Final Cut Pro X: Import, Edit, and Export

1. Class Introduction: Hello everyone. In this tutorial I'm going to show you how to import, edit, and export your project or video in Final Cut Pro ten, this is a very basic and beginners tutorial. So if you want to check out my full guide and there's link in the description below before now I'm going to show you the easiest and quickest way to do things. So hopefully I'll see you on the other side and thanks for joining. 2. Interface Basics and Importing: This is the main interface of Final Cut Pro ten. Once we open it, we have this space here where our imported footage will show up. We have this space here where we're going to preview our video once we're playing it back and down here, we have what's called our timeline. And here we're going to edit our video. As you can see here to the left, we have untitled smart collections and a date. This here is called a library in case you can't see this. So let's say for example, I close this down and you just see this here, Open Library. We're going to click there and select a library. It doesn't matter which name and has just choose this one by default. Why? Because in order to start editing a project Final Cut Pro ten needs a library. That's the way it works. So now we need to import our footage first. So we're going to press Command I on our keyboard. And this window is going to show up. So now we're able to import our footage into Final Cut Pro ten. In my case, my footage is on my desktop. So let's say for example, this picture here, this video, and this audio track. I'm going to click here. And I'll also press shift and then select the rest of the footage. Now that that's selected, I could come and click Import selected. But let me explain a couple of things from this column here. Files copied library, or leave files in place. You want to leave files in place. If you select Copy to library, it's just going to duplicate each file. And it's going to take a lot of space in your computer. These, I don't use them. Analyze video, you don't need it either. And transcode, I leave it unchecked. But if you're using a less powerful computer or your computer is a bit old, you can select create proxy media. To put things simply, this is going to create a smaller file to allow you to edit quicker, but it's not going to affect the quality of the exported file. But as I said, this is just for computers that are old or not powerful enough. These three, we don't check them either. This will leave by default. And then we click Import selected. And as you can see now, we have our video tracks, our image, and our audio track. In my case, I'm going to come up here to this icon here I'm going to click and I'm going to change the appearance of the clips here to make them smaller so there's more space. So I'm gonna change this instead of thirty-seconds, I'm going to move it all the way to the left. And you can make this bigger or smaller. So now we've successfully imported our footage. 3. Creating a New Project: And now we want to edit everything, but first we need to create a new project. So lets click here. And we can give this any name that we want. For example, let's say Final Cut Pro ten tutorial, this relieved by default. And the important part is over here, format ten ADP. So in my case, I leave it like this because I do record and then ATP, but if you record them for K, you would choose for gay. And the frame rate 24 frames per second, which is what I use to record. If you record in 30 frames per second, you would choose this one here. So this, we don't have to touch it and we don't have to touch it either. And then we just click Okay, and now we have our timeline here. So we could select a clip and bring it down to the timeline. If we hover our mouse on top, we can see a preview live of me talking in the car. I'm going to select these two clips and bring them down here. I'm gonna click and drag. And I'm going to bring them down here to the timeline. Now I could start editing my video. However, it's a bit too small, so I can't see properly. I'm going to come here to the right, to this icon here, we're going to click on it. And I'm going to change the size. I can see things better. Zoom out, zoom in. I'm going to leave it like that. I just have to press again. And now I can start editing my project. 4. How to Edit in Final Cut Pro X: As you can see up here, we have our video. We also have our audio waveform down here. So we can change the volume by hovering our mouse on top. And we can click and drag down to make it quieter or up to make it louder. If you make this audio track too loud, you're going to see yellow and red, and we don't want that. Let's bring it back down to 0, to the original level. So if you want to edit your audio precisely and you want to make sure it's not too loud or too low. You can come up here to Window showing workspace audio meters. If we deselect this disappears. Let's bring this back on window showing workspace audio meters. This way, when we play back our footage, we're going to be able to see the levels here. And my recommendation is that you make sure your audio stays between minus 12 and minus six. So how do we check that? We come here to the timeline and we're going to press Space-bar on our keyboard to play. While it's playing, we can see more or less every time I speak the audio meters move around minus 12 and minus six. If I want to pause the playback again, I'm going to press space bar. And I can do this all the time. Spacebar to play, space bar to pause. Now let's get to the editing process. There's many different ways of cutting and dreaming and Final Cut Pro, but I'm going to show you how I do it one of the quickest ways and it's also easy. We're going to use a keyboard shortcut. We basically have to move our mouse and cut all the unnecessary parts. In this case, if you see the waveform, you know, I'm going to be speaking here for example, but when I get here, I'm not speaking because there's no waveform. So to make things quicker, I just need to remove all the parts where there's no waveform. If the video starts here, I'm going to bring my mouse here, and I just simply need to press on my keyboard Command B. And now you can see this has created a slice, and now I can click on this part. Press Backspace on my keyboard. And now I've successfully erased that part that I didn't need. Let's keep doing this. If I'm speaking here, I cut here. Remember Command B on our keyboard. I'm going to move my mouse here, Command B once again. Now, if I click outside, you can see these two slices here. Once again, I'm going to click with my mouse and press Backspace on my keyboard to erase it. Final Cut Pro ten automatically snaps this part to this part. If we bring our mouse here and I press Space-bar, It's going to play these two together. So let's do that. Spacebar to play, space bar to pause. And that's how you're going to edit your video. I can come here, for example, and press Command