March 19, 2010

It All Adds Up!

As I prep my Storytelling webinar coming up on April 8th, I couldn't wait to share some really cool tips. They will be covered in the webinar in more detail, but if you get a minute, you should definitely take a closer look at a few of the FCP features I'll try to point out in my blog over the next few weeks.

You may know about the Razor Blade tool and how it splits a single clip into two parts. Well did you know there is another function that can do this for you on the fly - as you continue to play or screen your material? It's called the Add Edit function. It lives under the Sequence menu and its shortcut is Control-V. What you do is play a clip in the Timeline and when you want to blade or split a clip, just press Control-V and let the clip keep playing. Final Cut Pro places a marker in the Timeline ruler. Continue to press Control-V as you play the clip wherever you want to split the clip or clips in the sequence. When you stop playing the clip, Final Cut Pro will blade the clips at every one of the Add Edit markers in the Timeline ruler. Now you can use the Selection tool to select those portions of clips you don't want, and either delete or move them somewhere else. To me, it all seems to add up nicely!