WHAT THE HECK'S AN ASYMMETRICAL TRIM?

by Diana Weynand

You may have read about asymmetrical trimming in one of my Final Cut Pro editing books and wondered, “When would I ever use that in my own editing?” Well, it may not be something you use a lot. But you may find moments when this is exactly the editing approach you need.

PROBLEM

I was recently editing a documentary. I wanted to move the audio In point of a clip earlier so I could include more of the interview. The problem was that when I rippled both the audio and video tracks together, the audio sounded clean, but the video was unusable at that point.

SOLUTION

One solution is to ripple the interview audio track earlier, but ripple the video Out point of the previous clip later. Here are the steps to solve this particular problem.




With the Ripple tool, Option-click the In point of the Audio clip you want to trim earlier. Using Option allows you to select just one track of a linked clip.




To add the Video Out point of the previous cliip to the selection, hold down the Command key and click the video Out point with the Ripple tool.





Now drag either edit point in the direction you want it to go. As you drag one, the other edit point moves in the opposite direction. Voila!

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