Join Apple Certified Trainer Richard Harrington as he shows you how to edit your audio before your video in Final Cut Pro, making your edit easier overall. This is part 1 of 2.



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We’ve always wished that we were incredible illustrators. Alas the whole hand-eye coordination thing never really worked out. However, we have a nice, happy medium.

1. Choose a clip you’d like to effect.
2. Choose Effects > Video Filters > Stylize > Line Art. Whoa! Isn’t that cool? Your footage has instantly been transformed into a moving illustration!
3. Load the clip into the Viewer and click on the Filters tab. Here you can adjust paper color and opacity, and ink color.
4. You can also control threshold and smoothness to adjust what is included as a line and the blend between the lines and the paper.
5. Use the Mix control to blend in your original image.

Like this tip? It comes from the book
Final Cut Studio On the Spot from Focal Press.

Join Apple Certified Trainer Richard Harrington as he covers the essential windows and tools that you will need to use in Final Cut Pro.



Like the podcast? Subscribe for FREE.
Want more training? Check out our DVDs.

Ever have a project go bad? A file get corrupted? Maybe the system crashed (OS X never crashes—it just has an undocumented close feature). Worse, you come back from lunch, and the client is standing over your editing system. “I just pushed a few buttons, really!”

It’s okay if the Autosave Vault feature is turned on. This great feature will back up your project automatically. You tell it how often to save, how many versions to save, and how many total projects can be archived. This is a great way to cover yourself against unexpected events.

If things ever go wrong, simply choose File > Restore Project.... This way you can quickly access time-stamped versions of your project. After restoring a project, immediately select the Save Project As command and revert to the original name. Otherwise, the Autosave Vault feature will start building a new project folder for the project with a name such as FCP Tips_08_12_08_0241.

Use this the next time a producer pulls a 180-degree turn on you and wants to go back three hours in time.



Like this tip? It comes from the book
Final Cut Studio On the Spot from Focal Press.

Over at RHED Pixel, we've finally come up with a reasonable backup strategy for our FCP systems. Figured I'd share for those of you who need it

1. Target One Folder – We save all FCP projects to an FCP folder on the internal drive.

2. Use Backup Software – We've started using Data Backup from Prosoft. I like this package because its affordable and I have had great experiences with the company's other software like Data Rescue and Picture Rescue. This package allows you to pick a folder for backup. My favorite feature is its robust scheduling tools.

• Simply purchase a 1-4 GB USB thumb drive and plug it into your system.
• Then set Data Backup to automatically open as a login item (right click on its icon in the Dock at choose Open at Login).
• Then choose to set a schedule for backup and target the thumb drive.

May your project files find a safe haven.... All for about $150 a machine (software plus thumb drive).

We've been experimenting with the Panasonic HVX-200 on some of our recent shoots. This camera offers the ability to use P2 cards from Panasonic to store the video clips without ever going to tape. Sounds great, except you'll need to transfer those cards multiple times during an average shoot. This usually leads do a data assistant which is similar in function to a film-loader.

Leave it to Anders Holck to come up with a great solution. We already profiled the useful utility called FCP Rescue on this blog. Now he's released P2 Genie which automates several of the media management aspects when working with the cards.

• You run it on a Mac Laptop with a CardBus slot (This means PowerBooks only)
• P2 genie can be used as an automatic P2 store, or you set manual options
• It can also be used offload a P2 store or HVX-200.
• You can also choose to datestamp all your ofloaded P2 cards for easier sorting

We'll be putting it to test on a week-long shoot next week. P2 Genie costs $33 (US) or €25.

It’s not unusual for your skies to be washed out. This is often a problem, because video doesn’t offer the same dynamic range as film (the difference between darks and highlights). Fortunately, Final Cut Pro allows you to isolate the color correction, so you can achieve a fix just to the problem area.
1 Apply the Color Corrector 3-way filter, and access the filter’s visual controls.
2 Using the Select Color eyedropper in the Limit Effect controls, select the desired color you’d like to keep.
3 Click the key icon to view the matte. Use the Select Color eyedropper while holding down the Shift key to add to the matte. You can click in the Viewer or Canvas window.
4 Finesse the matte by adjusting the Width and Softness sliders for the Chroma, Saturation, and Luma values in the Limit Effect controls. When the desired color is clearly selected, there will be no holes in your matte. Also, adjust the Softening slider to improve the matte. You may get a better matte by using fewer limiting ranges.
5 Click the key icon twice to toggle back to View Final.
6 Adjust the color balance wheels and saturation of the shot.
You may need to add a second color corrector to finesse the scene or isolate another problem area.


Like this tip? It comes from the book
Final Cut Studio On the Spot from Focal Press.