Transcription
If you just got Final Cut Pro and you're ready to get editing, but you don't know where to start, you are in the right place. Welcome to my Final Cut Pro quick start tutorial. Let's get you going.
So, once you've downloaded Final Cut Pro from the app store, you obviously need to open it from your applications folder. But depending on which version of Final Cut Pro you have, your icon might look a little bit different. So, if you purchased Final Cut Pro as a one-time purchase in the App Store, your logo will look like this. But if you got it as part of Apple's Creator Studio subscription, your app icon is going to look like this. So either one you see, just go ahead and click on it. Everything we do from here on out will be exactly the same.
So if you've never created anything in Final Cut Pro, this is what you're going to see. The first thing we want to do is create a library. In Final Cut Pro, a library refers to your entire project. So all of your media and your timelines. So we can create a new library by hitting this plus sign here. Or we can go up to this top button and create a library there. And I highly recommend that you save your libraries on an external drive, not your internal hard drive, because these libraries can get very large in size. I'm going to name this library FCP quickart. And before we do anything else, I want to show you what that library looks like in your Finder window so you can come back to this library and open it later. So, if I open my Finder and navigate to that hard drive, this is what my Final Cut library is going to look like. And anytime I want to reopen this quick start library, I just have to doubleclick this icon and it'll automatically open Final Cut Pro and take me to this library.
Let's take a look at this upper left part of my UI. This is called my library sidebar. And so, you can see a little icon that looks just like the purple icon I just showed you, and it says Final Cut QuickArt. And underneath are two subfolders. These subfolders are called events. And you will by default have two different events in here. One will be smart collections where Final Cut automatically sorts your media once you've imported it into different categories. And you'll also have an event with today's date. You can rename this event anything you want by just clicking on it. And I'm going to call this event A-roll. And you can make more events by going back to this button here and selecting new event. And this one I'm going to call B-roll.
Now it's time to import our media. So we can import media by hitting this button here. Or you can hit this down arrow at the top of your UI. These two things do the same thing. This is called your media import window. And I'm going to navigate to the folder where my media lives. So on an external drive, I have a folder here called Fromage Aam. And I'm going to double click on that folder and it's going to bring up all the media in that folder. Let's take a look at some of the options here. First of all, it's asking me which event I want these video clips to land in. And this is actually A-roll, so I'm going to switch it to A-roll. Down here, it's asking me if I want to copy the files to the library or leave the files in place. I recommend that you copy your media to your library. That means that every time you go back to the library, that icon with the four squares and the white stars that I just showed you, all of your media will already be there in your library. If you choose this option, leave files in place, you're always going to have to have both your media folders and your library available to you anytime you want to edit in this library. So, if you had them on two separate hard drives, you would need to have both of those hard drives in hand in order to continue to edit. That's why I recommend that you copy your files into your library because every time you open that library, all your media will always be there for you. But this is also why I said you should put your libraries on an external drive because once you start importing media into the library, that's when the file size really expands.
So, I can either select specific clips I want to import or I can import them all by hitting this button, which I'm going to do. And you'll be able to see the progress of your import with these progress styles on each clip. So, this is the A-roll in my library. I also want to import the B-roll, which is in a separate folder. But my import button went away once I started importing this media. Not to worry, we can import by hitting this down arrow as well. And this time, I'm going to navigate to the B-roll. At the top of my media import window, let's switch this option from A-roll to B-roll and import all on this as well.
So, now that we've imported our media, how do we look at the contents of these clips? This window here where all of my media is living is called the browser. And this is where I can choose my clips and then hit the spacebar to play them back. And they're going to play back in this window here, which is called the viewer. And I can just select each clip, hit the space bar, and check out the contents.
