AnimeSuki Forums

.calla. · 2008-07-01, 16:01

so here's the deal.. i just got final cut pro the other day and i spent all day going through tutorial after tutorial on what would seem like something incredibly simple.

i added a clip to my timeline. i muted the sound. i added an mp3 to an empty spot in the sound timeline area...

i can't preview it.

how does one preview? seriously.

Ledgem · 2008-07-01, 23:41

First, create a new sequence. Double click that to make the timeline and all that correspond to that sequence. There should be two preview windows. One of the windows corresponds to what video/sound is currently open, and the other corresponds to the active sequence. Drag your video to the sequence timeline, and then drag the MP3 to the sound area. The sequence preview should be the rightmost window; hit the play button. I don't remember if you'll need to have it do a render preview before it'll play back.

As for muting the sound in your video, that seems strange. How did you go about that?

.calla. · 2008-07-03, 01:08

mmm yeah i figured out how to do it.. final cut is sooo not user friendly (i like ulead better >.<)

anyways, for every change you make you need to render. you can tell with that red bar above the timeline... but it sure is a pain in the ass to have to keep doing just to view your changes.

to mute sound you click on the little speaker icons in the audio section, it's in the left column.

now my bigger problem is getting transitions to work, if you have any idea as to how to make that less of a headache i would appreciate it.
usually you can throw in a transition between a clip and tell it how long you want the duration set to but with this it automatically sets it so that it lasts only those fractions of a second between clips. and even then the transition only effects one clip. so clip a will end abruptly and then clip b will have the fade in effect. know how to work with that?

Ledgem · 2008-07-03, 17:57

For the transition you can probably specify a time duration, but I found it easier to just go to the timeline and then drag the clips away from each other such that the transition spread out over the time that I wanted. I didn't need to do a whole lot of transitions in my work with FCP, so I can't help you much beyond that.

FCP is a pretty daunting program, but once you get used to the way it's geared then you'll find it friendly enough. I've used FCP and Adobe Premiere/After Effects. Both seem relatively counter-intuitive at first, but once you get used to the general workflow then neither are too bad to work with.

.calla. · 2008-07-03, 23:31

so am i to understand that i should throw in my first clip then add a transition of which duration i am able to choose then add the second clip instead of just throwing it in between?

Ledgem · 2008-07-04, 00:28

The way that I did it (using a simple fade-out, fade-in transition) was to have the two clips already on the timeline and then add the transition. The default transition time was too short, so I dragged the second clip out a bit to lengthen the transition... if I remember right. I don't remember whether I selected both clips or the clip edges (FCP has some weird selection options) and then added the transition, but I guess that's not very important.

I would expect that you can specify the exact amount of time without having to drag it, somehow, but I'm not really sure. I'd imagine that there's a better way to go about it, because that's a pretty horrible method. At least, I know how to do this in Adobe's programs that seem a bit easier. I probably just never discovered how to do the equivalent in FCP.

By the way, do you have Final Cut Studio or just Final Cut Pro? Since I needed the latest DVD Studio Pro for my work, my department boosted me to Final Cut Studio 2. There's a ton of programs in there that I never touched, and I'm sure they're just as complex as FCP. (They also took up close to 100 GB of disk space...)

.calla. · 2008-07-04, 10:09

yeah just final cut pro.. i didn't have the disks for motion and etc.

but what you're explaining sounds exactly what i was trying. i would shorten a clip about a second so i could set a transition in that would last a second. only to find that the first clip still abruptly ended and the next clip would fade in for a second.

.calla. · 2008-07-26, 21:29

now i have two questions:

how can i crop an image and then expand it to fill in the missing space without messing up my aspect ratio?

and what is the preferred choice for exporting? i can't seem to get compressor to work so i've been using quicktime and the best choice i have turns my five minute video into 600mb. assuming i just want to put my videos onto dvd what are the best options utilizing quicktime's converter?

Ledgem · 2008-07-26, 22:49

Quote:

Originally Posted by .calla.

how can i crop an image and then expand it to fill in the missing space without messing up my aspect ratio?

Crop it with the right aspect ratio. I don't know of any easy way to do this other than to calculate it out and crop based around that. I also don't know how you'd do this rom Finalcut Pro, if you even can. I do know that iPhoto has a feature where you can crop and tell it to maintain the aspect ratio, which I find to be very useful. I'm sure that other image software must have similar features. I have no idea how you'd crop in such a manner in Photoshop, though.

Quote:

and what is the preferred choice for exporting? i can't seem to get compressor to work so i've been using quicktime and the best choice i have turns my five minute video into 600mb. assuming i just want to put my videos onto dvd what are the best options utilizing quicktime's converter?

Compressor is pretty neat. It's a life-saver if you're batch processing videos, and if you ever get into distributed encoding it's essential. I can try to help you work through it if you'd like, but for your purposes you probably don't need it.

As for Quicktime, it sounds like your export settings are messed up. By default I think FCP uses a pretty terrible and inefficient codec that is geared more toward stopping quality loss than being efficient about file size.

There are two ways to export, and both have different settings dialogues. Yep, annoying. The first is to use File > Export > Quicktime Movie. To adjust the encoder settings, click on the pulldown menu for Setting: and scroll all the way down to "Custom." The upper fields mostly deal with framerate and aspect ratio. What you're probably looking for is at the bottom. In the "Quicktime Video Settings" section, change the Compressor setting to H.264. Using H.264, if I remember right you should be able to drop the quality to as low as 50% and not notice a difference unless you're working with insanely crisp and vibrant video. The Advanced button will bring you to a screen that looks similar to what you'd find if you use the method I've detailed below. I can't see any way to specify an audio codec, so you're going to probably get hit with a huge audio filesize because FCP's default audio codec is essentially uncompressed audio, if I remember right. See the below method for more control.

