Final Cut Pro Edit Timeline

with Isaac Brody

Transcript: Final Cut Pro Edit Timeline

Hi, I'm Isaac Brody for About.com computing. Today I'll teach you how to do basic editing in Final Cut Pro. Once you've captured your footage, your clips appear in the Browser Window.

Basic Final Cut Pro Editing

The basic method for editing is to highlight the clip, and drag it onto the timeline.

You can do this for how ever many clips you want. To watch our movie you need to move our play head to the beginning of the timeline and hit the spacebar key to watch the clips. However, we want to trim our clips before we drop them on the timeline. So let's delete them. I'll select the clips and hit delete.

Final Cut Pro Log

I'll select our first clip and double-click it. The video now appears in the Viewer Window. Here we have play controls. I can press the play button, scrub frame by frame by clicking the jog wheel and dragging. Or I can skip ahead by clicking the viewer timeline. This is where I want the clip to start.

Marking in Final Cut Pro

I'll click the Mark In icon, or click the letter i for a shortcut. Now I'll create an outpoint by moving the play head to the appropriate spot. And click the Mark Out icon, or press the letter O for a shortcut.

Now I'll drag the clip from the viewer to the timeline. You can also drag the same clip from the browser.

And I'll quickly doubleclick my second clip. Set Mark In and Mark Out, points and drag it to the timeline.

Final Cut Pro Insert and Overwrite Edits

Let's say we want to insert a third clip in between these on the timeline. First set the playhead to where you want to insert the new clip. Then double click a third clip, I'll set an In and Out point, and drag the clip to the playhead. You should see an arrow pointing down. If you release the clip it'll drop it and overwrite anything in it's way.

I'll hit Edit, Undo.

If you click and drag it down and slowly move the mouse until you see the arrow pointing right, this means that when I drop the clip, it'll shift everything from the playhead on right, and no footage will be erased.

And those are the basic ways for editing clips on a timeline.

Thanks for watching. For more information, please visit us online at Computing.About.com.

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