacting that happens when you have fast rise times (the distance in space over which color and luma change; fast rise times equals high contrast which results in crawling and artifacting) and high contrast text. In such situations, the only way to keep your text’s edges emotely clean is to soften them. Drop shadows can do this without the overwhelming loss of sharpness that a straight blur filter would entail. Adding drop shadows to a clip is pretty straightforward. Drop Shadow and its partner Motion Blur must be enabled with a checkbox. Once you have toggled it on, we want to give it appropriate settings. Unfortunately, the default settings won’t look correct for the entire animation. Since the text changes scale throughout the motion, we need to animate both the Offset and the Direction, so that the light source casting the drop shadow appears to be stationary. It’s the little details like this that make animations work well. Move the playhead to the third second in the sequence. Let’s set the keyframes only for the parameters we want to change. At second three, the Offset of 5 appears appropriate, as does the angle of 135. Leave the color set to black, but boost the softness up to around 40 to get a nice indistinct shadow. Set the opacity to 75% to give the text a great deal more presence (see Figure 8-47). Make sure you’ve set a keyframe for these values!
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Figure 8-46
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The Drop Shadow attribute.
The QuickView Tool and Option-P Now we know that some of these settings should change over time. To see what you have now, without using the dropped frame-laden Unlimited RT, you have two choices. The first is the QuickView tool. Go to Tools > QuickView (see Figure 8-48). The QuickView window will
Figure 8-47
Begin the Drop Shadow animation with these settings.
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Figure 8-48 menu.
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The QuickView preview tool in the Toolbench is called up from the Tools
open up in a special Toolbench window. The QuickView is a preview tool. If you need to quickly check some motion or an effect but you don’t want to wait for a full render, you can let the QuickView load up the frames into RAM. The result is a much faster preview on the desktop. In the bottom of the frame you will see a slider that allows you to set the loop range. This is the number of seconds the QuickView will loop around the playhead in the Canvas or Viewer. The first time it loops will be slower while it renders the frames up into RAM, but subsequent playback will be at real-time speeds. One nice thing about the QuickView is that, like other features in FCP, it is noninterruptable. This means you can get it started unning, then make other changes as it is going. It will keep working based on the changes ou made. Just set it running, and then watch the updates as they render and load into RAM.
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The other way to preview action is called Playback All Frames (keyboard shortcut, Option-p). This is a way of getting around the fact that if you have a red render bar, hitting play shows you the “unrendered” slate. Option-p is basically like hitting the Right Arrow key Advance Frame as quickly as possible. Depending on how much has to be rendered in each frame, you can get a pretty good idea of whether or not what you are trying to do worked. A nice touch is that when you use Option-p, the same frames are loaded into the QuickView. Sometimes that is actually quicker for spot checking than the QuickView, and both are far quicker than actually rendering. Best of all, neither wastes drive space with needless render files. Another bonus of Option-p relates to the Video Scopes. You may have noticed that the Video Scopes do not display in real time as you play in the Canvas and Viewer. The Video Scopes only update when you are parked on a frame. As a bonus, when you Option-p, the Video Scopes update with each frame as well. If you need to see your video clips’ levels in Waveform Monitor and Vectorscope, you can Option-p to watch the Video Scopes update in nearly real time. With the update to FCP 4.1, Play All Frames now also feeds videoframes out to firewire or your capture card. Video Scopes will become most useful in Chapter 9. Getting back to our drop shadow, load up into either QuickView or Option-p to get a look at the motion. The text starts out small in scale, so the drop shadow offset should be closer at the beginning and then grow out as the text increases in size. Go to the first Scale keyframe, then look down at the Drop Shadow attribute. Set a keyframe for the Offset parameter. Since the text scale increases by 400% (from 25% to 100%), we will set the initial keyframe for the offset to roughly one quarter of 5, its final setting. If you QuickView this now, you will see the offset tightly hugging the edge of the text all the way through the animation. Next, we want to keyframe the angle of the shadow so that the source of light casting the shadow appears to be stationary. To do so, the shadow itself needs to change angle. If we want to maintain the final position, set a keyframe at the beginning for an equal and opposite angle value from the actual rotation of the text clip. Since that rotation value was a –45 degree angle, add 45 to the final value of the drop shadow angle to a value of 180 and set that as the initial angle (see Figure 8-49). Set an initial Drop Shadow Angle keyframe on the same frame as the initial rotation keyframe. Then set the final Angle Keyframe value to 180. Option-p and watch the shadow remain in the same place as the text rotates! Motion Blur The final attribute in the Motion tab is for Motion Blur (see Figure 8-50). Motion Blur is a unique effect that works only with elements in sequences that move. A clip moving across the Canvas window can display Motion Blur, but a clip that is stationary in the center of the window cannot. Items such as film and video footage that display natural motion blur in their own original frames will not be affected by motion blur settings unless their entire clip moves in the larger video frame of the Canvas. Motion Blur is applied to entire clips rather than any separate part of a clip’s frame. Therefore, we will be able to add motion blur to our text
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Figure 8-49 Set an initial Offset keyframe of 1 to match the Scale keyframe of 25%. Then set the second Offset keyframe of 5 at the second Scale keyframe of 100%. Set the Shadow Angle Degree initial keyframe to 180, and then set the final keyframe to 135.
image when we move it across the screen, although we could not add it to any object inside the static video clip in the background. But what is motion blur? Motion blur is a phenomenon that occurs when an object moves faster than the perceptual frame rate that the viewing camera can gather still images. Video and film are simply a series of still images that update so rapidly that the viewer perceives continuous moving objects rather than a series of images. If the frame rate slows down too much, we see the still images individually, and the illusion of continuous motion is broken. Speed up the frame rate, and the illusion becomes stronger and sharper. At around 24 frames per second, which is the standard frame rate of film, the illusory motion becomes fluid, with each frame being nearly indistinguishable from the previous one.
Figure 8-50
The Motion Blur attribute.
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Slightly faster, PAL video uses a standard frame rate of 25 frames per second, which is very close to the film frame rate. NTSC video uses an even faster frame rate, increasing it up to 29.97. Since both PAL and NTSC video are interlaced formats that scan each frame as two separate fields sequentially (about which, see more in Appendix A), the true frame rate should really be regarded as double this number, or as fast as 59.94 individual fields per second. What does this have to do with motion blur? Motion blur occurs whenever an object passing in front of the camera or eye moves too fast for the viewer to actually record each increment of the movement. If you pass your hand in front of your face quickly, you will see a blur of your hand, because your eyesight is gathering image information at a relatively slow frame rate. In the fraction of a second that your eye gathers an entire frame’s worth of visual information, your hand has actually moved several inches or several feet, depending on how fast you move it. For those few fractions of a second, you see your hand in all the places it has traveled since the beginning of your eye’s gathering of the single visual frame. For our eyes, this is nothing new, and aside from some interesting optical illusions based on spinning wagon wheels and such, we are quite used to what our eyes can and cannot perceive sharply. But where motion blur really takes on significance is in the field of image gathering. Photographers and cinematographers must take care that when they record images, the shutter speed, which is the part of the camera that determines how long the image gathering period lasts, is fast enough to overcome excessive motion blur. If the shutter speed is too low, there will be so much movement between the beginning and the end of the exposure that there will be nothing but blur in the frame. As with Drop Shadow, Motion Blur must be checked on to be applied to a clip. There are two parameters for Motion Blur; the percentage of blur and the number of samples (see Figure 8-51). The percentage of blur lets you tell FCP how intense the motion blur should appear. FCP creates motion blur by taking a certain number of frames before and
Figure 8-51 samples.
The two parameters of Motion Blur are percentage of blur and number of
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after the frame in question and blending them together, just as we said your eye gathers image information about where your hand was over the entire period it gathered a single frame” of vision. The result is that you see a mixture of where the object is in the frame now with an image of where the object was just before and after the present frame. Since the blend across the frames is smooth and is reblended with each new frame, you get an effect not unlike what real motion blur does: you are kept from getting a tight focus on each position of the object within each frame. Although it would seem like a bad idea to obscure focus, motion blur can add realism to moving objects that otherwise appear not to be visually integrated into the frame. We can’t help it; when we see motion blur, we assume that an object really moves through space, even if that object is a two-dimensional text image crossing a video screen. Percentage of Blur increases or decreases blur by adjusting the range of previous frames that the blur blends into the frame when Motion Blur performs the act just described. The scale of percentage ranges from 1000%, which blends ten frames of the clip into the blur, to 0%, which blurs none (see Figure 8-52). Using 100% blends only one frame. The default value of percentage is 500%, which gives a healthy “standard” blur. Sample refers to how detailed the blending process is in calculating the motion blur. More samples will result in a much more fluid blend between the individual frames that are being joined to create the blur. Fewer samples means that the blend may look a little rough, since very few positions between the number of frames being sampled are figured in. The bottom end of fluid samples is 4, which looks pretty rough. A setting of 32 looks fantastic. The trade-off is that the larger the number of samples, the longer it takes FCP to calculate and render the frame (see Figure 8-53). With 32 samples, this can take several seconds. With 4, the calculation is quick. A setting of 8 or 16 usually gives the best balance between speed and quality.
Figure 8-52 Percentage of blur increases the number of frames that are blended together in the blur, thus increasing the amount of blur. The first image is set at 200, the second set at 600.
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Figure 8-53 Sample tells FCP how fluid the blend will be, from 4 samples at the low end to 32 at the top end. The first image is 4, the second is 16. Usually, 8 or 16 is the best balance between quality and speed.
Check the Motion Blur box on. The default settings of 500% and 4 samples looks pretty choppy, even before we render it and play back. Change the Sample value to 16 and you will achieve a much smoother blur. Render the clip out and you will see it stretch over the frames as the motion blur is applied to all the frames. You may want to pull back the percentage to 200, since our text moves relatively slowly and, as such, should have a little less blur. You can see why Motion Blur has to be enabled with a check box; with the settings above 4, the drag on the processor is monumental. Motion Blur is typically the last sweet touch you apply to animations when you have everything in place.
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9
Effects Filters
You can apply effects to a clip that are based on the use of filters, also known as plug-ins. In reality, filters are special text scripts that FCP can read and apply to clips to produce special effects. If you invest a little time, you can actually learn the programming language, FXScript, and build your own plugin filters. Rather than adjust one physical element of a clip at a time, like the Motion tab attributes, filters usually change many different aspects of a clip at once. Instead of being designed to change the raw physical attributes like scale or rotation, filters usually produce a specific type of desired effect dreamed up by a programmer, such as Gaussian Blur or Fisheye Distortion. Such filters are often also used to correct problems in your video footage, such as color and brightness, or contrast. Effects filters can be applied in a manner similar to the application of the Transition. You can drag and drop the filters from the Effects tab of the Browser onto the clip. You could also apply the filter by selecting the clip and accessing the filter from the Effects drop-down menu. In this example, we will use the latter process, although there is no functional difference between the two. Use whichever seems more effective in your personal workflow.
Applying Effects: The Color Correction 3-Way Filter Probably the most useful of all the effects filters available in FCP 4 is the Color Corrector 3-Way. No piece of edited video is finished until you have gone through it clip by clip to ensure color and luma continuity. Many editors neglect this step because it appears complicated or because they are so familiar with their footage that they don’t see the discontinuity. That should never happen to you. Always assume that you will need color correction if you want your sequences to look professional. It really isn’t all that complicated. You just need to start with a process and maintain it throughout your correction pass. FCP 4 has great tools for doing this, from the Video Scopes to Frame Viewer to the RT effects that give you instant updates of what your clips look like on a real video monitor. This makes color correction a much more streamlined process.
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It must be recommended from the get-go that you use a true YUV video monitor when engaging in color correction. YUV is a professional term commonly used to describe any video that is encoded, or converted, for use with televisions and video monitors, as opposed to the RGB and DVI computer monitor you use with your computer. For more about YUV, component video, and RGB, see Appendix A. The difference in chroma and luma relationships between your computer monitor and the NTSC or PAL video monitor your video is destined for is extreme. After comparing the esults of color correction simultaneously on a video (NTSC or PAL) monitor and computer desktop, you will see that no matter how you try to calibrate it, your video monitor can never match what you see on the desktop preview. The idea is to correct your clips as close to perfect as you can on the desktop preview, then make another color correction pass while monitoring out to the best video monitor you can afford. The really tough part of color correction is training your eyes to see what you need to correct! The process you need to follow goes along these lines: finish your edit, then watch the edit and pick out each scene’s Master Shots. 1. 2. 3. 4.
Pick out each scene’s Master Shot. Make corrections to the Master Shot. Go through and adjust each clip’s chroma and luma values to match the Master Shot. Finally, go through again, looking for remaining inconsistencies between clips.
Picking the Master Shot Edit together a sequence of clips that differ in color and luma values. Pick clips that differ widely. Typical shots that you will want to correct are backlit shots where the detail you want to see is too dark, color shifts introduced from lack of white balancing at the shoot, and blasted out whites where there is no detail at all. Edit them into a sequence, then edit a master shot in as the third clip (see Figure 9-1). What is a master shot? A master shot can be thought of as a target shot, the shot you want to match all of your subsequent corrections to. Typically, each scene from your sequence will have one master shot. The master shot will typically contain elements of the imagery that appear in the rest of the scene’s shots. The master shot is frequently, though not always, the establishing shot, or a shot that opens a sequence and allows you to see the entire surroundings of a scene before telescoping into the closeup action. When you see an element in the establishing shot, you expect it to maintain its exposure and color values throughout the rest of the scene. As with everything in color correction, rules are meant to be broken where necessary. ome colorists, in fact, refuse the term “color corrector” or “colorist” in favor of “color enhancement artist.” Every sequence wants its own particular color style, from exaggerated color shift to desaturated flat to straightforward objective color correction. It’s up to you to determine what your scenes require.
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Figure 9-1 A series of clips edited into the sequence. The third shot here is the master shot and is loaded into the Viewer for initial correction.
The Video Scopes: Luma and Saturation For the first step, we want to apply color correction to the master shot to get it looking the way you want. This implies more than just getting it spruced up. The Color Corrector 3-Way filter is also valuable for making your video broadcast legal. What is meant by broadcast legal? This is the specification for luma and saturation for any video signal being broadcast by a television station. What you need to know about broadcast legal can be summed up in the next tool to be investigated in the Toolbench window. To bring this tool up and to arrange your windows in the best setup for color correction workflow, go Window > Arrange > Color Correction. This automatically arranges your windows in a “three-up” so that you can simultaneously view the Viewer, Canvas, and Toolbench. It also automatically loads the Video Scopes and Frame Viewer tabs into the Toolbench. These are the most important tools you will use in the operations to follow. First, click on the Video Scopes tab. It will likely show four panes. For the moment we want to look at the Waveform Monitor. In the top left corner of the window is a layout pulldown menu. Click it and select Waveform. This will switch the window to display the waveform monitor only (see Figure 9-2). The Waveform Monitor is based on a real-world
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Figure 9-2
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Video Scopes with Waveform Active.
device that displays luma values as a range of numbers from black at 0 IRE to white at 100 IRE. The Waveform Monitor can actually measure IRE units up to 110 IRE (white) and down to 0 IRE (black), known as Superwhite and Superblack, because some digital formats, like DV, can record details of luma value above the broadcast limit of 100 IRE. The specific codec and hardware configuration you use (your Audio/Video Settings) determines what the maximum luminence values are. In the Video Scopes tab, click the View menu on the upper right and select Current rame, which will display the frame the playhead is parked on in the Canvas. Scrub the
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sequence playhead and watch the specs change place. This is showing the luma of each frame as you move through them. Hit the Up Arrow key to return to the first frame of the clip, and then hit Option-p to watch the Waveform Monitor update as it monitors each new frame. Get used to analyzing the luma values in the frame instead of what the physical picture looks like. Use the Waveform Monitor to gauge where the whites, grays, and blacks are in your video clips. We will also use it to make sure that the whites and blacks do not exceed the broadcast specifications for luma. Next, click the Layout menu on the left and select Vectorscope. The Vectorscope measures color. Rather than a linear scale from 0 to 100 as with the Waveform Monitor, the Vectorscope uses a circular scope. The Phase, or the 360 degrees of this circle, represents the hue, that is, the blue-cyan-green-yellow-red-magenta variations that make up the colors of white light. The Saturation of the color is expressed by how far from the center the reading is. The further away from the center the more saturated the color. There are actually small calibration targets for each of the primary and secondary colors which correspond to the standard color bars clip (referred to as a PLUGE, or Picture Line Up Generating Equipment, slate) that we started out the book with. Go to the Viewer, click the Generator menu tab on the bottom right, and load the Color Bar generator clip for your video standard. Switch the Video Scope’s View menu to Viewer and you will see the line that forms between each of the color calibration boxes, because each specific color box is represented in the color bar stripes (see Figure 9-3 in color insert section). Since we will be using these tools primarily, click the Layout menu and select WV + Hist, which also includes the Histogram, a tool we will encounter when we begin to adjust the settings. It may help you to see the readings in this window if you Control-click in any of the Video Scope’s windows and choose Green. This same menu allows you to adjust the brightness of the readings and to choose whether or not you see the calibration targets.
Correcting the Master Shot First, apply the Color Corrector 3-Way filter to the master shot clip. Double-click to load the clip into the Viewer from the sequence. As is usual for FCP, you can then apply the filter in a couple of different ways. You can do it via drag and drop from the Effects tab. To do so, click on the Effects tab, then click the widget for the Video Filters bin. Next, click the widget for the Color Correction bin. Finally, grab the Color Corrector 3-Way filter and drag and drop it into either the Viewer or the clip in the sequence (see Figure 9-4). The other way is to apply it from the Effects drop-down menu. Either activate the Viewer with the sequence clip loaded, or activate the Timeline and select the clip in the sequence. Then go Effects > Video Filters > Color Correction > Color Corrector 3-Way. When you do this a new tab will appear in the Viewer, the “Color Corrector 3-Way”. Generally, when you apply filters to clips, the filter settings all appear in the Filters tab. Click the Filters tab and you will see different headers: Video Filters, and either Audio 1 and Audio 2 Filters or Stereo Filters. The latter are for audio filters that we will use in the following chapter.
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Figure 9-4
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Drag and drop the Color Corrector 3-Way filter to the sequence clip.
If you click the widget next to the Color Corrector 3-Way on the Video tab, you will see a long list of parameters that you can adjust (see Figure 9-5). With other filters, the parameters list is not nearly so complex and extensive. And, in fact, this is why the FCP team developed an extra, visual-based tab for this and a few other filters. Next to the name “Color Corrector 3-Way” is a ‘visual’ button. Click this button and the tab automatically switches to the Color Corrector 3-Way tab. The controls on the visual tab are linked to the numerical’ tab and vice versa. On the visual tab there is also a numerical button to automatically switch back to the Filters tab. In all but the rarest circumstances, you will find the visual tab more effective. Switch to the visual tab (see Figure 9-6). At first you will see three circles and some buttons and sliders. The three circles are your ‘3-Way’ correction zones. They allow you to change color values based on whether the color is in the black, mids, or highlights. This allows you to change color relationships in the brighter sections of the frame without affecting the darker areas. Below each of the circles are sliders that let you adjust the luma of each of the black, mids, and highlights. And below the luma sliders are more controllers for setting contrast, color matching, and Saturation. We will address the remainder of the secondary color correction tools subsequently. Master Shot Correction: Set Contrast irst, you want to set the beginning Contrast level within the frame. The best way to do this is to let FCP figure out the total range of whites to blacks. Look at the Toolbench Video Scopes where we set the layout to WV + Hist. The third window in the layout is the Histogram. A histogram simply tells you how many pixels in the frame have how much luma. For instance, a frame that is completely white would have a single line in the histogram that goes all the way to 100. To see another example that will make this very clear, load another generator into the Viewer. Go to the Viewer window and click the Generator pulldown in the bottom right corner; choose Render > Gradient (see Figure 9-7). The Viewer will switch to a gradient clip that moves from left to right, white to black. The reason this is relevant to the histogram is because the gradient has an equal number of pixels for each value of luma. Go to the Video Scopes and under View, choose Viewer. The histogram should show roughly
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Figure 9-5
Filters tab controls for the Color Corrector 3-Way.
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Figure 9-6
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The Color Corrector 3-Way visual tab.
even levels for all luma values. If you choose Matte > Color in the Viewer Generator tab, a gray clip will load and the Histogram will show only one value, because all the pixels in the frame are a single gray color. Double-click the master shot clip from your sequence to load into the Viewer again and move to the Color Collector tab (don’t forget to switch the Video Scopes View menu back to Current Frame). Look under the color wheels for the Auto Levels controls. Three buttons, the Black, Black/White, and White Auto buttons will automatically remap the
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Figure 9-7 Gradient in Viewer shows equal luma levels in Histogram. Matte > Color shows only one.
range of luma values to the widest possible range of legal luma. If, for instance, you have footage that is lit flat and under-exposed, Auto Black/White will remap the brightest pixels that aren’t at maximum legal white to white and the darkest pixels to black. This can generate an enormous amount of detail you weren’t even aware was present in your footage. It will also ‘normalize’ the contrast in the frame, increasing contrast in low contrast frames and decreasing contrast on blown-out footage.
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Hit the middle Auto Black/White button (see Figure 9-8 in color insert section). In some cases, you might not see an enormous change. Sometimes only one or two pixels in the frame will be completely white or black, even though you can’t easily see it in the Canvas. In such instances, your remapped footage will not remap whites and blacks very far, because FCP believes that it already has a wide range of whites to blacks. In such cases, ou will have to use the other tools to correct the range and contrast. But in most cases, ou will see an immediate increase in detail, at least in the Video Scopes tab. Where luma before was mapped above 100 IRE or below 0 IRE, it will all be remapped to the highest alue of 100 IRE and lowest value of 0 IRE. Those not using Firewire DV, especially those using capture cards, should bear in mind that many cards use codecs which automatically limit footage to legal IRE values of 100 and 7.5 or 0 IRE. Consult your documentation, as well as the target values you actually see in the Video Scopes, to figure out if this applies to you. Master Shot Correction: Pick Up the Blacks Next, set the Blacks. Below each color wheel, you will see a luma slider (see Figure 9-9). The luma sliders let you manually adjust the luma for each of the three ranges the 3-Way can affect. It’s usually a good idea to start with the Blacks. The Auto Level button will have eset all of your luma sliders to get you in the neighborhood. Unfortunately, as you work through the correction, you will constantly be changing the luma values the Auto Level just established. Don’t worry; that’s a part of the process. To get the blacks in the right place, keep your eye on the Waveform Monitor. Click the arrows at either end of the Blacks luma slider (the slider itself is far too imprecise) and watch as this changes the lowest levels the video frame registers in the Waveform Monitor. This may take only a couple of clicks, but those clicks can make a ton of difference in estoring black to a noisy video frame. You want to get them down so that the darkest egions hit 0 IRE, but do not crowd up and ‘clip’. Once your luma values hit 0 IRE, they hit the ‘black floor’, since they can’t get darker than that. If you see rather bright values in the Waveform monitor on the 0 IRE line, add luma to the blacks slider until the items in the frame that are supposed to be black are the
Figure 9-9
Luma sliders below each color wheel.
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only things touching the 0 IRE line. FCP is smart, but knowing what is truly black in the video frame is still a decision you have to make yourself. Master Shot Correction: Set the Whites Next, you need to get the Whites in order. You want to perform the same operation you just committed to the Blacks, but in the opposite direction. In the Waveform Monitor, you want to adjust until the brightest, actual white pixel reaches 100 IRE. Click the arrows for the Whites slider until you get it there (see Figure 9-10). Setting the Whites luma value can be a little tricky, because you have to remember that the white you are using to base this must be a real white object, rather than over-exposed footage that the Waveform Monitor registers as 110 IRE. Blown out footage is rarely actually supposed to be truly white, and assigning it there will yield odd results. You need to find something else in the frame that you can use for the basis of the whitest object. Then map that to 100 IRE with the luma slider. Another tricky situation is when your brightest values are not supposed to be white. Obviously, in this case you do not want to map them to 100 IRE, or your talking head interviews will become high-contrast albinos! In these circumstances, your own eyes and a calibrated production monitor are going to have to make the call. There are some guidelines you can follow. For instance, most of the complexions of human skin and/or the subject you actually were focusing on with the camera fall with a range of 70–80 IRE, based on lighting and actual skin tone variations. If you have no actual white pixels to work with,
Figure 9-10
Pull down the Whites slider until the brightest pixel is at 100 IRE.
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get the skin tones in the right range (see Figure 9-11 in color insert section). If human skin is not properly corrected, viewers will pick up on it immediately. As you begin to use the Waveform monitor frequently, you will get the hang of where certain luma values in the frame fit into the numerical values on the scopes. Master Shot Correction: Set the Mids and Gamma inally comes the most important adjustment. The Mids luma slider is used to pull important detail back into the frame. If the subject matter is over or under exposed, use the Mid luma slider to pull it back into range. You’ll be surprised how much detail you can rescue by adjusting this slider. You have to keep your eye on the Waveform Monitor as you adjust this, however, because most of the time, the values you want to change are also within range of both the mid and the white or black luma sliders. If you boost the mids up, you will probably see the whites boost somewhat as well. If this happens, you will need to tug the whites back into place. Eventually, you will find that sweet spot where your whites and blacks are correctly mapped and your subject matter is also properly boosted in the mids. When you adjust the mids, you are actually affecting what is called the “gamma” rather than contrast of the entire frame. Contrast is strictly a relationship between white and black, whereas gamma describes the specific location of middle gray in between them. The gradient we saw earlier had a linear gamma, because the grays, pixels that were not exactly white or black, were evenly graduated over the frame. The gamma describes where the middle gray occurs. This doesn’t have to be exactly halfway between black and white. In fact, it rarely is. To illustrate gamma, grab the Mid luma slider and keep your eye on the histogram (see Figure 9-12). As you go to extremes of boosting and cutting the mids, you will see more pixels displaying darker grays than lighter and vice versa. You are controlling where middle gray occurs and therefore how many graduations of gray are possible.
Figure 9-12 and blacks.
Positioning the mids changes how much detail exists between highlights
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You will notice that, with the exception of blown-out whites and total blacks, the happy medium for a perfect contrast scene has a very even spread across the histogram. Many times you can pull detail back out of what originally appeared to be totally white or black areas of the frame. This is not always true and it depends on the content of the frame, but you will learn to make those judgments as you gain experience using the controls with various types of footage. Master Shot Correction: Correct Color for White Balance The next step is actually correcting the color in your footage. There is, as usual, an automatic corrector and then manual adjustment. Always try the automatic control first; it’s usually pretty close. This time, start with the Whites. Under the Whites color wheel, look for the eye dropper and click it (see Figure 9-13 in color insert section). Then, in the Canvas window, locate something in the frame that is actually white, like a painted wall or a T-shirt. Never use blown-out footage for this, because you are trying to correct a color cast, and blown out footage contains zero color detail. When you find the white you want to use, click it. Depending on how extreme the color correction needed is, you may see a great deal or little change in the color wheel. Keep your eye on the color wheel and your actual footage in the Canvas. If there are a lot of noise pixels in the area you are clicking, you may hit one that doesn’t produce the results you are looking for. If so, hit the little reset button next to the color wheel and sample again. It may happen that no matter what you do, the eye dropper doesn’t shift in the direction you want. Particularly if there is human skin in the frame, you need to be careful and get that balanced properly. If the eye dropper doesn’t do it, it’s time to go for some manual control. Grab the blob in the middle of the color wheel and drag in any direction (see Figure 9-14).
Figure 9-14 balance.
Click the blob in the color wheel and drag to manually adjust the color
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ou will find that it is rather difficult to make radical changes in color. That’s because precision is very important in color correction. Still, if you must be more radical, Commandclick and drag and it will adjust much more quickly. As you hold and drag, the Canvas and Vectorscope will update to show you the present setting. After tooling around in the Whites color wheel, reset it and do the same adjustments in the Mids and Blacks color wheels and examine how each wheel only makes color changes in the luma range of the color wheel you are working in. If there is human skin in the frame, there is a special tool in the Vectorscope that will help you get that skin in the right range. Control-click in the Vectorscope window and toggle on Targets (see Figure 9-15). In the area of the circle halfway between the red and
Figure 9-15 tone line.
Control-click the Vectorscope to get Targets and then look for the flesh-
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yellow calibration boxes, there is a line (roughly around 10:30 on the clock dial). This is called the fleshtone line. Most skin tones will register close to this line. If there are skin tones in the frame, look for lines in proximity to this fleshtone line and get them even closer. After you have the whites corrected, move to the mids and the blacks until they are also correct. The Frame Viewer Another new feature in FCP 4 is the Frame Viewer in the Toolbench. When you switched to Color Correction in Window > Arrange, the Toolbench loaded the Video Scopes and the Frame Viewer tabs. Click the Frame Viewer tab to look at its interface (see Figure 9-16 in color insert section). Frame Viewer is a highly configurable window that shows before and after views of clips you are working with. You can look at the same clip with and without filters. The Frame Viewer also allows you to compare the current clip with other clips either before or after the current clip. This is very useful for color correction. Move the sequence playhead to your color corrected master shot. On the bottom left of the Frame Viewer tab, you will see a green spot and pulldown. On the bottom right you will see the same but with a blue spot. These correspond to two viewable areas in the video window above them, which combines to make an adjustable split window. Clicking any of the spots or the edge of an area allows you to adjust its shape, both horizontally and vertically. By using the pulldowns below, you can tell FCP what to show in each region. For instance, in the green region, select Current Frame w/o Filters, and in the blue region, select Current Frame. Then adjust the edges so that a critical area for color correction (such as a human face) is split between the two regions. At the extreme bottom of the window, three buttons allow you to reset the regions horizontally or vertically and to switch which region the blue and green spots correspond to with a click. To illustrate, load the master clip up in the Viewer, go to the Color Corrector 3-Way tab and drag the Mids luma slider and color blob to make the disparity between the regions extreme. The regions automatically update the split screen showing you just how far you’ve come. When we start matching other shots to our master shot, you will see an even more useful aspect of this window in the color correction workflow. Don’t forget to undo the Mid slider and color blob action you just changed earlier in this paragraph!
Matching Shots to the Master Shot Once you have corrected your master shot, you want to go through each of your other shots and correct them individually to match the master. How you do this depends on a few factors. Does the lighting change from shot to shot? Were you using a different camera for the other shots? Do you need correction for the whole frame or are only individual elements out of whack? Each factor determines your workflow for each clip you correct.
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If your lighting changes from shot to shot, and it’s a safe bet it will with DV cameras, ou will need to go into each clip and start from the beginning, just the same way you corected the master shot. You have to get it into the neighborhood of correct exposure and color value before you start matching shots to your master shot. If you used a different camera for the other shot, and particularly if you were working a multicam event and using DV cameras, you can bet that with exactly the same lighting and exposure, your color is still going to vary a lot. Prosumer cameras simply have too much variance with white balancing and even luma sensitivity in their CCDs. Shot to Shot Copying There are ways you can speed this process up. Even though you need to visit each clip individually to check the continuity, it is likely that you will be cutting back and forth between clips with exactly the same color correction requirements. You don’t always have to start from scratch if you keep your eye on the ball. FCP has some tools to let you streamline the process of rough correcting. In many sequences, you will be cutting back and forth between the same camera shots epeatedly, say, for instance, a dialogue sequence where the camera cuts back and forth between two people having a chat. In such situations, the settings you derive for one clip are likely to be close, if not exactly the same, as the clip two edits up. The settings appropriate to each clip are likely to be repeated over and over again. There are a couple of ways to make this work for you. One way is to make the color correction to your initial clip, and then select the rest and apply the same settings to them. To see this in action, edit a series of clips into a new sequence. Make sure that several of them are derived from the same master clip, and thus, probably have similar correction needs, and spread them around in the sequence so that other clips come between them. Perform a correction for one of the clips. Then select the remainder of the clips that need the same color adjustments (see Figure 9-17). Go to the visual tab of the corrected clip (see Figure 9-18). Underneath the Numeric button, you will see a few buttons. The arrows containing 1s and 2s are a cool feature that automatically apply the settings from clips preceding the present clip or apply the settings of the present clip to clips following it. Here, we are more interested in the small hand between the arrows. Grab the hand and drag it over onto one of the selected, as yet uncorected, clips in your sequence. The settings are applied to all clips that are selected. Paste Attributes Another way to approach this is useful if you need to apply more than just the color corection to those clips. FCP lets you copy and apply any of the changes you’ve made to one clip to any others you want. Use Command-z to undo the multiple application of the color correction settings from the last action. Return to the clip that is color corrected, select it, and go Edit > Copy (keyboard shortcut, Command-c).
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Figure 9-17 Perform a correction to one sequence clip, and then select other clips in the sequence with similar color correction problems.
Next, again select each of the clips you want to apply this to in the sequence and go Edit > Paste Attributes (keyboard shortcut, Option-v). When you do this, you will get the Paste Attributes dialog box (see Figure 9-19). In this box, you tell FCP which of the copied attributes is pasted into the new clip. Check Filters. When you hit OK, the Color Corrector 3-Way filter from the copied clip, complete with settings, is applied to all the selected clips. Note that you also could have applied any Motion tab settings like Scale, Rotation, Drop Shadow, and even the content, or actual video frames, from the copied clip by checking off those attributes in the Paste Attributes dialog box. Match to Master Shots Once you have those shots all in the ballpark, it’s time to match them all to your master for continuity. It would be nice to use the Frame Viewer to make before-and-after views for comparison, but the Frame Viewer can only reach back a couple of edits, and your master
Figure 9-18 Underneath the Numeric button, find the numbered arrows and the hand. Drag the hand onto one of the selected, uncorrected clips.
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The Paste Attributes dialog box.
shot could be minutes away in the sequence. While this may work for the first couple of clips after the master shot, you’ll still need to see other, later shots and the master shot simultaneously. In these situations, you can take advantage of FCP’s ability to have more than one Viewer window open at a time. Double-click your master clip to load it into the Viewer window, and then move this Viewer window to an area of the screen that isn’t busy. Next, select the first clip in the sequence you want to match to the master shot and go View > Clip in New Window (keyboard shortcut, Shift-Return). Tear the Color Corrector tab away from the Viewer window, and you will be able to simultaneously analyze the master shot, the new clip, its Color Corrector tab, and Video Scopes all at once (see Figure 9-20). Each time you want to start working on another clip in the sequence, close the first one and open the next one. Match Hue Now, if you were correcting using the eyedropper and a white sample earlier, you may have encountered one of the biggest problems with ‘automatic’ controls. They are not human.
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Figure 9-20 Open a master clip Viewer, then a different sequence clip in a New Viewer, and then tear away the Color Corrector tab and add the Video Scopes tab so that they are all conveniently in view.
When you eyedropper sample for white, FCP says ‘what you eyedropper-sampled is supposed to be white, so shift all the colors in the frame so that the pixels you sampled actually become white.’ The problem is, life is not that simple. You’ll often find that when you correct a white wall in the background, the human faces in the foreground go wrong. In most cases, the color you
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want to match between shots is going to be human skin tones, since that is the focus in most shots. What if you could sample pixels in your master shot, say from human faces, and then apply corrections to another group of pixels in your subsequent shots to force them to match it? That is the function of the Match Hue tools. Load your master shot into the Viewer and tear away the Color Corrector tab. In the Color Corrector tab, look next to the Auto Level
Figure 9-21 Use the eyedropper in the Match Hue control to select a color which you will use to force match colors in other clips.