Now that we've imported our media, how do we actually get editing? You need to start what's called a project in Final Cut Pro. And a project is really just your timeline. So you can create a new project by hitting this button here. and you're going to get a new dialogue window that's going to look like this or this. Let's go back to custom settings. In the custom settings window, you can choose your video format. And here is where you would choose vertical or square. And then under resolution, I have all of these different resolution options. And I can also choose my frame rate. If you choose automatic settings, your timeline will take the properties, so the resolution and the frame rate of the first clip you drop into that timeline. So, in this case, I'm going to choose automatic settings. And I'm going to give my project the name Fromage Board because that's what this video is about. And this project is going to land in my A-roll event. I could switch it to my B-roll. It really does not matter which event your project lands in. It's wherever you want it to be. Let's hit okay. And I'm going to navigate to the A-roll event. And I just want to point out to you, here's all my media from my A-roll. But we also have this new icon, which is our project. And I know it's our project because it has this chevron pattern at the top.
And so now that we've made that project, let's drop our first piece of media in here. So I'm just going to select my first clip and I'm going to drag it and drop it in my timeline. But this brought in my entire clip into my timeline. What if I only wanted part of that clip? I'm going to hit command- Z to undo that. Let's go back to this clip in our browser. And when I select it, you'll notice that I have this yellow box around the perimeter of my selected clip. I can actually grab the edges of this clip and trim the beginning and end to just section out the part that I'm interested in dropping into my timeline. So now I've selected this smaller segment and when I drag it into my timeline, it's just this smaller piece. And I can continue playing back my clips in my browser, identifying the parts of the clip I like and dragging them into the timeline.
But there's something important to know about the Final Cut Pro timeline. When I grab a clip and drag it into my timeline, you'll notice it snaps to the previous clip. Both of these clips are on this darker gray line, which is called our primary story line. And the primary story line has magnetic properties. So every clip you drop onto that primary story line, will stick to the clip prior to it. And I can very easily reorder my clips by just shuffling them around on this primary story line. Let's add another clip and shuffle them around some more.
Now, if I want to play back what's happening in my timeline, I can grab the top of my playhead. That's this red line here. I can drag it to the beginning of my timeline, and I can hit the space bar to play back. >> And what's important for you to know is that when I'm working in my timeline, I'm seeing the contents of my timeline in the viewer. But once I start clicking around in my browser, now I'm seeing the contents of my browser in the viewer. The viewer in Final Cut Pro is dynamic. It shows you what you're working on in the moment. If you're coming from another nonlinear editor, let's say Adobe Premiere, you're probably used to seeing two sidebyside windows. Final Cuts Viewer serves both purposes of those two windows, and it's a smart way to save a lot of real estate in your UI.
Now, we did some trimming in our browser, but we can still trim our clips here in our timeline. You'll notice as I'm working, my cursor is this arrow. This is called the select tool. But if I hover my cursor between two clips, I get this new bracket icon where I can trim my clips here as well. So, you can do a lot more fine-tuning in the timeline.
Now, let's add some B-roll to our project. So, I'm going to navigate over to the B-roll event. And just like before, I can trim my B-roll shots to just section out the part that I really like. Now, I want to bring this B-roll into my timeline, but I don't want to bring in the associated audio with this clip, just the video component. So, I can make that selection here in the top left of my timeline by setting my edits from all, which would be both video and audio to video only. And now I can click and drag that B-roll on top of my A-roll. And you'll notice when I drag it down here, I get this little string at the bottom of my B-roll shot. When you stack clips above your primary story line, they are what are called connected clips. Now, when I play this back, watch what happens. >> What you'll notice is that I see our talent on camera and I hear her talking. And then we cut away to a close-up shot of the cutting board, but we still hear her talking. Like most other editing apps, Final Cut Pro has a top- down view in your timeline. So, you're going to visually see whatever clip is stacked at the top of your timeline, but you're still going to hear everything going on underneath.
