Final Cut Pro information

Notes on Final Cut Pro on Mac OS X

Show I use transitions in Training Videos?

or simply jump from one scene to another?

Simple Fade to Black - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPlFUiqPrms
Comment that this is the only transition they use.
Keeping in mind, these are training videos and not Films.

Lessons Learned from making 1st Training Video

Have plenty of footage before and after a scene to allow editing, text prompts, and transitions (if needed)
Make sure the headings fit the other training media.
Have an index of activities at the start and make sure each segment fits.

Export iPhone Video in Portrait instead of 1080P landscape

I have a iPhone video recorded in Portrait, this is to be uploaded to Youtube. I don’t want the bars on the side when exporting, so that it plays on a iPhone in the correct way.

Select the Project name in the browser.
In the Informational Panel (right) click Modify.
Video: Vertical format
1080x1920 Resolution.
Done!

Exporting Video to a manageable filesize

When choosing to Export File. Make sure to change the Format from Audio and Video to Computer. As the default option is for Mastering and there is no compression. Make sure to pick the correct CODEC for the input video, HDR or Not. As HDR video looks washed out when converted.

Library Management

When I had only 2GB of disk space left and my laptop was about to crash, I tried to clean up Final Cut Pro Library, my first thought was to simply delete unused media, but as I have multiple projects for different YouTube videos, this was not an easy task. How can I be sure I won’t use that file? Then I found a method to cleanup render files: https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/final-cut-pro/ver68a8c250/mac This discovered 300GB of space!?!??! on 30GB of media!! That is a lot of extra FCPx render files etc. Due to the first issue, how do I delete unused media, I’ve made the decision to change my Library management to:

When working on a new project with new media, create a new Library.
Once that project is complete, clean up render files etc, consolidate media (in case I linked something externally, this way its copied into the Library), and then
close the Library.

Text Wrap Box

Creating talking headings on a page ie: What you need to do:

Do this
Do that
Then you need to… I wanted each section to appear after completing the audio.

Using the Text Wrap plugin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfrN7R93WrA&t=240s
Then using keyframes and the Crop Tool to display at the right time.
I tried using animations, but they all didn’t work for me. Plus I needed each text to appear at the correct time based on the length of time the audio went for.
Needed two keyframes due to animation, not sure how to disable it. Before and after. But for now, 1 frame before, 1 frame after for new text look.

Captions

I have 2 Caption Roles for each language. One for Speaking Audio, and one for Text displayed on the screen that needs to be spoken out. Both are SRT format and are fed into my script to generate custom speaking audio. Only the primary caption role is burned into the screen using another tool, as Final Cut Pro caption burn in functionality is very limited.

SRT Import

My SRT Caption file that was exported from a video translation website, refused to import without any explanation of why. A generic error message, the sort that makes you think the software needs a lot of work.

After cutting out pieces of the file, I found the first index of 0 is not supported by Final Cut Pro?!?!

0
00:00:00,167 --> 00:00:06,608
Caption text for screen

I removed the first entry, so that the SRT file started at 1, and it imported without any issues.

Reference:

Crash Log

2023-08-14 Crash while using Control-Z in Text Wrap plugin.

Last modified October 11, 2023: Page Update (c68f0a3)