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for the Match Hue controls (see Figure 9-21). Click the eyedropper, then move to the Viewer Video tab. Find a color that you want to make sure is matched from master to other shots, such as facial tones. When you eyedropper the color, the middle box will display the color. To apply this to other clips, load another clip into a new Viewer window. If you switch to that clip’s Color Corrector tab, you will see that the Match Hue sample color has stuck. It remains global in all Viewers until you change it. Tear away the Color Corrector tab so that you can see both master clip and new clip’s Video tabs simultaneously. Look at the three color wheels on the new clip and you will see that one of the three droppers is bright green (see Figure 9-22 in color insert section). That is because FCP has determined that the color you originally sampled is in that wheel’s luma range. All you have to do is click on that green eyedropper, then click in the area that you want to match to the master shot color you sampled. You will get an instant color adjustment to make that range of luma values match that color. To reset the color in the Match Hue box, just hit the reset button on the right of the color box.
Secondary Color Correction Of course no matter what you do, you will find yourself in situations where correcting one part of the frame screws up another part. Color and luma mistakes are rarely as clean-cut and easy to fix as tutorials and demos make them seem. In the real world, color and luma problems are usually hairy messes that don’t have easy-to-define solutions. How do you deal with this? It’s called Secondary Color Correction and it allows you to fix specific problems without changing other areas of the frame. FCP calls secondary color correction ‘Limit Effect.’ Basically, when you limit effect, you are creating a matte (a concept we will discuss in greater detail in the next section) that only performs the color correction in a certain area of the frame. The area affected is determined by either the Hue, Luma, or Saturation controls, or any combination of the three. Limit Effect Load a high contrast clip into the Viewer, apply the Color Corrector 3-Way filter, and correct the footage for the primary subject matter, such as skin tones. When you are finished, you will probably notice that this has shifted the other areas of the frame out-of-whack. Look to the bottom left of the tab for a Limit Effect widget. Clicking this will reveal yet another set of controls (see Figure 9-23). The first is the long strip of color called Limit Hue. There are four handles and two lines in this strip. These allow you to define the range of colors you limit the effect to. Over to the right of the strip is an eyedropper. You will select an area that has the color you are trying to limit the corrections above to. The color you sample will be shown in the color strip in between the handles and bars. If you want to expand the range of the color
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Figure 9-23 Below the primary color correction controls, click the widget to reveal the Limit Effect controls.
selection by adding other colors to the sample, you can click the eyedropper again and hift-click in the desired area of the video frame to add that sample to the first sample. hift-clicking with the eyedropper adds a small “+” to the eyedropper, indicating that the next sample will add to, and not replace, the current color sample. Then using the handles and bars you can widen or narrow the range of colors. The bars can be diagonal or vertical based on how you drag the handles. Making them more diagonal makes the range of colors more tolerant, allowing more variation in the amount of corection used in the area. Making them vertical and parallel makes the range less tolerant, meaning the pixels are either included or not included. We will see this more clearly in the exercise that follows. Underneath this you will find similar strips for both Saturation and Luma. There is a checkbox next to each so that you can disable what you don’t need. For instance, if you had elatively flat luma footage but there was a brilliantly red object you wanted to isolate and correct, you could probably get better results limiting effect using the Saturation strip alone. If you get the bars and handles completely messed up, each strip also has a reset button.
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Figure 9-24 The Matte View button has three different modes.
Setting the Matte Underneath the eyedropper button is the Matte View button (see Figure 9-24). This doesn’t affect the limit effect matte at all, it just gives you a different view of the limit efffect you are building. When you see the red key, you are looking at the final matte or the results of the color correction filter with limit effect controls in use. Clicking it will change it to the black key or Matte View. This useful view makes it easier to see the areas of the frame that will be included or limited out, as we will see in a moment. The final view is given by the blue key which displays the clip without any limit effect. The final button below the Matte View button is Invert Selection. This will reverse what is included in the matte you have built. Choose the eyedropper and click in the highlights of the frame. You will see instant results in the Limit Effect area (see Figure 9-25 in color insert section). Depending on the luma, hue, and saturation of the pixels you hit with the eyedropper, the Limit controls snap into place. To see the Limit Effect matte you are building, click on the red key button to switch to the matte view. Remember the color and luma value of the area you are trying to include in the matte. If you chose a blown-out area, you probably will want to expand the upper end of the luma strip to build the matte. As you drag the handles and bars of the limit strips to include a larger range of luma and saturation, the white areas in the matte will grow larger and join. The white areas are the areas that will be affected by the color correction above the Limit Effect controls section. Hit the Invert Selection button below the Matte View button and the black and white areas will switch, meaning the color correction will affect the rest of the frame (see Figure 9-26 in color insert section). Sometimes it is easier to build your matte from the areas of the frame that you don’t want to correct and then reverse the matte so that what is left is what you do want to correct. Edge Thin and Softening Get the white matte as tight as you can. Of course, if it’s problem footage, your chances of getting a perfect matte right off the bat, particularly with DV footage, are pretty slim; let’s be realistic! There are a couple of more controls to clean up the edges. The first slider is called Edge Thin. Edge Thin essentially expands or contracts the matte in every direction (see Figure 9-27). It is used to fill up holes in the matte that are not eradicable by using the standard hue, saturation, and luma controls.
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Figure 9-27 Edge Thin expands the initial matte in all directions, increasing and tightening up the edge of the matte (first image at 0, second at +50).
The final control is Softening, which adds a blur to the edge of the matte you built. Particularly if you are using DV material, you may see blocky artifacting on the edge of the matte. A touch of blurring on the edge of the matte can soften the effects of this blockiness (see Figure 9-28). Be careful; it can be tempting to use too much blur. Your matte edges should never extend more than about 5 pixels from the edge of the area you are including in the matte. Also notice that as you increase both Edge Thin and Softening together, the Edge Thin tends to overpower the Softening and yield a different sort of extended matte that is very useful for filling in holes in the matte. Using the Limit Effect Matte Once you have the Limit Effect matte constructed, switch the matte view mode back to the ed key. Then return to the primary controls above and refine the individual elements you isolated. You may find that the edge of the matte you created is too ragged and that you need to go in and re-adjust it. Whatever you do, make sure you watch your matted color correction in full motion. Problems in your limit effect mattes are difficult to spot in stills but are glaringly obvious in motion. Use Option-p or the QuickView tab (or RT if you have the capability) to make sure that the corrections you are making really look as good as you think they do. Another thing to keep in mind is that desktop preview on the computer screen should only be used to get the material into the right neighborhood, after which you should do all color correction using a properly calibrated production video monitor. The color spaces of
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Figure 9-28 Softening adds a slight blur to the matte’s edge which eases the transition between corrected and uncorrected areas of the frame (first image at 0, second at 4 clicks up).
computer CRT, LCD, and video monitors are very different. If you get your correction locked down on a computer screen, you will only be let down later when you see the color relationships are different on a broadcast monitor. If you are preparing your material for broadcast, consider purchasing a true production monitor to check your video. Cheap televisions are better than nothing, but just barely. Since they cannot be reliably or accurately calibrated, TV sets should be avoided in situations where the results will end up being broadcast.
Teamwork Equals Fast Work You may have come to realize after reading all this that color correction is a rather lengthy and involved process that takes time and patience. Although the tools have come a long way towards speeding it up, it still takes looking at each clip individually and evaluating it relative to other clips. That’s difficult to do when you’re busy editing and in a hurry to meet a deadline. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it. Strategy can radically speed things up. A great workflow when editing in a team environment is to have one person go through and make preliminary color corrections for shots that you know are going to come into play in your sequences. Instead of applying the correction filters as you edit, have a team member do the preliminary color correction on another machine with the same media clips captured. As they do preliminary corrections, they will save them as Favorites, just the way we did with Transitions in the last chapter. They will name each Favorite filter setting based on
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which reel/clip it refers to. When you have completed the edit, you simply get the Favorites from their project and apply them to the clips in your edited sequence. But how do you get the Favorites from the machine they are working on into your project so you can use them? It’s actually very easy. FCP treats everything but bins and sequences in a project as a clip, including filters. When your coworker completes a color filter setting, instead of dragging it to the Favorites bin in the Effects tab, they will drag it to a normal bin in their project and rename it there (see Figure 9-29).
Figure 9-29 The preliminary correction settings are saved in a project. Then the correction settings project is transported to the real editing station and the settings are applied to the sequence clips.
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After saving the project, they pass it to you either on disk or through the network. Because FCP can have more than one project open at a time, you open their color correction filters project up and drag and drop the filters from the coworker’s project to the clips or into your own Favorites folder in your project and apply them throughout your sequence!
Composite Modes The next sort of compositing we need to look at involves the way in which the various luma and chroma values of the images on one layer interact with the values of those on the layer underneath. Compositing Modes are among the most poorly understood features of FCP and image editing applications in general. But they should not be avoided. They provide a tool of incredible flexibility and ease of use when generating visual effects. Part of the confusion about using the Composite Modes is in understanding what they do and what needs to be in place in order for them to show results. The first requirement is obviously that the clip must be in the sequence. Since a Composite Mode is an effect that relies on a clip’s relationship with the clip underneath, changing its Composite Mode outside of a sequence will not display its true appearance. This also means that when you choose a Composite Mode for a clip, you need to make sure that there is a clip underneath it that will change the clip in the way you want. If no clip exists underneath the clip whose Composite Mode you change, there may be no apparent change in the clip. Using straight Black or White backgrounds for a clip’s Composite Mode complement could yield unpredictable results or no change at all. Clear off your sequence from the preceding example and add two stacked clips, one into the V1 track and one into the V2 track. Make sure to select two clips that are different from each other. Single-click the clip in the V2 track to select it. Go to Modify > Composite Modes. When you move to this submenu, you will find a list of many different Composite Modes. The Composite Modes are also accessible in a contextual menu by Control-clicking the clip in the sequence (see Figure 9-30 in color insert section). Each name describes how the luma and chroma values of the underlying clip will influence the appearance of the clip you apply the Mode to. Until you actively change it, a clip’s Composite Mode is set by default to Normal. The problem for most new users is that the names of the Modes do not accurately describe what the effect on your clip will be. Unlike effects filters such as Gaussian Blur and Fish-Eye, the Composite Modes only describe the method by which FCP will take the luma and chroma values of the underlying clip and use them to alter the appearance of the clip you apply the Mode to. This means that the effect resulting from the application of a Composite Mode depends on the contents of both clips and the Composite Mode chosen. That said, there are some Modes that come into frequent use. Perhaps you want to lighten or reverse the colors in one area of your clip. You may want to enhance the effect
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of a Filter by drawing out the luma and chroma values of a clip before applying the Filter. ome people are masters at using the Composite Modes as a type of unique paintbrush, one that is able to make complex and beautiful patterns of color and light from the mixture of math and image. If you select any of the Composite Modes other than Travel Matte Alpha or Travel Matte Luma, you will begin to see interesting results. Continue choosing different Modes from the list for the selected clip, noting how each Mode yields both different and sometimes similar results, depending on the two clips and the Mode. Some of the Modes show an even mixture of the two images, while others show only the darker sections of the one or the lighter sections of the other. Some reverse areas of similar or different detail, yielding odd color combinations. Some may produce no difference or completely black frames. Feel free to change the Composite Mode for a clip as often as you’d like. Of course, any clip that has its Mode changed will require rendering, even for those Macintosh’s capable of RT. To turn off the Composite Mode for a clip, you must return the Composite Mode to Normal. Composite Modes are not keyframeable, and have no controls, although you can certainly change the appearance and performance of any given Mode by changing the appearance of either of the two clips involved. For instance, if you want to reduce the amount of one clip’s Composite Mode effect on another, you could reduce its opacity or apply any of a number of effects filters. This variability is what makes the Composite Mode such a flexible tool, even if it is a little tough to get your head around. Mattes, Masks, and Stencils Two of the most valuable Composite Modes were skipped in the preceding section because of their unique function and value to FCP editors. These are Travel Matte-Alpha and Travel Matte-Luma. These tools offer the ability to frame the images of one video layer inside a shape above another layer (see Figure 9-31). This is great for more advanced picture-in-picture effects, such as the ability to show one video clip through the letters of a word while using another clip as a background, a very common usage. Essentially, the Travel Matte keys out or makes transparent areas that either have a certain luminosity or an alpha channel, a concept which we will explore shortly. The effect is rather like using a stencil to paint letters. If you lay the stencil on a background you want to paint the letter onto, you can paint with impunity above the stencil itself, knowing that the paint will reach only the background in the spaces that the stencil allows it to get through. Thus, three layers are involved in the process: the background, the stencil, and the layer of paint that is being used for the letters applied through the stencil. A stencil is part of a group of tools that all perform roughly this same task. Whether they go by the name Mask or Matte, these tools are part of a family referred to as mattes. Mattes allow you to obscure or reveal areas of an image based on the criteria that defines the matte. In the stencil example above, our criterion is very simple. The stencil blocks the path of the paint, restricting it to the shape of the letters the stencil is constructed to paint.
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Figure 9-31 A common use for travel mattes is to use a video clip as the fill inside graphics or text over another video background.
Setting the Travel Matte-Luma To work with mattes as we have just described them, we need to set up the sequence a little differently. Edit a darker video clip into the V1 track. Perform a Superimpose edit of the text clip we used in Chapter 8 onto the V2 track (you can go back to that sequence, copy the text clip from the last chapter and then paste it into this sequence by using the AutoSelect toggle to define the track you paste into). Finally, set the Destination Track for V2 and then Superimpose edit a lighter video clip onto V3, as demonstrated in Figure 9-32. This will be used to matte into the text, such that the video from V3 will appear inside the text on V2, and the text will be superimposed on V1. Select a clip from the Browser that you want to use. Once again, make sure that you use a different clip from the one in the V1 track and that this clip contains footage that is generally lighter in detail. If both clips are exactly the same or if they both contain footage that is equally bright or dark, it will be difficult to see that matting has taken place, just as if we used a stencil to paint green letters on a green wall. The text clip that we use as
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Figure 9-32 Edit a darker clip into V1, superimpose the text clip from Chapter 8 over it into V2, and then superimpose a lighter clip over the text clip into V3.
a stencil will disappear completely, so don’t expect to see the white letters following the next operation. Select the clip in the V3 track. Go to the Modify drop-down menu, scan down to the Composite Modes, and select Travel Matte-Luma. When you do this, the Canvas window, which was previously showing only the V3 track, will suddenly reveal most of the V1 track, with the exception of the text, inside of which is video matted from your V3 clip (see Figure 9-33). What is occurring here is that FCP is using the luma of the text clip values (the white text) to determine what should be used as the stencil. Anything white in the text clip is used as the stencil and allows the V3 layer clip to show through onto the background clip. Anything that is black (which is all the background of the text clip) blocks the stencil and doesn’t let the V3 layer clip show through onto the background clip. It is performing the simple act of matting. Notice that the drop shadow has disappeared, however. This is because the drop shadow was specified as black, a color not included in the luma matte which is only looking for whites. With the luma Travel Matte, the brighter the values, the more they are matted in. If we went back into the Motion tab of the text clip and set the drop shadow color for gray or white, we would actually see it begin to appear. Unlike a normal stencil that either blocks or doesn’t block, our Travel Matte performs more like a fine-tunable screen. We can adjust how strong or weak the matte is based on how close to white an element in the clip is. White text, such as we created in the Controls tab, produces a complete matte, allowing the V3 clip to show through totally. Black, on the other hand, blocks the matte, and all we see is the background V1 clip. The implication of this is that all the values in between black and white—the grays—have luma values that are not quite here nor there. These can be used to yield partial mattes. To see this difference, double-click the text clip in the V2 track of the sequence to load it into the Viewer again and go to the Motion tab. Click on the Drop Shadow triangle to reveal the parameters (see Figure 9-34). In the Color parameter, change the color of the drop shadow to somewhere around middle gray. Return to the Canvas. You will see that the drop shadow is starting to appear on the edge of the matte.
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Figure 9-33 Select the V3 clip and change its Composite Mode to Travel Matte > Luma to see it matted into the text clip.
This is because the drop shadow color is now within range of the luma values that the Travel Matte Luma can translate into a matte. Unfortunately, you also begin to see the limitations of the Luma Matte itself. The drop shadow, because it is based on the single gray color, is rough edged and ineffective in a luma matte. Its softness and gradient shading is
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Figure 9-34 Change the drop shadow parameters to see the drop shadow appear when its luma values approach white.
gone as the matte is simply drawn from its source color gray. To get a better looking matte, we will use the Travel Matte Alpha.
The Travel Matte-Alpha: What Is an Alpha Channel? The other type of Travel Matte is capable of delivering interesting results, but is based on a different method of contributing transparency information to the matte. This is called the alpha channel. The alpha channel is a unique system that includes the transparency information in an image, not simply by using colors within the image (although that is possible as well). Instead, alpha transparency information is included in its own special channel that accompanies an image. There, it performs like a carry-along matte for the image. Any application that can access alpha channels uses the information from the alpha channel to determine what should or should not be transparent. Some explanation of the RGB system of digital images is necessary here. Digital images generally use a system called RGB to store information about each pixel in the image. R stands for red, G stands for green, and B stands for blue. All the colors that can be displayed by a computer (which includes most of the colors visible to the human eye) can be expressed by some mixture of these three colors. The amount of each of the three colors determines which color is displayed. The scale of possible variations on each primary color in 8-bit RGB is 256 (the DV codec is an 8-bit codec). Therefore, in every pixel, there is a separate channel each for red, green, and blue. Each channel carries a value of between 0 and 255 for the amount of that color. The mixture of values for the three channels gives the pixel its color appearance. Although this doesn’t seem like much variation, the combination of 256 possible colors for each of the three primary colors yields over 16 million different colors, from which the
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term “millions of colors” originates. Each pixel of an RGB image carries bits of data describing what the red, green, and blue values for the pixel are. The reddest possible red in the RGB color scale would carry the value “255, 0, 0”, zero being the value when none of a particular color is being used in a channel (green and blue in this instance). The luma matte we just created used the RGB values of white (255, 255, 255) and black (0, 0, 0), as well as every shade of gray in between to generate its transparency. The alpha channel was developed as a system that would not intrude on the original three color channels but could be used to carry transparency information about the image. A separate channel was devised that is limited to variations of strictly luma information. The alpha channel uses 256 levels of gray to communicate whether or not a pixel should be transparent, regardless of its RGB color data. Because this alpha information can be expressed as grays as well as completely black or white, a pixel can also be partially transparent, depending on how close the alpha level is to black or white. This may sound very similar to the luma matte that we just created earlier, and in fact, the same process is used. But the difference is that we needed two images to complete the luma matte, the text clip for the matte and the actual image we were matting (not counting the background the matte was being stenciled onto). An image that contains an alpha channel carries the matte inside of it as a channel. Thus, an image with an alpha channel is like two images in one: our color information that we see as image detail, and then an unseen channel of grayscale information that determines only what parts of the image are transparent. Many applications can read and utilize alpha channels, FCP included, and many use alpha channel transparency information for processing transparencies just as we are doing without informing you that the process is taking place. A good example of this is the text clip we have been using all along. Although we didn’t have to tell FCP we wanted the rest of the frame to be transparent, it understood this and applied alpha transparency to the text clip in those areas where there is no text. Although an alpha channel does use grayscale luma information to carry transparency data about the image, it is not the same sort of matte as a luma matte. We will use our text clip again as an example of the way that alpha channels can show information that does not display when a luma matte is being used. FCP can easily detect and access alpha channels. They exist, typically, wherever transparency is needed. One exists in our text clip. It is what is giving us the ability to overlay the text clip on top of video and see around its edges. Wherever you do not see text in the text layer, you are seeing (or rather not seeing!) alpha channel transparency. And because this alpha channel information is dedicated to how transparent a pixel is, rather than how dark or light it is, we can achieve much higher quality results using it for things like drop shadows in our Travel Matte. At the moment, the V3 clip is still set for the Travel Matte Luma. First, visit the Motion tab of the text clip again and set the drop shadow’s color back to a deep effective black (see Figure 9-35). Then, Control-click the V3 clip and choose Travel Matte Alpha from the Compositing Mode submenu. The change is immediate and satisfying. The soft gradient of the drop shadow returns, but this time it is a gradient transparency rather than simply darker or lighter luma values.
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Figure 9-35 Set the drop shadow back to a deep black and then choose Travel Matte > Alpha for the V3 clip’s Composite Mode. This mode uses the alpha channel of the text clip rather than its luma value for the matte.
Speed and Duration Another effect that you can apply to video and audio clips is speed. It is easy to change the speed of a clip directly. Because of the flexibility of the Speed control dialog box, it’s also easy to coordinate the new speed with a specific duration so that you can slow the clip down to match another element in your sequence. To change the speed of a clip, we want to load it into a sequence first. Although you can change the speed of a clip by simply selecting it in the Browser or loading it into the Viewer,
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this will actually apply the speed change to the master clip. Clips that have had their speed adjusted must be rendered to play back correctly, and rendering can only occur in a sequence. Edit a clip into a fresh empty sequence. Adjust the Time Scale of the sequence so that the entire clip is visible on the sequence. With the clip selected, go to the Modify dropdown menu and select Speed (Control-click > Speed, or keyboard shortcut, Command-j). When you do so, you will receive a dialog box that allows you to customize the resulting clip generated by the Speed command (see Figure 9-36). There is a pulldown menu that specifies Constant or Variable Speed. Choose Constant. Type 50% into the Speed field, and watch the Duration field double in length. The default, 100%, is normal speed. Lowering the percentage will decrease the speed; raising it will increase the speed. Above this is a Duration field. Notice that if you hit the Tab key after entering a new value into the Speed field, the Duration field updates, revealing the new duration of the clip. Reducing speed to 50% will result in the duration doubling, while doubling the speed to 200% will result in halving of the duration. By the same token, changing the Duration field will give a new speed percentage value. This is probably the most valuable tool for wily B-Roll video editors who want to make the most of every frame they have, and who aren’t afraid of adjusting the speed of a clip to make it fit just right into its edit slot. Although Fit to Fill, one of the Canvas’ editing overlay boxes, also performs this function automatically, you can’t check the speed change before committing to the edit. With the Speed command, you enter the duration you have for the clip, and you can immediately see the speed change your clip will be subject to when processed before committing to it. The Reverse checkbox simply applies a negative value to the percentage. This means that in addition to any speed changes made, FCP will also reverse the order of the frames in the clip, making it run backwards.
Figure 9-36
The Speed dialog box.
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Frame Blending should always be enabled. When you speed up or slow down a clip, you are removing or creating frames of video to make the video appear faster or slower. This can cause strobing or stuttering if the new set of frames do not appear to be as continuous or sequential as the original set were. Frame Blending creates new intermediary frames that are a blend of the frames removed or added by the speed change. The result is smoother and cleaner speed changes. Set the percentage to 50%, enable Frame Blending, leave Reverse disabled, and hit OK. The clip in the sequence will have doubled in length and require rendering. If you render, ou will observe the very smooth slow motion. Bear in mind that any change in speed will possibly require a render. If you change the speed and then change it back to 100%, or normal, that speed change will not require rendering, since the second speed change simply refers the clip back to the original clip media. When you change the speed, the clip in the sequence will be marked with the percentage of the speed as a handy reminder that the clip is modified. Any audio linked to the clip is also sped up to maintain sync with the video clip.
Nesting and Effects, the FCP Way ituations will arise where you need to apply the same effects filter equally to all the individual clips in a sequence. We did this earlier when we applied the same color correction to many clips. But what if you wanted to lay a letterbox matte over the entire sequence to acheive an ‘after-the-fact’ widescreen effect? Or perhaps after completing an edit, you want to apply Motion tab effects to a sequence in its entirety rather than its individual constituent clips. This would be impossible to do with the sequence’s clips on a one-to-one basis. The answer lies in nesting. Nesting simply refers to placing a sequence inside another sequence so that the first, inserted sequence is treated as a single clip. You can manually move one sequence into another by simply dragging and dropping it just like you edit in a clip. You can load a sequence from the Browser into the Viewer just as if it were a clip and then edit it into another sequence. And you can apply effects to a sequence as if it were a clip. About the only thing you can’t do with nesting is to nest a sequence inside of itself. Start out by creating a new sequence and name it “outside.” Edit a video clip each into V1 and V2 of “outside.” Trim the longer of the two so that they are of equal duration. Double-click one of the two clips to load it into the Viewer. While loaded into the Viewer, click on the Motion tab and set the Scale value to 50%. Now double-click the other and perform the same Scale setting. Select the clip in the V2 track. Once selected, make sure the Canvas window is in Image + Wireframe mode and look for the wireframe of the clip. Finally, Shift-click the wireframed clip and drag to the right or left. Shift-clicking and dragging clips in the Canvas window constrains the direction of movement to either a horizontal or vertical direction. This allows you to line up one of the clips either directly above or directly next to the other. When you have one clip lined up next to the other, drop the clip, so that your sequence and Canvas look like Figure 9-37.
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Figure 9-37 Two clips at 50% scale are placed side by side in the Canvas, with one superimposed over the other in the sequence.
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Now select both clips in the “outside” sequence and go to Sequence > Nest Item(s). In the dialog box that comes up, change the name field to “inside nest” (see Figure 9-38). Check the Mixdown Audio box. When you nest these items, the subsequent nest will only contain two audio tracks, but the four original audio tracks will still exist inside the nest, as we will see. Using Mixdown Audio will render up the tracks so that you don’t accidentally
Figure 9-38 box.
Select the two clips in the sequence and configure the Nest Items dialog
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pass the realtime mixed down tracks possible for your system, which is an easy mistake to make when you start nesting lots of tracks. Hit OK. When you do, the original two video tracks and four audio tracks are rolled into one video and two audio tracks. The name of the clip nest has changed to “inside nest.” Look over into the project tab and you will see a new sequence named “inside nest.” Double-click the “inside nest” clip in the sequence. Instead of loading into the Viewer, it loads up as a sequence, which, of course, is what the nest is! Look into the “inside nest” sequence in the Timeline and you will see the original two clips still sitting there. Now that the nest is in the sequence, you can treat it like any clip. To load it into the Viewer, simply Option-double-click it. Supposed you want to include the contents of a sequence in another sequence, but without collapsing it into single tracks like a Nest would. You hold down the Command key and then drag the sequence from the project tab into the sequence in the Timeline window you want to include it in (see Figure 9-39). This will edit all the contents of the first sequence into the second, clip for clip, rather than moving it in as a single sequence. Which way you perform the edit really depends on what you are trying to do. Why Nest? Aside from the effects possibilities described above, why would you need to nest? One of the most useful attributes of a nest is that it also protects render files. If you have rendered a clip, but then decide to perform trimming on it, you will find that making any changes to its edit points throws away renders for those frames. Even if you are simply untrimming the edit points for a rendered clip that you trimmed, you would have to re-render those sections. Render files in FCP are linked to the frame numbers in a sequence. When you render something in a sequence, the render files are saved on your scratch disk. When you play the rendered clips, FCP goes into the render folder and locates the correct files based on the current frame number from the sequence. How can nesting help? Because render files are linked to the frame numbers in a sequence, the render files linked to a nested sequence are actually safe when edited from outside the sequence. In other words, if you have rendered material in a sequence, and you
Figure 9-39 Command-click and drag a sequence from the Browser to the sequence to insert its entire contents without nesting, but maintaining its track and clip order.
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nest that sequence, you can trim, slice, and edit the nested sequence without affecting the ender files inside the nested sequence. That can save you an enormous amount of time if ou need to apply effects prior to editing, as is sometimes necessary, say, for instance, when working with footage that you want to finish with a widescreen matte. The Render Manager ou can see this by looking at another tool in FCP’s toolset. Go to Tools > Render Manager (see Figure 9-40). When you do this, you will be presented with a window that allows you
Figure 9-40 Go to Tools > Render Manager to find the Render Manager. It allows you to control your render files from within the FCP interface.
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to eliminate render files from your disks from within FCP. If you are running low of drive space and you know that you haven’t cleaned your disks in a long time, you may have gigs and gigs of old render files stored there. Use the “Last Modified” date to determine if the sequences in the project folders represented are old and worthy of being removed. If so, you can do that directly from within this dialog box. Note that within the project folder is a seperate folder for each sequence in the project that has render files. Inside the sequence’s folder you will find its render files, and the specific information about each render file like dates modified, size, and other details. If you want to get rid of render files, simply put a check mark in the “Remove” column for any files or folders. When you are done, hit OK to leave the Render Manager and delete the render files that you have checked.
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10
The Audio Tools
OK, so not everything is going to be perfect after your recording session. Sometimes people will speak too loudly or softly, or worse, they will do both during the same recordings. There will be some noise, no matter what you do. And frankly, you’re going to want to change things that aren’t technically bad audio, just because, well, because you want them to sound differently. Of course, you should always strive to record the highest quality audio you can while shooting, but this isn’t always within your control. FCP has an excellent suite of new tools for addressing audio issues. Similar to opacity, audio levels can be adjusted and keyframed on the sequence as well as in the Audio tab of the Viewer, and from a special new tool in the Toolbench. FCP also has Audio Filters that can be used to clean up a number of common issues. Finally, there are some pretty cool tools that make it easy to get quick, classy voiceovers into your productions.
Fixing Audio Levels First, we’ll take a look at the basic audio tools in FCP. In your project, open up a new sequence and edit a clip into it. Select the clip and go to Modify > Make Stereo Pair (keyboard shortcut, Option-l), if they are not already linked as such (see Figure 10-1). In the Log and Capture window you can specify that FCP captures either Stereo Pairs or Mono channels. Look on the Capture Settings tab for the Input Settings pulldown on the lower left side of the window. How you set this tab determines how the audio will be linked after capture. To understand the difference between a stereo pair of audio clips and a couple of mono clips that are simply linked together, you have to understand the difference between mono and stereo sound. Mono sound is unidirectional. In simple terms, this means that the sound you hear is flat and appears to be generated from all directions at once. Stereo, on the other hand, uses two speakers to simulate depth, and thus position (or origin) in the sound field. Sounds emitted by stereo speakers, if mixed properly, do not appear to originate directly from the speakers, but rather somewhere between them. It is this variance of levels of a single sound to two different speakers, or ‘panning/stereo mixing’ that gives stereo its depth, realism, and presence.
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Figure 10-1 Pair.
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To make any clip linked Stereo, select the clip and go Modify > Make Stereo
When you make two audio clips stereo in FCP, as we have just done, you add this mixing option. But even if you don’t intend to do any heavy mixing, making tracks stereo can benefit you with a special sort of convenience when setting and adjusting audio levels. ince it is assumed that you want to increase stereo channel levels equally, when you make two audio tracks stereo, any level adjustment you make to one is automatically applied to the other. A stereo pair will appear on a single audio tab in the Viewer (see Figure 10-2). Any Audio filters are automatically applied to both audio clips. In the sequence, two little green triangles appear at the head of the audio clip to indicate that these two audio clips are linked in a special way. Even if you unlink your clips using the Toggle Linking button in the Timeline window, the two clips will still be locked together in this special elationship. After selecting the new stereo-ized clip, double-click to load it into the Viewer window. Click on the Audio tab and a window opens that contains two wavy, jagged lines. These are called waveforms. A waveform is essentially a graphic representation of the volume levels of the audio in the clip. Where you see spikes in the line, the audio level is higher; where the jaggies are shorter, the levels are lower. These levels correspond to the levels you may have already seen in the clip in the sequence when waveforms are toggled on (keyboard shortcut, Command-Option-w). They are also seen in the Audio Level Meter, a small thin window that normally resides next to the Toolbar, when the windows are laid out in the default arrangement. If you hit the spacebar to begin playback, you will hear sound and see the level meter registering the rise and fall of the audio levels. Of course, we are not limited to the levels that we have when we capture. If you look near the top of the tab, you will see a slider marked Level. This red slider corresponds to the red horizontal level line down in the waveform area of the window. To change levels,
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Figure 10-2 Stereo linked clips use one single tab on the Viewer, and filters applied to one audio clip are automatically applied to both left and right channels.
you can either move the slider left or right, or you can use the mouse pointer to move the level line in the waveform tracks up and down (see Figure 10-3). Use the mouse pointer to grab the red line in the waveform track and drag it up. As you do, you will see a small box appear with a number and “dB.” The dB stands for decibel, a unit of measurement for force which is often used to describe sound or audio levels. As you drag, you’ll see the slider follow it. When you see “8 dB,” let go. This audio level rubberband line can also be found on the sequence. In the Timeline window, enable the Clip Overlay button. The clip’s audio tracks will display a similar level line. If you grab that line with the mouse pointer, you will see that it is also at the 8 dB level.
Figure 10-3 On the Audio tab, you can boost or cut levels with the slider or on the rubberband line in the track.
If you drag it back down to 0 dB, you will see the lines in the Audio tab in the Viewer window follow it. Keyframing Audio Levels Of course, we are not limited to just raising or lowering the levels of an entire audio clip. We have already learned how to keyframe opacity levels in the sequence. We’ll use the Pen tool again to change the audio levels. With both Overlays and Waveforms turned on, select
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the Pen tool (keyboard shortcut, p), then proceed to the audio clips in the sequence. Position the mouse pointer over the rubberband line in the audio tracks, and click to create the first point. Click elsewhere, either prior to or after this first point, to set a second keyframe, place the cursor between the two keyframes, and drag up or down. As you do you will also see the little “dB” box appear informing you how much you are raising or lowering audio levels. Also notice that a keyframe can be dragged and repositioned on the Timeline (left or right). When you change the position of the keyframe in the sequence, the line between the two points extends, and just like with opacity keyframing, the transition between the two audio level values takes longer. So, for instance, if you wanted to slowly increase an audio track from quiet to loud over four seconds, you would set the first keyframe at a relatively low minus dB value at the first frame where the audio starts. Then set the last keyframe at the fourth second at a higher, more suitable, audio level (see Figure 10-4).
The Audio Mixer Tool New to FCP 4 is yet another window in the Tool Bench. This is perhaps the most eagerlyawaited addition to the FCP toolset, the Audio Mixer. The Audio Mixer is a full-fledged mixing interface, complete with track and master faders, solo, muting, and panning controls. Unlike the previous version’s audio mixing toolset, the Audio Mixer is built to
Figure 10-4 Just as with opacity keyframing, audio levels can be boosted or cut directly on the Timeline.
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allow you to mix your audio tracks on the fly, raising and lowering audio levels for each track independently as you playback. Nothing could be faster. Go to Tools > Audio Mixer. When you do, the Audio Mixer will appear in the Toolbench (see Figure 10-5). To the far left of the window you will see all the tracks in the current sequence listed. Next to this, on the right, are the fader controls for the tracks. Above each fader are the Pan, Solo, and Mute buttons. Below the level faders are the readouts for the level of the fader expressed by the fader. Load a new video clip with two audio clips and edit it into the sequence. Edit more audio clips to the sequence in more audio tracks until you have at least six audio tracks in the sequence and Audio Mix window. If you need to add more tracks to the sequence to accommodate the merged clip in the Viewer, go Sequence > Insert Tracks and add additional ones. Notice that as you add tracks to the sequence, faders are added to the Audio Mixer tab. Fader channels, as tracks are sometimes referred to, are linked to sequence tracks (see igure 10-6). Hit the spacebar to initiate playback. Then, grab any fader you like and adjust. You will hear audio levels drop for the contents of that track, and its stereo counterpart if there is one (you may want to hit Control-l, the keyboard shortcut for Loop Playback, so that the
Figure 10-5
Go Tools > Audio Mixer and look to the Toolbench for the Audio Mixer.