Let's add another B-roll shot to our timeline. And I'm going to drag this one here. And you'll notice again, it's got that string, but it did not snap to the clip next to it like it did when we were on our primary story line. Connected clips are not magnetic. This is how they work. Instead, you'll see that the little string here is connected to the clip beneath it. If I reposition this clip, the B-roll shot goes with it. Let me trim this and show you that this clip with the cutting board is attached to this sound bite here on my primary story line. If I move that clip on the primary story line, this B-roll shot goes with it as well.
So, those are the basics of how the Final Cut Pro timeline works, but there's probably a lot of really simple common functions you need to know how to do. For instance, what if you wanted to split a clip into two? So, as you know, right now I'm on the select tool. So, my cursor is this arrow. If I wanted to split a clip into two parts, let's say this clip here, I would need to navigate to what's called my blade tool. And I can reach the blade tool by hitting this drop down at the top of the timeline, selecting blade, and then my cursor becomes these little scissors, and I can just hover my cursor where I want to split the clip in two, and press once with my mouse button, and then go back to the select tool so I can reposition that clip and edit as normal.
And what if you wanted to scale up a shot so it looks like it was shot closer? I've selected this clip here in my timeline. And I know it's selected because it's got the yellow box around it. You're going to want to look for this drop-own menu here at the bottom left of your viewer. And remember, your viewer includes the scopes if you have them open. And here you have options to transform, crop, or distort your shots. Let's select transform. And now I've got these new overlays in my viewer. And I can just grab the corner of my shot and upscale my video clip. And as I do this, watch the panel to the right of my viewer. This is your inspector. You can see the scale numbers change when I resize that shot. So I can make adjustments to my clip by enabling the transform tools in my viewer. Like I can reposition it or I can use these sliders and modify these other values in my inspector as well. And when I'm done working in the viewer in this way, I just hit the done button.
Now, the inspector is also where you can make color corrections to your clips. You're going to want to head over to the color inspector, which is this inverted triangle. Final Cut Pro has several different tools for color correcting. And if you drop down here, you can see all the different options for color tools in Final Cut Pro. Some of these are more advanced, and some of them are more basic, like these color adjustments, where I can just bring down the shadows and crank up the saturation if I wanted to.
The inspector window is also where you can adjust your audio, but you need to be working on a clip that has audio on it to be able to access those tools here in the inspector. So, let me in my timeline select one of these A-roll clips. And suddenly I have a new icon in my inspector, which is this speaker. If I press on that, you can see that I've been able to access the different channels of my audio track. And I know that channel one is where we had the microphone on our talent. So I can disable my other channels of audio by unchecking these boxes. And then I can also adjust the volume by cranking up or down this slider.
Let's say you also wanted to add effects to your clip. We can do that by opening what's called the effects browser. So the effects browser can be found at the top right of your timeline. You're going to look for these two interlocking rectangles. And when you open that up, you'll see a bunch of different effects that you can apply to your video clips. And you'll see more here in my effects browser than you probably have. Some of these are from third parties, and I've collected them over the years, but I know you have all of these under the stylized category. I'm going to navigate to the handheld effect, and I'm going to pick up this effect and drop it in my timeline onto that clip. And if I wanted to adjust how much the handheld effect moved around, I would go back to my inspector and click on the video inspector. That's the one with the film strip. And now you can see in my stack before where we were playing with the scale and position of our B-roll clip. Now I have this new line item here called handheld where I can play with these sliders to adjust the effect I just applied to this clip. And every effect that you drag and drop onto your clips will have different options here in the video inspector.
Now, before we go any further, I do want to let you know that Final Cut Pro does so much more than I can show you in this quick start tutorial. So, to continue the learning, make sure you subscribe to this channel. I have tons of Final Cut Pro tutorials. And you might also want to take a look at my premium fulllength courses at jenjger.com, Final Cut Rockstar, and Rockstar Next Level. I give you all the media to download. So, we work side by side on building a project in Final Cut Pro, getting more and more and more advanced as we go. You will unlock so many features you never would have found on your own in Final Cut Pro. So, head on over to jenjger.com for a Final Cut Rockstar.
