Video:How to Use the Final Cut Cloning Effect

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Transcript:How to Use the Final Cut Cloning Effect

Hi, I'm Brent Rose for About.com and today, I'm going to teach you how to use Final Cut to create the effect you're seeing right now: the cloning effect.

Footage Needed for Using the Final Cut Cloning Effect

The first thing you're going to do is record your footage. First you get the one shot, and then you get the second shot.

Tips for Getting Footage Needed for Final Cut

Now, there are some important factors to remember when shooting your footage.

Number one, lock your camera down tightly on a tripod, and make sure that it does not move even the tiniest bit during or in between takes. That will ruin the effect.

Make sure the lighting is exactly identical between your two takes, otherwise your footage won't match, you'll get this weird line, and you'll end up spending a lot of time using filters to try to correct it. For this reason we recommend shooting in a controlled environment and using artificial lighting, rather than sunlight, which will probably change too quickly.

White balance. For the same reasons as above, make sure that the white balance is the same in between takes. Use manual white balance or set it to a specific value, as auto white balance may be too inconsistent.

Lastly, make sure no part of you passes through the center-line between the two characters, or you're going to lose some body parts.

Using the Final Cut Cloning Effect

Now that our footage is shot, let's show you how to create the effect in Final Cut. < Okay, so I've got first my two clips here, and once I've already taken the liberty of setting my in and out points. Take your first clip and drag it into the timeline. Then then drag the other in and superimpose it on the track above the first one.

Now select the clip on top by double-clicking it (which will also bring it up in the Viewer), and switch to the Crop tool by clicking here or by pressing C. I come up to the canvass, bring the pointer over to the edge of the frame, and wait for the crop tool to appear. Then you simply click one side and drag it over until you find a nice line in between the two characters. Now ideal you'd be sitting on something harder like chairs, because you can see that the couch moved just a tiny bit, but this is a pretty decent line and I think that will work okay.

So already that looks pretty good. We're going to make it look just a little bit nicer, because you can see that there are some shadows here at the line that bring a little too much attention there. So come over here to the Viewer window, click the Motion tab, and then click Crop, and we're going to use this Edge Feather tool, and bring it up just a bit. Now notice if you bring it up too much, you'll see over here that my ankles are starting to disappear. That's no good. So you want just a little bit of edge feather, say maybe 10%. If you shot it right, you're done. If there is some messing around with filters you need to do, you would come over to Effects. Say we made it too dark. Go to Video Filters > Image Control and take the Brightness and Contrast filter, and drag it onto the clip that needs to be lightened up a little. Double-click that track again to load it up in the Viewer, and then open the Filters tab (in the Viewer window), and just turn up the brightness a little bit. You can see that that would adjust the brightness to match. Now, we actually did shoot it right so we don't need to do that, so I'm going to turn that off, and we should be good to go. Let's see how it looks.

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