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Figure 10-6
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Adding tracks to the sequence adds faders to the Audio Mixer window.
clip repeats itself enough times for you to get the hang of the faders). Notice that as you adjust it, it changes levels on the fly to match, without stopping playback. This is a major advantage of using faders for setting levels. You will notice, however, that when you adjust the levels, they affect the entire clip, rather than setting keyframes for level within the clip, as would be most useful to us in cleaning up lousy tracks. This is for your own safety, though. You can set levels directly from the faders, but you have to enable it with a toggle switch. This is to keep you from accidentally wiping out levels you already set. Look in the top right corner of the Audio Mixer window for the button bar (see Figure 10-7). The Record Keyframe Audio button is preloaded there, because the FCP team knew that you would need to access it while in this window pretty frequently. When you want to keyframe audio levels for your tracks, click the Record Keyframe Audio button. Note that this overides the Clip Overlays rubberbanding tool in the Timeline window. It doesn’t matter whether the Clip Overlays toggle in the Timeline is enabled or not; when the Keyframe Audio button is engaged, you are setting audio keyframes with every change you make in the faders. It is in your best interest to have the Clip Overlays toggle on in such circumstances, because that is the only way you can actually see the keyframes you are creating (see Figure 10-8)! With both Record Keyframe Audio and Clip Overlays buttons enabled, start playback in the sequence. As it plays back, adjust various faders. After a couple of loops, hit the spacebar to stop. Look into the sequence and the clip has new keyframes for each track you adjusted with the fader. Depending on how you have your User Preferences set, your keyframes may look similar or very different to what you see in the images with this section. That’s because FCP lets you determine the precision of the keyframes as you change them. This can make a big difference both while you are setting them and adjusting them after the fact. Go to Final
Figure 10-7 The Record Keyframe Audio button must be enabled to create keyframes in the sequence on the fly using the Audio Mixer.
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Figure 10-8 Make sure you keep the Clip Overlays toggle enabled so that you can actually see the keyframes you create on the fly with the Audio Mixer faders.
Cut Pro > User Preferences and look on the General tab. Under the Audio Playback Quality, you will see a toggle switch and pulldown tab for “Record Audio Keyframes” (see Figure 10-9). The toggle switch is the same function you enabled from the button bar in the Audio Mixer tab, so you need not deal with that here. The pulldown menu is a different story, though. The pulldown gives you three options: All, Reduced, and Peaks Only. All speaks for itself. When you make a change in the fader for the track, it record keyframes as fast as possible, getting pretty close to a keyframe per frame of video. Reduced records keyframes, but less frequently. The keyframes are still what you are inputting with the mouse, but are sampled less frequently than with All. Peaks Only records only the most extreme adjustments you make with the faders, thus, generating potentially the fewest number of keyframes to edit later. In practice, using All effectively is nearly impossible, unless your audio tracks are so screwed up that you would have to use an unlimited number of keyframes to clean them up anyway! Peaks Only is very difficult as well, since this depends on audio tracks that don’t really need much adjustment. Reduced is usually the best choice. It give you plenty of minute control, and don’t forget that you can always add extra keyframes manually with the Pen tool.
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Figure 10-9 The toggle, plus a variable control for setting the precision and frequency of the keyframes you create using the Audio Mixer, is set in the User Preferences General tab.
Another great piece of functionality in the Audio Mixer tool is the View: Track Display ets (see Figure 10-10). In the top left corner of the Audio Mixer tab, look for “View:” and four buttons labeled 1, 2, 3, and 4. These buttons let you program display sets of faders. This means that at the push of a button, you can show certain tracks and hide others that are commonly adjusted in common. To use this function, you just hide or show tracks while a view set is engaged. When ou start FCP, the first set “1” is engaged, with the default of having all tracks displayed. We will leave this as is, so that we can always switch to a view of all tracks simultaneously. Click on “2.” Initially, this track also has all tracks displayed. Move the mouse pointer over to the left side of the window and click A1 and A2 such that the accompanying circle is white. When you do, the A1 and A2 tracks disappear from the fader columns. witch back to “View: 1” and you will see the faders reappear. “View: 2” now has a different display set from “View: 1.” You can continue to customize the view sets for any of the buttons. This tool is most useful for isolating views based on the audio elements you will encounter during video editing situations. You’ll commonly put your synced audio tracks (from the camera recording) and dialogue on A1 and A2. Music beds, sound tracks, and other additions might be on A3, A4, A5, and A6. Other elements like room tone and sound effects might be dedicated to A7 and A8. But, rather than always look at the huge range of tracks simultaneously, put together display sets so that you can mix your dialogue and sync tracks without dealing with 8 faders at once. Each track has Mute and Solo buttons, located above the fader (see Figure 10-11). These buttons have counterparts on the sequence that we saw earlier in Chapter 6.
Figure 10-10 Track Display Sets let you customize which tracks are visible in the Audio Mixer, and let you switch between such customized views with a single click.
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Figure 10-11 There are Mute and Solo buttons that correspond to the Mute and Solo buttons in the sequence tracks; each enables the other.
The Mute button, identified by the speaker, makes the track temporarily inaudible. The olo button, symbolized by the headphones, does the opposite. When you hit the Solo button for the track, not only does its Solo button change color, but all other tracks are muted. Notice that if you hit Mute or Solo, the corresponding button is enabled in the sequence. Finally, the Pan slider is also keyframeable. Panning, as mentioned before, generally efers to stereo mixing. Stereo tracks give presence and dimensionality in sound by adding levels of a particular sound element to one speaker and taking it away from another. Although this has to do with stereo mixing (since you can’t pan in mono, stereo, by definition, equires two sides to pan between), you can still set panning keyframes, because panning is ultimately interpreted by the audio output of your FCP system. If, for instance, you are using eight mono tracks with a Firewire DV system, your eight tracks are being mixed down by default to two stereo tracks for Firewire output. The Audio Output tab of the User Preferences allows you to create a preset for how your audio leaves FCP’s Timeline and enters the real world. If you have hardware support other than Firewire DV, you can actually keep your tracks discrete to multiple channels if you wish, rather than mix them into stereo mixdowns. Take a look at the master control on the right side of the Audio Mixer tab (see igure 10-12). This master control has a fader and a level meter, as well as a master Mute. Each track in the Audio Output Preset you are using is represented next to the fader. If you are using stereo two-track mixdown in the Audio Output tab, the default for those using Firewire DV, then you will only see two channels in the meter. These meters display the tracks of audio leaving FCP. If you were, on the other hand, using a MOTU 828 Firewire Audio digitizer which supports eight channels of input and output, you could set up an Audio Output preset for either four stereo pairs or eight discrete mono audio outputs. If I enabled this preset, the master control level meters will show all eight output tracks, even if there is nothing in those tracks, and even if there are fewer than eight tracks in the sequence!
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Figure 10-12 The Master Fader, all the way to the right of the window, will have an output track for each output track you have in your current Audio Output Preset from the Audio Output tab of the User Preferences.
Just above the master fader is a downmix button in the Audio Output Preference. Even if you have access to a multi-channel output, such as the aforementioned MOTU solution, much of the time you will likely not be mixing that multi-channel audio. You will, in most cases, be quite happy to cut with two channels of mixed-down stereo. Instead of creating new sequences that use a separate Audio Output preset, you can simply click this button to automatically mixdown all tracks into two stereo tracks. Odd-numbered tracks are mixed into the left channel, while even-numbered ones are mixed into the right.
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It should be noted that if the Audio/Video Settings Sequence preset you are using does not have enough outputs for the multi-channel Audio Output preset you choose, FCP will ask you if you want to mixdown as described above, or simply to run with all channels above the first two tracks muted.
Using the Audio Filters Audio filters are very similar to video filters in that you apply them to an entire clip. These filters are used to correct audio problems or add effects. When you apply the filter to the clip, its controls appear in the Filter’s tab in the clip’s Viewer. There are a lot of filters to choose from, each with its own particular function. We’ll look at a few of the more important ones and figure out what they do and how to set them for your individual clip’s needs. The Three Band EQ An equalizer is an important tool in cleaning up audio. To understand what it does, ou have to know a little bit about audio itself. Audio and sound are composed of two important features that make them “sound” the way they do. The first, amplitude, describes olume levels as we have been adjusting them using rubberbands. Amplitude describes how powerful, or loud, a sound is. In the waveforms we’ve been looking at, the higher the spike in the wave, the louder the sound. This is the amplitude of the sound or audio wave. The second is the frequency. Frequency is the number of waves that happen over a period of time. Don’t confuse this with the sample rate, which has to do with how frequently your camera samples the audio waves. Frequency here means how many different waves happen per second in the sound you are hearing. Higher frequencies result in higher pitch sounds like whines, and lower frequencies result in lower pitch sounds like rumbles. The combination of frequency and amplitude determines how loud and what pitch the sound is. Knowing this gives us a little leverage for fixing sounds. The EQ, or equalizer, is a tool that allows you to adjust the audio levels of a clip, but instead of adjusting all frequencies at the same rate, it allows you to change the loudness of individual frequencies in the sound. or instance, you may have audio in which the high pitched sounds are where all the noise is, but you want the middle pitch, or mid-range, and the lows to remain the same. With an EQ, you would simply lower the audio levels for the high pitch noises, while leaving the mid-range and low pitch sounds untouched. The number of bands an EQ has determines the precision that the EQ has in addressing ranges of frequency. A twelve band EQ, for instance, will split up the whole range of human hearing (20 Hz to 20 KHz) into twelve sections, allowing you to effectively have four different bands of EQ for all three (high, mid, and low) ranges. That’s a lot of precision. There are even 24 and 36 band EQs that can isolate very small bands of frequency without touching others. Of course, with that level of precision comes a big price tag.
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The very lowest number of bands you are going to encounter in an EQ is going to be the Three Band EQ, simply because this is the fewest number of bands that can be effective when separating frequencies. To apply the Three Band EQ, edit a fresh clip with one video and two stereo audio tracks into your sequence, and then double-click to load it into the Viewer window. Before you go any further, you need to turn off Record Keyframing Audio, which can be done either from the Audio Mixer tool button bar or on the General tab in the User Preferences. Otherwise, as you experiment with settings, you will be laying keyframes all over your clip! Go to the Effects tab and look in the Audio Filters bin (see Figure 10-13). Inside are two more bins. FCP 4 ships not only with the set of filters FCP editors are familiar with from past versions, but also another set of filters in a bin named Apple. The Apple AUGraphicEQ filter, in fact, is an extremely precise EQ just like the ones described above. It covers 31 separate bands of frequency. We won’t use it for this exercise, because 31 bands is pretty difficult to use if you are still learning where noise frequently occurs in audio for video. The limited capability of the 3 Band EQ in the Final Cut Pro bin makes it a little easier to see what is going on when you EQ. Other than the number of bands, the functionality is the same. When you get the sense of how EQ’ing works, you can put the AUGraphicEQ’s 31 bands to use. To apply the 3 Band EQ audio filter, look in the Final Cut Pro bin. The first audio filter in the list is the 3 Band EQ. Grab it and drag it over onto the audio tracks of the clip in the sequence (see Figure 10-14). If the filter only appears to be settling on one of the two audio clips, stop, select the clip, and go Modify > Make Stereo. If you only apply the filter to one of the two audio clips, you will only be EQ’ing half the sound! And if you apply the filter to the two audio clips separately, you will have to put in the settings for the filters for both clips separately as well.
Figure 10-13 In the Effects tab, you will find bins containing both the new Apple Audio Unit plugins and the older FCP audio plugin set.
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Figure 10-14 Apply the 3 Band EQ from the FCP set to the audio portion of the sequence clip by dragging and dropping.
After applying the 3 Band EQ, double-click the clip so it loads into the Viewer. Switch to the Filters tab and click the widget to look at the EQ Filter. Under Audio Filters you should see the 3 Band EQ. Click the widget to look at the parameters (see Figure 10-15). ou will find a Frequency slider and Gain, or level, slider for each of the Low, Mid, and High frequency ranges. As described above, you set the specific frequency in each range and adjust the amount of boost or reduction applied to that frequency. If you don’t want to affect a frequency range at all, just leave the Gain slider at 0 dB. How do you manage this filter and its parameters? What follows is a good workflow for isolating noise in a clip and then reducing it. Locate a short section of the clip in the sequence that contains dialogue, but also contains objectionable noise, such as hissing or low hums. Then, in the Toolbar, choose the Range Selection tool (keyboard shortcut, ggg). Go to the clip in the sequence, click inside the body of the clip, and drag. You will see that you are selecting only a portion of the clip (see Figure 10-16). Make sure that you’ve selected the area of the clip that you want to use for a test, about eight to ten seconds that contains the sound you want to keep (dialogue) and the sounds you want to eliminate (hiss or hum heard during pauses in dialogue). After you’ve selected the area, go to Mark > Mark Selection (keyboard shortcut, Shift-a). This will put an In and Out point for the range of selected frames in the clip. Set FCP to Loop (View > Loop Playback, keyboard shortcut, Control-l). To play from the In point to the Out point, choose Mark > Play > In to Out (keyboard shortcut, Shift-\). Thus, after setting the selection, go Shift-a, Control-l, and Shift-\ to begin looping a preview of the test section (see Figure 10-17). One of the greatest improvements to FCP’s audio suite is noninterruptible filters. This means that as you make changes in the Filter tab, the playback in the Canvas updates and continues. You make a change in the audio filter settings, listen for the effect, then continue
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Figure 10-15 The 3 Band EQ filter lets you boost or cut levels for three different frequency ranges.
to adjust until you arrive at the perfect settings. What sort of settings should you start with? Here are a few very common frequencies of annoying sounds that you will have to address at some point: 1. 8000 Hz Electronic hiss—the kind of hiss that doesn’t exist in the room, but is generated by the electronics of your microphone and the camera.
Figure 10-16 Using the Range Selection tool (keyboard shortcut, ggg), click and drag in a clip in the sequence that contains both dialog and noise.
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Figure 10-17 After setting an In and Out point based on the selection within the clip and toggling loop playback, hit Shift-\ for Play In to Out. This will start the test section looping so that you can find the appropriate EQ settings.
2. 15,734 Hz Television refresh whine—if you record too close to a television monitor, you will very likely pick up this high pitched whine, too high to easily hear, but there and very annoying. 3. 60 Hz—a very low hum originating from problems in electrical wiring and grounding in the location you are plugging your equipment into. Once again, difficult to hear when recording, but painful when trying to get rid of in your tracks. 4. 20–200 Hz—low rumbles, often structural vibrations, and noise that you can’t ‘hear’ but which is recorded to tape and interferes with other frequencies. 5. 1000 Hz—a very common frequency for room hiss, and annoying sounds like heating and air conditioning vents. Unfortunately, this frequency is also right in the middle of the human vocal range, so be careful! The Parametric EQ The Parametric EQ works from a similar methodology. It isolates a frequency range, then lowers the level by the amount you tell it to in the controls. The difference here is that you
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only have one band in the Parametric EQ filter, rather than the three in the 3 Band EQ. To make up for this limitation, the Parametric EQ allows you to select the frequency band you are adjusting, plus it lets you make that frequency band larger or smaller. In other words, you can affect only one group of frequencies, but you can make that group of frequencies cover a range as large or small as you want to focus on eliminating the noise you hear. Click the checkbox in the 3 Band EQ filter controls to check it off, and then go Effects > Audio Filters > Parametric EQ (see Figure 10-18). Take a look in the controls and you will see two sliders you would expect. The second slider control, however, is new. Q is the control that determines how wide the range of frequencies you control is. When it is set to 1, it is nearly as wide as the entire frequency range! When it is set to 20, it is covering a very narrow frequency range.
Figure 10-18 Disable the 3 Band EQ, then apply the Parametric EQ to the clip. In addition to the Frequency and Gain, there is a Q slider, which determines the width of the frequency range you are adjusting.
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The smart way to work is to set it at around 3 (which is very wide), set the Gain(dB) to –20, and start moving the frequency control around as the clip plays until you hear the noise disappear. Once you find that range of frequencies, start adding to the Q value, and bumping the frequency control until you get Q up to about 10 and you are still hearing elatively little noise. Evaluate how the rest of your clip sounds with this EQ setting, and then make more changes if necessary. If you need to cut down the high frequencies and the low frequencies simultaneously, without affecting the mid-ranges (which is, in fact, the most common audio clean up situation!), you would have to apply two separate applications of the Parametric EQ. Still, in many situations where there is only a specific noise source to clean up and which is spread across a range of frequencies that are too broad for the individual bands of the 3 Band, or even 31 Band EQs, Parametric EQ may be easier to work with.
The Voice Over Tool Another really great audio tool is the Voice Over tool. This tool makes it a snap to add classy, high quality voice-over tracks to your video productions without having to record to tape, and then capture the material! The Voice Over tool is what we call a punch-in, or direct audio dub to your FCP sequence. The Voice Over tool is very easy to master and incredibly easy to integrate into your workflow. Even those who don’t need voice overs for dramatic effect will find it useful. If two or more people are working on the same project, it’s a great way to leave messages and commentary about the way to deal with certain footage. Nothing could be more convenient than having a separate audio track that is especially reserved for notation. Need to tell someone else how to handle an edit? Bring up the Voice Over tool, select the target track, and talk away. It’s as easy as that. Setup and Things to Consider etup is pretty easy. The Voice Over tool can access nearly any audio input device that works with your Macintosh as long as it is compatible with Sound Manager, the QuickTime engine in the Mac OS that makes sound possible. Most USB Mike input devices qualify, such as Griffin Technologies ‘iMic,’ as does the old microphone input on older G3s and G4s. PowerBooks all have a built-in microphone mounted on the lid of the laptop; iMacs have a built-in mic as well. You can even hook up your DV camcorder through Firewire and use it. There are, of course, the expensive add-on PCI card solutions, which may or may not work, depending on compatibility with Sound Manager, but, in general, there are plenty of ways to get audio into the Voice Over tool. To get access, go Tool > Voice Over (see Figure 10-19). When you do so, the Voice Over tool will appear in the Tool Bench. The first thing you need to check is whether or not your audio input device is available. Look to the lower half of the window for a drop-down
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Figure 10-19 To access the Voice Over tool, go Tool > Voice Over, and then look in the lower half of the window to make sure the Source tab shows the device you want to use.
tab labeled Source. Depending on your Macintosh, and what you you have connected to it, you may see a number of options. The likely choices will be Built-in Audio Controller, DV Audio, and USB Audio. The Built-in Audio Controller refers to your built-in 16-bit sound card that all Macintoshes have on their motherboard. Depending on the Mac you own, this Built-in Audio Controller may have a microphone input. If so, you can certainly use it for creating voice overs, though you will need to connect a microphone to the input. PowerBooks, as we said earlier, have such a microphone built into the lid of the laptop, and the iMac models also sport a built-in mike. The Input drop down below this will list the possible inputs that are available using the Source. If the Source drop down is set for Built-in Audio Controller, then the available Inputs will be Internal Microphone (for built-in mikes like the PowerBook) and Line In (if such an input is available, such as a built-in mike input). DV Audio refers to a DV device potentially connected to your Firewire port. This will show up regardless of whether there is actually a DV camera connected or not. However, if there is no such device connected, when you select it in the Source drop-down menu, you will receive a message stating that it is missing. Don’t engage this option unless you, DV camera or deck is connected and turned on, not in VTR mode (as is normal), but in record
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mode so that the camera’s mikes are actually working. In addition, remember that you need to set View > External Video to None. Firewire cannot pass video or audio in both directions at once, so you have to disable Firewire output and allow the camera to send audio through the Voice Over tool. Capturing voice over audio through your camera or deck is both better and worse than capturing through the Built-in Audio Controller. It is better than the Built-in Audio Controller because its sample rate can be set at 48K, higher than the 44.1K limit of the built-in sound card. In addition, the native 48K that is brought in from the camera will exactly match the sample rate of your sequence, unlike the 44.1K clips brought in from the built-in sound card. On the other hand, it is worse, because on-camera mikes are some of the worst sounding mikes on the planet. They tend to pick up more noise than true mikes, and because they are attached to a bulky camera, cannot be easily positioned for the best possible sound recordings. In general, this will work in a pinch, but if you really care about the quality, you won’t use either of these first two Sources. Rather, look into the large number of USB audio interfaces that have saturated the market in the last two years. USB audio capture devices are uniformly inexpensive, have easonably reliable, standardized drivers built for Mac OSX, and, generally, have quite good ecording capability. Most feature at least 48K audio sampling and the ability to get a lot further away from your loud, noisy, buzzing computer than the Built-in and Firewire nputs would. If you are going to do regular punch-ins, it’s worth looking into. At the bottom of the Voice Over box, you will see a section labeled Headphones. It is strongly advised that you monitor your voice over delivery through headphones. As ou will see when you begin to record your voice over, FCP lets you hear the audio tracks already present on the sequence that your voice over will accompany when you are finished. In addition, it gives a countdown, a series of beeps that let you know when to start talking and when you should stop. If you let these sounds come through the Macintosh built-in speaker, they will bleed over into your recorded voice over track. You can adjust the level of audio feeding into your headphones here; it will not affect the recording at all. You can also disable the beeping cues, although this is a pretty bad idea, since you’ll be losing the ability to easily tell when you should start your delivery! There is a visual count down as well. Setting the Offset One important item you should initially setup when you start using a new audio input is the offset. Offset is a delay you can insert in your audio capture to compensate for latency, or the delay that occurs anytime you try and match the audio you are punching in with the tracks in the sequence you are laying voice overs underneath. This is going to be different for the various audio inputs available to you, so you need to check whenever you start using a new input. USB, DV Audio, and the internal sound card all have different delays, due to the different electronics they use to get audio into the Mac, so you need to run a quick test with whichever input you are using.
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On an empty sequence, navigate to the tenth second by typing in the number “1000” and hitting enter (see Figure 10-20). Then hit the I key to create an In point. Type the number “2000” and hit enter to navigate to the twentieth second. There, hit the O key to enter an Out point. Now, hold the recording microphone up to the headphone speaker and hit the Record button in the top left corner of the window. You will be letting the Voice Over tool record its own cue beeps. Continue holding the microphone to the headphone speaker until the voice over recording has completed. After a moment, the newly recorded track will appear on the sequence. Use the Command-Option-W keyboard shortcut to enable waveform previews on the sequence (unless you already had them enabled). Use the Up and Down Arrow keys to navigate to the end of the voice over clip. Use the Command - + keyboard shortcut to zoom in on the sequence until you are seeing increments that are individual frames. Make sure that your playhead is on the frame ‘00:00:20:00’ then count the number of frames after that frame number that the last beep’s waveform ends (see Figure 10-21). The number of frames difference here is the correct number to use in the Offset drop-down tab. After you set this, do another quick test run to make sure that this was the correct offset. After you get it set, you can be sure that your delivery will be right in sync with the video you are doing a voice over for. Apple states that USB audio input devices tend to have an offset of one frame while DV cameras and other Firewire input devices may have offsets of up to three frames. The Rest of the Voice Over Window Furthest left is a practice run through button. When you hit it, the Voice Over tool will run through the exact range of frames included in the In to Out point. If you have not set an In to Out point range, it will use the current position of the playhead as the In point and the last frame of the sequence as the Out point. Clearly, it’s a good idea to limit your range of frames to just what you want to cover, so set In and Out points. We have already used the red Record button to test the Offset of our mic and input device. Next to it, on the right, is the Discard button. This button is only available just after you have completed a take or voice over recording. If you want to immediately toss the last attempt, you can hit this button. A warning will come up telling you that this is an irreversible act. And it is. The take will be wiped from the disk, so make sure you don’t want to keep it. To the right of this is the progress meter. In this box, you will receive messages telling you how much longer you have, as well as a percentage meter informing you how much time is left during the voice over take. Underneath this is the Audio File section. This box informs you of the currently set target track where the voice over clip will be sent. The Name text field underneath the Target label is for assigning a name that will be applied to the voice over clip to be created in the sequence. If you don’t enter a name, the Voice Over tool will use the last name that was assigned plus a number.
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Figure 10-20 To set the offset, create an empty sequence and navigate to the 10th second (00:00:10:00) and set an In point. Set an Out point at the 20th second (00:00:20:00). Then, make sure the mic is near the speaker and hit record to punch in a test beep track.
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Figure 10-21 The number of frames discrepancy between the Out point and the beep’s spike in the audio waveform is the required offset (you might have to trim the end of the punch-in clip to see the beep in the waveform).
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Finally, in the Input section, in addition to the Source and Input tabs, there is a level meter so that you can detect any clipping in the recording you are making. If you see clipping, first make sure you are not speaking too close to the mic! Many mics are very sensitive, and you need to add a little distance in order to get a good recording. If the levels are still too high, you might drop the Gain control somewhat and see if the results are more successful. Finally, look at the Rate tab and make sure you have selected the highest sample rate available, since some devices can use several different ones. If you have options, 48K is the preferred sample rate, since this will match the rate we are using in the sequence. Using the Voice Over Tool To put the Voice Over tool to work is very simple. First, you need to set the range of frames ou want to record the voice over for. Find the frame where you want to start your delivery on the sequence and hit the I key to insert an In point. Navigate up to the frame where you want the voice over to end and set an Out point. Unless the delivery must be in one unbroken piece, consider breaking the range up and doing several individual voice overs. Once you have set the In and Out points, take a moment to figure out where the voice over clip should be sent. It is not critical to specify this. FCP will never record a voice over into a track where there is already a clip present. If a clip is in the way, FCP will create a new track for the voice over and bump the tracks already containing clips down into new tracks. No audio sync will be threatened. But it’s a good idea to organize and plan ahead. In general, for organizational purposes, you will want to dedicate a couple of audio tracks—out of the way of your normal audio tracks—that are linked to your video tracks. The rule is that FCP will always use the ‘a2’ source track. This is not Audio Track 2 necessarily; this refers to the Source/Destination track router. If, for instance, you have set a2’ source track to A5 destination track, the Voice Over tool will select A5 as the target track for the voice over clip. If there is currently a clip in the target track, the Voice Over tool will move the ‘a2’ source track to the next track down. If there is also a clip in that track, the Voice Over tool will leave the target set for the track, but will bump the other tracks down a step out of the way. To begin the voice over recording, put on your headphones and hit the red Record button. You will immediately hear a countdown start beeping. It will stop a few seconds before the frame you wanted to start your delivery on. In the background, FCP starts ecording a few seconds before you indicated you wanted it to in case you begin a little early, so that you don’t accidentally cut off the beginning of your first word. It also continues for two seconds after the last beep to make sure you aren’t cut off. The Canvas window will play through the frames of video that your voice over is to accompany. In the Progress meter, you will see the countdown to the end of the voice over. If the voice over range is more than fifteen seconds long, at fifteen seconds before the end of the voice over, you will be given a warning beep. Then, in the last five seconds of the voice over range, you will hear five warning beeps, followed by a ‘finished’ beep. If these beeps
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Figure 10-22
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After the voice over take, the clip appears in the correct target track.
get in the way of a decent voice over delivery, feel free to disable the “sound cues” checkbox in the headphone. Just be careful to monitor the Progress meter so you know where you are in the recording session. After the recording is finished, the clip will appear in the track (see Figure 10-22). You can give the track a quick listen, immediately discard it, or temporarily mute it using the keyboard shortcut Control-B so that you can have another go at the voice over without hearing the previous take. Immediately discarding the take can be a bad idea; usually you will not get an entirely perfect take in one go. If you complete several takes, you may be able to piece the best parts of each take into the perfect voice over; you’d be surprised to hear that this is frequently the way that professional voice over tracks are cobbled together! After you get the voice over completed, you can eliminate the takes you don’t want to use, and trim the ones you do want to use. You can move the good takes up into more accessible audio tracks. As a final note, you might want to be careful to back up these voice over tracks. Unlike your video and audio tracks from your camera, these voice over tracks have no timecode. If anything happens to your hard drives, you will have lost them forever. Use the export techniques in the next chapter to export the voice over audio, then burn them to CD-ROM or other back up media for safekeeping.
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Getting Your Project Out of Final Cut Pro
There are several different ways of getting your clips or edited sequences from FCP to your destination format. Once you’ve finished editing your video production, you’re ready to output the results to tape. You can ‘crash record’ straight from the sequence, Print to Tape, Edit to Tape, and export in any of a number of formats for DVD or CD/Web distribution. Getting your stuff out to the rest of the world is simply a matter of deciding what format to use and how much you want to automate that process.
Output to Video Tape The first and simplest way to record your finished production out to tape is called crash recording. You put the tape in the deck, park the playhead at the beginning of the sequence, hit Record on the deck, and then hit the Spacebar to play in FCP. There is no real difference between this method, which you’ve been using all along to preview your edits on an NTSC or PAL video monitor, and the following method, Print To Video, aside from varying degrees of automation. This simpler method may prove best for editors using DV converter boxes or those who are using cameras and decks not yet supported or controlled by FCP. If you intend to use the crash record method, it is highly recommended that you perform a Mixdown Audio from the menu, rendering the audio in your sequence. This will ensure that the tracks playback at the highest quality with no fluctuations in the data rate, regardless of how many tracks of audio you have included in the Timeline. This is particularly important if you have been using the Low or Medium setting for Audio Playback Quality in the Preferences, since playback on the Timeline uses that lower quality for resampling, whereas Print To Video always uses High settings! Don’t be confused about the render options for audio mixdowns (see Figure 11-1). Make sure you deselect all items in the sequence, then go Sequence > Render Only > Mixdown (keyboard shortcut, Command-Option-r). The subsequent render is very fast, and eliminates audio as a source of problems, from either quality or performance issues.
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Figure 11-1 First deselect all items in the sequence, then go to Sequence > Render Only > Mixdown, to render your audio at the highest quality and assure no dropped frames or other hiccups.
Output to Tape: Print to Video The second method is for customizing your master copy that will be recorded to tape and is called Print to Video. Print to Video is a very simple yet powerful tool that allows you to define what goes to tape. You can include leader material such as color bars and tone, slate information, special countdowns, and the amount of black that occurs prior to and after sequence playback. You can specify whether the entire sequence or just a portion of it is played back. You can have FCP play the sequence back as a defined number of loops, inserting black space between each loop. You can also add trailer black onto the end of the ecorded sequence so that your recorded product doesn’t end on blank video, resulting in a timecode break. And you can keep tabs on exactly how long the final recorded piece will be, based on the amount of extra time you’ve added on to include the features just described. To start the process, make sure that your deck is connected to the video output on the Macintosh and powered on. Select a sequence in the project tab or the Timeline window. ou can also set In and Out points in your sequence to Print to Video only a section of the
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Figure 11-2
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The Print to Video dialog box.
sequence. If necessary, perform any rendering and mixdowns on the sequence, since any unrendered material will have to be rendered before outputting. This includes mixing down any audio that you may have included that exceeds the number of realtime mixed audio tracks. Now go to the File drop-down menu and select Print to Video. Customizing Your Print to Video When you select Print to Video, a dialog box will appear named Print to Video (see Figure 11-2). This is the window that lets you customize the output. The top section of the box contains “Leader,” or any elements that you may want to include prior to playback of the actual video in your master tape. You enable or disable each element using checkboxes. Color Bars and Audio Test Tone The first Leader element is for Color Bars and Tone, essentially the same clip we used at the beginning of this book to explore the various windows of the application. Here, FCP will automatically output color bars and audio test tone to tape right before your project. Most video monitors are not calibrated, or set to display colors exactly as yours does. Color bars contain each of the colors necessary for establishing the correct color balance of
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a video monitor. Color bars are not only useful for calibrating your own video monitors, they are necessary in the broadcast industry for making sure that your video fits within the broadcast specification for video. Such specifications are referred to as “broadcast legal.” Without reference color bars on your tape, you are always at the mercy of having your video displayed incorrectly wherever it is played back. Including them is always a good idea, even if you think you may never need them. Most stations require a minimum of 60 seconds of color bars prior to slate information on the tape. FCP also includes a reference audio tone with the color bars. This standard tone lets the engineer check to make sure that what our tape thinks is 1 KHz agrees with what the station’s equipment thinks is 1 KHz. If the level of your reference audio tone is set at –12 dB, the engineer will know how to adjust our audio tracks when mixing them with other audio sources. It will be possible to boost or lower the signal with great precision so that your audio is reproduced faithfully. This system of matching audio levels between the recording side and the playback side using a reference tone is referred to as gain staging. It has far more important benefits than those listed above, especially with respect to avoiding distortion and clipping when the audio is rerecorded through analog or digital systems later on down the road. Just remember that anything you record without reference color bars and audio tone leaves you operating in the dark about the state of your video and audio. You will have no way of gauging how the product looks or sounds when reproduced on another video monitor or when rerecorded later. Below Bars and Tone is an option for Black. This option is offered between each leader option for the purposes of making your leader smoother, more predictable, and easy to use. ou can customize the amount of black in seconds here. Enable the Black checkbox and insert 10 seconds of black. Slate The third option is for a slate. Slates are simply text or graphic images that appear before our video piece plays back. They can give information about the format of the video and audio, the title of the piece, who produced it, what it is for, information about the reference bars and tone, and anything else you want to include. When you submit a piece of video to broadcast or production facilities, they often have specific policies about what they equire in the slates before your piece. Make sure you know what should and should not be there, as well as how long the slate should appear. There are three options for the slate (see Figure 11-3). You can use the Clip Name, the default setting which includes just the name from your project being recorded. If you are ecording a sequence, the name of the sequence will appear in the slate. If you are outputting only a single clip, its name will appear. Clip Name is the default setting because the other two choices, Text and File, require you to enter information or select a file, whereas Clip Name will just use the name of the object you are printing to video. If you click the Slate drop-down bar and select Text, a small text box appears to the side of the bar. You can type all the relevant information here and it will appear as the slate during the Print to Video. This is the fastest way of getting information into the slate prior to
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Figure 11-3
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The Slate drop-down menu offers three options: Clip Name, Text, and File.
recording, since it requires no external file preparation and is capable of including far more information than the simple clip name. Be careful when using this, though. It’s easy to forget to change this text, and you will find yourself using slate information from a previous recording session if you do not change it, since the text remains the same until you disable or alter it. Finally, the Slate drop-down bar gives you an option for File. If you choose this, a small folder icon appears next to the bar. Clicking on the icon allows users to navigate to the file they have created for a slate. This option is very useful if you wish to use a standardized company logo image or you have a specific design you want to use that cannot be achieved using the limited text box of the previous bar option. The File option allows for the use of standard PICT files, Photoshop images, or any of a number of QuickTime still image file types. Remember that the non-square pixel rules are still in effect here, as discussed earlier in the book, and that you need to prepare image files such that they are displayed correctly without appearing squeezed or stretched. If you choose to include a slate in the playback, there will be a slight render delay before playback for recording. Clip Name and Text are very fast renders because they are using a standard black and white text format that processes and compresses very quickly. If you use the File option, the render may take longer as FCP converts, then processes and compresses the video. In either case, the render of still images in FCP is rather fast and is well worth the wait if you want the benefit of sharp-looking hand-made graphics that say more about your product than just what its name is. Enable a slate, set it for 10 seconds, and then choose Text from the bar. In the text box, type in “This is the Print to Video text slate.” Below this is another optional Black. Enable the black checkbox and insert 10 seconds of black. Countdown The final Leader option is for Countdown (see Figure 11-4). This option also contains a drop-down bar for selecting the source of the countdown. There are two options: Builtin, which is a standard countdown file that comes pre-packaged with FCP; and File, which gives you the ability to create your own custom countdown movies. The Built-in countdown is precisely clocked for 10 seconds, in which each second is displayed with a clock wipe showing the passage of the second. When the countdown reaches second two, there is a “pop” (a ‘two-pop,’ as it is called). Countdowns are imperative for precise editing situations and broadcast facilities that must cue up tapes with a great degree of accuracy.
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Figure 11-4 The Countdown menu offers both the built-in countdown and the ability to create and use your own custom countdown.