Now, let's add some text to our project. You're going to want to navigate over to this guy here. This is the titles and generators sidebar. And this is where you can find all of the titles and generators that come with Final Cut Pro. And you're going to see that I have so many more titles than you probably have because I've collected so many extras over the years. But you definitely have this category build in and build out. Let's select this guy here, soft edge, and I'm going to drag it on top of my first clip in my primary story line. By default, it's 4 seconds long. I can extend this if I want. And to trim something to this degree, you'll probably want to zoom in on your timeline. So, make sure you're selected on something in your timeline and just hit command plus on your keyboard until you're as zoomed in as you want to be. And just like you can with any other clip in Final Cut Pro, you can reposition the title and trim it or extend it as you see fit. And you'll see that by default the text says the word title, which obviously is not what we want. Selected on that title in my timeline. So, it's got the yellow box around it. If I hover my cursor over the text in the viewer, you can see I've got a text box here. I can just double click on this text and type in anything I want. And I'm going to click anywhere in my UI outside of the viewer to stop editing the text. And then I can actually grab that text and reposition it anywhere I want in my viewer.
Now, while I'm working on this text, you'll notice in the inspector, I'm on a different window here. This is called my text inspector. And this is where I can choose a different font for my project. I can change the size and the alignment and everything else about this text. If you want to change the color, you're going to navigate down to face. And you're going to want to hover your cursor over where it says face until you get this word here that says show. If I click on the word show, it opens up that menu for me. So, we can just change the color of her name here. And this title template came with a drop shadow, which I don't want. So, I can disable the drop shadow by unchecking it. I can change the properties of the drop shadow by hitting show.
But what if I wanted to add a transition between these two B-roll clips here in my timeline? I'm going to navigate over to the transitions browser, which you can access by clicking on this button at the top right of your timeline. It looks like a little bow tie. And I'm going to navigate to this category, the modular transitions. And I want to apply this guy here, the sidebyside split. And I can preview what the transition looks like just by hovering my cursor over it. And so now what I'm going to do is click on either end of these B-roll clips. And then I'm just going to doubleclick in my transitions browser on that transition I want to apply. And now in my timeline between those two clips, I have this gray box. This represents my transition.
Now let's add some music under our little video here. So, I could go back to the import button or right from my finder, I can drag a cut of music and drop it underneath my video. Now, this music track is much longer than our video. So, let's zoom out of our timeline. I'm going to hit command and minus to zoom out. And then I can grab the end of my music cut and trim it to the length of my video. Now, you should know that audio only files always go at the bottom of your timeline. If I try to move this music cut up, it doesn't want to do that. It wants to jump to the bottom of my timeline. I'm going to zoom in a little bit again. And this music is going to be really loud by default. If I want to lower the volume of this music, remember I can do that here in my inspector, but you can also do it right here in the timeline. If I hover my cursor over this music clip in my timeline, you'll see that I get this top and bottom arrow and this little indicator that says 0.0 dB. And if you look real close, there's a skinny line in the middle of my music cut, I can just grab that line and bring my volume down. And then if I want to fade out my music, if I hover my cursor again, you'll see this tiny little teardrop at the very end of my music cut. I can hover my cursor over it till I get this two-sided arrow here. Click and drag, and that's going to create this little fade here you see at the end of my music cut.
Now that you're done editing, let me show you how to export your video. You're going to want to go up to the share button at the top right of the UI. Export file. In this window, you can rename your video if you want to. Under settings, you can choose your export settings. Hit next and choose where you want that exported file to live and hit save. And you can track the progress of your export by hitting this dial at the top left of your UI. It gives you a progress bar here.
So, there's your quick start. Drop me a comment down below if you found this helpful. If you want to know more about Final Cut Pro, check out Final Cut Rockstar at jenjger.com. Thanks for hanging out. >> [music]