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Final
Cut Pro Editing Power Tips
Techniques That Can Save You Time
by Larry Jordan
I am constantly surprised by how many editors create their sequences
by dragging clips from the Viewer to the Timeline. Which is fine,
I guess, it�s just extremely slow and not necessarily accurate.
Why is speed so important? Because we edit clips to the timeline
hundreds of times in every show we cut. Every second we can save
in this process adds up to a huge time savings.
What this article will do is show you a variety of better ways
to edit � techniques that can save you huge wads of time. So,
if your time isn�t important, then go-ahead, turn the page. But,
if you have other things you need to do � other than sit around
slowly dragging clips to the timeline, this article could change
your life.
Two Types of Edits
There are two types of edits in the non-linear world: overwrite
and insert. An overwrite edit replaces whatever clips it lands
on, without changing the duration of the timeline; unless you
are adding the clip to the end of your sequence. An insert edit
creates a break in the timeline, pushing all clips to the right
of the break even further to the right to create room to insert
the new clip at the start of the break.
Using an overwrite edit as your standard edit is a really good
habit to develop, especially as you start to work with audio and
B-roll, as it will give you the results you expect. An insert
edit should only be used as a special case.
The reason for making this distinction is that there are five
ways you can overwrite edit a clip to the Timeline from the Viewer;
and only one of those five involves dragging the clip to the Timeline.
Plus, there are five more techniques that perform an insert edit.
High-Speed Overwrite Editing
You know the routine: load a clip from the Browser into the Viewer,
set the In, set the Out� So far, no surprises. It�s what you do
next that makes a difference.
In these examples, position the Playhead in the Timeline so that
it is exactly where you want your new clip to start.
Technique #1: Grab the clip and drag it, but
this time, drag it sideways to the Canvas and drop it on top of
the red Overwrite overlay. Poof! The clip shows up at the position
of the Playhead in the Timeline. And, it is much faster to drag
the clip tn all the way down to the Timeline.
Technique #2: Grab the clip in the Viewer and
drag it on top of the red envelope in the lower left corner of
the Canvas. Poof! Again, it shows up at the position of the Playhead
in the Timeline. And it is even faster to drag to the red envelope
than it is to drag all the way over to the red Overwrite overlay
in the Canvas.
Already, we are starting to pick up speed!
Technique #3: Let�s speed up even further. You
can edit a clip from the Viewer to the Timeline simply by clicking
the red envelope, in the lower left corner of the Viewer.
Suddenly, we�ve gone from taking 5-10 seconds to drag a clip to
the Timeline to a single mouse click! Woosh!
Technique #4: Here�s the keyboard shortcut version
of clicking the red envelop � press the F10 key. At this point,
one of two things will happen: either the clip will edit to the
Timeline at the position of the playhead, or every window on your
screen suddenly changed color and flew off into a million places.
Don�t panic. You have not permanently destroyed your system.
Preventing the Destruction of Everything on Your Screen
If the clip nicely edited to the Timeline, you can skip to the
next section. If, however, your screen is in a shambles, first,
press the ESC key to bring everything back and keep reading. Built
into Mac OS X 10.3 and 10.4 is a feature called Expos�. Be default,
Expos� is programmed into key F10.
To change the keyboard settings for Expos�, go to the Blue Apple
in the top left corner of your monitor and select System Preferences.
Click the icon for Dashboard/Expose (OS X 10.4) or Expos� (OS
X 10.3). Hold down the Control key and change all the lower pop-up
menus so they look like ^F10 � the icon that looks like the roof
of a house is the symbol for the Control key.
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