You could also select your own customized countdown QuickTime Movie file by changing the drop-down bar to File and then navigating to the new countdown file. You can use FCP itself to create your custom countdown file; just create and export a suitable movie file and save it in a safe place for use when you need it. But remember that using a custom-made countdown file does not guarantee that it is accurate to a 10-second countdown. You have to arrange that yourself when you create the file. The Print to Video settings box will not constrain your file to fit a 10-second countdown. It will simply play the file you select. Enable the countdown and select Built-in from the bar. Media In the bottom left corner of the Print to Video window, there is a box labeled Media. This box lets you customize what gets sent to tape. Although the practice of sending media through your video output is no different than simply playing from the Timeline, the Print to Video window allows us to automate the process and create seamless master tapes based on our individual needs. This can include looping the media, choosing to record only a specific portion of the sequence, or including pauses between the loop repetitions. The first option is a drop-down bar named Print (see Figure 11-5). The two choices on the bar are In to Out and Entire Media. In to Out allows you to create a range in your sequence or clip defined by In and Out points on the sequence Timeline or Viewer window. Then choosing In to Out in the Print bar will restrict playback to those edit points.
Figure 11-5 The Print drop-down menu lets you choose between a range of frames from the sequence or the entire thing.
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This can be very useful if you are only backing up sections of your sequence to tape and are not yet mastering the entire sequence. Choosing Entire Media, on the other hand, plays the whole clip or sequence from the first frame to the last frame of the last clip. The use of these two options is rather like the Voice Tool in the previous chapter. If you set an In point to Out point range in your sequence and choose In to Out, FCP will only Print to Video that range. If you choose Entire Media, Print to Video ignores any In and Out points and records the contents of the entire sequence from the first frame to the last. Below the Print bar are two options. The first checkbox is for Loop, which is accompanied by a numerical field for establishing the number of looped repetitions. Beneath this is a checkbox for a black pause between repetitions and a field for determining the length of the pause. For the Media settings, select Entire Media from the bar, then disable Loop and Black between Loop checkboxes. Of course, none of this is really ever out of your control. You can always stop the Print to Video by stopping the recording at the deck and/or hitting Escape on the keyboard. Print to Video does not involve Device Control; you are the one who tells the deck to actually begin recording. The only difference between Print to Video and simply playing from the Timeline and hitting the record button on your deck is that Print to Video allows you to add all this useful leader and trailer content. Print to Video will not start or stop the recording on your deck. Actually, there is a way to add Device Control to Print to Video if you have device control through Firewire or serial deck control. Go to Final Cut Pro > Audio/Video Settings and click the Device Control preset tab (see Figure 11-6). Select the Device Control preset on the left that you have been using and hit the Duplicate button. When you do, the Edit Device Control Preset window opens. Look in the bottom right corner of the window for the Auto Record and PTV setting. You can create a preset that allows FCP to automatically start recording after the predetermined delay you insert here. This is like automated crash recording. FCP doesn’t look at the timecode or content when you go to Print to Video. You have to be a little careful when you use this; it’s pretty easy to accidentally leave an important tape in the deck and then record over it!
Figure 11-6 In the Audio/Video Settings Device Control tab, you can set up a preset that does everything the default one does, but which also adds automatic recording.
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Trailer To the right of the Media box is the single option for Trailer. You may include black following the end of your recorded product, and you may define the length of this black trailer. Do not be fooled by the seeming unimportance of this one box. It is very important that you insert black trailer at the end of your recording. Always tack on at least 30 seconds of recorded black trailer at the end of your program. A more important reason for including this black trailer is that if you do not add some sort of recorded material after your piece, the timecode on your tape may end up suffering from a Timecode break. Remember that when we captured video, we had to be very careful about capturing around timecode breaks. They could be just as bad or worse for you on our master tape. But if you always record 30 seconds of black at the end of your Print to Video, you will always have some video at the end of your piece to tag the next recording onto, therefore avoiding any possibility of timecode breaks. For the Trailer settings, enable Black and enter 30 seconds into the numerical field. Duration Calculator inally, the box underneath Trailer is the Duration Calculator. The two Timecode fields efer to Media (the length of the actual sequence or clip) and Total, which is the sum amount down to the frame of all the leader, media, and trailer footage, including any looping of the media. This is just a short idiot check to make sure that you have enough ecording space on the tape for the duration that you have prepared to Print to Tape. Your Duration Calculator should show the length of your sequence in the Media field and that same amount plus 2 minutes and 20 seconds in the Total field, that being the sum total of the leader and trailer features you have tacked on to the piece. Print to Tape Once these settings are correct, hit the OK button to begin rendering the Slate and the Countdown. While the render process is completing, cue up a tape in the deck, or, if you are using an A/D converter box or other pass-through device, prepare whatever deck you are using to record. When the render process is completed, you will be greeted by a message box reading, “Start the video recorder now and click OK to begin playback.” This is your cue to manually begin recording on the deck or camera. Let the tape record for at least eight seconds of pre-roll, then click OK. The video will start feeding the deck video and audio, showing you the leader, your product, and, finally, the trailer black footage. Near the end of the trailer black, press “Stop” on your deck, and you will have completed your first mastering-to-tape process. It should be noted that if you get repeated dropped frames interruptions in the rint to Video process, particularly on older Macs such as the G4 350 MHz models, you may need to disable Mirror to Desktop in the Audio/Video Settings tab, which can suck away just enough processor power to cause them (see Figure 11-7).
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Figure 11-7 Turn off Mirror to Desktop on older Macs to avoid dropped frames interruptions on Print to Video.
Output to Tape: Edit to Tape There is another type of output that is far more reliable and professional called Edit to Tape. Edit to Tape is exactly what it sounds like. The output from FCP edits to a precise timecode on the destination tape. This is not crash recording or simply printing to videotape as before. This is a true edit performed by FCP using what is on the sequence and the timecode from the destination tape. Depending on the type of deck control you are using, you can even perform true insert editing. If you don’t have deck control, you cannot take advantage of Edit to Tape. Go to File > Edit to Tape (see Figure 11-8). When you do, a new window will open up. Very much like the Log and Capture window, this window has a direct in/out connection with your deck. If you have device control, you can control your deck from here. You will choose the edit points for your destination tape by controlling the deck here. You will use the same mastering controls you had in Print to Video to create header and trailer material. There are three tabs in the Edit to Tape window. The first is the Video tab. The Video tab is very similar to the Log and Capture video window. There are controls for playback of the deck and the insertion of In and Out points. Once you have In and Out points, there is an edit overlay very much like the Insert/Overwrite overlays in the Canvas. The second tab is the Mastering Settings tab. This is essentially the same as the Header and Trailer window in the Print to Video window. Finally, the Settings tab is the same settings tab as in the Log and Capture, and lets you change the Device Control and Capture settings currently in force. The Issues for Edit to Tape Edit to Tape is not for everyone. There are basic limitations that depend on your specific hardware. Within the realm of DV editing in FCP, there are many different variations on getting your materials in and out. The main determinant is your deck control. If you are using Firewire DV for deck control, you will be limited to Assemble editing. Those with
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Figure 11-8 Access the Edit to Tape window from the File Menu.
serial deck control, such as RS-422 or RS-232 connector support, can take advantage of both Insert and Assemble edits to tape. Insert and Assemble edits are different from the Insert edits you were working with in the Canvas. Insert and Assemble editing refer back to the good old days of tape editing. With an Insert edit, you give FCP the In and Out timecode numbers for the edit you want. FCP will then record the video into place on the tape, not recording over anything outside of those In and Out points. This is often used in the industry when a program has already been laid out to tape, but something needs to be changed. Why record an entire hour long program out to tape again when you only need to correct one 15 second segment? Just set the In and Out points on the tape and in the sequence and Insert edit them. Also, Insert editing allows
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you to insert audio or video dubs to tape without recording over the existing tracks that you don’t want to change. For instance, if you already had the correct video recorded out to tape, but you needed to edit new audio tracks to the tape, you could insert edit them in without affecting the video already on the tape. Insert editing only records the tracks that you tell it to. This differs from Assemble editing. Assemble edits do, in fact, use timecode and In points to begin editing your piece out to tape. But Assemble edits have two features that make them different. First, Assemble edits are what is called “clean in dirty out.” This means that FCP will lay in the edit precisely on the frame you chose for an In point, resulting in a “clean in.” However, assemble edits do not include Out points. Instead, they continue recording until the video source stops. This means that there is no frame-accurate guarantee that the end of the edit will be “clean out.” This usually results in a break in timecode and the recording of black frames, or “dirty out.” Another feature of Assemble editing is that it must record all tracks of video and audio simultaneously. There can be no individual tracks recorded to tape, as with Insert editing. With Insert editing, the tape must be completely prestriped with timecode and video and audio, because Insert editing only records the individual tracks you indicate, but not timecode. Assemble editing, on the other hand, records video, audio, and timecode. With Assemble editing, you don’t need much timecode on the tape at all. All you need is a little timecode to tag onto at the beginning of the Assemble edit, after which the incoming assemble-edited sequence will write its own timecode on the tape. The further implication of this is the hardware requirements. DV deck control only supports Assemble editing in the Edit to Tape window. Because Firewire deck control is not considered to be frame accurate, having DV set for the Device Control preset will yield a grayed out Insert overlay when the time comes to perform the edit. Assemble edit is the only available selection for Firewire DV deck control. As stated earlier, without deck control, Edit to Tape is impossible. Performing the Edit to Tape To perform the Edit to Tape, first go to the Capture Settings tab and make sure that you have the appropriate Device Control and Capture Preset enabled. It’s entirely possible that you may need to create a new Device Control preset for Edit to Tape. Many decks have specific offsets, or the number of frames late they will begin an edit, due to things like electronic latency. This is not a serious problem; all you have to do is go to the Apple website and search for “Final Cut Pro compatibility.” Find the compatibility chart for your deck or camera and look for frame offset information. If necessary, create a new preset for Device Control like we did in Chapter 2 in the Audio/Video Settings that includes the frame offset. Next, visit the Mastering Settings tab. Use the same sensibility in creating header and trailer material on this tab if you are planning on recording your entire product to tape. If you are planning on performing an Insert edit, you probably will not want any of the
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header or trailer material. Furthermore, you will be choosing Edit mode, to be described next, which ignores the Mastering Settings tab. Finally, switch back to the Video tab (see Figure 11-9). At the top and center of the window are two items to look at. The first is a pulldown menu that either lists Mastering or Editing. If it lists Mastering, then you are set to edit the entire range or sequence out to tape. Mastering also uses the Mastering Settings tab settings for any header and trailer material ou may want to include. Both Assemble and Insert Edits are available in Mastering mode. If you switch it to Editing mode, you lose access to the Mastering Settings, because you are, strictly speaking, editing to the tape. This operation is exactly like doing an Overwrite
Figure 11-9
The Edit to Tape Video tab.
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edit into a sequence in the Timeline, except that you are recording to tape. With Editing mode, you specify an edit In point (and quite possibly an Out point, depending on your hardware situation), and FCP edits the material into place. Why does an Out point depend on your hardware situation? Because, as specified earlier, DV Firewire controlled decks and cameras cannot perform Insert edits, while serial controlled decks can. Editing with both In and Out points requires an Insert edit, and, thus, the DV hardware in your system won’t be able to perform them. Next to the Mastering/Editing pulldown is the Black and Code button (see Figure 11-10). As you will remember, both Edit to Tape Assemble and Insert edits require timecode to be already present on the tape. The only difference is how much is necessary. With Assemble, you only really need enough on the tape to pre-roll into and then tag onto for an In point. Assemble editing actually records a fresh timecode track as it records, so it doesn’t matter what’s on the tape beyond where it begins the edit. Insert, on the other hand, requires the entire section of tape that will be edited into to have timecode striped to it. This is because Insert edit gives you the option of recording or not recording any element of your production, specifying either video, audio, and timecode, or any mixture of them. The Black and Code button is just an automated output to tape that records video black, 0 audio levels, and timecode for your entire tape, which is otherwise known as striping or blacking. Frankly, for DV editors, the easiest method of striping is not tying up your Mac for an hour recording video black. Just put the lens cap on the camera, hit record, and you’ll be doing the same thing. No matter how you do it, always do it. You should always work with tapes that have striped timecode. Prestriping your tapes actually has another benefit for videographers. Running through the length of your tape once before using it to record is a very good idea if you require no surprises in your shooting. Called unpacking your tape, it basically relieves any uneven pressure on the tape cassette that may have occurred in the factory when the tape was being assembled. Uneven pressure can lead to uneven playback and record speeds, which can lead to drop outs and timecode breaks. It is rare, but it does happen. Prestriping your tapes eliminates this as a problem, since your tape is completely unwound and wound up again before you shoot with it. After you have chosen Mastering or Editing mode, you are almost ready to perform the edit. First, you need to select the In point. Insert your tape in the deck, then use the familiar J-K-L controls to navigate the tape to select an In point, exactly as if this were a Log and
Figure 11-10
The Black and Code button.
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Capture operation. Once you have chosen it, you could immediately perform the Assemble edit. Grab the sequence or clip that you want to edit in and drag it into the Edit to Tape window (see Figure 11-11). The Edit Overlay will appear. You would drop it on Assemble overlay and the edit will commence, delayed by any rendering of header or trailer material ou chose in the Mastering Settings. Insert edits are a little more involved. You want to set an In point and Out point on our tape so that you limit the edit and don’t record over anything you don’t want to record over. Navigate as before, but this time get both an In and Out point from your tape. Next, in the bottom right hand of the window, you specify which tracks will be overwritten. Remember that Insert edits only record over the tracks you want them to. In the bottom right corner you will see enabler buttons and a pulldown for the video, timecode, and up to eight audio tracks if your hardware and audio output preset supports them. After you have these set appropriately, drag the sequence or clip over to the Video window. But rather than immediately dropping it onto the Insert button, drop it onto the Preview button. Because you are overwriting individual tracks, edit controllers that do Insert edits have always had the ability to give a short preview of the edit to make sure that you dub over the tracks you want to. Both Assemble and Insert edits are destructive
Figure 11-11 To perform an Assemble Edit to Tape, first set an In point on your tape, and then drag and drop the sequence or clip into the Assemble overlay.
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edits; in other words, when you perform these edits, they destroy what was on the tape before. Doing a preview is very important. After the Preview, drop the clip or sequence on the Insert overlay and the edit will be performed. Make sure you go back after performing such edits and check that the edit was performed correctly. If you do more Edits to Tape after this one, any change you need to make later to this section of tape is liable to affect the rest of the tape, so you want to get it right!
Exporting You don’t have to restrict yourself to printing or editing to tape. Although DV is a fantastic way to make video for full-frame, full-screen viewing, you can also use the Export function to produce QuickTime movie files for use in Web, CD-ROM, and DVD. To explore all the possible variations of export is far beyond the scope of this book, but stepping through several of the more important options should get you through the initial stage and give you the tools for further experimentation. There are two primary purposes for exporting media from FCP: (1) to create media files optimized for such specific purposes as the Web, CD-ROM, or DVD development, and (2) to create media files that are unchanged from the source for external manipulation in another digital application like iDVD, DVD SP, Compressor, Adobe After Effects, Pinnacle Commotion, or Discreet Combustion. Each of these two purposes requires a different strategy and, predictably, FCP has developed a convenient workflow for dealing with each option.
Export for Distribution: Optimizing the QuickTime Movie The first option we will discuss is exporting to optimize a media file for use in specialized distribution. The most common use for this is to create multimedia files for use in Web and CD-ROM distribution or DVD authoring. In this instance, we are actually creating a new media file that contains the content of the media we are exporting from FCP but using different parameters to allow it to function elsewhere. There is much you can change about a file while exporting it. Depending on the codec (Apple DV, MPEG-4, Animation, MPEG-2, etc.), the frame size, aspect ratio, and frame rate, you can change the media to suit your needs specifically. Which option you choose when exporting will determine how you can manipulate the media as you export it as a file. But to export the file as we want it, we need to first specify the file format, which will determine how the media will be exported into the new file. Choosing the File Format Select a clip in the project tab that you want to export and load it into the Viewer. For this exercise, we are exporting a single clip, although you could also set In and Out points on the sequence and export as a range. Next go to File > Export. You will be confronted by a
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huge list of export possibilities (see Figure 11-12). Even editors who have used FCP prior to version 4 are liable to be a little dismayed, because some of the names have changed, although none of the functionality has. Many of the export options in this list are dedicated exports for use with “the four little dragons” that ship with FCP 4: Compressor, LiveType, Soundtrack, and Cinema Tools. Going into those applications is far beyond the scope of this book, and there are better resources out there that address the specific issues of each of these applications directly. We want to look at the two primary export types available to the FCP editor. They are the QuickTime Standalone and the QuickTime reference movie.
Figure 11-12
The many new and confusing possibilities in the Export menu.
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QuickTime Standalones For this first exercise, select Using QuickTime Conversion. This, in previous versions, was simply called QuickTime Movie. Using QuickTime Conversion creates what is referred to as a “QuickTime Standalone Movie.” A standalone movie is a movie file that contains the data for all the frames of the movie in the file itself. This is a true media file. The media files created when you captured clips earlier in the book, for instance, were standalone movie files. QuickTime Conversion means that FCP will take the video and audio you want to export and leverage the QuickTime engine to convert the content to any QuickTime format you want. This could be low data rate movies for use in Web and CD-ROM, audio-only AIFF files, MPEG-2 files for use in DVD authoring applications, or any other format supported. The concept here is that you are creating a new version of the edited material for use elsewhere in a different format than what the material exists as in your project. After you choose Using QuickTime Conversion, an Export dialog box will pop up asking you to specify the settings. There are many variations between the different types of QuickTime export possibilities. Underneath the File Location box and the Export As field, locate the Format pulldown menu (see Figure 11-13). The options on the list have their specific purposes, and independently purchased codecs, such as the professional Sorenson set, can add even more flexibility. The formats we want to work with in the first exercise are QuickTime Movie and MPEG-4 for use with low data rate Web and CD-ROM. Underneath the Format bar is a Use bar with Export presets for the Format you’ve chosen, but it is rarely a good idea to settle for presets when you have the option of customizing the file manually to match your specific purpose.
Choosing and Setting the Compression The main issue at stake for creating media files for Web and multimedia functions is to keep the data rate low. For the DV codec Firewire DV editors are using in FCP, the data rate is a steady 3.6 MB/second. For those editing with uncompressed media, the data rate may exceed 24 MB/second. Unfortunately, for users viewing QuickTime movies from CD-ROMs, the data rates shouldn’t exceed a maximum of 128 KB/second, and for most low-bandwidth Web surfers, the data rate should be even lower. We need to optimize the file as we export it, simultaneously dropping the data rate and creating a separate file for use elsewhere. From the discussions in Appendix A about codecs, there are several issues involved in lowering the data rate of a media file. The initial issue is the codec we choose to utilize for the video. We know that the codec determines not only how much data is included about each frame of video, but other factors, such as the size of the frame and its aspect ratio. For instance, the DV codec that Firewire DV uses requires the frame size to be exactly 720×480 pixels for NTSC and 720×576 pixels for PAL. It also requires that the frame rate be a standard 29.97 and 25 frames per second, respectively. This means that the data rate cannot dip below the 3.6 MB/second and still account for all those pixels.
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Figure 11-13
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The Format Options in the QuickTime Conversion dialog box.
Other codecs are more flexible in this regard. Most software codecs will support different frame sizes and frame rates, and the data rates will adjust lower accordingly. There are a host of other factors for each individual codec as to how it trades off image quality and size for data rate, so there is always a particular codec that is best suited for the job of getting the data rate lower. In addition, it must be remembered that the same codec must live on the machine that exports the file and the machine expected to play the video file back. So, selecting the proper codec must involve a little soul-searching as to what the file needs to do and where it needs to go. For this exercise, we will use two common multimedia codecs: Sorenson 3 and MPEG-4. These codecs are cross-platform, meaning that they are equally functional on both PC and
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Macintosh systems. Sorenson is fairly flexible at offering different frame sizes and frame rates, and delivers very small data rates, enabling widespread use in Web and multimedia applications (though it is not quite as good as MPEG-4 at getting great images for such low data rates). MPEG-4 is a new cross platform standard that is becoming popular but is not yet in widespread use. Its quality is staggering though, in view of how successful it is at delivering beautiful quality at very low data rates. We will use both to export a file suitable for multimedia distribution. Select QuickTime Movie from the Format list, then look for the Options button in the dialog box. After hitting the Option button, you will be presented with a dialog box that lets you optimize each facet of the soon-to-be-exported Movie file (see Figure 11-14). At the top is the Video section. The default compressor, or codec, is Video. Beware! Video is the name of a codec in the list, not just a general title! And it’s not a particularly good one either! You need to change this. Since we want to use Sorenson 3, click the Settings button. You will be presented with the Compressor dialog box. Click on the Compressor drop-down bar and select Sorenson 3 Video from the list. When you do, the options for the codec will appear below the bar. First, since we want to shrink the data rate enormously, enter 15 in the Frame Rate field or select 15 from the Frame Rate selection bar. Although this means the codec will throw away many frames from the video file, 15 frames per second is still enough to give a pretty
Figure 11-14 Choose QuickTime Movie from the Format list, and then hit the Options to correctly configure the subsequent settings for the export. For this exercise, choose Sorenson 3.
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good illusion of the moving image, and it will shrink the size of the exported file radically, eliminating over half the visual data at one go. The other two settings involve the way that the codec will operate on the video frames and determine which data is relevant and which can be thrown away. The two methods are referred to as spatial and temporal compression. Some codecs use one method, some use the other, and still others use both as a means of eliminating excess data from video frames. Quality or Spatial Compression The Quality slider represents the amount of spatial compression you are applying to the file. Spatial compression looks at each frame of video and throws out a certain amount of detail in order to achieve a specific amount of data reduction in the frame. The Quality slider does no comparisons between groups of frames for important or recurrent detail; it just evenly lowers the detail quality for each frame a certain amount based on how low you set the slider. Set the Quality slider at Medium, which will cut the data rate pretty radically without losing too much detail. Keyframe Every or Temporal Compression The next setting is called Keyframe Every, and represents the temporal compression technique. This keyframing is not to be confused with the keyframing we worked with in the sequence and Canvas window, although they do approach their separate tasks from the same universal idea of the amount of change between two frames. Temporal compression sets a keyframe at an interval established by the value you insert in the box. Each keyframe frame is compressed using only your setting for Quality or Spatial compression. However, all the frames occurring between the two keyframes, called interframes, are compared to the initial keyframe. Any differences between the interframes and the keyframe are retained, whereas any similar pixels are discarded, thus further lowering the amount of data in the frame. If your video contains areas of the frame that do not change at all over time, such as static backgrounds around talking heads, much of that data can be thrown out without affecting the image quality of the interframe at all. The result is that the data rate shrinks dramatically because the amount of data in each interframe is lowered while the image quality isn’t affected very much. Of course, this compression type is effective only if you do not have a lot of changing imagery in the video footage for the keyframes to keep track of. If you establish keyframes every 90 frames, this means that major changes in footage over roughly three seconds will not be tracked. If your keyframes are too far apart, a lot of important movement could be discarded as the interframes get further away from the keyframe. As the distance between keyframes increases, the image quality drops. The option of entering a lower number in the Keyframe Every and decreasing the distance between the keyframes and making them closer together results in higher quality
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interframes. Unfortunately, it also defeats the purpose of the keyframing temporal compression, since the more keyframes you have, the fewer the frames that are processed as interframes and compressed. The key, of course, is to shoot and select your video with an eye towards the compression issues you’ll encounter later. If you are going to compress video for the Web, make sure to get rock-steady tripod shots and don’t allow excessive camera or subject movement. Other codecs such as Cinepak offer different mathematical procedures for the compression, but the parameters for codecs are largely limited to spatial and temporal compression. Leave the Keyframe Every setting at the default value of 24 frames. The final setting in the Compressor box is Limit Data Rate To. This lets you set a ceiling for the data rates, just in case your compression settings are not sufficient to bring the overall data rate down. Set the data rate ceiling at 128 KB/second, a data rate ceiling for slower CD-ROM drives and faster DSL/cable modem connections. Click OK and return to the Options box. Other Factors: Frame Size, Audio, etc. Having set the compression, the next setting is Filter, which would allow us to apply Effects Filters directly to the clip as it is exported. In most cases you will not want to apply such filters; it’s far better to apply such image manipulation in FCP as you edit, then export it directly. The next button, Size, will be necessary to visit, though. Because the video file is likely to be viewed on a computer screen, it is not necessary to stick religiously to the large 720×480 frame size our video currently uses. Cutting the size of the video frames will cut the data rate enormously, since fewer actual pixels will be included in each frame of video. Click the Size button, and you will enter a dialog box labeled Export Size Settings. The two checkbox options below are for Use Current Size and Use Custom Size. Click the dot next to Use Custom Size and the Width and Height fields will appear. You can resize according to whim, which may result in a stretching of the video frame. To choose a new frame size, simply divide the starting dimension in halves or quarters or however small you wish to shrink the frame. Don’t forget that the pixel shape, square or non-square, is determined by the codec in use. The DV codec your footage is originating from used non-square pixels, resulting from 720×480/720×486 or 720×576 frame size. But the codecs you are likely to use with Web and CD-ROM exports will be in square pixels. Therefore, the half-frame size for this export from DV to Sorenson would be from 720×480/720×486 to 320×240, which is half the frame size for the square pixel video file the Sorenson compressor generates. For the Size setting, select 320×240 pixels, then hit OK to return to the Options box. The next section to set is Audio. We do want to include audio with the file, but we definitely need to change the settings from the default uncompressed version. Although audio data rates are smaller than video data rates, they can still be far higher than necessary for such uses as Web and CD-ROM, where every byte counts. Click the Settings button in the Sound section of the Options dialog box to enter the Audio Compressor dialog box.
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For the Compressor bar, select the IMA 4:1. This is only one of a number of excellent audio compressors on the market, as well as the ones freely supplied with the QuickTime compression system. Each audio compressor has a specific targeted function, such as optimizing data rate for human voices, midrange music, and many other specific issues. Most audio compressors are expressly for use with Web and multimedia. Because audio data rates are generally so low compared to video, we never compress audio while editing. But for streaming video and other Web and multimedia work, compressing audio is just as integral a process as compressing video. Setting the sample rate lower to 22.05 KHz will also contribute to a lower data rate. Although 22.05 KHz would be considered unacceptable for inclusion in the DV video we are editing, it is more than enough for low-bandwidth options. With the IMA 4:1 codec, the bit rate is fixed at 16, while you can choose between a Stereo or Mono file. Select Mono and hit OK to return to the Options box. The last option in the box is for Fast Start. Fast Start refers to file coding that can be inserted in the exported QuickTime file to facilitate Internet streaming functionality. If our QuickTime Movies are to be sent to a server for streaming download, contact the administrator of the server and find out how the Fast Start settings need to be optimized for use. If you have no plans for streaming the video file, you can safely disable the feature. Hit OK to return to the QuickTime Movie box, check your settings, then click OK again to return to the Export dialog box. Now all that remains is to navigate the Save location to a suitable place. This will depend on your Exported file. If the QuickTime file were of a high data rate and comparable in size and compression to the files you edit with in FCP, you’d want to save the file to a dedicated media drive just as if it were a captured clip. If, on the other hand, the file has a very low data rate for use on the Web, like the export we are working with here, saving it to the Desktop and playing from there will do no harm to our system. Since our exported QuickTime Movie will be heavily compressed with a very low data rate, save it to the Desktop. Navigate the Save location to the Desktop by clicking on the Where tab and choosing Desktop. Name the file, using the “.mov” suffix in case any of your PC pals want to access it, and then click Save. FCP will begin rendering out your QuickTime file. Depending on the amount of processing and the codec you use, the render can be very short or very long. Once the render process is complete, you can double-click the exported file on the Desktop to view it in the QuickTime Movie Player application already installed in the Mac OS. MPEG-4, MPEG-2, and You Before moving on, it might be a good idea to address a couple of formats that are likely to be the new standard in compression of video for distribution on the Web, as well as for viewing on a television screen. These are a set of compression formats referred to as MPEG. There are various types of MPEG formats, each relating to a particular type of media and
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distribution format. MPEG generally offers such flexibility and quality at such low data rates that it is a shoe-in to be the most popular format for some time to come. But the most amazing feature of MPEG is that it is a standard rather than a single proprietary child of one corporate parent. In other words, no company owns MPEG; rather, MPEG specifications (or what an MPEG must be able to do) are developed by a consortium of industry professionals, who then develop their own versions of MPEG products. This assures the consumer that Company A’s MPEG compressed files will playback on Company B’s player device. No one company can hold the standard hostage, since no one company “owns” MPEG. Some of the MPEG formats are already in widespread use, though working in the background. The MP3 audio format is part of the MPEG system. Its name is somewhat misleading; it is not MPEG-3 but rather MPEG-1 Layer 3, hence, the short term MP3. Although it was developed as a complement to an MPEG video format, its audio compression quality was so excellent that it has come to be almost universal in the function of music compression and distribution. Of course, the other widespread use of MPEG is MPEG-2, the video file format used in DVD authoring. This special format offers exceptional quality at incredibly low data rates. If you purchased your Macintosh with a Superdrive DVD-R burner, you are able to create DVDs playable in a desktop unit using either the iDVD application that comes free with the Superdrive burner and contains its own compressor, or with the much more flexible (and expensive) DVD Studio Pro application. FCP 4 actually installs a special codec option in the QuickTime Export format options to allow you to choose suitable compression settings for the MPEG-2s you will need to author in DVD Studio Pro or any other true DVD authoring application. iDVD, on the other hand, comes with its own automatic MPEG-2 encoder, so that you don’t have to work with compression settings. To use it, you will want to export your video as a reference movie, which will be covered in the next section. Before moving on, though, we should visit an MPEG format that promises to be the most successful format in history in terms of quality, compatibility, and flexibility, MPEG-4. Although it is possible that MPEG-4 will always remain a format for online Web distribution where data rates must stay very low, its fantastic quality and universal acceptance by every platform and system makes it extremely attractive to deliverers of digital content. It must be stated, though, that MPEG-4 is still in its infancy, and is just beginning to stake its claim in the world of video distribution. Currently, viewing MPEG-4 content using the Mac OS requires QuickTime 6 or later. Obviously, this will not be a problem on your FCP editing station, since QuickTime 6 or later is required for FCP to run. But you have to remember that not everyone out there is running the most current operating software on any platform. If you are going to encode content using a compression format, you want to take into account who will be accessing the content. If some of your viewers are using older systems and do not have access to MPEG-4-capable computers, you may need to offer the same content using older, more-compatible, and less impressive looking compression formats.
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Exporting with MPEG-4 That said, let’s step through the process of exporting MPEG-4 QuickTimes. First, line up a clip for export using the same steps used earlier for the Sorenson-compressed export. When you get to the step of choosing the format in the QuickTime Export dialog box, click on the Format list and choose MPEG-4. Then hit the Options button to configure the export (see Figure 11-15). The Options box offers a series of tabs that allow you to get pretty specific about what sort of trade-offs you are making to lower the data rate. On the General tab, set the Video Track to Improved and the Size to 320×240. MPEG-4 uses a series of “profiles” to give more flexibility with regard to quality, data rate, and streaming options when compressing, but not all MPEG-4 decoders can read all the profiles. In addition, if you select the largest frame sizes and higher frame rates, the computer that receives the file will also have to be able to decode them, and that might be a lot to ask from an older PC. With the free MPEG-4 that comes with QuickTime 6, the only audio options are Music and None. Obviously, we want audio here, so select Music. In the next couple of tabs we will optimize the settings for the best possible quality. Click on the Video tab (see Figure 11-16). The default data rate for the Basic video setting is 64 kilobits. Beware, this is kb, or kilobits, not KB, or kilobytes! There are 8 bits to the byte, so divide 64 kilobits by 8 to get only 8 KB. The average DSL or Cable modem connection can get between 70 and 128 KB per second, so this gives us a lot more bandwidth and will allow us to get much better quality than the default setting. We’ll set the bit rate for worst case scenario DSL/Cable. Assuming the end user is getting a connection speed of 70 KB per second, this would give us a bit rate of around 560 kb/second.
Figure 11-15 This time, choose MPEG-4 from the Format pulldown and again hit the Options button to get the MPEG-4 configuration dialog box.
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Figure 11-16
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The Video tab.
On the Video tab, drag the slider up to a value of around 560. The frame rate should be set at 15 frames per second, and we will set the temporal, or “Keyframe Every” 24 frames as well for a starter. Unfortunately, if you had set the initial video track profile for Basic rather than Improved (and Basic providing the widest compatibility for streaming) you would have discovered from reading the information about your settings in the box below the settings controls that bit rates in excess of 64 kilobits per second do not fit into the Basic profile that guarantees the widest compatibility among MPEG-4 players. In addition, the frame size of 320×240 would also have been invalid. Although the widest compatibility is nice, it doesn’t give you much leeway to make good looking video. On the Audio tab (see Figure 11-17), leave the audio bitrate set for 128 kilobits and change the channels setting to mono. The only use for stereo would be if you had actually made interesting use of stereo in your project (like sounds that are only present in one channel or the other, or music from a CD). If not, the stereo file is basically just two mono channels, which means you are using twice the data rate that you really need! When you change the setting to mono, the lowest sample rate you will be able to achieve is 44.1 KHz. Lower sample rates will mean lower data rates, so select 44.1 KHz. Interestingly, if you choose stereo for channels, you can select 32 KHz, which is still an acceptable sample rate quality. Finally set the Quality for Medium, which is a decent tradeoff between Quality and Bitrate. Streaming should be left alone until you can get to your network administrator. They will inform you of any settings necessary to prepare your content for streaming. It must be said that streaming technology is a rapidly evolving area. At this point, many content providers still prefer the older, reliable method of Progressive Download for the highest
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Figure 11-17
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The Audio tab.
quality and reliable playback, as opposed to Realtime Streaming. Seek more information about your server and what you need to do if you want to implement this option. Finally, on the Compatibility tab (see Figure 11-18), leave the Compatibility Profile drop-down at None. If we had chosen Basic earlier for compatibility and still chosen our high data rates, we would have needed to set this to None to avoid an invalid combination of settings. Because we set our data rate and frame size too high for compliance with the
Figure 11-18
The Compatibility tab.
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standards for ISMA streaming protocols, the MPEG-4 compressor Compability would have to be set for None. Hit the OK button to return to the QuickTime Export box, then hit OK and begin the Export. Once it is complete, go to the Desktop and double-click on the “.mp4” file to start up QuickTime Player and watch your movie. Although the frame rate might be a little jumpy because you have reduced it to 15 frames per second, you should be pleasantly surprised by the quality, even in comparison to the Sorenson compressor we just used earlier.
Export for Loss-less Transfer: The QuickTime Reference Movie Although the previously described Export is much more common, there is another export method that is specially designed for post-production purposes. The issue for post-production is definitely not reducing the data rate or quality of the editing materials. Quite the opposite; there is a necessity to retain the highest level of quality and fidelity to the film or video while editing and manipulating it. It is often necessary to pass sections of a clip or sequence out to be manipulated by another application. There are numerous applications, such as Adobe After Effects and Pinnacle System’s Commotion Pro, which use specialized toolsets to further develop the same matting and keyframing techniques we worked with earlier in Chapter 9. Although FCP has a great set of compositing tools, professional post-production often requires styling that only specialized applications can deliver. Also, many FCP editors will want to use the simple iDVD application to burn DVDs of their projects. Since iDVD uses an automatic encoder to produce the MPEG-2 files it needs to burn a DVD, you actually don’t export your video into the MPEG-2 format manually using QuickTime Conversion. And even when using DVD Studio Pro 2, you will want to use its automatic encoder or use Compressor (included with FCP 4) for much more effective compression and MPEG-2 encoding. So you need to bring your clips and sequences out of FCP at the highest quality, without passing through a codec and lowering data rate and image quality. If we use the previously described QuickTime export process, our clip will end up having passed through two sets of compression. The first will be compression applied as the QuickTime file is saved using a codec. Then, it will likely be compressed a second time as it is rendered in the other application to which we exported the movie. Any time FCP creates media that does not already exist, it must render that media, and rendering with a codec requires compression. There are two ways to overcome this compression. The first is fairly obvious; if you don’t want to involve compression in the export, use a lossless codec that doesn’t discard data! For instance, the Animation lossless codec would give us a media file that had not received any further compression. But this is not acceptable for our uses for another reason; it involves a waste of time and drive space.
