Video editing

Here are some advice about getting more into Apple’s Final Cut Pro. These are things that I personally found useful while getting a grip to FCP. I had worked previously with Adobe Premiere, so I had to get used doing simple things on another way. Here’s some examples_

Scratch Disks

Keep all your project files in their own locations. Select top menu Final Cut Pro-> System settings and Set scratch disks. Use external hard drive so that you dont run out disk space. For 2 hours of HD material, 50 GB would be reasonable (2 x 16gb memory cards +16gb for export and additional space). Place Waveform Cache, Thumbnail Cache and Autosave to the same location, away from macintosh HD.
When you have ALL your project files in one location, you can transfer your whole project to another hard drive, computer or DVD.

Autosave and reconnect media

Your system is  most likely going to crash sooner or later. You prevent a catastrophy, can put auto save function on from top menu Final Cut Pro -> User Preferences ->General and check Autosave Vault to save your project every 15 minutes.

If your system crashes, you can load the latest auto save. Do a search in Finder and check which one of the autosaves is the latest one of the project (check date and time). Load and relax.

If your hard drive accidentally disconnects (a dog pulls it off the table of something), save a temporary version of your project and quit Final Cut. Plug your drive back on and restart the program. You can also reconnect media by control clicking the missing file and linking them back. This method however can be slow and leave some files unconnected.

Organizing files and sequences

In many projects, you have to edit 2 or 3 versions of one product. Edit these in the same project, but different sequences. In the picture, Maarja has edited 2 acts of a play. She has pointed out the highlights by putting markers on the clips she’s going to use and named them according what the actors are saying in them. She has also put groups of clips into folders to keep things organized and selected highlights as subclips. When she has all the acts done, she can make another sequence called ALL ACTS and place all the sequences after another as sub sequences that contains sub clips from the raw footage.

In the sequence window, theres alot useful information. For example what Compressor does the material use. Footage from the EX1 uses XDCAM EX codec.  Make sure your sequence settings match the video compressor.

Trailer cut: Rapid cuts & black space

Heres the beginning of a trailer called “Cockroach“. Unlike the most proudcts, this one had to be scary, glitchy, dark and mysterious. Trailers (specially horror movies) often use black space and rapid cuts so heres how it looks like on the time line. Do not hesitate leaving empty space and darkness. Less is more..scary. People can see even the fastest shots so don’t make your clips too long. Just a frame or two can be enough. Compare trailers or music videos to see how short shots they use (or spor hidden demons on “The Exorcist“). Listen to the beat to decide when to cut out, even when theres no sound. Cutting to the soundtrack helps alot for me.

Coloring

Im not a coloring expert but here’s what I did for a wedding video back in fall 09. The white balance was off during the shooting so the outside footage looked blue. I used RGB balance filter and reduced the amount of blue while boosting red to bring up the nice fall colors. I must say, I saturated the colors a bit more to get more colorful shot (you can see the sky is over exposed). We decided this was ok for a wedding piece, but would not be cool for broadcast.

You can easily change the mood by coloring your shots. Make sure the color scheme matches the context (don’t go yellow if you want fresh, go yellow for hot beaches! don’t be dark if you show children, boost black if youre filming CSI).

Advanced TIP (this is getting exiting): If you want more radical changes, go from Final Cut to After Effects and Get Magic Bullet Looks -plugin for stunning coloring and even more. Its a very easy and handy little program inside After Effects that lets you try different filters for changing looks. You can add gradients, shine, vintage boarders, blurs, weather filters etc.

Flesh Tones

With people theres one thing to look at: healthy flesh tones. If these people below would have blue faces, their weddings would be ruined. Remember not to over expose, although you can make wrinkles dissappear by loosing details. Be always flattering to your skin. Here, I’ve used 3-way color corrector. Notice that the background is now too yellow, because I had to bring up some warmth to these people standing in the shadow.

Cut Aways & Still Frames

With the same wedding video, I used a lot of cut away shots (details, close ups, establishing shots, wide angles) and stills to cover up unattractive shots and camera shakes. Stills are easy to make in FCP: From the video viewer, select Image. Now you are able to drag the single frame into the timeline. This makes you able to “freeze time”. I just wanted to stabilaze the shot, but theres a lot options you can do with this. You can also export still photos from your timeline by going to File > Export > Using Quicktime Coversion select Still image as format.

Transitions: Dip to White

You propably now this but mixing different transitions into videos look amateur, kindly speaking. Simple cross fades can look messy aswell and should be used carefully. One classy and elegant transition is a quick dip to white. You can see these especially on love and fashion reality shows on MTV. I used these again on my wedding project aswell. They are simply done by adding white color solid matte and putting cross fades on each ends. So so sopisticated.

Heres my first set of Final Cut Pro tips. If you spot an error on something, or wish to add anything, just write me a comment!