If you go with Export > Quicktime Conversion. Assuming you're going with MP4 (MPEG-4 on the menu) or MOV (Quicktime Movie), clicking on Options should bring up your encoder options. This may roughly be the same for other output formats, but I haven't worked with those. Click on the Settings button in the Video area. Set your compression type to H.264. Set the quality to either Medium or High; I've never been able to tell the difference between the two, but I wasn't working with extremely high-quality video sources. Data rate can be left to automatic (but you'd want to set it to something specific if, for example, you were preparing video to be streamed over the internet), leave the frame rate as "Current." I have key frames set to every 24 frames and frame reordering is enabled, but I presume those were the defaults. That should be it for video, but for your reference: The Filter button will give you some options to adjust some extra processing for the video. The Size button will let you specify an output resolution and will allow you to enable deinterlacing, if you were working with interlaced video footage. Lastly, we'll adjust the sound encoder settings. Click on Settings from the sound section. Set the format to AAC. In most cases, "Normal" quality at 128 kbps for a bitrate should suffice. I'd imagine that everything else there is self-explanatory. Now you should be set, and you won't get gargantuan filesizes!

Hope it helps - I'm feeling a bit sleepy when I wrote this, so if something doesn't make sense, let me know and I'll try to clarify it tomorrow.

2008-07-01, 16:01	Link #1
.calla. Member Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: idaho	new to final cut pro so here's the deal.. i just got final cut pro the other day and i spent all day going through tutorial after tutorial on what would seem like something incredibly simple. i added a clip to my timeline. i muted the sound. i added an mp3 to an empty spot in the sound timeline area... i can't preview it. how does one preview? seriously.

2008-07-01, 23:41	Link #2
Ledgem Love Yourself Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Northeast USA Age: 38	First, create a new sequence. Double click that to make the timeline and all that correspond to that sequence. There should be two preview windows. One of the windows corresponds to what video/sound is currently open, and the other corresponds to the active sequence. Drag your video to the sequence timeline, and then drag the MP3 to the sound area. The sequence preview should be the rightmost window; hit the play button. I don't remember if you'll need to have it do a render preview before it'll play back. As for muting the sound in your video, that seems strange. How did you go about that? __________________

2008-07-03, 17:57	Link #4
Ledgem Love Yourself Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Northeast USA Age: 38	For the transition you can probably specify a time duration, but I found it easier to just go to the timeline and then drag the clips away from each other such that the transition spread out over the time that I wanted. I didn't need to do a whole lot of transitions in my work with FCP, so I can't help you much beyond that. FCP is a pretty daunting program, but once you get used to the way it's geared then you'll find it friendly enough. I've used FCP and Adobe Premiere/After Effects. Both seem relatively counter-intuitive at first, but once you get used to the general workflow then neither are too bad to work with. __________________

2008-07-04, 00:28	Link #6
Ledgem Love Yourself Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Northeast USA Age: 38	The way that I did it (using a simple fade-out, fade-in transition) was to have the two clips already on the timeline and then add the transition. The default transition time was too short, so I dragged the second clip out a bit to lengthen the transition... if I remember right. I don't remember whether I selected both clips or the clip edges (FCP has some weird selection options) and then added the transition, but I guess that's not very important. I would expect that you can specify the exact amount of time without having to drag it, somehow, but I'm not really sure. I'd imagine that there's a better way to go about it, because that's a pretty horrible method. At least, I know how to do this in Adobe's programs that seem a bit easier. I probably just never discovered how to do the equivalent in FCP. By the way, do you have Final Cut Studio or just Final Cut Pro? Since I needed the latest DVD Studio Pro for my work, my department boosted me to Final Cut Studio 2. There's a ton of programs in there that I never touched, and I'm sure they're just as complex as FCP. (They also took up close to 100 GB of disk space...) __________________

2008-07-03, 01:08	Link #3
.calla. Member Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: idaho	mmm yeah i figured out how to do it.. final cut is sooo not user friendly (i like ulead better >.<) anyways, for every change you make you need to render. you can tell with that red bar above the timeline... but it sure is a pain in the ass to have to keep doing just to view your changes. to mute sound you click on the little speaker icons in the audio section, it's in the left column. now my bigger problem is getting transitions to work, if you have any idea as to how to make that less of a headache i would appreciate it. usually you can throw in a transition between a clip and tell it how long you want the duration set to but with this it automatically sets it so that it lasts only those fractions of a second between clips. and even then the transition only effects one clip. so clip a will end abruptly and then clip b will have the fade in effect. know how to work with that?

2008-07-03, 23:31	Link #5
.calla. Member Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: idaho	so am i to understand that i should throw in my first clip then add a transition of which duration i am able to choose then add the second clip instead of just throwing it in between?

2008-07-04, 10:09	Link #7
.calla. Member Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: idaho	yeah just final cut pro.. i didn't have the disks for motion and etc. but what you're explaining sounds exactly what i was trying. i would shorten a clip about a second so i could set a transition in that would last a second. only to find that the first clip still abruptly ended and the next clip would fade in for a second.

2008-07-26, 21:29	Link #8
.calla. Member Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: idaho	now i have two questions: how can i crop an image and then expand it to fill in the missing space without messing up my aspect ratio? and what is the preferred choice for exporting? i can't seem to get compressor to work so i've been using quicktime and the best choice i have turns my five minute video into 600mb. assuming i just want to put my videos onto dvd what are the best options utilizing quicktime's converter?