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The media we want to export without recompression already exists in our Scratch Disk folder. It is already digital, and it is already compressed. Why recompress digital media, when it is already sitting there on the media drive? Creating more copies of the same media on our media drives is a waste of space, particularly if the redundant copies are generated by a codec like the Animation codec that explodes the data rate tenfold. Beyond this, rendering takes time. When you render, FCP has to analyze and process each frame. Decompressing the DV codec source material, then applying the lossless Animation codec, and saving it to disk is a process that will have you looking at the progress bar far longer than you would if you could simply access the relevant parts of the media file already sitting in your Scratch Disk folder. What if you could simply produce the equivalent of an FCP clip that can function outside of FCP? A clip in an FCP project is simply a reference to the original media file back in your Scratch Disk folder. When you work with it in the Viewer or Canvas, you are simply telling FCP how you want to work with the media file being referenced by the clip, rather than working with the media itself. This is what makes nonlinear editing possible and what sets digital video editing apart from old linear analog tape editing. FCP includes an export feature that is sometimes referred to as a Reference Movie. A QuickTime Reference Movie is very similar to a QuickTime Movie; indeed, most applications will see it and treat it as such. But the QuickTime Reference Movie offers an option that a QuickTime Conversion export cannot: the choice between a Self-Contained and Referenced exported file. A reference movie does not contain any frames of the video in the file, but instead references the frames of video from the FCP project from which it was exported. It references media from the Scratch Disk just like a clip in a FCP project does. It is treated like a normal QuickTime movie by any application that can access such files. And because the exported movie may be from a range of clips in a sequence, it even accesses any render files that might have been created if you rendered an effect on the sequence. Since a self-contained movie file is not being created, no rendering is required, so a reference file export is nearly instantaneous. No more waiting on progress bars. And because the file is merely a reference to the media in the Scratch Disk folder, the reference movie file actually takes up very little drive space; in most circumstances, less than a single MB. Thus, this reference movie export function allows you to work with material that has not been recompressed with a codec, does not delay you with excessive render times, and takes up nearly zero drive space. This is clearly the best method to use if you want to take your media out to another application, particularly iDVD. You can even include chapter markers in our QuickTime reference for use in iDVD! Special Limitations That said, there are a few tweaks and special rules that apply. It’s important to follow the correct process in generating the reference movie to make sure that you are benefiting from
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all that the feature has to offer. To create the QuickTime reference movie, first create a range of frames that you want to export in a sequence using In and Out points. Make sure that the range of frames does not require rendering. If it does, render it before attempting to export. If you export material as a reference movie that requires rendering, FCP will render the material prior to creating the reference movie and then embed the render files in the reference movie itself, resulting in a render process that takes time but does not actually apply to the sequence material you are exporting. In addition, the size of the reference movie itself grows, as the render files are included rather than really being referenced. Also, you must be very careful not to orphan your reference movie by accidentally eliminating or moving media files referenced by the movie. This means that you need to keep the reference movie on the same workstation that the media files for the project are on. Unlike a sequence in a FCP project, the reference movie is not updated after it is exported, so if you change anything about its media, it will lose its links and become worthless. This applies particularly to render files in your FCP project. If you make a change to a sequence that has been rendered, the new render files will not work with any previously-created reference movie. This is not a step that can be undone, so proceed with caution when working with a project that you know has been used to create QuickTime reference movies. The QuickTime Movie Dialog Box In past versions of FCP, this export option was referred to as a Final Cut Pro Movie, but now is called QuickTime Movie. Select a sequence and the range of frames using In to Out points. Then go to File > Export > QuickTime Movie. When you do so, you will be presented with a QuickTime Movie Export dialog box (see Figure 11-19). At the top of the dialog box, you will find the familiar Save location tools. Because the reference movie is not a true media file, it is less imperative that you save it to your media drive. Give yourself an export folder on the Desktop and store your reference movie there. After you navigate to the appropriate Save location, name the file, making sure to specify in the file name that it is a reference movie, i.e. “xxx.ref.mov.” The setting “Include” bears a little discussion. A limitation of the reference movie is that only video files can be indexed; audio files are not indexed by a reference movie. If you leave the Include bar set at the default Video and Audio, the resulting reference movie will actually embed the audio tracks, just as it embeds render files that are not rendered prior to export. Selecting Video Only eliminates this problem, as only the video files will be included in the reference movie. If you need to include audio in the reference movie; for instance, if you are using this as an export for use in iDVD, do not hesitate to Include Video and Audio. Remember that audio data rates are very low, and the inclusion of the audio data in the index file will not increase the file size radically. Just remember that you may want to store such reference
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Figure 11-19
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The QuickTime Movie Export dialog box.
movies that include audio on your media drive, since they contain audio files which have to be accessed at the requisite high speeds of a true media file. For our exercise, set the nclude bar at Video Only. Underneath the Include bar is another drop-down tab named Markers, which by default is set for None. In most cases this is suitable. But we should look at it for the options it offers to those looking to work with iDVD. Because Apple knew that many FCP editors would be using the QuickTime Movie option to move sequences between FCP and iDVD (and DVD SP), they included the ability to insert Chapter Markers in the sequence, and then carry them out with the sequence straight to iDVD.
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Where do the Chapter Markers come from? If you remember from the chapter on capturing clips, in the Log and Capture window we had the option of inserting Markers that would stay with the captured clip once it was brought into the project. Although this marker could not be seen on the video output, we could use any notes we included in the marker for reference purposes. Another use for markers is to carry chapter markers from the sequence to iDVD. In the sequence, you simply hit the M key twice (the first time creates the marker, then the second one opens up the Edit Marker dialog box so you can change its contents). One of the options in the Edit Marker dialog box is the Chapter Marker (see Figure 11-20). When you insert a chapter marker (which appears in the Edit Marker text field as “”), it will be included in QuickTime Movie export. Once the Movie is imported into iDVD, the chapter markers will be read and interpreted. After this, there is a checkbox option that warrants special attention. This is the Make Movie Self-Contained box. The default setting for this box is enabled. If this box is enabled, FCP will create a stand-alone movie file for the export. If you want to create a reference movie, you need to disable this. In some circumstances, you may actually want to create self-contained rather than reference movies. The difference between a self-contained QuickTime Movie and a QuickTime Conversion Movie previously described is that the QuickTime Conversion applies compression. Remember that you chose a codec with QuickTime Conversion (even if it was None or Animation, which are lossless codecs). A self-contained QuickTime Movie does
Figure 11-20 Chapter and other markers can be set into sequences in the Edit Marker box, and then exported from FCP through the QuickTime Movie option.
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not have to compress your footage again; it can create a movie file by simply duplicating the frames from your media files from the sequence. Unless you have chosen to include audio or are making a self-contained stand-alone QuickTime Movie, the process should be nearly instantaneous. Hide FCP (by Optionclicking the Desktop or hitting Command-h), and locate the exported FCP Reference Movie. If you select the reference movie and hit Command-i, you will see that it is indeed quite small in size compared to the same thing exported as a stand-alone QuickTime Movie of equal quality (see Figure 11-21). The icon used for QuickTime Movies is a variation on the FCP icon. If you doubleclick on the FCP Movie icon, you will see that it opens the file up as a clip inside of FCP, instead of opening the QuickTime Movie Player application that the QuickTime movie file we exported earlier opened. This is because the file contains code establishing that it was created by FCP. This information is used by the Mac OS to decide which application to open when the file is double-clicked. Have no fear; applications that can use QuickTime movie files, such as QuickTime Player, iDVD, and Adobe After Effects, will recognize the eference movie and utilize it just like a QuickTime Movie.
Export for Metadata There is another sort of export that is very useful for more advanced applications. This is called Metadata. Metadata means precisely what its name says, “data about data.” In fact, you’ve been working with metadata all along. The project you are working in is metadata. Metadata is essentially any saved and stored computer code that describes relationships and properties of media.
Figure 11-21 file size.
Select the reference movie on the Desktop and hit Command-i to see the
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Your project is basically a lot of computer code that tells the Mac OS where your media is on the drives, what order to play it in, and what, if anything, to do with it while playing it. That is metadata; data to describe and direct other data. But your project isn’t the only metadata out there. In fact, a large part of the professional functionality of FCP is its ability to generate and manipulate metadata. What are other sorts of metadata? The two key types for FCP are the Edit Decision List and Batch Lists. Both are standard methods for getting project metadata out of FCP for use elsewhere, or even inside FCP again. The Edit Decision List The Edit Decision List is a great piece of functionality, even when used out of context from its origins in the linear tape editing world. The Edit Decision List, or EDL as it is referred to, is basically a “Rosetta Stone” or translator of edited sequences between video editing systems. It allows any system that can read EDLs to access the metadata from any other system. Thus, your FCP system can generate an EDL and pass it to an Avid or Media 100 nonlinear editing station. That station will be able to open the EDL and access the exact same sequence you were working with. This is only metadata from the sequence, so the media to make that sequence online is not present. EDLs are only meant to pass around the timecode information and types of edits in the sequence. Where did this come from? The EDL was developed for use with online tape editing facilities. The editor was supposed to edit offline using lower quality dubs of their video materials. Once their edit of these offline dubs was in order, they generated a list with all the timecode values for all the edits in the piece. They did so using a standard format, based on spreadsheet formatting (called “tab-delimited”) that could be understood by an editcontroller (an automatic linear video editing station) (see Figure 11-22). Give the automatic editing station the EDL, the tapes the EDL refers to, and a destination tape to edit onto, and the editing station could assemble edit the entire program. In fact, most online houses still use much more advanced versions of this same process when they online a production. A common professional workflow for high end broadcast is to shoot your material in whatever format you choose, from MiniDV up to Digi-Beta and HD, and then go to a dub facility. The dubbing facility will dub your source tape into two different formats: one offline format, such as DV, Betacam, or even 3/4′′ tape; and an online master, which might be Digi-Beta or DVCPRO50. The most important part of this is that both the offline and master dubs will have precisely matching timecode values for all the footage. You would go home, edit using the offline MiniDV tapes, then generate an EDL of the edited sequence. You would take this EDL back to the transfer facility and have them apply the same edits to the master dubs. Since the timecodes match, the higher quality, much more expensive formats can be used in the final assembly, while all the editing to generate the EDL was done on your $2,000 editing station at home. This process is called onlining. There is another benefit to using EDLs. Because EDLs follow a standard spreadsheet format (necessary so that the automatic online editing station at the other end of the workflow
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Figure 11-22 An EDL is simply a tab-delimited spreadsheet file containing timecode values and edits.
can understand it), this means that most programs that can generate EDLs can also read them! An application like Avid that can generate an EDL can send that information to FCP. FCP can use the EDL to create a sequence that matches all the metadata. You can then recapture all the media that goes along with it, just as if you had logged it all by hand and edited it into place. The reverse is also true. This means applications that have proprietary project files like Avid, FCP, Media 100, etc. can actually talk to each other. Of course, there are limitations to that functionality. A lot of the great special stuff that FCP can do doesn’t translate into the simpler edit types that are used by online linear tape editors. The crazier and more interesting your effects get, the more unlikely that a linear tape editor
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can perform the operation. This is true for all nonlinear editors that generate EDLs but also are capable of creating effects. The key to working with EDLs successfully is to limit what is included in your sequences to what the limited EDL common languages can handle. There are a few things that you can be sure won’t make it into an EDL from FCP. Because EDLs are limited to one edited video track (a second video track is only available for special keying techniques in the online edit session), you can’t really make use of those 98 other tracks available to you. This includes nested sequences, which, of course, have no timecode. Motion tabs don’t occur in other applications, and they won’t make it through your EDL either. This applies to filters as well, since FCP’s filter set is unique to the application. Does this mean that EDLs must be cuts only, or consist of hard edits from clip to clip? Not at all. The rigid, simplified language does allow for some common transitions, as long as they meet the SMPTE specifications established to describe them. The common transitions are what you would expect: Dissolves, Wipes, and Iris. Straying beyond will likely yield unpredictable or no results at all. To export an EDL, select the sequence you want to export, and go File > Export > EDL. In the window that follows, you need to configure the EDL. First you have to make a decision about which type of EDL you want to produce (see Figure 11-23). The names of the EDL formats are related to the online editors they originated from: CMX, Sony, and Grass Valley Group. Although CMX 3600 is the most common EDL format passed around, you need to find out from your online facility which one they want before deciding this. While we’re on the subject, the standard warning is that you want to communicate with your online facility (or whatever destination you are sending the EDL to) and find out what they want prior to generating it, even before you begin editing the sequence itself. EDLs are somewhat of a black art because there are so many possible variations among the EDL types and what you might potentially want to include in them. Sending the online facility a test EDL to check out the conversion is not such a bad idea, especially if your online house will do it cheaply or for free; many will, because it saves both parties time and money. If you will be using a lot of EDLs in your workflow, make sure you read the relevant chapters in the Final Cut Pro manual. There is a great deal of detailed information there with regard to specific limitations and requirements for each EDL type and how video and audio tracks are handled inside them. This is important long before you deliver the EDL; even something as simple as naming your clips incorrectly can muck up the entire works! The Batch List The EDL is for sending out sequence metadata to recreate a sequence in another location. But what if you haven’t even started editing yet? The EDL only sends metadata about the clips in the sequence. Can you move logged clips to another machine, short of duplicating the project? The answer is yes, the Batch List. The Batch List is like an EDL for bins. When you export a Batch List for a bin, FCP generates a spreadsheet with all the information about the clips in that bin.
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Figure 11-23
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The EDL options.
Go to the Browser, make sure it is in List view and open up the window wide so that you are looking at all the columns for your clips. You can customize the columns, as we saw in the editing chapter, by Control-clicking any column header to hide or show any given column. You can also save the column layout once you get it the way you like and even transport those settings to new machines when you move around to other editing stations (saved layouts are stored in your Preferences folder: go to Macintosh HD > Users > Your User > Library > Preferences > Final Cut Pro User Data > Custom Layouts).
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If you need to access the data from your clips outside of FCP, all you have to do is File > Export > Batch List (see Figure 11-24). In the Save dialog box that follows, you can and should save this in the same location you save your project. It is very much like a project file, so it need not be saved on your media drives. At the bottom of the dialog box is the only possible variation: tabbed text or formatted text. Users of Microsoft Excel or Apple’s own Appleworks will see no difference between the two formats, since those applications can read the tabbed text that Batch Lists use. Any application that correctly displays spreadsheets should work fine, including software for handheld PDAs. Batch Lists are useful not only for passing bins around between stations. You can use them for offline logging. If you start with a fresh project that currently holds no clips and export a Batch List, when you open it in the spreadsheet application you will get a worksheet with all the columns FCP uses (see Figure 11-25). Just fill in the fields in the columns for In and Out points and save. This is great for logging right on the set as you shoot or having an assistant sort through and log your tapes without tying up an expensive editing workstation. When you are done building the Batch List, you can easily bring this into FCP by going to File > Import > Batch List. You need to remember to create a new bin before doing so; enter that bin by double-clicking it, and then doing the import process; otherwise importing Batch Lists will just dump the imported clips helter-skelter into the active bin or project tab. Then just recapture the clips and your clips go online. This is not the limit to the Batch List functionality. Since it is a spreadsheet format, the Batch List can be used as a source tape database. B-Roll footage is worth its weight in gold, provided you can find it on your source tapes! As you shoot and edit projects, make a habit
Figure 11-24
The Export Batch List dialog box.
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Figure 11-25 spreadsheets.
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Exported Batch Lists can be opened in any application that can access
of exporting your bins as Batch Lists when you are done. Merging your project databases allows you to build a huge, searchable database of logged clips that you can go browse through when you need a little extra B-Roll. If you’re old school and like to avoid the computer, you can print your Batch Lists out and keep them filed. Either way, being able to pull resources out in a pinch will speed you up and save you money and time. Batch Lists can also be used to pass logged clips between FCP and Avid using a great freeware tool from Peter Reventlow’s Sebsky Tools (see Figure 11-26). Using the easy GUI interface and with one click, you can convert FCP Batch Lists into Avid ALE log files and back, among other useful functions. If you have both FCP and Avid in your workflow, the time will come when this simple tool will make your day.
Media Manager The last subject of this chapter is more of a workflow than a file type. It is a tool called the Media Manager that is used to get complete control of your media. Media Manager can do a lot of things, but its usefulness comes mainly under three functionalities: Offline/Online Editing, Project Media Trimming, and Converting Media. Learning to use the offline/online process lets you make the most out of limited drive space, particularly for those cutting extremely longform projects or who are doing the bulk of their work on PowerBook laptops.
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Figure 11-26
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Peter Reventlow’s Sebsky Tools.
The Other Offline/Online Process What is the offline/online process? Understanding offline editing is essential in getting the most out of your system, particularly if you are looking at upgrading your system from a Firewire DV editing station into an uncompressed high-end workstation. The biggest problem with digital video editing at the highest quality is always storage. It’s not just about how fast your drives are, as is emphasized in Chapter 3 and in the Appendices. Captured video takes up drive space, and the higher the resolution the video is that you are using, the more drive space it consumes per second of capture. How much drive space? Well, the DV codec’s data rate runs at 3.6 MB per second, which ends up delivering about 5 minutes to the gig, or 12 gigs to the hour. This is not bad
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when contrasted with uncompressed video. Uncompressed 10-bit video, which is the highest quality when using standard definition video, can run up to 30 MB per second, or nearly 110 gigs per hour! When you start building in 10–20% drive space buffers (as you should), you really start to see your drive space evaporate. The lion’s share of editing work is making choices about which footage occurs where in the sequence. It need not be the absolute highest quality video, so long as it is of acceptable quality to get the work done. Back in the days before our most recent video editing technology, editing digital video online (editing with the same quality as will be used in the final output) was unthinkable, simply because the quality of digital video technology at the time was terrible. You could see enough in the editing interface to make edits, but you didn’t want a customer to ever see the murky, pixellated, postage stamp-sized video you were using on the computer. Instead, you edited your timeline using this offline video, then you used the timecode numbers generated by the timeline to re-assemble the edits from the original tapes using much higher quality decks to perform the edit, or to online it. Thus, offline editing is using a lower quality version of your materials with the same timecode as the original, which will later be onlined, also called up-rezzing (upping the resolution), using the original source tapes and higher quality editing machinery. This is the same process as we encountered earlier when looking at EDLs. And though that process has improved with time, technology, and tools, the process is still in use in professional production everywhere today. But nowadays, it can be used by any FCP editor who is looking to maximize drive space and editing flexibility, rather than just being the province of people developing content for HDTV broadcasts. FCP contains a powerful offline codec called OfflineRT. This offline codec is based on the PhotoJPEG compression scheme. It uses a data rate of roughly 300 KB per second, less than one tenth of the DV data rate. This makes it possible to fit almost an hour into a gig. Although that number will shrink a little by the time you’ve included audio with the capture, you can still get nearly 45 minutes onto a gig of disk space. This is particularly useful for two groups of people: longform and documentary editors who need hours and hours of footage available to edit with all the time, and editors on the go who work on a PowerBook and can’t carry an external drive around holding tons of online footage. There are two ways to implement this OfflineRT codec. First, you can capture your footage with this codec using the OfflineRT Capture and Sequence Presets available in the Audio/Video Settings (see Figure 11-27). When you capture, FCP converts the footage on the fly to the lower quality codec and stores it on your drive. Using the Sequence Preset for OfflineRT, you edit your footage. In fact, if your Macintosh has enough system resources, ou can even send this out to Firewire and video monitor using RT Extreme, although the quality is liable to be far too low for any usefulness in editing. When you finish the edit, you recapture the sequence, this time using the regular sequence preset for the best quality. The other way is very useful for projects you begin working with online, but which you need to continue working with under either of the above scenarios. Media manager, as we
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Figure 11-27 You can capture your footage using one of the OfflineRT capture presets from the Audio/Video Settings.
will see, can convert the media that already exists to another sequence preset, such as Offline RT. Once it is converted, the entire project and the new offline media can be transferred over to the PowerBook’s hard drive and the editing can resume there, using the same clips and sequences that you were working with online before. How It Works Media Manager is implemented by selecting sequences and clips in the Browser, then going File > Media Manager, or Control-clicking any of the selected clips and choosing Media Manager (see Figure 11-28). When you do this, FCP will open a dialog box that is where you tell Media Manager what to do with the selected items. At the top of the box you will likely see a couple of green bars. These bars are a visual indicator to demonstrate the reductions in media that occur as you change the settings below. They are accompanied by a short paragraph that details what is being left out or included in the Media Manager operation.
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Figure 11-28 The Media Manager dialog box is reached either from the File menu or by selecting and Control-clicking specific clips and sequences in the project tab.
Below the green bars, there is a pulldown menu that directs the entire operation. Each choice on the bar initiates a radically different action (see Figure 11-29). The first option is Copy. Copy means that FCP will exactly duplicate your project’s clips, sequences, and media to a location you specify; it also leaves the original resources intact on the olume you are copying from. During the duplication, you have the option of trimming away any media resources that are not currently being used in the project. This option is useful when you need to clear off drive space, or transfer your project to another drive completely.
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Figure 11-29
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The Action pulldown in the Media Manager dialog box.
Change the pulldown menu to Move and you complete the same action as Copy, except that the media on the original volume is deleted after the operation. It might seem like this is a better option if you’re trying to free up drive space on your only capture drive, but there is a certain risk involved with Move. Copy is a safer method because after the operation you can test the copy you just created to make sure all the elements are there. If for whatever reason the duplication wasn’t perfect, your original project and its resources are still sitting there. This may not seem very important, but when you absolutely cannot afford any accidents, Copy is always the correct choice. Just make sure you keep your eye
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on your drive space so that you always have enough room to Copy and trim into. Once you have tested your Copy project you can then delete the media from the original. The next choice is Recompress. Recompress performs the action described above wherein you are able to move an online project to a PowerBook. Recompress takes the sequence in question, as well as any related/selected clips and media, and makes a copy for use elsewhere. While doing so, it lets you compress the original media on your drive into the OfflineRT PhotoJPEG codec. Thus, you can take that project you’ve been working on for weeks on the road whenever you need to. The next choice, Use Existing, is a mode meant strictly for trimming sequences. But where Copy and Move transfers the contents to another volume (trimmed or not), Use Existing merely trims the sequence contents, leaving only the used media on the capture drive. It is meant solely for freeing up drive space as you work, since you are not relocating the resources, only trimming away what is not in use in the sequence. I am leery of Use Existing for the same reasons that I generally avoid Move. Since Use Existing is performing trimming operations on your existing media resources, there is little margin for error. All it takes is one mistake and you will have to go back to your tapes for ecapture. And, if for some reason you didn’t originally use timecode for capture, well, you’re not likely to enjoy the consequences. Finally, the most useful option in the Media Manager is Create Offline. Create Offline generates an offline copy of your sequence and any selected items and places them in a new project. This offline does not refer to a lower quality of video, but is truly offline, meaning that no media is linked to the clips, as with the clips you logged in Chapter 4 before ou captured them. When you choose Create Offline, the next pulldown menu becomes available, asking which sequence preset you want to use to put the offline clips into (see Figure 11-30). This is because the main function of Create Offline is to create a sequence to be recaptured into a fully online sequence (both in terms of media being linked and online, or the highest quality). While Media Manager can be useful for reclaiming drive space as described earlier, it is really the ability to work at different resolutions through offline/online editing that
Figure 11-30 Choosing Create Offline enables the Sequence Preset menu. You must choose the type of sequence to put the offline clips you create in. Choosing the preset also assigns the clips’ “logged clip settings” so that they recapture correctly fully online.
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makes Media Manager an essential tool in the professional editor’s toolkit. Editors working with uncompressed or low-compression video and capture cards will find that using offline/online techniques makes much higher quality video edits possible without breaking the bank on terabytes of drive space. Even editors only working with DV capture and output can make a 120 gigabyte drive stretch nearly to infinity by using OfflineRT editing. No other software-only editing package offers such flexibility. The Offline/Online Process Here’s the offline/online process you will use. When you start your project, you will do your initial Audio/Video Settings, choosing the offline codec appropriate to you. For instance, if you will be working with DV as your final online capture, you will want to start out with OfflineRT Capture and Sequence Presets. For those using 8- and 10-bit uncompressed cards, depending on the card you own, you might use an 8-bit uncompressed or a low compression JPEG format, depending on how much drive space you are willing to burn while working offline. Once you have captured and edited your sequence, select it and go File > Media Manager. On the Media pulldown menu, choose Create Offline. When you do this, the lower green bar disappears from the top of the window (see Figure 11-31). This is because once you commit to generating an offline sequence, the lower green bar is irrelevant. Offline sequences do not have media for the green bar to measure. Instead, you want to monitor the duration of the media Media Manager is saying it will recapture when you go to recapture the sequence. You can see this by running the mouse over the “N/A” where you will see the current trimmed duration of the amount of media that will need to be recaptured. As you make adjustments to what is being trimmed from the offline sequence, this duration will change. After setting the “Set sequences to:” pulldown menu for the online sequence preset you will want to recapture to, you need to make some decisions about how much you are going
Figure 11-31 Green duration bars at the top of the dialog box tell you how much media is really being trimmed by your current settings. Create Offline doesn’t show the lower green bar, rather “N/A,” because Offline, by definition, contains no media.
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to trim away. In general, you won’t want to recapture extra media from your project that isn’t being used in the final sequence. Checking “Delete unused media from duplicate sequences” makes sure that the sequence you recapture contains only the edits in the sequence. The next option, Handles, should always be checked. In almost all situations where you will be capturing, you want to make sure that you add handles to your clips, and this is no exception. One second should be enough in most cases. The next option bears a little discussion and involves a less than obvious step. “Include affiliate clips outside selection” would force FCP to include any affiliate clip material, even if it were not in use in the present sequence. This includes parts of the master clip that are marked with In and Out points as well as clips in use in other sequences that are derived from the same master clip. Since our purpose is almost always to limit the recapture to only what is used in the sequence (and of course, handles), you’ll want to uncheck this option. Unfortunately, just unchecking this option is not enough. FCP 4’s new master and affiliate relationship throws a curve ball into the process. Even if you disable the Include affiliate … option, FCP still forces recapture of any frames of video in any master clip in the project tab that is between In and Out points. To illustrate this, run the mouse pointer over the N/A where the lower green bar would have been in any other Media Manager mode (see Figure 11-32). The trimmed duration will likely be much larger than you would expect, based on how much of your master clips you are using in the sequence that is being trimmed. There is a way to deal with this. It is called Make Sequence Clips Independent. Control-click the sequence you are trimming in the project tab and you will see this option in the list (see Figure 11-33). When you select it, FCP strips the sequence clips of any affiliate relationship with master clips in the project. Once the master clips are no longer connected to the affiliates in the sequence, the Media Manager will report the correct duration, and subsequent recapture will only get the frames from the sequence. The problem with this is that Make Sequence Clips Independent is not only irreversible, it’s not undoable! If ou select the wrong sequence, or if you decide you want to continue your edit with the same master/affiliate relationship, you are now out of luck. To get around that, simply duplicate the sequence (Control-click the sequence and choose Duplicate), rename it ‘indy sequence’ or somesuch, and then apply the Make equence Clips Independent to the duplicate sequence. That way, your original sequence is
Figure 11-32 Run the mouse pointer over the “N/A” and you will see that FCP still wants to capture far too much material.
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Figure 11-33 Control-click the sequence and choose Make Sequence Clips Independent, which will divorce the sequence clips from the project tab master clips. This method is irreversible!
still connected to its master clips. After making the sequence clips independent, run your mouse pointer over the N/A and you will see that the duration is almost exactly the duration of all the clips in your sequence (see Figure 11-34). Finally, address the last setting. Base Media file names on … tells FCP how to name the media files when you recapture the offline sequence you are creating. If you choose Source Media Files, FCP will use the same names for the capture of the offline clips’ media that the project currently uses. If you choose Clip Names, FCP will use the names of the clips in the offline sequence to name the media files it captures and places in the Scratch Disk in the onlining process.
Figure 11-34
Checking the N/A indicator now shows the correct duration.
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Figure 11-35 After the Offline Sequence has been generated in the new sequence, its new project is opened. All that remains is to recapture by Control-clicking it and choosing Batch Capture.
Hit the OK button to start the generation of the offline copy. FCP creates a brand new project to put the offline sequence and a bin for the master clips that will correspond to the sequence clips. Indeed, the next thing that will happen after you hit OK is that FCP will ask you to save that new project. Make sure you save this project in an appropriate place, such as the folder on the desktop where you saved your original project. After naming and saving the project, FCP will open it, such that both your original and new offline project are available in the Browser (see Figure 11-35). All that’s left to do is Control-click the sequence in the project tab and choose Batch Capture to online it. It is ecommended that you leave the original OfflineRT sequence intact and online until you have recaptured the new sequence, so that if there are any errors or issues, you can easily Media Manage the original project to rectify the situation.
Appendix
A
What Is Digital Video Anyway?
How Video Works: Analog and Digital Video To understand digital video, we have to know how digital video differs from analog video. Analog video is still the most common format used in television and consumer VCRs. Like film, video works by the rapid display of many still images, one after the other. This creates the illusion of real motion because the still images replace each other on the screen more quickly than your eye can register, called persistence of vision. In film, the rate of these images is 24 frames, or individual images, per second. NTSC video has a frame rate of 29.97 frames per second and is used in United States, much of South America, and Japan. PAL video has a frame rate of 25 frames per second and is used in most of Europe, China, and countries which were under European colonial control late into the twentieth century. Standards in other countries vary between the two, based on the system of electricity in use (US and Japan use 60 Hz, while Europe uses 50 Hz). This concept of illusory motion is where the similarity between film and video ends. Film creates the illusion of motion by shining light through celluloid material to create a projected image on a flat reflective surface. Each individual frame is created on the screen as a result of light passing through the emulsion, or the material coating the celluloid film. Each frame is projected through the lens of a projector in its entirety, top to bottom, and side to side. Video, on the other hand, is an indirect system of display. An analog video signal is actually an electrical wave that travels through a cable, say, from your VCR to a television. This electrical wave carries the visual information for each frame to your television. On receiving the wave, the television interprets this information and uses an electron gun to shoot a beam of electrons at the inside of the television screen. The electron beam charges up phosphors on the inside of the television screen, producing the glowing images you see on the front. It does this at the frame rate established by the video standard in use, 29.97 or 25 times per second for NTSC and PAL, respectively. The origin of the term analog comes from the fact that video’s electrical waveform is an analogy, or corresponding likeness, of the original image. The process of directing the electron beam to the television screen is called scanning. Instead of illuminating the entire screen at once as film does, the electron gun must
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draw thin horizontal lines, one after another, all the way down the screen. When the beam has crossed the video screen horizontally once, we say it has scanned one line. After it scans a single line, it moves to where the next line is to be drawn a little further down the screen. A single frame on an NTSC video screen is composed of 525 of these separately scanned horizontal lines, which we call the vertical resolution. When the scanning of 525 lines on the screen is complete, we say one frame of NTSC video has been scanned. Then the process begins again, repeating this action at the rate of 29.97 times per second for NTSC and 25 times per second for PAL, which is composed of 625 lines. A video frame is actually scanned in two separate scans of a single video frame, referred to as fields. The electron gun in the television monitor does not go directly from the first scanned line to where the second one should be. Instead, it skips a line before it performs the horizontal scanning process again. While scanning a single frame, the electron gun actually scans all the odd-numbered lines first, and then on reaching the bottom of the screen, it returns to the top to scan all the remaining evenly-numbered lines (see Figure A-1). This field scanning process is referred to as field interlacing, because the two separately scanned fields when viewed together form one interlaced frame. Although the precedence of one field being drawn before the other, or field dominance, can vary between digital video systems, for the moment it is enough to know that electricity is driving the video signal, that the electrical waveform for each field of the frame determines what you see on the screen, and that this scanning action occurs at the rate of 29.97 frames per second for NTSC and 25 frames per second for PAL. Each frame is composed of two separate fields, yielding a field rate of 59.94 fields per second for NTSC and 50 fields per second for PAL. Generation Loss and Digital Video “Great,” you say, “it works, and that’s all I care about. What is the need for digital video if we have a perfectly good analog system?” The answer lies in what is referred to as “generation loss.” Because the analog video signal is an electrical wave, it is a physical thing. It is comprised of physical electrons that move up and down in waves which then travel through a cable, thus transmitting the necessary information to the video monitor so it can display images. The quality and integrity of the image you get is totally dependent on the quality and integrity of that electrical wave. The problem is that every time the signal passes through a medium—for example, when it passes through a cable from your VCR to your video monitor—the electrical wave changes a little, or a lot! The electrical wave that makes it to your television is never quite the same as the electrical wave that was magnetically stored on the source tape and played back. The slight distortion in the wave from its transmission through the cable results in a change for the worse in the picture quality generated by the wave.
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Figure A-1 Video is created by scanning horizontal lines until a complete frame is formed on the screen. There are 525 scanned lines in NTSC frames and 625 scanned lines in PAL frames.
We call the decay of the electrical wave generation loss. Every time you make a copy of a videotape, or even simply pass it through a cable, you lose a generation. After a few generations of passing between even the highest quality analog equipment, the electrical wave will deteriorate until the quality of the video image and audio is poor indeed. You can have more or less decay, depending on the type of video signal (composite, Y/C, or component), but with analog video, there is always generation loss.
Analog Video Formats There are three analog video formats in widespread use today. They correspond to consumer, prosumer, and fully professional quality for recording and playback of analog video. These are Composite, Y/C (or S-Video), and Component. Composite video is a consumer level format that is usually delivered on a single BNC or RCA cable, and recorded to VHS tape. Composite video is one electrical waveform that
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Figure A-2 Composite video, considered to be a consumer format, contains both luma and color information in one electircal waveform that is usually delivered on one single BNC or RCA cable. As such, color fidelity and detail are compromised for better luma contrast and detail.
contains all the luma and color information (See Figure A-2). Because black-and-white luma information is far more important than color in visual perception, most of the waveform contains luma. A single cable can only contain so much information at a time, and color fidelity and detail are sacrificed for better luma contrast and detail. As such, the reproduction quality, particularly after recording to tape, is very low. We usually say that the generation loss, the loss of detail resolution when recording video from a composite source, is on the order of 1/2 (240 lines out of 500)! Y/C, or S-Video, is a prosumer format that is usually delivered using a single cable containing two separate wires and a special 4-pin DIN connector, and recorded to special S-VHS tape. Y/C uses two separate waveforms, one for color and one for luma (see Figure A-3). Because the waveforms are kept separate, neither luma nor chroma detail need be sacrificed. The subsequent generation loss is much less severe than composite video. We usually characterize resolution loss of Y/C at about 1/5, or 100 lines out of 500. Most DV cameras and decks are outfitted with Y/C connectors, which corresponds to the prosumer nature of Firewire DV cameras and decks. Finally, we hit the apex of analog video technology, Component video. Component is a fully professional format. It is delivered on three separate cables (usually BNC) and is ecorded using special Betacam SP tapes (see Figure A-4). Although there are two methods of Component encoding of video, the most common uses a system of ‘color differential’ to get color and luma transferred at the highest possible quality. The color differential means that one cable carries all the luma waveform, while the other two cables each carry a color waveform (either red or blue) minus the luma information. Green does not need to be delivered, since it can be determined by what is left when you remove the luma from red and blue signals, or the color differential.
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Figure A-3 Y/C, or S-Video, contains luma and color information in two separate electrical waveforms that pass through two separate wires in one single cable with a special 4-pin DIN connector.
