Beth Cataldo, January 25, 2007
Intro to Final Cut Pro


Developed by Apple, Firewire (IEEE 1394) is a protocol that allows fast transfer of information between devices, such as a DV camera and a hard drive. Apple's introduction to the Firewire protocal accelerated the ability for people to edit on their home-based system.

You will need to get an external drive if you are planning to work on a longer movie. Some basic facts about storage:

Storage:
Uncompressed standard definition video takes up about 1.4GB per minute. This means that you will need about 90GB for a 60-minute movie.

1080 29.97i high definition video takes about 3.6GB per minute. You'll need a whopping 434GB for your next 60-minute high-def movie.

However, these numbers are deceiving. All of us know that we will capture probably 10-15 more percentage of video footage than we will use. So you should multiply the final size of your project by a factor of at least five to get an approximate amount of storage you will need for your movie.

A separate disc for media is important because your start-up disk is already working hard on processing the video with Final Cut Pro. It's important that your critical data is on a drive separate from your start-up disk.

Final Cut Pro is a non-destructive non-linear video editing system. What this means is that you are creating a series of pointers or a playlist inside your video project. The original media remains intact and isn't changed. Instead, Final Cut gives a set of directions about how to manipulate your clips. This means that you can make use of your media files several times in different ways.

 

THE WORKSPACE


THE BROWSER
The window you use to organize and access all the media elements used as source materials. It also contains your projects' sequences, which are the pointer files that contain your edited playlists. This is a holding bin for all your assets.

The Browser's Effects Tab is your source for Final Cut Pro's effects, filters and generators.

THE VIEWER
When you're editing, the Viewer acts as your source monitor. By clicking on the different tabs, you can also edit your clips, apply effects and create titles in this window.


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Video tab: View video frames and mark and refine edit points.

Audio Tab: Listen to and mark edit points in audio clips. Set levels.

Effects Tabs:
Controls Tab: Adjust the settings for a generator effect, such as a text generator.

Filters Tab: Adjust the setting and set keyframes for any filter effects you have applied to a clip.

Motion Tab: Apply and modiy motion effects.

Color Corrector Tab: Contains onscreen controls you can use to adjust the settings for the color correction filters.

THE CANVAS
The Canvas plays back you edited sequence as you are creating it. You can also use the controls in the Canvas window to play sequences, mark sequence In and Out points, add sequence markers and set keyframes.

 

THE TIMELINE

The Timeline displays your edited sequence as multiple video and audio tracks along a timeline. As you drag your playhead along the timeline, the canvas window will reflect the current frame. You edit by dragging clips from the Browser or Viewer directly onto the timeline. You can have many sequences open at once. Each of them will have a separate tab in the Timeline Window.


THE TOOL PALETTE

The Tool Palette contains tools for selecting and manipulating items in the Timeline, Canvas and Viewer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Further reading: Final Cut Pro 5 for Mac OS X: Visual QuickPro Guide