
Remove a clip out of your primary storyline and all the other clips ripple down. Let’s dive into some specific features of the Magnetic timeline that help boost editing speed, all the while maintaining that “story/clip” relationship. In spite of sync locks and the other tools that NLEs give you to help mitigate these errors, no editor is immune to them. That second error can be extremely difficult to repair, because there is no inherent “correct” relationship between two independent clips on the timeline, as there usually is between the audio and video of a single clip. It is easy for the sound to lose sync with the video, and it’s even easier for two pieces of video to slide around relative to each other on the timeline. On most NLEs, the editor has to constantly worry about accidentally losing sync.

Again, it is all about the relationships. You have to consciously disconnect and move it if you want to override that sync. You can toggle audio channels, and so on.īut the big thing is that the dialogue is married to the visuals in a way that prevents it from getting out-of-sync. Then as you drop clips into the storyline, the dialogue should be synced up and wrapped into the main clip. All those things make your editing more precise. Place some keywords, mark important spots in the browser, and make notes on clips. There are several reasons for this, not the least of which is that FCP X encourages you to quickly organize your footage before editing. The magnetic timeline saves an enormous amount of time. It might strike you as odd that FCP X refers to “timelines” as “projects.” But that is an indicator that FCP X is putting the emphasis on story rather than timecode. Sync clips, effortlessly create multicam clips, and join raw audio and video together in the browser before it ever hits your main project. The timeline automatically “ripples”, and all of the relationships between story elements are preserved.įinal Cut Pro X does an amazing job of letting you bundle related things together. Secondary storylines are then connected to clips on the main storyline so that if something earlier is removed, all of the rest of the story relationships remain established. The primary storyline comprises clips that define the main story.
#FINAL CUT PRO KEY FRAME BY FRAME SOFTWARE#
It organizes the software around the concepts of story, instead of shaping the discipline around the constraints of software. There shouldn’t be dead space, unless it is intentional, and every B-roll clip, sound effect, or piece of background music relates to a primary story element.įinal Cut Pro X asks us to rethink how we look at the NLE but it frees the editor to focus on her main story and how everything relates to that. This is the starting place for FCP X’s magnetic timeline. A song, with beats that structure the edits.The scene in the script you are working with.What if the NLE was rethought to focus on story? After all, that’s what this is all about. Apple’s designers (who, on the whole, tend to know what they’re doing) took a hard look at this limitation, and determined that the limitation was artificial.

“This audio cue needs to happen at 45 seconds and 12 frames in, which happens to visually correspond to what is going on with 5 tracks up the timeline and out of my view.” There weren’t great ways to establish flexible relationships with clips to the story and to each other-rather everything was constrained by placement and time. “ First I want to see the wide, then the medium, then the tight.”īut traditional track-based timelines asked us to think in a way that wasn’t focused on story, but rather on a set of technical specifications.“This audio queue should happen when that boat comes around the corner.”.The primary question is one of story relationships. But when you’re editing a story, the primary decision isn’t when something needs to happen in timecode. In a track-based editing program you’re constantly asking yourself “where in time does this clip go?” At 30 seconds in? 45 seconds? And so on.

And it seemed great-other than the occasional Avid editor asking “Does Final Cut have a real trim mode yet?” Limitations of the Old Method We’d target tracks after carefully considering where clips would go in our timeline.

FCP7 allowed exports to many other platforms without plugins. Video tracks and audio tracks indicated visual priority. Clips go in bins and a source-record viewer previewed your bins and timelines. When Final Cut Pro’s magnetic timeline hit the scene six years ago, professional editors were already quite adept at wielding the tools of Avid, Premiere Pro, and Final Cut Pro 7.