A more rare form of component video uses the standard red, green, and blue color channels for the entire video signal without utilizing a specific luma waveform, very similar in fact to the way that computer displays work. Component, using color differential, is the highest quality analog format, yielding near perfect reproduction, even when recorded to tape. Generation loss is minimal, even over a couple of generations. Component is, in fact, so successful and of such high quality that it will be seen in the next few sections of this appendix that component color differential is used in digital sampling when generating digital video from analog.
Figure A-4 Component video typically delivers luma and color information through three separate cables (usually BNC). One cable carries all the luma waveform, and the color waveform is passed through the remaining two cables as red and blue minus the luma information. It is considered to be a professional format.
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Where Does Digital Video Originate? How Light Becomes Numbers How does DV work? How does the video become digital in the first place? How exactly does light become the series of numbers that are safe from generation loss and deterioration? When light passes through the lens of the camera, it is evaluated for its luma and chroma, or bright/dark values and color values, respectively. The luma and chroma information is collected on light sensitive chips called “charged coupled devices” (CCDs). The luma and chroma information is gathered from the chips at the same rate and in the same manner as we saw with the electron beam in the back of the television set. It is essentially the same operation in reverse, the television generating light from electrical information and the CCD generating electrical information from light. This much of the process is really no different whether a digital or an analog video camera is being used. Both generate luma and chroma information from CCDs. The difference is in what happens after that information has been generated. In the analog camera, generally speaking, nothing more is done with the signal. The electrical wave created by the CCD passes directly to the destination videotape, where it is stored magnetically for later playback. The digital camera, on the other hand, digitizes the electrical signal. It quantizes, or assigns numerical values, to the various qualities of the light, translating the luma and chroma values into data that can be stored on tape. As a result, although both analog video and digital video end up being recorded to tape, the digitally recorded video is not recorded as a video waveform. It passes from CCD to the recording tape as data. If you are using analog Betacam cameras for source footage, and using a DV converter box or uncompressed card to capture into FCP, the digitizing step still applies to you, because in order for you to edit with this footage, it must be digitized.
Sampling and Compression It sounds very easy. The camera magically changes light into numbers. In reality, the process is quite mechanical and predetermined. First, the luma and chroma values from the analog video signal are subjected to a process called sampling. Before the video can be digitized, the digitizer needs to know about the luma and chroma of the video. Now, perceptually speaking, luma values are far more important to the human eye than color information. You need a lot more luma information to make out detail in an image than chroma, probably because not so many thousands of years ago, seeing shapes in the dark kept our ancestors from getting eaten. Yellow lion versus purple lion matters not nearly so much as hungry lion in the shadows! Consequently, the video is analyzed for color value (hue and saturation) in the camera less frequently than the luma values. As the camera scans a video line and gathers luma and chroma values, it does so at a ratio of luma values to chroma values. The particular ratio depends on the camera and/or digitizing system processing the video. There are four common ratios in use in digital video. Since ratios
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Figure A-5 The sampling ratios describe how frequently the digitizer checks the luma and chroma of the pixels in an image. The three common ratios are 4:4:4, 4:2:2, and 4:1:1. These ratios relate to the frame as depicted in the chart.
generally work best in whole numbers (and for other, more complicated reasons we will not go into here), the ratios list the luma value first, designated as Y, and assign it a value of 4. This yields the following four whole number ratios: 4:4:4, 4:2:2, 4:1:1, and 4:2:0. In these ratios, the 4 designates that the luma value is always sampling all the possible values for bright/dark. The other two numbers in each ratio refer to two of the three primary colors for video, red and blue. Thus, in a 4:4:4 sampling ratio, all luma and chroma are sampled from each range of four pixels: four Y, four red, and four blue, as in the color differential as described earlier. In a 4:2:2 ratio, however, the red and blue values are only sampled every other pixel in comparison to the full four samples of the Y. This results in four Y, two red, and two blue for four pixels. And finally, in the 4:1:1 ratio, the red and blue values are sampled only every fourth time (see Figure A-5). Few systems other than computer monitors and hardware broadcast switchers (and the most expensive video camera in existence) are robust enough to sample at the full 4:4:4 ratio. Some software codecs, such as the Animation codec, also use a 4:4:4 sample ratio, and are completely lossless. For the most part, 4:4:4 sampling is complete overkill, and the quality returns from sampling so extensively at the digitizing stage do not justify the cost and complexity of systems capable of handling that much data and processing! A 4:2:2 sample ratio is, generally speaking, indistinguishable from a 4:4:4 ratio. The 4:2:2 ratio characterizes the bulk of the high-end equipment in use in the broadcast industry, where very high quality is demanded. Fully professional formats such as Sony’s Digital Betacam and Panasonic’s DVCPRO50 are the primary digital recording formats using this ratio. Beyond recording formats, almost all capture cards, including proprietary systems like Media 100, use 4:2:2 sampling. Using 4:2:2 requires hefty processing power to generate so many chroma values per frame of video, and as such, needs the assistance of extra hardware resources. This is why 4:2:2 is limited to more expensive cameras, decks, and capture cards plugged into the Macintosh PCI slots and fast drive solutions, rather than the simple DV camera or deck solutions we will look at next. The Firewire DV System The prosumer DV camera and deck systems which compress and digitize video with the DV codec use the 4:1:1 sampling ratio. Although not nearly as detailed a sampling system
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as the far more expensive 4:2:2-based cameras, decks, and cards, 4:1:1 provides a fairly high-resolution sampling at a fraction of the price. In comparison with the video quality of prosumer, and even professional video gear from the recent past, DV’s 4:1:1 sampling ratio is more detailed and ensures much higher fidelity to the image being recorded. The digitizing process is not complete with the sampling process, however. The next key element of digitizing video is the encoding of the video/audio stream. After sampling the video, it is encoded into a digital data stream. This stream of video and/or audio data uses a specified data bitrate, determined by the format. Different recording formats use different types of streams. For instance, the SDI stream supports recording one uncompressed video track and up to sixteen audio tracks in one digital data stream, even if you don’t need to access or record to all of them. The ceiling, or maximum bitrate for this SDI stream, is 270 megabits per second, roughly 34 megabytes per second. That is a very high data rate, and requires significant drive resources, as described in Appendix B, once the video stream is captured into your computer for editing. The prosumer DV format, on the other hand, encodes video into the relatively low bitrate DV Stream format. DV Stream only supports one video and two audio tracks and has a much lower bitrate of 25 megabits per second, and is often referred to as DV25 for this reason. To fit all that uncompressed video that took up 270 megabits per second into a 25 megabit per second stream, the video frames will need to be compressed, introducing us to the idea of the “codec.” What Is a Codec? The previously described sampling process generates an astounding amount of information. In order to create a single scanned line of a digital video frame, we must sample 720 pixels for luma. Depending on the sampling ratio involved, we must also sample 360 or 180 values for red and blue. Beyond this, in NTSC, we must gather 480 (for Firewire DV) or 486 (for standard definition capture cards) lines per frame, called the vertical resolution, and then repeat this 29.97 times per second. For PAL, both capture card and DV, the values are 576 lines per frame 25 times per second. That is a huge amount of raw data, upwards to a megabyte per individual frame, not including accompanying audio. This translates into about 30 megabytes per second. To put that number into perspective, the sustained data rate of the stock hard drives in a Macintosh G4 generally clocks in at around 10 to 14 megabytes per second, and peaks at around 16 megabytes per second. The hard drive solutions of the standard inexpensive desktop computers we intend to use for DV editing cannot match the data rate of the video coming right out of the sampling process. There are two ways to deal with this situation. One solution is to speed up the data rate of our computer with faster hard drive systems. In higher-end editing systems in which the absolute optimum quality is necessary, hard drive storage solutions are employed that can match or exceed the requirements of enormous data rates. For those employing uncompressed capture cards, extremely fast hard drive solutions will be necessary, as described
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in Appendix B. The downside, of course, is that these super-fast drive solutions are also radically more expensive. For a low-cost Firewire DV system, however, there is a better way of dealing with the issue—reduce the video data rate to something more manageable. In the Firewire-based FCP 4 DV editing system, this latter method is employed through a process called compression. The initial staggeringly large video data rate is brought down to a respectable 3.6 megabytes per second, which is well within range of the inexpensive stock drives of your Macintosh. This data rate reduction is made possible by the codec, a term that combines the words compression and decompression. A codec’s main function is to reduce the amount of data in a video frame while, at the same time, maintaining the integrity of the image. When a video frame is initially compressed, the codec throws away excess and redundant digital information, retaining only what it deems will be necessary to reproduce, or decompress, the image again later. The result is a much smaller amount of data for each individual frame, a correspondingly lower data rate, and, hopefully, an image that more or less resembles the original uncompressed source footage. 8-Bit and 10-Bit Uncompressed Uncompressed is not just a descriptive term; it’s also a set of codecs. Uncompressed codecs are theoretically lossless in terms of data, though not necessarily in total visual detail. Rather, what the codec sees after going through the sampling phase is directly encoded into digital video frames without throwing away any data. The accuracy of the sample phase determines the fidelity of the encoding. Once the sample has taken place, the data is encoded in total. This yields very high data rates, anywhere from 800 KB to 1.2 MB per frame. The quality is fantastic, because every detail that has been sampled is recorded into the video frame. By contrast, the DV codec discards enough data from the frame to reduce it to the neighborhood of 125K! That’s nearly a 10 to 1 data reduction (although, practically speaking, it works out to be only 5 to 1 in terms of real lost image detail)! There is a further differentiation in uncompressed codecs, however: the difference between 8 bit and 10 bit uncompressed. The difference between 8 and 10 bit is in how much detail is encoded into the frame of video after sampling. Think about this process as compared to painting a picture of someone’s face from memory. The sampling phase would be the experience of having seen their face and having noted the features. The encoding phase would be when you actually draw the face on the page from memory. In this analogy, consider the difference between 8- and 10-bit uncompressed as the number of brush strokes you are allowed to use when painting the person’s face. In a component RGB system, where the colors red, green, and blue all combine to make white, an 8-bit codec has a bit depth of 8 bits per color channel, or 24 bits per pixel. An 8-bit codec can see 256 (that’s 28, or two to the eighth power) different variations between black and white. This means that there are 256 levels of definition for each color.
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If you do the math, this means 16,777,216 different possible colors for a given pixel. That’s a lot of detail, and the 8-bit codec is pretty much the standard color system used, from the prosumer compressed DV codec up to uncompressed cards. There is another, more precise, bit depth, though. The SDI video system, described earlier in the appendix supports a 10-bit uncompressed digital video stream. The 10-bit codecs have 10-bits per color channel, meaning a bit depth of 30. A 10-bit codec can see an astounding 1024 different variations for each color (that’s 210). Those extra two bits of depth are like saying you can use 200 brush strokes to paint the face rather than just 50. While the 8-bit paintbrush will show you that the subject has blond hair and blue eyes, the 10-bit paintbrush will show you that the subject also has acne and needs a shave! As you would expect, however, the increase in detail that 10-bit encoding delivers incurs an increase in bitrate. More information in the frame entails more data to transfer per second. An 8-bit uncompressed encoded video stream will generally be in the range of 24–28 MB per second, whereas the 10-bit uncompressed encoded video stream will generally be in the range of 28–34 MB per second. Drive solutions that are fine for 8-bit uncompressed might not be able to handle the extra sustained data rate of 10-bit uncompressed. Do you need true 10-bit uncompressed captures? That really depends on what equipment you are using in your editing suite. For instance, if you were capturing from a Digital Betacam source deck through an uncompressed AJA Kona card using SDI inputs, you have a choice of using 8 bit (which will give a little lower quality but will allow you to stretch our drive space because of the lower bitrate), or 10 bit (which is both the native bit depth for the SDI video stream of Digital Betacam and which maintains the highest, technically lossless, image quality). If, on the other hand, you were using an analog format, such as analog component Betacam SP, for capture into an uncompressed BlackMagic Decklink SP card with analog component video inputs, you may not even need the extra bit depth that 10 bit delivers, since the level of image detail recorded to and retrieved from analog Betacam tape isn’t generally high enough to warrant the precision of 10-bit sampling and encoding. Using 8-bit encoding and decoding is more than accurate enough. The bottom line is that it is your own specific configuration and workflow that will determine what you need to invest in. Longform documentary editors will be totally satisfied with the high quality and storage saving nature of 8 bit, while motion graphics and effects facilities working with much less media, but who require absolutely the highest fidelity from their video frames from tape to disk, will want 10 bit every time. Even which uncompressed capture device you will want depends on your specific situation. The great thing about FCP is its open acceptance of third party capture devices. The range of such devices is rather large, and each PCI card or converter has its own unique niche. ome cards, like the AJA Kona, only offer SDI in/out, while others, like the BlackMagic Decklink SP card, offer support for legacy users using analog devices like the Sony Betacam SP. Still others offer further RT support, hardware-assisted offline codecs, special film and HD editing ‘pulldown removal,’ and even higher bit depths.
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Make sure you shop and do the research, taking into account both your budget and your particular needs. You can put a rock-solid uncompressed editing station together for a small fraction of what it cost three years ago. But since most lower priced choices are relatively specialized, you want to make sure that what you invest in can handle everything you want to capture. A Decklink SP card may look great until you find out six months down the road that you also need to be able to capture SDI. Likewise, an inexpensive video converter that takes in analog component and outputs SDI for capture into an AJA SDIonly card might seem to fill all your capture needs, until you realize that you need integrated machine control, genlock, and that great ‘YUV Video Desktop’ feature that Decklink offers its customers! You really have to think ahead. There are few bad uncompressed solutions out there, but typically there will be only one that perfectly matches your needs in the balance between price, functionality, and format.
What about Digital Audio? Sound becomes analog audio when sound waves in the air encounter a transducer like a microphone, thereby producing an electrical waveform that is an analog of the original sound wave. This process is similar to that of analog video. Analog audio, at this stage, is usually directly recorded to analog tape. When the tape plays back, the electrical waves recorded on the tape are converted back to sound. As with analog video, the audio waveform experiences deterioration through generation loss. Digitizing audio eliminates this problem just as digitizing video does. Digitizing audio involves sampling. In audio sampling, the digitizer analyzes the audio wave and assigns numerical values to describe each variation of level and frequency in the audio waveform. Each audio sample, like video, is composed of a number of bits. There are four common bit depths of digital audio: 8, 12, 16, and 24. The number of bits per sample and the way they are utilized in the sample yields some interesting flexibility in manipulating, recording, and playback. Bit depth also plays a role in the digital audio quality itself, since the fewer the number of bits per sample, the less information that is retained about the audio when it is digitized. Just as with sampling video, sampling audio is a variable task. You can sample both video and audio more or less intensively. Unlike video, however, audio data rates are far lower, so audio really never needs to be compressed with a codec for acceptable playback performance. Digital audio for use in editing is never compressed, and its quality is determined by the frequency of the sample rate and the bit depth. Sampling and Digital Audio This sample rate is described in kilohertz (KHz) or thousands of cycles per second. A higher sample rate results in more finely detailed information about the original audio wave and, thus, a higher quality digitizing process. It follows that the higher the number of samples per second,
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the larger the amount of available information about the recorded audio, and, thus, the better the quality and the higher the necessary data rate. There is an increase in the data rate and quality of digitized audio when the sample rate is increased. As always, the more information a digitizer has about the material, the better the job it is going to do digitizing it. There are standard sample rates that are commonly used in the world of media production today. Audio compact discs, for example, use a standard sample rate of 44.1 KHz, or 44,100 samples per second. This is adequate definition for high quality two-channel stereo recording. Another common sample rate is 22.05 KHz, which is a lower quality sample rate used in multimedia CD-ROMs and for the Web because its file sizes and data rate are small enough for delivery over low-bandwidth Internet connections. The quality is quite horrible, better than the quality of telephone audio, but not much better. Two sample rates that concern us are the native sample rates for DV decks and cameras. These two sample rates are 48 KHz and 32 KHz. 48 KHz is a very high quality sample rate. It exceeds the quality of audio CDs and provides very accurate reproduction. It is a fully professional sample rate, and not long ago it was available only through professional DAT recorders. It is a testament to the power of the prosumer market that such quality acquisition is available at such low prices today. Currently, 48 KHz is one of the two native sample rates available in nearly all DV cameras and decks, and it is your best bet for recording audio. Why then, you ask, would we use a lower sample rate of 32 KHz, when 48 KHz is so much better and available on the same camera or deck? The Canon XL-1S DV camera and most DV decks allow you really interesting options when recording your audio in 32 KHz. If you shoot video and record the audio at 32 KHz with the XL-1S, you can simultaneously ecord four tracks of 32 KHz audio, a useful feature for videographers who don’t have time to un a mixer while they are shooting. Many DV decks allow you to go in later and overdub the two extra available audio tracks to accompany the two tracks you already have on tape. Multitrack audio recording on digital videotape using the 12 bit/32 KHz audio setting is a highly underutilized feature, one that many people aren’t even aware exists in their camera. Analog Audio Recording and Double System Sound Beyond Firewire DV audio, there are a couple of other primary types of audio capture. The first is called double system sound. This common method of working with audio for film simply means that audio is being recorded to a device other than the film or video camera getting the footage. The device recording the audio doesn’t matter; it could be an analog device, like a workhorse Nagra 4.2 analog reel-to-reel deck, or a digital DAT and direct-todisk audio recorder, which are becoming increasingly popular. After the shoot, the audio that was recorded separately must be moved onto the computer and synced up with the captured video. Once synced up, the audio and video clips are merged into a single clip and cut just like any clip you’d capture from DV tape through Firewire. The possible variations on this have to do with whether the audio is already digital or whether you need to digitize it to get it onto your drives and into your FCP project.
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For analog recorders, like the Nagra mentioned above, you will need to locate an analog/ digital converter. For digital sources, like the DAT recorders, you may be able to use various interfaces such as ‘light pipe’ “SPDIF” optical cable or digital coaxial cable to get the already digital audio onto your drives. In older Macs, you will likely need to look into either a PCI card or USB device to get the digital audio stream in. The new G5 Power Mac has optical audio inputs and outputs as well as standard analog inputs and outputs, making getting digital audio into your Mac a snap. The other variation is whether or not the audio device contains timecode. Timecode data recorded with the audio can be used to sync it with film or video shot simultaneously. There are a myriad of different recorders and methods of getting the recording onto the computer. Not all DAT’s have light pipe or even digital coaxial outputs, so you need to check out the specifications of any device you want to integrate into your production workflow. SDI Digital Audio A final method of getting audio in and out of your system is for those working with SDI capture devices. The Serial Digital Interface not only supports a 10-bit uncompressed video stream, it also supports up to 16 streams (or 8 stereo channels) of AES-EBU (Audio Engineering Society-European Broadcast Union) digital audio. When using an uncompressed capture device with SDI sources, the single SDI cable carries the video and audio channels both in and out of the system. Once again, you have to determine your needs and really investigate when you shop for a capture device. Although the AES-EBU digital audio specification supports 16 channels, not all capture devices actually utilize all those channels. Just as each of these devices sports unique functionality for video capture and output, they also sport differing functionality for audio in and ouput. Some cards, like the Decklink SP, also offer extra digital coaxial outputs for extended monitoring flexibility. In practice, SDI audio is easy to configure; just invoking the proper Easy Setup is usually all that is required to access video and all your streams of audio from a single cable.
What About Timecode? Professional video and audio editing would be nothing if not for two other important features. These are timecode and device control. Timecode is a great system that was developed to assist in editing accuracy by giving individual frames unique addresses. This frame addressing gives us yet another bonus: device control. There are a several different types of timecode and device control, and which one applies to your situation depends on your specific configuration. We will first look at Firewire, which has a unique timecode and device control system, then we will move on to the other variations of timecode and how it applies to the the variations of device control.
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Firewire DV: Video, Audio, Timecode, and Device Control in One Cable We mentioned Firewire in reference to transmission of video and audio data between the DV deck or camera and your Macintosh. But what exactly is Firewire? Firewire is Apple Computer’s proprietary name for an industry-agreed-on engineering specification called IEEE 1394. The IEEE 1394 standard was developed so that the many companies developing high-bandwidth digital interfaces would be more likely to construct machines and software that could talk to each other. Sony’s proprietary name I.Link refers to the same IEEE 1394 specifications. This is why you can use so many different decks and cameras with FCP 4. Although not all DV devices are officially tested and supported by Apple for use with FCP 4, they are all based on the same technology. The engineering specification allows for a certain amount of digital information to pass from one device (say, your deck) to another device (say, your Macintosh) at a specific rate and using certain wiring and data transfer protocols. A newer version of the IEEE 1394 specification is currently being implemented in new Macintoshes and Firewire drives. The IEEE 1394b specification, called ‘Firewire 800’ in Apple-speak, boasts a much higher potential data rate than the IEEE 1394 specification, while conferring the benefits we are talking about here. It is also backwards compatible with IEEE 1394, so, if you have a new Macintosh, you don’t have to worry that your machine is unable to work with DV cameras and decks. What this means is that through just one cable you can pass both digital video and audio between the deck or camera and your Macintosh. But it also allows for other data to be transferred. FCP 4 is capable of manually controlling any of the DV devices that Apple Computer specifies is supported, as well as a good many more that they simply haven’t gotten around to testing. How it does this is really not a new process for those experienced with video production, but it is very important information for new users who have never encountered the concept of timecode.
Timecode: Analog and DV Clearly, it is important to be able to access and manipulate video at the level of frames rather than in seconds. The answer lies in timecode. Timecode uses what is referred to as video frame addressing. When the video footage recorded on a tape is accompanied by timecode, we say that each frame of the video has a specific and unchanging address. When you insert a tape with timecode into a deck that can read timecode, the deck will display the frame number of the tape that is currently cued up on the playhead of the deck. Each frame of video on the tape has a frame number that is unique to it. For simplicity, it is a standard that this numerical frame address follows the universal convention of the digital clock; that is, in the form of hours:minutes:seconds:frames; for example, 01:23:45;15. The NTSC timecode clock runs up 29 frames and the PAL timecode clock counts up 24 frames before each turns over a second, then runs up 59 seconds before racking up a minute.
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Because the frames we want have immutable assigned numbers as addresses, it is easy for computers and decks to automate the process of play, record, and capture. As long as there is timecode, your computer and decks can do this precise work for you, getting exactly the results you want without you lifting a finger. There is an important distinction that applies only to NTSC. This is the difference between drop frame and non-drop frame. What are drop frame and non-drop frame timecodes? The difference has to do with the slightly odd frame rate of 29.97 frames per second of NTSC video. Remember that this is the rate of frames being seen per second. But there is no such thing as a fraction of a frame; all video frames are whole intact entities. And the function of timecode is to count their progression over time using a clock of hours: minutes:seconds:frames. Unfortunately, we need a whole number system to do this. We cannot use the fractions that exist in the actual NTSC frame rate, which would result in a time scale using increments of .999 frames instead of 1! This is not a problem for PAL users, whose frame rate is exactly 25 frames per second, but for NTSC users the issue is critical. If we take the most obvious path and just round off the frame rate from 29.97 to 30 frames per second, at the end of an hour you end up with a disparity of 108 frames between the real-world clock and the timecode clock, which, at a frame rate of 29.97 frames per second, equals more than three seconds! Here’s the math: 60 minutes × 60 seconds × 30 frames = 108,000 frames (if we use the rounded-up, incorrect 30 fps) 60 minutes × 60 seconds × 29.97 frames = 107,892 frames (if we use the correct 29.97 fps) 108,000 frames – 107,892 frames = 108 extra frames Imagine the consternation at the television broadcast station. The timecode standard of counting 30 whole frames per second slowly and progressively throws off the relationship between when the show should end and when, in fact, it does end. As the timecode values get further away from the real-world clock values, hours get longer, and if the union watchdogs weren’t awake, workers at the station would be putting in an extra 30 seconds of free labor in an eight-hour day! But, more important, broadcast schedules would go completely out of whack after only a few hours. Think of it this way. There have been many calendars in the history of the world, but they haven’t always been as accurate as our 365 1/4 day calendar. We know that a solar year is the amount of time it takes for the earth to go around the sun once. Unfortunately, that one revolution doesn’t fit exactly right with the number of days it takes to complete that revolution. It takes that extra 1/4-day to complete the revolution. How does the calendar compensate for one quarter of a day? Does the sun stop rising once a year at 6:00 AM and start over? Do we have one day of the year marked with only a quarter-of-a-day marker? No, instead we use a leap year. Every four years, we add a day to
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the calendar to make up for four years of missing one-quarter days. That way, over many ears, the calendar doesn’t go completely out of order and we don’t watch the Superbowl in the middle of the summer. So how do we get an exact whole number for each individual frame of NTSC video without the numbering system going out of whack? An ingenious system was developed that allows all NTSC video frames to fall on a whole number for a frame address without losing sync between the real-world clock and the timecode clock. Instead of adding a leap ear, we are periodically subtracting a “leap frame” from the timecode. The system is called drop frame timecode. In drop frame timecode, the numbering system is based on the frame rate of 30 whole frames per second. Then, over the course of one hour, exactly 108 frame numbers are left out. Although the real-true-honest-to-Joe frame rate of the video is 29.97 frames per second, the drop frame timecode numbering system actually labels the frames with the progression of numbers at the whole number rate of 30 frames per second. Then, to keep the frame address numbers from exceeding the actual clock time of the hour, it periodically skips numbers. Which numbers are left out of the count? It isn’t random at all. Frame numbers 0 and 1 are skipped in the first second of each minute, unless the minute number is divisible by ten. Thus, after ten minutes, 18 frame numbers have been skipped, leaving a progression of numbers like 00:01:59;28, 00:01:59;29, 00:02:00;02, 00:02:00;03 …. It is important to emember that no actual video frames are ever left out; there is only a skip in the number chosen for its address. Just as street numbers for houses are rarely in perfect sequence although the houses are all present, timecode address numbers are skipped, though each frame has a numerical address. Non-drop frame timecode does not take the 108 frames per hour discrepancy into account and always uses 30 frames per second as its numbering system, never skipping any frame address numbers. Remember that the actual video frame rate of both drop frame and non-drop frame timecode video is 29.97 frames per second. Of course, as mentioned previously, this issue relates only to NTSC, since PAL does not suffer a frame rate based on fractional values. Drop frame and non-drop frame timecode are easily distinguished in the timecode number. Drop frame timecode always uses a semicolon instead of a colon to separate seconds and frames—for example, 01:02:03;15. All NTSC DV timecode is drop frame and exhibits this. Sony’s proprietary format DVCAM can record either drop frame or non-drop frame where it is required. PAL DV, not having a drop/non-drop frame issue, always uses non-drop frame signatures. Why Use Non-Drop Frame? Pulldown Issues In most cases, you will use drop frame timecode for editing NTSC video, since it always matches the timecode to the real-world clock. However, non-drop frame timecode is still used pretty heavily in some types of editing, particularly with film and HD, since these both natively work in 24 frame per second rates. Often, editors work with film and HD in
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an offline/online mode like we looked at in Chapter 11. Film is ‘telecined’ to video for digital video editing offline, then the edits made in the NLE are used to generate a cut list, which is used to cut the actual film negative later to make a work print or a film-based copy. HD is very often downconverted to standard definition for easier and less-expensive editing, after which, an EDL is generated to online and returned to the HD final cut. When working with film or HD 24 frame per second material in standard definition NTSC, 24 frame per second material is spread over 29.97 NTSC video frames using a pulldown. Pulldown is a method of using the field interlacing of 29.97 frame per second NTSC to spread 24 frame per second film or HD frames evenly across one second of time. In a standard pulldown, often called a 3:2 pulldown and, more accurately, a 2:3:2:3 pulldown, 4 film or HD frames are spread across 10 video fields (5 video frames), such that the first film/HD frame, or A frame, is completely in one video frame (2 fields) (see Figure A-6). The next, or B, frame of film/HD is also contained in a whole video frame. But the following video frame is composed of one field from the B frame and one field of the C frame. The next video frame similarly contains one field from the C frame and one field from the D frame. These two are also called ‘Split Frames,’ as opposed to the ordinary ‘Whole Frames’ in which one frame of film is contained on both fields of a single video frame. The final frame of video in the group contains both fields of the D frame from the film/HD source. This is the origin of the 3:2 and 2:3:2:3 numbers; the pattern, or cadence, of extra frame/fields added to make the film/HD rate fit inside the NTSC rate. Although this book cannot get into the minutiae of editing 24 frame per second material, there are a few things that should be addressed. If you are going to distribute the final edited sequence in NTSC video, you don’t really have to deal with this pulldown business at all. At the most, you need to be careful about
Figure A-6 A 3:2 pulldown uses a cadence to insert four film frames across 5 video frames, or 10 video fields.
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where you make your edits, since the result of having two film or HD frames spread across a single frame of video is judder, meaning that you might end up seeing one field from a frame ou don’t want to see when you make the cut on the frame you do want to see. It’s called judder because any motion between the two fields (because they are from totally different film/HD frames) appears as a jerking motion when the playhead is parked on the 3rd or 4th frame in the 3:2 cadence. If you intend to use pulldown footage like this in an offline process and you want to eturn this 29.97 frame per second to its 24 frame per second origin for film or HD distribution, you need to use Apple’s Cinema Tools, which is bundled with FCP 4, to remove the pulldown before you begin editing. Cinema Tools removes the pulldown and generates a true 24 frame per second video file that you can edit in a true 24 frame per second sequence. FCP 4 can actually re-insert the pulldown on the fly so that you can preview on your YUV monitor as you edit and playback on the Timeline through a normal DV deck or capture card. After you have completed the edit in the 24 frame per second sequence, you will generate the cut list or EDL to complete the return to the source format of film or HD. Panasonic AG-DVX100: The 24P DV Camera There is, in fact, a DV camera that generates 24 frame per second footage just like an HD camera. The Panasonic DVX100 24P DV camera uses the exact same two pulldown cadences to fit 24 frames into 29.97 frames that its big sister, the Panasonic Varicam HD camera, uses. There are actually two completely different pulldown cadences available in Panasonic 24P cameras. The first, standard 3:2 cadence, we have already encountered earlier in the section. The second cadence is the Advanced Pulldown. It uses a special pulldown cadence (characterized as 2:3:3:2). Unlike the standard pulldown, which needs Cinema Tools to ender out a 24 frame per second file to edit with in FCP (with the concomitant recompression using the DV codec we talked about in Chapter 11), FCP 4 can remove the Advanced Pulldown as the footage is being captured, generating a 24 frame per second clip whose linked capture file is, in actuality, a true 29.97 frame per second file. Although the captured file is only a normal 29.97 file, FCP 4 ‘tags’ the A frames of the cadence and then just disregards the extra fields that make up the pulldown. This not only saves time and drive space, since you don’t need to save a different version of the same file, it avoids a quality loss through recompression. To access this footage, ou simply set your Capture and Sequence presets in the Audio/Video Settings window to Advanced Pulldown Removal. If you have already captured such a clip without the proper Capture preset, you can also remove the Advanced Pulldown after capture from the Tools menu (Tools > Remove Advanced Pulldown). Why all this talk about pulldowns when our original question was about non-drop frame? Because pulldown footage cannot skip timecode numbers if the video and film/HD frames are to match up with timecode numbers. Rather than risk losing sync with audio and timecode, the Advanced Pulldown system always uses video with non-drop frame
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timecode and a 23.976 frame rate (commonly called ‘23.98’), an adjustment equivalent to the 29.97/30 discrepancy so that the sequence still stays true to the wall clock. Since the default Device Control preset for Firewire DV capture is Firewire DF, or drop frame, you particularly need to remember to switch this to Firewire NDF if you are using footage from the DVX100 with Advanced Pulldown. In addition, you need to add a special plugin for the DVX100 camera from the FCP4 installer CD, which addressed audio sync issues the camera’s footage might generate. Device Control Device control is simply any of a number of methods of having FCP and your Mac control your source deck(s) when you capture or output video and audio. There are two primary types of device control: Serial and Firewire. As we saw in Chapter 11, the big difference between these two is that serial device control is a frame accurate method that allows Insert Edits when using the Edit to Tape functions. Firewire is not considered to be frame accurate (because of variability in deck mechanisms) and as such can only be used for Assemble edits. Firewire device control is immediately available when you connect to a deck with the Firewire cable and go to Log and Capture or Edit to Tape. Deck control through Firewire is totally plug and play. It lets you access the timecode and capture from DV tapes with total ease, as indeed you will have been working with through the chapters of this entire book if you were using Firewire DV decks or cameras. Serial device control, on the other hand, is more advanced, and requires significantly more professional decks and capture devices. It usually uses an RS-422 or RS-232 9-Pin connector and either a special serial adapter for your Mac (usually installed to a USB or the modem port) or a dedicated connector on the capture device (such as Blackmagic’s Decklink integrated serial 9-pin connector). Increasingly, higher quality capture devices integrate serial device control into the card or converter box, since it is a given that frame accurate control of professional decks like analog and Digital Betacam will be necessary in most editing environments. When you search for an uncompressed capture device, make sure that you take into account whether device control is included or whether you will have to create workarounds to control your decks in capture and output. Serial device control generally works with two other forms of timecode: LTC and/or VITC. The critical difference between these has to do with where the timecode is on the videotape. LTC, or Longitudinal TimeCode, occupies its own dedicated track on the videotape. It is actually an audio pulse that is recorded on a special track on the tape in tandem with the video frames. VITC, or Vertical Interval TimeCode, is instead embedded in a scan line in the video frame, thus, not requiring an extra track on the videotape. Ultimately which you use matters less than if you have the correct Device Control preset selected prior, to operating Device Control.
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Appendix
B
Storage: RAM and Drive Solutions
There are two different categories of storage on your Macintosh: volatile and nonvolatile. Volatile refers to data storage that is lost when your Macintosh is powered down. Nonvolatile storage is saved until you reboot the computer. RAM, or random access memory, is volatile storage. Physical hard drives of whatever flavor are nonvolatile storage. Each has its place and function.
RAM: Random Access Memory RAM is the super-fast storage where your system software, applications, and opened files load up and operate. It is the fastest storage device in your system and is where the computer does most of its work. RAM is incredibly fast, which is why the active parts of the OSX System load up into and run from it at start up. RAM is also the storage space where applications live and perform their functions while you are running them. When you quit an application, it gives up the space it was using in RAM, making that space available for other applications. Typically, Macs ship stocked with 256 or 512 megabytes of RAM installed, but you can easily install up to 1.5, 2, or even 8 gigabytes, depending on the Macintosh model you own. RAM chips are sold in sticks of 128, 256, and 512 megabytes. Since you may only have three or four RAM slots, it behooves you to purchase larger sticks so that in future years you may add more as you need it (see Figure B-1). If your Mac has four RAM slots and you have four 128-megabyte sticks rather than one 512-megabyte chip, you will have to throw away 128 megabytes in order to add more RAM. In particular, the new G5 models require that you interleave, or install RAM in matched pairs of RAM chips. In purchasing additional RAM, be careful of a couple of considerations. First, make sure that you are purchasing RAM from a company that sells Macintosh-dedicated and guaranteed hardware. Apple uses a higher technical standard for RAM chips in its motherboard than manufacturers of PCs. The Mac OS tests all the RAM chips installed at start up. Cheap RAM chips which do not meet Apple’s specification are ignored. This is very much a good thing, since RAM chips are so critical to consistent, trouble-free performance. The Mac OS is just making sure that the installed RAM can actually keep up with it without making mistakes and crashing your system! If you get a lot of ‘unexpected quits’ and you determine that it isn’t system related, it could easily be bad RAM chips.
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RAM slots present on a G4 Power Mac.