B. And here. And press Command B once again. And again, I'm going to select this part Backspace on my keyboard to remove it. And that's how you erase all the parts of the video where you're not talking now, let's say you were cutting something and you made a mistake. You can either come here and click, Edit, undo, delete, and as you can see, this shows up again, so that goes backwards. One step, Let's click Edit, redo, delete. You can also press on your keyboard command Z to go back one step. So Command Z, and it goes back one step. But now let's delete this part because we don't want it. So Backspace on our keyboard. But now let's say you went a bit too far cutting and you don't want to undo and undo and undo again, you can move your mouse to the place where you created this slice. And as you can see, the icon it changes. If we select this part here, we can move our mouse to the edge. Once the icon changes, we can click and hold. We can drag to the right or the left. We are recovering. What do we erased? So now we're just trimming instead of cutting. So that's how you trim and cuts in Final Cut Pro ten. And you can do that through the whole clip. So basically removing all the parts of the footage where you're not talking or they you simply don't need. But now let's say I wanted to add an image to my video. In this case this one here, I'm gonna click and drag. And now I can either click and drag once more and drop it here on the timeline. And now my image shows on top of the video. So let's come here and press Spacebar to play. But if you look closely, we can still see the video beneath it. So it doesn't look very good. So we can press Command Z to go back on our keyboard and undo the last step. And we can also use another shortcut to bring the image down on the timeline. If we select the image and we come down here to the timeline, and we press on our keyboard letter W. This will bring the image in-between this clip and this clip. If we click on the image. And we come here, we can see it's telling us the clip duration. So this image is ten seconds long, but of course we can make it shorter. Now if we click on it again, it's telling us it's seven seconds long. But now let's imagine we don't want to have the image in-between one clip and the other clip. With the image selected, we're going to press backspace on our keyboard to erase it. And we're going to come here again to select it. And let's say I want to place my image here. Instead of pressing W on my keyboard, I'm going to press Q. Once again, the image lays on top of my video. So if we press Spacebar to play, we have our video and our image on top. But once again, we can see the video beneath it. How do we change this? We're going to click on the image and we're going to come here to this square icon which says Transform, and we're going to click on it and these dots show up. So now we can change and resize the image. So let's click and drag from this dot here. We're making the image smaller. Now, we can click and drag and move the image inside of our video. We can leave it here. And once we're done, we're going to click this square icon again. And now our image is the size that we want. Once again, let's move our play head here and press space bar to play. And this is how it would look like. So we have our image placed on top, but without bothering. And of course we can click on the image again. And if we click and drag from the edge, we can make sure it lines up with the video where we cut previously and now you know how to add images to your timeline. But let's say you don't want the original audio of your video and you want to add a soundtrack, for example, we can come here to this part of the clip. We're going to click and then we're going to right-click and select detach audio. Now we have two different tracks, one for video and one for audio. We can click here and press Backspace on our keyboard to erase it. And now this part of the video has the original audio, and this part of the video has no audio. So we can come here to where we imported or footage and here we have a soundtrack. So we're going to select the soundtrack and we're going to click and drag down here. And once we've aligned it with the video, we're going to let go of the mouse. And as I told you before, you don't want the audio to be red because that means it's too loud. So we're just going to click and bring this down a bit. Now, we would have our video with our soundtrack. And of course, once again, as we did with our video and our image, we can click and drag to make this shorter or longer. So we're trimming the audio track, or of course, we can also remove parts of the audio track that we don't want. So we're going to click on the audio track and we're going to move our play head. Let's say here for example, we're going to press Command B again on our keyboard. And we've created a slice, and now we could keep moving or playhead here, for example. And we can press Command B once again. Now we can remove this part of the soundtrack by pressing Backspace on our keyboard. And that's how cutting and trimming works. So it's the same for video, images, or audio. Once you've removed everything that you don't need and you've added your images, your soundtrack, and everything. Looks good. You're ready to export your footage. We're going to come up here to this icon here. We're going to click on it. And we're going to choose the first option which says export file default. We're going to click there. And this window shows up. We're going to make sure these stats are okay. So 1920 by 1080 and at 24 frames per second, I film in 1080 in 24 frames per seconds. So that's okay. Stereo is okay as well. And this is the duration of the whole clip. So of course you can double-click here to change the title. You can also double-click here to change the description greater is myself, but you can also change the name. The file format once it's exported will be dot MOV. And this is the space that it's going to take up more or less in your hard drive. And once you're ready, you just have to click Next. And then up here to the left and a small white wheel is going to show up and it's going to fill up as the video is exporting. And once the video has been exported to your computer, year to the right, a pop-up is going to show up saying your video has been exported and it's already saved to your computer. 5. Class Recommendations: As I said, I'm going to leave a link in the description below. If you want to check my full course, it's on Skillshare. That course is more than one hour long and I cover everything in detail from adding text, transitions, basic color grading, adding effects to your video. How to record a voiceover. How to improve your audio, more keyboard shortcuts and other tips and tricks. So if you're interested, please feel free to check it out or adding other of my classes on my profile. Once again, thank you very much for joining and I'll see you in the next one.