Also, make sure that you purchase your RAM from a vendor that guarantees hasslefree, instant replacement of faulty RAM chips and a lifetime warranty. The last few years have seen a steady decline both in the price, quality, and reliability of RAM chips, and it’s not at all uncommon to get at least one faulty chip during your lifetime. This situation is very likely not the vendor’s fault, nor Apple’s, but some nameless company three steps up the marketing food chain. Just make sure that if you determine the chip to be faulty, you know the company will immediately send you a replacement. Not every company does this, and sticking with the ones that do will often be worth the extra few dollars you spend for the initial purchase.
How Much RAM? Obviously, more RAM is better than less; you can’t have too much RAM. The average system running Mac OSX uses anywhere from 70 to 100 megabytes of RAM just for itself. If ou had only 256 megabytes installed on your system, there would not be enough left to un FCP 4, which requires a minimum of 192 megabytes of RAM just for itself and really should have access to 256 megabytes of RAM or more. Although, FCP 4 might actually start up and begin running (due to Virtual Memory kicking in, a concept to be described shortly), you would very quickly run into severe performance issues.
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Mac OSX, in keeping with the UNIX system it is built on, no longer requires the user to set RAM allocations for each application manually. The Mac OS itself dynamically allocates RAM resources, meaning that it is constantly giving and taking RAM to and from active applications as necessary. When an application needs more RAM, the OS just doles it out, no more no less. All applications always have as much RAM as they need at any given moment. No more crashing the system because there is not enough RAM to go around! Unfortunately, this can also cause a problem. If you do not have as much real physical RAM as the applications you are running demand, the OS must somehow come up with the RAM resources. The OS performs what is called a “pageout,” to Virtual Memory. Virtual memory simulates the existence of more RAM in your system by using a hard drive as if it were RAM. Using virtual memory from ten-gigabytes of hard drive space provides a nearly unlimited amount of pseudo RAM. Instead of writing information into the real RAM chip, it pageouts, or writes out the information to a location on a locked-off section of a hard drive. The reason Apple instituted virtual memory into the Mac OS was to provide a great benefit to the user called protected memory. This simply means that the Mac OS itself is controlling each megabyte of RAM, rather than leaving such management to the applications actually using the RAM. If one application doesn’t play nicely or runs into trouble and decides to crash, it can only crash itself. Protected memory makes it impossible for one crashing application to affect others. Gone are the days when one crashing application locked up your entire machine. You can safely force quit (command-option-escape) any running application without crashing the whole system or any other application (see Figure B-2). Although you would lose any unsaved work in the application you are force quitting, you won’t lose everything else you were doing, and most likely won’t even have to reboot your machine. Mac OSX dynamic memory management makes this possible. This alone is enough to make most old-school Mac enthusiasts upgrade to Mac OSX! Why is virtual memory a bad idea then? RAM is, of necessity, very fast storage. The processor on the motherboard can access it at nearly instantaneous speeds. But your processor can work only as quickly as it is provided data, so the Macintosh is as slow as the slowest link in the chain. If the processor is receiving data from bona fide RAM chips, your Mac will work at its fastest. If, on the other hand, you are using virtual memory, your processor will at times be forced to receive information only at the dramatically lower speed of the hard drive. For instance, the theoretical data rate of a DDR 2100 RAM chip (the type of RAM chip used in the Power Mac Dual 867 MHz minitower) is an astounding 2.1 gigabytes per second. In contrast, the stock hard drive on your Macintosh might keep a sustained data rate of 6–16 megabytes per second at best. The operations that FCP 4 and the Mac OS need to perform at lightning speed occur rather more like molasses, and you immediately begin to see bad behavior. The importance of using real RAM in processor-intensive applications like nonlinear editors cannot be overemphasized. You will also find that other applications work much faster when you have plenty of extra RAM to go around. Take advantage of the rock-bottom prices on RAM and settle the situation correctly.
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Figure B-2 If an application doesn’t respond or locks up, you can “force quit” by pressing the Command Option and Escape keys together, then close the application you want to force quit.
Hard Drives In the category of nonvolatile storage, we have the large and sometimes confusing range of hard disk-based drive solutions. As nonvolatile storage, disk-based storage is capable of etaining data saved to it after your Macintosh is shut down. The manner and speed at which the computer actually accesses that data on the drive is what spawns the bewildering diversity of disk-based storage solutions. There are solutions that are appropriate for only one specific purpose, and there are good all-around solutions that function well under many circumstances. Since prices of hard drives can run the gamut from very inexpensive to ruinously expensive, it is important to understand what is necessary for the various types of DV editing with FCP 4 so that one gets the best deal available. Issues: Storage Space The two most important criteria with which to judge a disk drive are its storage size and its sustained data rate. Your own particular needs with regard to the first issue, the storage capacity, can be determined by considering the data rates we looked at in Appendix A. The data rate of the Apple DV codec is 3.6 megabytes per second, which generates roughly
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five minutes per gigabyte, (1,024 megabytes of drive storage per gigabyte and 3.6 mbs/ second × 60 seconds × 5 minutes = 1,080 megabytes). Avoiding drive fragmentation requires that we cut this number down to about 4.5 minutes to the gigabyte. Thus, a 60-gigabyte drive will hold just under 4 1/2 hours of DV codec video. Those working with uncompressed capture devices, on the other hand, have much higher data rates to go with the higher quality, so the drive resources also need to be much larger. A typical 8-bit uncompressed capture that has a data rate of about 28 MB per second will need over 1 1/2 gigs per minute, meaning that 60 gigs of drive space would really only effectively last about 30 minutes. And 10-bit uncompressed captures will devour even more drive space per second. As we shall see next, that single 60 gig drive will not suffice for uncompressed work for other reasons.
Issues: Drive Speed The second criterion to be evaluated is that of sustained data rates. As we will see, there are a number of different ways for a drive to transfer data back and forth between itself and the motherboard of the computer. These differing methods produce limitations on how fast a drive can deliver or accept data. No matter how fast the drive itself is, it can function only as quickly as the interface with the motherboard of the computer. The sustained data rate of a drive depends not only on the drive’s internal capabilities, but on the type of bus it uses to communicate with the processor/motherboard. This concept, referred to as bandwidth, is rather like saying that only so much water can pass through a hose at a time. The larger the hose, the more water can pass through per second. No matter how much water is on either side of the hose, only so much can travel through it per second. The larger the bandwidth of the drive interface, the higher the speed with which data can be passed through from one side to the other. First, we’ll look at the types of drive solutions by location, (removable, internal, and external), and then by standard (ATA, SCSI, and Firewire). In addition, for higher bitrate video, you need to investigate special software configured RAIDs.
Types of Drive by Location: Removable Disk
The first category of hard drives is that of removable disks. The lower-end scale of removable disk drives involves smaller and slower disk types such as the Iomega Zip disk (see Figure B-3). These disk types are valuable primarily for their ability to move small amounts of data quickly between machines. With a limit of less than a gigabyte of storage and a very slow data transfer rate of around 1.5 megabytes/second, the Iomega Zip disk and its colleagues are clearly not acceptable for use in the capture, playback, and storage of DV footage. Its use is generally limited to saving and backing up projects, documents, and other smaller relevant files.
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Figure B-3 Removable disks like the Iomega Zip disk, while unsuitable for capture, playback, and storage of DV footage, are good for moving small files around.
Types of Drive by Location: The Internal Drive
The next category of hard drive solutions is that of internal drives. The stock hard drive that came as the startup drive for your Macintosh is just such an internal drive (see Figure B-4). nternal drives may be of either ATA or SCSI, the two major standards we will describe, and their only real limitation is the amount of space inside your Macintosh. Adding internal drives, sometimes also referred to as “bare,” is the least expensive drive solution, as they equire only a connection cable, a few screws, and a power supply cable. They do require a little work on the user’s part, though, as they must be manually installed. Because you are actually seating the hard drive in the Macintosh’s belly, you can’t easily move it to another Macintosh should you need to do so. Installation and removal are easy, but not that easy. An internal drive is to be considered a fairly permanent item in the Macintosh. There is, naturally, a limit to the number of drives that can be internally installed. They are not covered here, because of the numerous different motherboards that
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Figure B-4 The stock hard drive that comes as the startup drive for a G5 Power Mac, an ATA drive, is considered an internal drive.
are approved for use with FCP 4. Check the documentation online at Apple’s website for customer-installable parts for your model Mac to find out how far you can go with selfinstalled internal drives. In particular, PowerBook users need to consult the Apple website, since adding a new hard drive is not considered a “customer installable part” on some newer models and might void your warranty! Types of Drive by Location: The External Drive
An external drive is simply an internal drive that has been prepackaged in a resilient casing with an input/output interface based on whichever standard it uses (see Figure B-5). One simply pulls it out of the box and connects it to the Macintosh with no muss or fuss. Of course, the user pays for this ease in price. Expect to see the price for the same amount of internal storage to double for an external drive solution put together for you by a retailer. Why choose an external drive rather than an internal? There actually are some benefits to using an external drive that may be less than obvious. As stated before, there is a limit to the number of internals one can fit in the Macintosh. For externals, there is only the limit of your storage standard, since some standards like ATA, which can have at most two drives
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Figure B-5 The LaCie D2 Firewire drive is an example of an external hard drive. The practical limit of 63 Firewire devices on a Macintosh makes the Firewire external drive a very flexible choice for Firewire DV storage solutions.
on one ATA bus, are more limited than others like SCSI and Firewire, which can have many more. If the standard you are using is nearly unlimited, so to will be the number of possible drives. Although the current Parallel-ATA drive standard does not exist as an external option (the Serial ATA standard included in the new Power Mac G5 will very likely support external drives), both SCSI and Firewire external drives are in heavy use. A Macintosh can technically connect to up to 63 Firewire drives at the same time. The larder knows no limit. External hard drives also may be considerably more convenient in terms of mobility. Although no hard drive is designed to withstand the heavy shocks of being banged around constantly, it can be moved much more easily than doing so with an internal. Moving an
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external hard drive to another system is as simple as unmounting the drive from the desktop (i.e., dragging the drive icon to the trash), and disconnecting and then reconnecting a cable. Moving an internal drive will require some surgery, regardless of how simple that surgery can be. Types of Drive by Standard There are four primary standards of connectivity with your Macintosh, each of which can be used for communication with drives. These are the input/output buses. But since each of these buses determines the standard for the drive we connect through it, it is necessary to look briefly at them. The four, in order of popular usage, are ATA, SCSI, Firewire, and USB (see Figure B-6). Each of these standards simply does one thing: it transfers data between two devices, such as your drive and your computer. The maximum data rate of the hard drive at the end of this connectivity is limited by the highest possible data rate that the standard supports. No drive or set of drives ever reaches the theoretical limits of its specifications, but some come very close. Our job is to look at what we need for DV editing with FCP 4 and see how far we can stretch our money. Types of Drive by Standard: ATA
The first and most popular standard is ATA. This is the most inexpensive drive solution on the market, offering enormous amounts of drive space for the lowest prices. As standards go, ATA is the best deal around for dollars per gigabyte of storage, and, with some reservations, it is a very suitable drive standard for Firewire DV editing.
Figure B-6 ATA, SCSI, Firewire, and USB are the four input/output buses that provide standard connectivity with a Macintosh.
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The ATA drive interface does, of course, have some limitations. The first and most serious limitation is that the cables that connect Parallel-ATA (the older ATA, pre-G5 standard) devices must be shorter than 14 inches. This means that there are no external ATA drive solutions. If all ATA drives must be internal, then there is a practical limit to the number of ATA drives one can have in one’s system. The new Power Mac G5 uses the Serial-ATA standard which will probably make external ATA solutions possible (see Figure B-7). Although the specifications for ATA data rates change with the technology faster than my printer can keep up with, generally speaking, the sustained data rate for an ATA individual drive (given the many different possible variations among drives, Macintosh units, and fragmentation) generally tops out at around 16 megabytes per second. Since the data rates required for Firewire DV editing are around 3.6 megabytes per second, the ATA standard is well within the range of suitability for use with FCP 4. The low cost and acceptable data rates make the internal ATA drive a logical choice for most Firewire DV editors, but far below the necessary sustained data rates for uncompressed 8-bit and 10-bit video.
Figure B-7 The ATA drive interface is a very popular drive solution, featuring the most affordable cost in terms of dollar per gigabyte of storage. Shown is the stock internal ATA drive supplied with a Power Mac G4 with a separate ATA drive added to the 14 inch Parallel-ATA cable.
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Types of Drive by Standard: SCSI
The next popular standard of connectivity for storage is SCSI, which stands for Small Computer Systems Interface. SCSI is a very old standard that has gone through many variations and contains several different levels of data rate and access. A few generations back in the history of the Macintosh, the SCSI interface was the standard for connection with drives of all kinds and a SCSI connector came built into the Macintosh’s motherboard. These days, the cost-effectiveness of the ATA standard has eliminated most of the lower-end usage of the SCSI standard. But SCSI has remained in higher-end applications, where its flexibility stands superior to ATA in every way. Higher end SCSI cards support extremely high data rates and are richly featured with options that uncompressed users will find necessary, such as the ability to string together up to thirty devices and general rocksolid reliability that only years of engineering can deliver (see Figure B-8). SCSI is far and away the most reliable and consistent format available. The catch, of course, is the price. Even bare internal SCSI drives can cost up to, and sometimes more than, three times as much as a comparably-sized ATA drive. And since the
Figure B-8 Today, SCSI (Small Computer Systems Interface) is mostly used in uncompressed editing systems where extremely high data rates are needed. To accomplish this, higher end SCSI PCI expansion cards that support these data rates are used with external SCSI drive solutions.
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Macintosh does not carry a built-in SCSI bus on its motherboard (as it does an ATA bus), an add-on PCI SCSI card must be figured into the price of the system, further driving up the cost of the storage solution. The cost of a lower-end 120-gigabyte solution using the SCSI interface could easily amount to $800, whereas a bare 120-gigabyte ATA drive could be had for around $100. Of course, the savings would appear later, because the SCSI interface easily accepts more and faster-configured drives, internally and externally, whereas the ATA bus is completely filled with only two. SCSI prices tend to fluctuate less and remain at a premium, partially because of their popularity in higher-end solutions and partially because of their special flexibility in terms of expansion and configuration. ATA drives continue to plunge as each new development in drive technology nudges up the data rates and storage capacity of the individual ATA drive. Where ATA is generally the drive of choice for Firewire DV editors, SCSI is the system of choice for higher-end production stations using uncompressed video and HD for which flexibility and the ability to handle extreme data rates are basic requirements. Types of Drive by Standard: Firewire
pecial mention must be made of an external solution that exists in the Macintosh market today, that of Firewire drives. Although we have discussed Firewire as a system of transferring digital video and audio, Firewire connectivity is really simply a data transfer system that is fundamentally similar in function to ATA and SCSI. Although radically different in design, the standard is simply a technical specification for transferring data between one end of a cable and the other. IEEE 1394 Firewire has a specified data rate ceiling of 400 megabits per second, yielding a theoretical maximum possible data rate of 50 megabytes per second. The recently implemented IEEE 1394b specification, referred to as “Firewire 800,” has a theoretical limit of 800 megabits per second, giving a potential data rate of up to 100 megabytes per second! Of course in practice, this is higher than the actual possible rates achievable with the present hardware available to use with the Firewire interface, and is particularly dependent on the drive inside the Firewire case. But a Firewire drive that uses the Oxford 911 chipset in its Firewire-to-ATA bridge and at least a 7,200 RPM ATA drive makes much more efficient use of the Firewire bus. When purchasing a Firewire 400 drive, ask to make sure it has the Oxford 911 chipset by name; Firewire drives that do not sport this chipset may be plagued by slower data rates, and, frankly, the cost difference is minimal. Once again, saving a few bucks will only result in headaches. As the Firewire 800 specification is further implemented in the industry, other Firewire bridges will be developed, as, for instance, the third generation of Oxford bridges, the Oxford 922, accesses the IEEE 1394b potential. Make sure you research the current capabilities before you purchase! Remember that neither the the Firewire 400 nor 800 bus will actually give you such data rates if the drives in the Firewire drive case are not at least as fast! It will usually take a RAID (to be discussed subsequently) to even approach these high data rates.
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High data rates are not the only bonus conferred by the Firewire interface standard. Firewire shares and expands the connectivity gains inherent in the SCSI standard and allows for long cable lengths, enabling it as an external solution. Devices can be daisychained, allowing up to 63 possible devices on the Firewire bus. As another bonus, Firewire connectivity confers the ability to hot-plug Firewire devices. Hot-plugging means the user can disconnect a device while the computer is still running, something potentially disastrous for either ATA or SCSI devices. In reality, there is no such thing as a “Firewire drive.” Firewire drives are basically external drive boxes containing an ATA drive and a bridge that converts the Firewire data stream to and from the ATA data stream (the Oxford 911 and 922 chipset “Firewire-to-ATA bridge” described above is such a bridge) (see Figure B-9). Thus, the cost of the Firewire drive is determined by the low price of the ATA drive, the increasingly low price of the ATA-Firewire conversion bridge, and the box that holds it all together. There are several doit-yourself kits on the market that allow you to purchase and install your own drive for use in a Firewire case. Just remember that the drive you install in the case is the weakest link in
Figure B-9 Firewire drives suitable for Firewire DV editing consist of an external drive enclosure housing an ATA drive of at least 7,200 RPMs and a Firewire-to-ATA bridge with the Oxford 911 or 922 chipset that converts the Firewire data stream to and from the ATA data stream.
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the chain. A slow drive in a fast Firewire chain equals a slow Firewire drive. Make sure the drive inside the Firewire case is at least 7,200 RPM. Given the benefits of using the Firewire interface for storage, you may not want to use anything else for Firewire DV editing purposes. The convenience, portability, and rich feature set of Firewire drives makes them very attractive, and their reliance on very inexpensive drives makes them a cost-effective solution. Are there any problems to consider? Well, Apple Computer has never formally approved of Firewire drives for use as a Scratch Disk in FCP. One would assume this is because Apple can’t guarantee that everyone will do the right thing and use the right configuration, namely: fast bridge (such as the Oxford 911 or 922) and a fast drive (ATA100 and 7,200 RPM or faster). In practice, a correctly configured Firewire drive that meets these specification generally proves to be very reliable for Firewire DV Scratch Disks. Types of Drive by Standard: USB
The final standard for connectivity in data transfer is that of the universal serial bus (USB). The USB standard delivers a very low data rate that does not exceed 1.5 megabytes per second. While this data rate is acceptable for less-intensive uses such as floppy disks and the omega Zip drive, it is far below what is needed for editing with the DV codec and FCP 4. The USB standard is not recommended for editing purposes, although it has its uses elsewhere in the Macintosh system for connecting things like keyboard/mice, printers, and scanners (see Figure B-10). The next generation of USB, USB 2.0, sports a radically faster data rate, one that is theoretically as fast as or faster than Firewire! It may come to pass that in the future, the USB 2.0 standard becomes a staple for DV editors. Unfortunately, USB interconnectivity
Figure B-10 USB, or universal serial bus, delivers a data rate that does not exceed 1.5 megabytes per second and is not recommended for editing purposes other than for archival of project files. USB 2.0, though supporting faster data rates, is not a common interface yet on DV decks and cameras.
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is a rare feature in the DV cameras that are half of the Firewire DV editing revolution, and as such, USB 2.0 does not appear to be a good idea for committed editors looking to make a solid investment. Firewire drives will generally be a smarter choice wherever a choice is to be made between the two, if for no other reason than built-in support and widespread compatibility.
The Input and Output Buses The input and output buses of the Macintosh constitute the way in which it receives and delivers data to and from the outside world and other parts of the Macintosh. There are several such buses, and each one is dedicated to a specific task. The primary input/output buses are: AGP, PCI, ATA, SCSI, Firewire, and USB. The AGP–Accelerated Graphics Port The accelerated graphics port (AGP) is a dedicated expansion slot on the motherboard of the Macintosh. It is a very high-speed interface that is designed to communicate with the primary video graphics card controlling the computer monitor you use with your Macintosh (see Figure B-11). The Macintosh comes standard with one such video card in the AGP slot. The AGP card is also the engine that drives the high-intensity graphics requisite for the proper functioning of FCP 4 and other applications. Mac OS 10.2 and above are optimized to offer massive performance increases based on the presence of the AGP slot and video card. The more video RAM built in to the AGP card, the better the performance you will see on your Mac and in FCP 4. In particular, this will give you fantastic boosts in Realtime performance. It should be noted that many video cards are not AGP cards and that such cards will not fit in the AGP slot. Attempts to do so will damage the card, the motherboard, or both. Make sure you are buying the appropriate card for your needs when shopping for a new video card. The PCI–Peripheral Component Interconnect The second bus is the peripheral component interconnect (PCI) bus. These are the expansion slots lined up next to the AGP slot on the motherboard. Different models of the Macintosh include different numbers of PCI slots, from an all-time high of six slots in the old Power Mac 9500/9600 (see Figure B-12). PCI slots are one of the most useful items on the Macintosh motherboard, because they allow the user to easily install a completely customizable set of input and output devices such as SCSI and ATA expansion cards, extra video cards for multiple monitor support, and a host of other third-party items like professional audio cards and video capture cards, the list of which grows by the hour.
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Figure B-11 Located on the motherboard of desktop Power Macs, the accelerated graphics port (AGP) is a dedicated expansion slot with a high-speed interface designed to communicate with the primary video graphics card controlling your computer monitor.
One of the most appealing things about the AGP and PCI buses is that, in contrast to their counterparts on the PC side, they are completely plug-and-play compatible. This means that although you may have to install a software driver of some kind, you do not have to worry about hardware conflicts and addresses as you would with a PC. The Macintosh hardware and software is able to locate and work with AGP and PCI expansion cards with no fuss, provided the proper software drivers are installed. PC users who discover this are usually amazed at the ease of installation they encounter in the Macintosh, compared with the nightmare of IRQ settings and hardware conflicts of other operating softwares. With the new PowerMac G5s, there is no longer a build-to-order SCSI option, so you must install both PCI SCSI card and drives yourself. Once again, installing and utilizing a SCSI card is painlessly simple. Most SCSI cards can service SCSI drives inside the Macintosh as well as external SCSI devices simultaneously, making for a uniquely flexible solution. And the SCSI standard is not limited to drives. Items like scanners, archival data tape backup units, and CD or DVD burners are all available with SCSI connectivity.
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Figure B-12 The peripheral component interconnect (PCI) bus, located next to the AGP slot on the motherboard of a Power Mac. Pictured are the four PCI slots available on a G5 Power Mac. PCI slots allow for a completely customizable set of input and output devices.
ATA expansion cards are also available that allow users to add more than the previously stated limit of two ATA drives of some Macintoshes. ATA expansion cards are very inexpensive compared with SCSI cards and may prove the best expansion alternative for lowend users looking for more internal drive capacity. In addition, ATA 133 PCI controller cards will also enable you to use ATA drives with capacities larger than 136 gigs, which is the limit for ATA drives running off the stock ATA bus. How many drives you can install internally depends on your particular Mac model. Indeed, the new G5s only have space for two internal drives, and one must be your start up drive! Beyond the SCSI and ATA expansion possibilities lies a range of third-party cards, each of which performs a specific task. Extra video cards for multiple monitor support are inexpensive and painless, most of them not even requiring the installation of software drivers. Both the AGP and PCI slots are situated so that the connector side of the card installed in the slot will peek out of the rear of the machine, making connections to computer monitors and external hard drives a snap. A final note on PCI slots is that the new PowerMac G5 desktop models have a new PCI standard called PCI-X, a new architecture that promises exponential speed boosts. Although PCI-X offers a certain amount of backwards compatibility, you need to check
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with the manufacturer before trying to use older cards in the newer slots. You don’t want to damage your $2,000 motherboard trying to salvage a $50 video card you only use for a second computer monitor!
RAIDS and You What is a RAID? RAID stands for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks. A RAID is a system where a group of two or more disks is tied together by formatting software such that they appear as a single logical volume, essentially making one large drive from several individual drives. The formatting software marries the multiple drives into an array. When your Mac writes files to the RAID, it believes it is writing to a single volume. It must be stated before going further that there is more than one type of RAID. There are several different levels of RAID. Of the different levels, the three that are most commonly used for video editing are RAID-0, RAID-1, and RAID-10 (also called RAID 1/0). Each level has a specific use and function.
RAID-0 RAID-0 is used to increase read and write speeds to your capture drives when editing video with very high data rates. Uncompressed capture, with either 8- or 10-bit, will generally equire a RAID-0 to match the huge data rates they generate. The way that a RAID-0 works is this: When your drive tries to write a file, it is slowed down by the fact that a single drive can write a single bit of data at a time. However, when you stripe more than one drive together into a single RAID-0 volume, there will always be a drive ready to accept and write data, no matter whether another drive in the RAID is busy or not. Your drive system can therefore write data to disk as fast as it is handed to it through the SCSI, ATA, or Firewire bus and never has to wait until the current piece of data is written or read. Think about it like this. If you have to mow a rather large lawn, it will take a very long time. If, on the other hand, your next door neighbor brings his lawn mower over, you would probably finish the same yard in half the same. Get a third neighbor over, and it will take even less time. By the same token, a single drive can only accept and write a certain amount of data at a time. But three drives striped together as a single volume can write much more data per second by divvying up the writing tasks. As such, you can get very high throughput by striping together drives. In fact, digital video editors have been using RAID-0s since the early days of digital video editing. RAID-0s are easy enough to construct, particularly since Apple Disk Utility, the free formatting software Apple includes in the Mac OSX Utility folder, contains RAID formatting software (see Figure B-13). RAIDs don’t have to be SCSI drives, though most professional suites use them; you can build and format a RAID with ATA drives installed internally with a PCI ATA expansion card, or even Firewire drives. If you intend to put a RAID together, you will want to use matched drive
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Figure B-13 Apple Disk Utility, included in the Utilities folder of Mac OSX software, contains RAID formatting software. Disk Utility streamlines the process of setting up RAID-0.
specifications that are the exact same model (say, for instance, 4 Seagate Barracuda 7,200 RPM drives), and, in general, you should use drives with the same amount of use and wear (four new drives rather than three new and one harvested from another machine). Using a Firewire drive is potentially not such a great idea, since Firewire drives have a tendency to go into light sleep modes periodically and their performance can vary more than the same drive would if installed internally on the ATA bus. This can be critical because a RAID requires all of its drives to perform in tandem when any of them are being accessed. The reason its speeds are increased is because it is writing partial data to each of the individual drives simultaneously. This concept must also be kept in mind because of the element of risk involved. It is a calculated risk that we use hard drives at all. All hard drives will eventually fail—they are physical devices. The chances of having a hard drive physically fail is pretty low and, in general, it’s not something you have to agonize over. The problem with RAIDs is that you
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double, triple, quadruple, and so on your odds when you stripe your data across multiple drives. If one goes down, you lose everything on all of them. But if you need the ability to use high data rates, you have to take the risk as well. RAID-1 A RAID-1 is very different. Its primary use is in keeping a rock solid backup. When you have a RAID-1 volume, anything you write to one volume is also duplicated to the other olume. Its concern is not for increasing data rates, and, in fact, the drives are not striped together in that relationship. Instead, the drives are mirrored such that one drive is an exact duplicate of the other. In critical situations, if one drive fails, the other mirror drive is available. RAID-1s are frequently used in servers that cannot afford downtime due to individual drive failures. They are also very useful for motion graphics professionals who spend most of their time generating media that doesn’t have timecode. While you could recapture video from tape to resurrect a project if your scratch disk failed, items like QuickTime movies rendered out of Adobe After Effects of Pinnacle Commotion Pro have no such backup options. RAID-10 or RAID-1/0 A RAID-10 is a combination of RAID levels 1 and 0. It uses multiple drives striped together as in RAID-0 to increase data throughput, enabling capture of high data rate material such as uncompressed video. It also uses RAID-1 mirroring to duplicate drives simultaneously so that anything written to the high speed RAID is duplicated to the other high speed RAID. This is, without doubt, the safest way to work if you have to work with RAID-0 striping. Of course, this requires more drives simply for duplication purposes. The minimum number of drives for RAID-0 and RAID-1 are two drives, but the minimum number of drives for a RAID-10 is four, since you would be mirroring a RAID-0 volume. RAID-10 also requires that you purchase third party formatting software, since Apple’s Disk Utility only performs striping and mirroring RAID formatting.
Checking the Pieces: The Apple System Profiler To check on almost everything relating to your Macintosh’s hardware and software, access the Apple System Profiler. In Macintosh OSX, the Apple System Profiler is hidden away in the Utilities folder of the Applications Folder. The Apple System Profiler is a little application that gives the hardware and software status of your entire system at that moment. It is an excellent tool for quickly checking whether or not a device is present and doing what it should be doing (see Figure B-14). The first tab of the Apple System Profiler shows the System Profile. It describes the version of the currently loaded system software, the startup drive and its bus and address, the
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Figure B-14 Apple System Profiler, located in the Utilities folder of the Applications folder in Mac OSX, acts as a troubleshooting tool in that it displays the present hardware and software status of your entire system.
amount of installed RAM and its distribution amongst the RAM slots, etc. It describes the major areas of your system all on one tab. The second tab, Devices and Volumes, is a detailed map of all hardware components currently connected to your system. Each bus is represented, along with a hierarchical chart of what is connected to each bus and the settings, if any, of the device or volume at the location. The next two tabs give a detailed listing of all the Frameworks and Extensions in your Macintosh OSX System. Frameworks and Extensions are special collections of files that drive the operating system’s components, many of which are installed with third party software and hardware. The Applications tab displays every application program on your system. This can include many smaller applications that are included in the installed package of larger application sets. In general, you should stay out of your Mac OSX System folder and allow it to keep its own house clean. The usefulness of the Apple System Profiler is that if you do run into trouble at some point down the line, you will be able to evaluate what software is installed to root out the issue. In addition to being informative to the user, the Apple System Profiler is an invaluable tool for Technical Support or long-distance troubleshooting. You can save a copy of your
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Apple System Profiler as a report to print out or e-mail to a troubleshooter, eliminating the need for the troubleshooter to be present to look at your system. Simply glancing through the Apple System Profiler and looking for known issues can solve many problems, both hardware and software.
Regular Operating System Maintenance: The Care and Feeding of a Jungle Cat our Macintosh is a computer, and computers, like all cats, tend to bite you when you efuse to pay attention to them. No matter how much buzz you hear about systems that never have to be shut down and never fail, you just know that your experience will not be like that. You are correct; it won’t be, unless you regularly follow some maintenance procedures to make sure the computer is keeping its nose clean. But what maintenance is proper and when should you do it? Apple’s own resources are elatively vague about the periodic maintenance techniques that will keep the whole system happy. Partially, this is because the Mac OS does many of the tasks. Mac OSX is built on a UNIX system that is programmed to clean up, repair, and maintain itself periodically. It also hides many of the files that are actually doing the work, so that you can’t “see” them in the GUI (Graphic User Interface, the Desktop, and windows you use) even if you could figure out what to do with them in the first place (the short answer is absolutely nothing). To make matters more confusing, OSX uses file permissions, essentially allowing only certain users access to certain files. Is there anything you can to do to keep your system happy? Yes, you still have to do egular maintenance to keep things in order. The good news is that this is very simple and that much of it can be automated, except in extreme situations. What follows is a good system to follow on a weekly basis to make your editing station bulletproof, or at least easy to estore in case disaster strikes. Repair Permissions UNIX ushers in a whole new idea for old-school Mac users: permissions. With UNIX, all files and folder have access permissions determining whether a user can read and/or modify a file or folder. This is very secure, and is one of the reasons that multi-user logins in OSX actually work. Unfortunately, this can be confusing for the user who is trying to clean up their system or improve performance. A ‘User’ isn’t always your weird friend who accesses the same machine you do. In fact, the operating system itself is a user. A whole host of users and groups is acting in the background to make sure that any part of the system that needs access to any file or folder can get it when necessary. Unfortunately for us, these permissions operate transparently. When permissions are set incorrectly or corrupt, the machine doesn’t die, it just gets weird. You may hear your hard drive start spinning at top speed when the machine is doing nothing. You may
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suddenly be locked out of hard drive directories or unable to start certain applications, and then tomorrow have access to them again. Most importantly, your machine will slow down dramatically. To avoid this, you want to periodically repair permissions. Go to the Utilities Folder in the Applications Folder on your System drive. Locate and start up the Disk Utility application. On the left, select your Mac OSX system partition (where the System and the User folder are located), click the First Aid tab and choose Repair Permissions. You can only repair permissions on the partition you are booted from, and only if it is a true Mac OSX boot partition (it will appear to repair partitions you aren’t booted to, but after the long wait you will find that nothing was repaired). After initiating a “Repair Permissions” action, get some coffee, walk the dog; this process takes a long time (10–15 minutes, give or take a few). Obviously, you can’t repair permissions on an OS9-only or non-system partition, since permissions affected by this tool only exist on a Mac OSX partition. Although files on removable and other drives in your machine can have permissions, Repair Permissions only works on Apple-installed or configured files; it doesn’t touch files or folders it didn’t create, so you don’t have to worry about it messing up permissions of your personal stuff. As a side note, it is a good idea to eliminate the option of permissions on extra media volumes you are using for storage rather than system/applications (don’t ever do this to any volume or partition that has a Mac OSX system installed, only to media and scratch disk volumes!). You can easily accomplish this by selecting a volume or partition and hitting Command-I, for Get Info. Open the Ownership and Permissions widget and look to the bottom for the “Ignore Ownership on this volume” checkbox (see Figure B-15). Check it and now all files created there will always be read-and-write accessible to anyone. This is particularly important for Firewire hard drives that you may be using on several different systems with different users accessing the same media. Do Repair Permissions at least once a week if you use your machine a lot (5+ hours per day). You will likely see a tremendous speed boost the first time you do this and that speed will stay consistent if you regularly repair them. It’s also a good idea to repair them anytime you install any applications, since that’s frequently a time when permissions get misassigned. Either way, you cannot do damage repairing permissions, so once a week is a good idea. Jaguar 10.2 and Single User Mode The way the Mac OSX file system works, you can’t actually run any sort of disk utility on a disk partition while booted up to that partition. If you open up the Disk Utility we just used, your drives and partitions are listed on the left side of the window. If you select your Mac OSX boot partition from the list and then click on the First Aid tab, you’ll see that the Verify and Repair Disk tabs are grayed. Although you can Verify and Repair Disk for any partitions or volumes that are not the current boot partition, you can’t repair a partition you are running from. That makes fixing disk problems difficult, if not impossible, if you only have one boot partition with both OSX and OS9 installed there. Booting from a CD to repair disks is so painfully slow with OSX that there must be a better way.
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Figure B-15 Eliminate the option of permissions on any volume or partition not containing a Mac OSX system folder or Applications folder by selecting “Ignore Ownership on this volume,” located in the Ownership and Permissions section within the Get Info dialog box for that particular volume or partition.
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Of course, there is. Under Jaguar Mac OS 10.2, Apple allows you to enter a mode called “Single User Mode” (for Panther users, hold off for the following paragraph!). Restart your machine and as soon as you hear the ‘bong’, hold down the Command-s keys. Continue holding them down until you see some rather obnoxious looking old ASCII text go streaming down the screen, then release the keys. This text means the Macintosh is booted up outside the Mac OSX GUI and can directly perform file system repairs. Once you get to a cursor prompt (a solid white box that doesn’t blink), type in the following without quotes, “fsck -y” (note the blank space before the “-y”). All this means in code is “File System Check; yes-repair any problems you find.” It will immediately start running through your boot partition looking for and correcting any problems. This can take a while; the Mac OSX file system has tens of thousands of files. When it is finished checking the disk, it will give you a one-line report. If it found problems, it will state “Disk X has been modified.” If no problems were found, it will state “Disk X appears to be OK.” If you get the “… modified” statement, run “fsck -y” again repeatedly until you get the “… OK” statement. I have seen this process take up to four times in a system with serious problems. When you get the “… OK” message, type without quotes, “Reboot -n.” This will restart your machine (the “-n” is to tell the system not to perform a certain memory operation) and return you to the User GUI interface you know and love. Perform this once a week, or whenever you smell trouble. It can’t hurt you and it might help catch a problem before the problem catches you. In particular, you need to perform this file system check if you ever have to force-restart your Macintosh without shutting it down properly; i.e. complete system lockups. This is a time when directories and temporary files commonly corrupt. Panther 10.3 and Safe Mode If you are running Panther Mac OS 10.3, you may find that this previous ‘fsck -y’ method does not work. This is because Panther, by default, uses a feature called journaling. Journaling is an old UNIX feature in which the operating system is constantly taking notes about the data on your drive. In the event of catastrophes like power outages and other sudden disasters where data might be corrupted, journaling may make recovering the data on the drive easier. The problem with this scenario is that journaling makes it difficult to perform fsck -y operations. You could force the Single User Mode to do it, but this is not a good idea. Instead, you can use the Safe Mode to perform the same fsck -y operation. To initiate Safe Mode, you need to reboot your Macintosh, this time holding down the Shift key throughout the boot process, very similar to the old-world Mac OS version of starting up with Extensions Disabled. Indeed, Safe Mode does disable many of the essential OS files in the Mac OSX system. Safe Mode is supposed to be used to bypass them if you have installed
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software that is conflicting with your system and making it impossible to boot up completely. ou will know that Safe Mode has been invoked because the boot screen will include this phrase in the status box. The bonus of booting into Safe Mode is that it forces a background fsck -y prior to eaching the login screen. Because Panther’s boot process is remarkably faster than previous operating systems, this actually speeds things up enormously. Remember that after completing the boot into Safe Mode, you need to reboot normally so that the Mac OS has access to all the files in the System again. You might even want to run the Safe Mode boot a couple of times, since you can’t actually see the file modifications it is making (if it indeed found anything wrong) as you would have in Single User Mode. In conclusion, it should be remarked that anytime your Macintosh crashes hard enough to require a complete reboot (not restarting an application, but locking up so you have to force it to manually restart), you should run the Single User or Safe Mode reboots. These are times when files get corrupted and cause problems that don’t crop up for weeks or more. The process isn’t difficult or time-consuming and it will save you headaches.
When Single User or Safe Mode Doesn’t Fix It On rare occasions, your system may be so completely messed up that Single User or Safe Mode won’t clear the problem even after repeated doses. In that case, you want to get out our Mac OSX installer CD and boot up from it in the time-honored method of restarting and holding down the C key. When booted to the Apple CD, look under the Apple Menu, and access the Run Disk Utility option. When Disk Utility opens, run the First Aid tab for Repair Disk and Repair Permissions for all volumes and partitions until they come clean. Then reboot and see if the problems have cleared up. There have been rare instances where even running Repair Disk while booted from the Apple CDs did not clear up serious problems. On such occasions, it may be necessary to invest in some form of third party disk maintenance software. Alsoft’s DiskWarrior is a great example; it can rebuild damaged disk directory that Apple’s tools can’t correct (see Figure B-16). I have seen it pull both Mac OSX boot partitions and Firewire drive partitions back from the dead when no other software tools could rescue them.
Cleaning House UNIX is unique in that it performs its own system maintenance on a regular basis without prompting. Although it isn’t going to fix any disk-related trouble for you, it does do things like dump temporary cache files and logs that can get bloated when the system doesn’t throw them out as it should. But there’s a catch, of course. UNIX only performs these activities in the wee hours of the morning (when it assumes all the IT people are home and no one needs the processor or the files it will be doctoring). There are daily, weekly, and monthly tasks that UNIX schedules for these early morning hours.
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Figure B-16 Alsoft’s DiskWarrior is a third party disk maintenance software that can rebuild a damaged disk directory that Single User Mode or Disk Utility can’t correct.
Many folks, especially those from pre-OSX days and PowerBook owners, shut their systems down when they are finished working. Mac OS 9 liked a regular reboot anyway, and not everyone is willing to leave a machine on twenty-four hours a day. I’m not going to discuss those merits here; that’s your choice as a machine owner. But you have to know that the UNIX auto-cleaning isn’t going to happen if your machine is off or asleep. There is a way to beat this. Although you could figure out the command line code to perform these actions, it’s easier to find one of the nice shareware apps out there that give you a GUI interface to accomplish the same thing. Go to the Apple website and investigate the Mac OSX page for links to freeware and shareware applications that will perform these actions for you. In particular, check out MacJanitor from Brian Hill Software, which gives a nice, simple push-button interface to perform each of these UNIX cleanup tasks whenever you feel like it (see Figure B-17). Basically, you can have MacJanitor initiate the UNIX cleanup scripts for you at the push of a button, rather than have to type in code or leave your machine on all the time. And MacJanitor, as of this writing, is free! Another great tool to check out for regular maintenance is Cache Out X, from NoName Scriptware. It performs a bit of maintenance that MacJanitor leaves out. Mac OSX,
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Figure B-17 MacJanitor, from Brian Hill Software, is a free shareware application that gives a nice, simple push-button interface to perform UNIX auto-cleanup system maintenance tasks on Macs that are turned off during the night.
in normal operation, creates many different ‘temp’ files (see Figure B-18). These files are intended to only be in existence for the short time they are in use, thus temp, or temporary. However, sometimes the applications that create them forget to delete them after they are no longer useful. This can lead to unexplainable missing disk space and even constant crashing. Because temp and cache files are often invisible, there is no easy way to find them and delete them. Applications like Cache Out X (and there are a few others, though not all of them are completely free!), simply delete all cache files they find. Generally, this requires a restart of the Macintosh, because they also clear out cache and temp files for the operating system itself. This doesn’t hurt your system; it may help it in fact, because it can catch and delete corrupt temp files before they become a problem to your system. Backing Up Your System Gone are the days of the easily-copied System Folder. In the previous Mac OS 9, you could back up your system with a single drag-and-drop of a folder. You could create a bootable backup CD by dragging one group of folders into Toast. Mac OSX, on the other hand, has
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Figure B-18 Cache Out X, from NoName Scriptware, is a shareware application that deletes cache files, temp files, and swapfiles from the operating system. By doing so, it recovers valuable disk space on your Macintosh and improves system stability.
many little invisible files and structures that don’t copy over when you drag a volume’s contents. This means you can back up normal data with no problems, but you can’t just duplicate your drive by dragging and dropping it. There is, thankfully, at least one way to safely back up a partition these days, using one of the coolest shareware applications out there today: Carbon Copy Cloner. Carbon Copy Cloner is an application created by Mike Bombich that actually clones one partition onto another partition (see Figure B-19). The clone carries all those invisible files and makes a perfect duplicate of the original partition that is even bootable. (Although most of your System Preferences get reset; they will need to be visited again when you boot to that cloned partition.) It’s very handy; you will use it more than once if you try it. If you download this software, pay the man. We have saved many gray hairs with this simple GUI interface application. Here’s the method you can use for a regular, bulletproof backup. First, run all the previously described maintenance routines, such as repairing permissions and single user mode.
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Figure B-19 Carbon Copy Cloner, by Bombich Software, enables you to safely back up a partition to another partition or hard drive. It copies all the system files necessary, maintaining Unix permissions and ownership, to create a bootable backup of your drive.
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You don’t want to clone a start up partition that has problems! Then, get a small, cheap, dedicated Firewire hard drive and hook it up to your system. Use it with Carbon Copy Cloner for a regular, portable high-speed backup. In the Carbon Copy Cloner Preferences, you can even set the application to schedule this cloning to occur when you are sleeping and to perform sync actions that don’t overwrite data you want to keep continuous on your backup drive. Do this process once a week. If your system ever goes south at a bad time, you can just boot to the backup Firewire drive and get your work done until you can take the time to run Disk Repair and Single User Mode and let them do their jobs. This has allowed me to hit deadlines with work when one of my machines decided to behave badly at a clutch moment. If you have several systems like I do, you can partition this backup Firewire drive such that there is a different backup partition for each computer. When you want to back up a particular computer, plug the Firewire drive in to mount the partitions, start up Carbon Copy Cloner, and set it to clone to the partition that you dedicate to that computer. Since you are cloning to one of several partitions on the drive, you won’t affect the other backup partitions. This is a good regimen; it will keep downtime to a minimum even if you do run into problems. Cloning your start up drive is a particularly good idea when you go to upgrade your operating system (say, for instance, from 10.2 to 10.3) or when upgrading important software (like FCP 4 to FCP 4.1). Since third-party drivers sometimes don’t completely jibe with new operating systems, it can be very handy to have your old system sitting on a bootable firewire drive in case your new system doesn’t work. Conclusion This is not the absolute last word in Mac maintenance, but it’s enough to keep your system in good working order and at its best performance level. Do these things consistently and regularly, and even if you do rarely run into problems, at least they won’t keep you from working. Schedule your maintenance so that it happens while you are sleeping or otherwise occupied, so that you don’t waste half your workday doing something the machine can do by itself just as well. You want to keep the thing working without sacrificing editing time, so be realistic; schedule your maintenance and then actually do it.
Backing Up to CD-Rs All new Macintoshes ship with either a CD or DVD burner. You can use a single CD-R optical disk to back up in excess of 600 copies of your project. The bonus is that CDs are far cheaper and more reliable than floppy, zip, and other removable disks as long as you don’t scratch the shiny side. You can use either Apple Disk Copy/disk utility application in your Utilities folder or a third party application such as Roxio’s Toast to burn the folder
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holding the project file. Although Toast costs a little extra, you will find that it is very useful for other functionality, such as burning VideoCD and DVD disks, as well as audio CDs and data disks. Regardless of which you choose, simply change the name of the project folder on our desktop to the date and time each time you burn a copy of it. After doing this a couple of times per edit session, you will end up with an imperishable copy of your project as it was at every stage of your edit. If you need to return to your project at any stage of its development, you can simply pop the CD in, grab the appropriate folder, and launch it. This method, combined with the Autosave Vault feature addressed in the Preferences, is the best way to work for those who don’t want to have to redo entire projects after an accident.
Using Apple Disk Copy For Jaguar 10.2
To burn a copy of this project folder using Disk Copy (see Figure B-20), start the Disk Copy application (found in the Utilities Folder in the Applications Folder of your Macintosh hard drive), then choose New>Image from Folder or Volume from the File drop-down menu. In the dialog box, choose Desktop from the Where drop-down tab, then find and double-click the project folder you want to back up. This will lead to a new dialog box wherein you are asked to save the disk image you will be burning. Choose Desktop as the location again, select “compressed” from the ‘image format’ choice bar, and Save. Once the image has been saved, return to the File menu and choose “Burn Image.” In the dialog box, select the image you just created. When you select it and choose OK, you will be given the option of making this a “multi-session” CD by selecting “Allow Additional Burns” (see Figure B-21). A multi-session CD allows you
Figure B-20 Selecting “Allow Additional Burns” in Disk Copy allows you to burn a multisession CD when you back up your project files on a regular basis.
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to burn additional images to the CD-R after the first one. If you do not make it a multisession CD, you will have to burn a fresh CD every time you go to back up your project. If you choose multi-session, you can probably fit nearly six hundred backups on one 700 MB CD-R! For Panther 10.3
Panther moved the separate application Disk Copy into the larger Disk Utility application. To perform the previous CD burn in Panther, start the Disk Utility application. First, go to the Images drop-down menu and choose New > Image from Folder (see Figure B-22). Choose the folder of project files or whatever you are backing up, then select a location for Disk Utility to save the disk image (you can compress the image if you want to save some space and don’t mind waiting for the image to decompress after you retrieve it from the subsequently burned CD). After the image has been created, it will appear in the left of the Disk Utility window. Simply select it and hit the Burn button (see Figure B-23). Make sure that you have inserted a burnable CD or DVD, then also make sure to select Leave Disk Appendable. From there, it’s the same operation as with Jaguar.
Figure B-21 The Disk Copy Process is a little different under Panther, because Disk Copy is now a part of Disk Utility. Still, the process allows you to make multi-session CDs just as before.
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Figure B-22 dialog box.
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Select the new image, hit the Burn button and then configure the Burn
Figure B-23 After the image has been created, it will appear in the left of the Disk Utility window. Simply select it and hit the Burn button.
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Using Roxio Toast If you already own Roxio Toast, you may want to use it instead. The setup for burning is much more streamlined and easy. In addition to the backups you can perform like we describe here, Roxio Toast adds a great deal of flexibility that will come in handy as you start to send your productions out into the world (see Figure B-24). Toast can burn special VCDs (video compact disks, that can play back in most consumer DVD players), audio CDs, and data CDs of all types. It’s even a snap to duplicate the homemade DVDs you produce in iDVD and DVD Studio Pro without having to remaster them from the original projects! To back up your project folder in Toast, start up the application. (When it is running, you will see the Toast window.) Make sure that Data is selected in the buttons in the top
Figure B-24 of flexibility.
In addition to the backups you can perform, Roxio Toast adds a great deal
458
Editing with Final Cut Pro 4
of the window, as opposed to the Audio, Copy, and Other buttons. Grab the project folder off of the Desktop and drop it into this window. A CD will appear in the window. Its name will be whatever the name of the folder was. If you want to change this name, say, for instance, to the date and time of the burn, just single-click this name and change it. Double-click the CD icon in the Toast window and choose Use Empty Desktop Database for added security, since Toast actually copies your Mac OS desktop database to the CD unless you tell it not to! As a last step, click the triangle to see the contents of the CD. Select the file named “DS_Store” and click the Remove button at the bottom of the window. This file, if present, can in some instances cause verification errors after the burn is complete. Once you have this set, insert a blank CD-R. Click the Record button. After a moment, you will enter a final dialog box in which you select the speed and tell Toast how to burn the CD. Generally, burning at a speed other than the fastest possible leads to fewer coasters; waste a few extra seconds and you may end up with fewer coasters. Select Make ession rather than Make Disk to make this a multi-session CD as described in the previous section. When you choose Make Session, the burn will begin. After it is complete, make sure ou Verify the disk. You want to know if there is any chance of corrupted data on the disk. A backup CD isn’t worth much if the data can’t be used! After the Verification, hit Eject and your back up is complete!
Index
A Accelerated graphics port (AGP), 437 Additional Items Found dialog box, 106–107 Add Keyframe, 132, 255–256 Add Marker button, 132–135 Administrator, 8–9 Alias, creating, 13 Alpha channel, 312, 316–318 Analog video differences between digital video and, 403–404 formats, 405–407 Apple System Profiler, 442–444 AppleTalk tab, 6–8 Aspect Ratio, 274–276 Assemble editing, 364–365, 368 ATA drives, 431–432 Audio CDs, importing, 110–115 Audio compression, 375–376 Audio Controls, 178 Audio filters parametric EQ, 344–346 three band EQ, 340–344 Audio formats, 109 Audio levels fixing, 327–340 keyframing, 330–331 meter, 328 stereo pairs versus mono, 327–328 Audio Meters window, 32–33 Audio Mixer, 34, 331–340 Audio Outputs tab, 76–78 Audio Playback Quality, 71–72 Audio rendering, 70–71 track visibility, 72 Audio tracks, limiting, 70 Audio/Video Devices tab, 65–67
Audio/Video Settings Audio/Video Devices tab, 65–67 Capture Presets tab, 56–57 Device Control Presets tab, 62–65 issues involved in, 53–54 Sequence Presets tab, 57–59 Summary tab, 55, 67 Video Processing tab, 59–62 Autosave Vault, 45, 75–76 Auto Select, 175–177
B Backups, 15, 450–458 Autosave Vault, 45, 75–76 of imported media, 126–127 Baseline, 248 Batch Capture button, 92 idiot check, 106–107 offline/online, 101, 103–104 process, 104–106 Batch List, 389–392 Bevel and Emboss, 121, 122 Bezier handle, 261, 263, 266–267 Bin, 19 creating, 24 Bitmapping, 119 Black and Code, 367 Black-and-white images, importing, 124 Blacking, 367 Blackmagic DeckLink, 146 Blacks, setting, 294–295 BorisFX’s, 244 Broadcast legal, 287 B-Roll footage, 216–217, 218–219
460 Browser window, 17–24 utton bars, 194–197
C Cache Out X, 449–450 Calligraphy, 244 Canvas window, 13, 28–29 drag and drop to, 140–142 insert/overwrite editing, 142 monitoring Slip or Slide in, 219 reducing size, 93 Capture Batch. See Batch Capture Capture buttons, 92–93 Capture Clip, 92, 97–98 Capture Now button, 92–93 DV start/stop detection, 100–101 DV timecode and, 98–99 process, 99–100 Capture Offset, 64–65 Capture Presets tab, 56–57 Capture window, reducing size, 93 Capturing See also Log and Capture window process, 93–97 Clip(s), 19 master, 229–237, 245–249 moving from Bin to Viewer, 24, 27–28 moving from Effects to Project tab, 21–22 moving from Viewer window to Sequence, 29–32 setting in and out points for, 95–97 Subclip, 133, 231–234 Clip Duration field, 97 Clip Keyframe, 179–180 Clip Overlays, 180–181, 240 CMYK images, importing, 124 Codec, defined, 410–411 Color bars, 21–22, 357–358 Color correction See also Master shots secondary, 305–309 Color Corrector 3-Way filter, 285–286, 289–290 Command-z (undo), 139–140 Component video, 406–407 Composite video, 406
Index
Compositing defined, 239 keyframing in the Sequence, 240–244 layers, 239–249 modes, 311–318 Text Generator, 244–245 Compression choosing and setting, 371–374 spatial, 374 temporal, 374–375 Contrast, setting, 290–294 Copy, 396–398 Countdown, 359–360 Create Offline, 398 Crop, 269–272 Cross Dissolve, 149 Cross Zoom, 149 Curves, adding, 260–261
D Data rate, 37 lowering, 371 Delete Point tool (shortcut-pp), 260 Description field, 90 Desktop Preview, 144–145 Destination button/tab, 172 Device control, 421 Device Control Presets tab, 62–65 Digital audio double system sound, 414–415 sampling, 413–414 SDI (Serial Digital Interface), 415 Digital video charged coupled devices, 408 differences between analog video and, 403–404 generation loss and, 404–405 sampling, 408–409 uncompressed codecs, 411–413 Dip to Color Dissolve, 149 Disk Copy, 454–456 Displays Preference, 2–4 Dissolve, 149 Distort (shortcut-d), 272–276 Double system sound, 414–415 Downmix level control, 78
461
Index
Drag and drop to canvas, 140–142 to sequence, 135–136 Dropped frames, 73, 111, 417–418 Drop Shadow, 254, 276–277 Dupe Detection, 234–236 Duration, 318–320 Duration Calculator, 362 DV start/stop detection, 100–101 DV timecode, Capture Now and, 98–99 Dynamic Trim, 163, 169
E Ease In/Ease Out, 261–268 Easy Setup, 67–69 Edge Feather, 272 Edge Thin and Softening, 307–308 Edit Decision List (EDL), 387–389 Editing drag and drop to canvas, 140–142 drag and drop to sequence, 135–136 insert/overwrite to canvas, 142 insert/overwrite to sequence, 136–140 realtime and rendering effects, 142–149 ripple, 164 roll, 166 split, 191–192 teamwork, 309–311 Timeline and Toolbar windows for, 169–188, 199–237 transitions, 140–142, 149–154 Trim Edit window, 159–169 trimming, 154–157 Viewer Window, 129–135 Edit Selection (shortcut-G), 201–202 Edit to Tape, 363–369 Effect Handling tab, 52–53 Effects filters See also Master shots Color Corrector 3-Way, 285–286 composite modes, 311–318 luma and saturation, 287–289 nesting, 320–324 purpose of, 285 secondary color correction, 305–309 speed and duration, 318–320 Video Scopes, 287–289
Effects tab, 17, 19–21 Energy Saver Preference, 1–2 EQ (equalizer) parametric, 344–346 three band, 340–344 Exporting audio, setting, 375–376 compression, choosing and setting, 371–374 compression, spatial, 374 compression, temporal, 374–375 Effects Filters, 375 Fast Time, 376 file format, choosing, 369–370 Keyframe Every, 374–375 for Metadata, 386–392 for optimization, 369 pixel shape, 375 post-production purposes and, 381–386 Quality slider, 374 QuickTime Conversion, 371 sizing and resizing, 375 External Editors tab, 52
F Fast Start, 376 Favorites, creating customized, 151–154 FCP (Final Cut Pro) how to get media inside, 79–81 installing, 9–13 starting, 13–15 Field dominance, 404 File segment size, capture/export, 46–47 Filters. See Effects filters Filters tab, 24 Firewire DV system, 409–410, 416, 434–436 Forward slash, use of, 42 Frame Blending, 320 Frame Rate, 64 Frame size and resizing, 375 Frame Viewer, 34, 287, 299 FXScript, 285
G Gain staging, 358 Gamma, setting, 296–297
462 Gang Sync, 210–212 General Preferences tab, 69–76 General Selection (shortcut-A), 201 Generation loss, 404–405 Ghost clip, 136 Graphic files. See Importing Photoshop graphic files Graphic still formats, 109 Group Selection (shortcut-GG), 202–203
H Handle, 140 Bezier, 261, 263, 266–267 Handle Size, 65 Hand tool, 225–226 Hard drives, 426 ATA, 431–432 drive speed, 427 external, 429–431 Firewire, 434–436 internal, 428–429 removable disks, 427–428 SCSI, 433–434 storage space, 427 USB, 436–437 High RT, 146 Hues, matching, 302–305
Index
to sequence, 136–140 Installing FCP software, 9–13 Interframes, 374 Interpolation, 243 nonlinear, 260–261
J Jaguar 10.2, 445–447 J-K-L support, 95 Jog controls, 95 JPEGs, 124
K Keyboard shortcuts See also Shortcuts Toolbar versus, 199–201 Keyframe (keyframing), 239 adding, 132, 256–257 audio levels, 330–331 interpolation, 243 rubberbanding and, 180 in the Sequence, 240–244 setting, for motion, 255–260 Keyframe Every, 374–375
L diot check, 106 mage + Wireframe Viewing mode, 251–254 mporting audio CDs with QuickTime Pro, 110–115 defined, 109–110 organizing and making backups, 126–127 mporting Photoshop graphic files getting layer effects into FCP intact, 118–119 problems when, 124 process, 119–125 resizing images, 121–123 square versus non-square pixels, 115–118 Title-Safe Zone, 119–121 In points, 95–97, 135 nsert editing to canvas, 142 Edit to Tape and, 364, 368
Latency, 348 Limit capture/export file segment size, 46–47 Limit Capture Now, 47–48 Limit Effect, 305–306, 308–309 Linking button, 186–188 example of, 188–191 sync issues with, 192–194 List view, thumbnails in, 227–228 Log and Capture window See also Capturing accessing, 86 Description field, 90 Markers, 90–92 Name field, 90 preview window, 87
463
Index
Log and Capture window (Continued) Reel field, 88–90 tabs, 87–88 Logging manual, 84 tab, 87 Logging Bin, 84–86 Long frame, 106 Low RT, 145 Luma, 287–289 Travel Matte-Luma, 312, 313–316
M Macintosh OSX, System Preferences, 1–8 MacJanitor, 449 Maintenance, 444–453 Mark Clip button, 131 Markers, 90–92 adding, 132–135 Master clips and affiliates, 229–237, 245–249 Mastering Settings, 366–367 Master shots, correcting, 289 blacks, setting, 294–295 contrast, setting, 290–294 mids and gamma, setting, 296–297 white balance, correct color for, 297–299 whites, setting, 295–296 Master shots, matching other shots with, 299 copying shot to shot, 300 hues, matching, 302–305 matching process, 301–302 paste attributes, 300–301 Master shots, picking, 286 Match Frame button, 131 Matte Limit Effect, 308–309 setting, 307 Travel Matte-Alpha, 312, 316–318 Travel Matte-Luma, 312, 313–316 Media files, 110 how to get, inside FCP, 79–81 in Print to Video, 360–361 use of term, 79 Media Manager, 392 how it works, 395–399 offline/online process, 393–395, 399–402
Medium RT, 145–146 Memory & Cache tab, 48–49 Merged clips, 172–173 Messages Insufficient Content for Edit, 140 No Communication, 87 Unable to Lock Deck Servo, 214 Metadata Batch List, 389–392 defined, 386 Edit Decision List, 387–389 exporting for, 386–392 Mids, setting, 296–297 Miller, Loren, 200 Mixdown Audio, 322–323, 355 Monitors, setting, 2–4 Motion curves, adding, 260–261 Ease In/Ease Out, 261–268 Image + Wireframe Viewing mode, 251–254 motion path, creating a, 255, 256 setting keyframes for, 255–260 Motion Blur, 254, 279–283 Motion tab tools, 24 Crop, 269–272 Distort, 272–276 Drop Shadow, 254, 276–277 Motion Blur, 254, 279–283 QuickView tool and Option-p, 277–279 MP-3, 377 MPEG-2, 376–377 MPEG-4, 376–381 Multi-user issues, 8–9 Mute button, 178, 336, 338
N Name field, 90 Naming forward slash, use of, 42 media drive and media folder, 41–44 projects, 13 Neotron Design, 200 Nesting, 320–324 Network Preferences, 6–8 Non-drop frames, 417, 418–420 Nonlinear editor, 79 Nonlinear interpolation, 260–261
464 O Offline/online, 101, 103–104, 393–395, 399–402 OfflineRT, 394–395 Onlining, 387 Opacity, 240, 264, 266 Option-p, 277–279 Out points, 95–97, 135 Output to video tape crash recording method, 355 customizing edit to tape, 363–369 customizing print to video, 356–363 Overwrite editing to canvas, 142 to sequence, 136–140
P anasonic cameras, 420–421 an slider, 338 anther 10.3, 447–448 aper Log, 81–83 arametric EQ, 344–346 Partitioning, 38 aste attributes, 300–301 en tool (shortcut-p), 180, 240–244, 260–261, 330–331 eripheral component interconnect (PCI), 437–440 ermissions, 444–445 hotoshop graphics. See Importing Photoshop graphic files Pixels (picture elements), square versus nonsquare, 115–118, 375 lay Around Current button, 95 lay Around Edit Loop, 167–168 layback, dropped frames during, 73 layback All Frames (shortcut option-p), 277–279 layback Control tab, 49–52 layback Offset, 64–65 layback Output, 65–66 lay Base Layer Only, 51–52 layhead Timecode field, 184–186 lay In to Out button, 95 PLUGE (Picture Line Up Generation Equipment), 21, 289 lug-ins. See Effects filters oster Frame, 214, 226–227 ost-Roll, 65
Index
PPPoE, 8 Preferences. See User Preferences Pre-Roll, 65 Previous Edit, 168 Print to Video color bars and audio test tone, 357–358 Countdown, 359–360 customizing, 357 Duration Calculator, 362 Media, 360–361 Slate, 358–359 starting, 356–357 Trailer, 362 Profile, 67 Project files, 109–110 Project tab, 17, 19 Protocol, 63 Pulldown Pattern, 51 Punch-in, 346
Q Quality levels, 145–146 Quality slider, 374 QuickTime Conversion, 371 QuickTime Movie, 369–386 QuickTime Player, 111 QuickTime Pro, importing audio CDs using, 110–115 QuickTime reference movie, 370 QuickTime Standalone, 370 QuickView tab, 34 QuickView tool, 277–279
R RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) storage solutions, 39, 440–442 RAM (random access memory), 423–426 Range Selection (shortcut-GGG), 176, 203–204 Rasterizing, 119 Razorblade (shortcuts-B, BB), 219–223, 266 Realtime and rendering effects, 142–149 Real-time Audio Mixing, 70–71 Recompress, 398 Record, auto, 65 Reel field, 88–90
Index
Reference movie, 381–383 Refresh rate, 2–3 Rendering effects, 142–149 Render Manager, 324–325 Rendevous, 8 Resizing images, 121–123 Resolution setting, 3 upping, 394 vertical, 404 RGB controls, 59–60 importing images in, 124 system, 286, 316–317 Ripple Delete, 222–223 Ripple editing, 164 split edits, 208–210 Ripple Edit (shortcut-RR), 164, 207–208 Roll Edit (shortcut-r), 166, 205–207 Rotate circular arrow, 254 Roxio Toast, 456–458 RT performance, 49–51 Rubberband tool, 180
S Safe TR, 148 Saturation, 287–289 Saving projects, 15 Autosave Vault, 45, 75–76 Scale crosshair, 253–254 Scratch Disks Autosave Vault, 45 correct assignment, 36–37 limit capture/export file segment size, 46–47 Limit Capture Now, 47–48 minimum allowable free space, 45–46 missing, 44 naming issues, 41–44 partitioning, 38 setting, 38–41 Thumbnail Cache, 45 Waveform Cache, 45 Scrub Video, 226–227 SCSI (Small Computer Systems Interface), 433–434 SDI (Serial Digital Interface), 415 Secondary color correction, 305–309
465 Sequence, 19 drag and drop to, 135–136 insert/overwrite editing, 136–140 keyframing in, 240–244 Timeline Options, 236–237 Sequence Presets tab, 57–59 settings for new, 73 Serial deck control, 63 Settings See also Audio/Video Settings; System Settings Easy Setup, 67–69 Setup, choosing, 10 Shading, 121, 122 Shortcuts Button bars, 194–197 Delete Point (shortcut-pp), 260 Distort (shortcut-d), 272–276 Edit Selection (shortcut-G), 201–202 General Selection (shortcut-A), 201 Group Selection (shortcut-GG), 202–203 icon, 13 Pen (shortcut-p), 240–244, 260–261, 330–331 Playback All Frames (shortcut option-p), 277–279 Range Selection (shortcut-GGG), 203–204 Razorblade (shortcuts-B, BB), 219–223 Ripple Edit (shortcut-RR), 207–208 Roll Edit (shortcut-r), 205–207 Slide (shortcut-SS), 212, 218–219 Slip (shortcut-S), 212–217, 219 Smooth Point (shortcut-ppp), 260–261 toolbar versus keyboard, 199–201 Track Selection (shortcuts-T, TT, TTT, TTTT, TTTTT), 204–205 Zoom (shortcuts-Z, ZZ, H, HH), 224–228 Shuttle controls, 95 Slates, 358–359 Sleep mode, 2 Slide (shortcut-SS), 212, 218–219 Slip (shortcut-S), 212–217, 219 Smooth Point (shortcut-ppp), 260–261 Snapping, 139, 186 Softening, 307–308 Software Update, 4–6 Solo button, 178, 336, 338 Sounds, annoying, 343–344 Source button/tab, 172 Spatial compression, 374 Speed, 318–320 Split edit, 191–192, 208–210
466 tarting FCP, 13–15 toryboards, 214–216 triping, 367 ubclip, 133, 231–234 ummary tab, 55, 67 uperblack, 288 uperimpose, 181, 246 uperwhite, 60–61, 288 ync, Slip into, 217–218 ync issues with linking and unlinking, 192–194 ystem Preferences accessing, 1 Displays Preference, 2–4 Energy Saver Preference, 1–2 Network Preferences and AppleTalk, 6–8 Software Update, 4–6 ystem Settings accessing, 35 Effect Handling tab, 52–53 External Editors tab, 52 Memory & Cache tab, 48–49 Playback Control tab, 49–52 Scratch Disks tab, 36–48
T Tab architecture, 17 eamwork, 309–311 Temporal compression, 374–375 ext Generator, 244–245 Three band EQ, 340–344 Through Edits, 222 Thumbnail Cache, 45 Thumbnails, 226–228 imecode, 62–63 analog and DV, 416–421 break, 74–75 Firewire DV, 416 Window Burn Dub, 83 imecode field clip duration, 97 current frame, 94 imeline, customization controls Audio Controls, 178 Clip Keyframe, 179–180 Clip Overlays, 180–181 Playhead Timecode field, 184–186 Time Scale bar, 183–184
Index
Toggle Linking, 186–188 Toggle Snapping, 186 Track Height, 181 Zoom Control, 1183 Zoom Slider bar, 183–184 Timeline Options tab, 236–237 Timeline window, 29–32 track routing selection area, 171–177 tracks, 169–171 Time Scale bar, 183–184 Time Source, 64 Title-Safe Zone, 119–121, 247 Toggle Linking, 186–188 Toggle Snapping, 186 Tone Generator, 21–22 Toolbar window, 33 Crop, 269–272 Distort, 272–276 Edit Selection (shortcut-G), 201–202 Gang Sync, 210–212 General Selection (shortcut-A), 201 Group Selection (shortcut-GG), 202–203 Pen (shortcut-p), 240–244, 260–261, 330–331 Range Selection (shortcut-GGG), 203–204 Razorblade (shortcuts-B, BB), 219–223 Ripple Edit (shortcut-RR), 207–208 Roll Edit (shortcut-r), 205–207 Slide (shortcut-SS), 212, 218–219 Slip (shortcut-S), 212–217, 219 Track Selection (shortcuts-T, TT, TTT, TTTT, TTTTT), 204–205 versus keyboard shortcuts, 199–201 Zoom (shortcuts-Z, ZZ, H, HH), 224–228 Tool Bench window, 34 Total free space and time, 94 Track drop-down bar, 160–163 Track Height, 181 Tracks prioritizing, 170–171 routing selection area, 171–177 routing tabs, 172 Timeline window, 169–171 visibility switch, 171–172 Track Selection (shortcuts-T, TT, TTT, TTTT, TTTTT), 204–205 Trailer, 362 Transition changing, 149–150 creating customized favorites, 151–154
467
Index
insert/overwrite with, 140–142 oroborous sequence trick, 150–151 Transport controls, 94–95 Travel Matte-Alpha, 312, 316–318 Travel Matte-Luma, 312, 313–316 Trim Edit window accessing, 160 adjusting size of, 160 Dynamic Trim, 163, 169 function of, 159 navigating clips in, 163–167 previewing trims, 167–169 Track drop-down bar, 160–163 Trimming edits asymmetrical, 208–210 basic techniques, 154–157 Troubleshooting and maintenance, 444–453
U Uncompressed codecs, 8-bit and 10-bit, 411–413 Undo command, 139–140 Universal serial bus (USB), 436–437 UNIX, 448–449 Unlimited RT, 148 Unlinking, sync issues with, 192–194 Unpacking tape, 367 Unrendering, 146 Up-rezzing, 394 Use Existing, 398 User Preferences Audio Outputs tab, 76–78 Audio Playback Quality, 71–72 General Preferences tab, 69–76 Real-time Audio Mixing, 70–71
V Vectorscope, 289 Vertical resolution, 404 Video formats, 109 Video Processing tab, 59–62 Video Quality, 50–51 Video Scopes, 34, 287–289 Viewer window, 13, 24, 27–28 Add Keyframe button, 132 Add Marker button, 132–135
In and Out Point buttons, 135 Mark Clip button, 131 Master clips and affiliates, 245–249 Match Frame button, 131 reducing size, 93 slip in, 217 working in, 129–131 Voice Over tool, 34 offset, setting, 348–349 setting up, 346–348 using, 349–353
W Waveform Cache, 45 Waveform Monitor, 287–289, 296 Waveforms, 328 White(s) balance, correct color for, 297–299 setting, 295–296 superwhite versus, 60–61 Windows accessing, 17 Audio Meters, 32–33 Browser, 17–24 Canvas, 13, 28–29 Timeline, 29–32 Toolbar, 33 Tool Bench, 34 Viewer, 13, 24, 27–28 Wireframes, 251–254
Y Y-C (S-Video), 406 YUV controls, 59–60, 286
Z Zoom Control, 1183 Zoom In, 224 Zoom Out, 224 Zoom (shortcuts-Z, ZZ, H, HH), 224–228 Zoom Slider bar, 183–184
