Hey guys! Dylan again. And let's jump right into the tutorial. The first thing you’re doing wrong
is maneuvering your clips in an inefficient way. In part 1 we went over using the ‘grave’ key,
also known as the tilde key, to move your clips about freely. Here are some more similar tips
for ya. Chances are that you probably know that by pressing T, which brings up your trim tool,
you can perform a slip edit, which allows you to find a later or earlier part of the clip easily.
Once again, you can hold the grave key to prevent this connected media from moving with it.
The slip edit doesn’t change the clip’s position on the timeline or the duration, it just changes
what part of that clip is shown. Quick side tip, if you hold down T instead of just clicking it,
once you stop pressing the key and you let go, it will go back to the previous tool you were using.
This also works for whatever other tool you’d like to use by the way.
You can also perform what is called a slide edit by either pressing or holding T
and clicking OPTION while you drag the clip that you want to move
on the timeline. The slide edit allows you to move a clip between clips, without creating a
gap. Stay with me now because this is something I use a lot. So say you’ve
decided that this B-roll clip would be better off in your primary storyline. Tidy things up
a bit by pressing option command and down arrow, with that clip selected. If you have a clip that
you’d like above the primary storyline, do the opposite shortcut, option command and up arrow.
The second thing you’re doing wrong is not utilizing the video or audio animation editors to
adjust the effects of your video or audio clips. So check this out. I have the muffled sound effect
applied to this clip. I want to make it so it gradually becomes more muffled as he walks up to
the tree. I could make the adjustments by hitting the keyframe button in the inspector window,
but I’m a visual person. Maybe you are too. So for me, this is the way to go about it. Right click
the sound effect that has the effect on it and hit show audio animation or press the shortcut control
A. Hit this drop down menu, and whenever you want to place keyframes you’ll press
the shortcut option K. So I’ll hit option K where I want the muffled sound effect to start occurring
and then I’ll set another keyframe where I want the audio effect to be at full level. Then I’ll
lower this to the bottom so there’s no effect here, I’ll raise up the amount of the muffled
effect and you’ll notice that now, we have a very gradual introduction of that muffled effect.
If I want, I can move these around to make it more gradual or less gradual
and obviously moving these lines up or down changes the amount of the effect. Then just hit
this X when you’re done. I find that the audio animation editor is the most useful
but you can do the same thing with video as well! I’ll add a gaussian blur on this clip.
I’ll Control and right click the clip and hit show video animation. Or press control V.
I’ll hit option K 4 times to make 4 key frames, and I’ll lower these sections on the side so we
just have the blur gradually coming into play in this raised section here. Maybe I throw a
title in that section of the clip since the added blur gives way to it being more visible. These
animation editors allow us to see when that effect is taking place in the clip and by how much.
The third thing you’re doing wrong is not using the ‘default title/effect/transition’ feature. So
let’s say that I use this title from this plugin all the time. If I control right click the title,
I can hit make default title. Now, whenever I hit Control T (think Control title) that title will
automatically be placed on the timeline. Let’s say I use the sharpen effect, in my effects browser,
all the time. I’ll control right click and hit default video effect. Then hit option E
(think option Effect) with my clip selected and that effect is automatically added
whenever I hit that shortcut. Same with the transition that I use the most. Right click,
make default. And this time it’s Command T (think Command Transition). So that’s Control T
for title, Option E for effect, and Command T for transition. Last thing for this, you can
set a default lower third as well. So I have my default lower third set up as an adjustment layer.
So all I have to do is hit Control Shift and T and my adjustment layer will quickly pop up with.
That leads us into the fourth thing you might be doing wrong and that’s not using adjustment
layers in your workflow. What are adjustment layers some of you might be asking? Adjustment
layers are these layers that look like titles and when you add an effect or adjust any part of them,
they affect everything under them on the timeline. Everything. So for example,
if I add one over my clips by pressing Control Shift T, find custom LUTs and select one of my own LUTs,
now I’ve added that LUT to all the clips underneath that adjustment layer which really
helps if you’re trying to bust out color grading in a short amount of time. Using an adjustment
layer is also a great way to add a letterbox if you want to bake in a letterbox to your video.
And I probably use adjustment layers the most for this. I use it to scale in, rotate,
and adjust the position of the entire timeline at will. And these layers are free guys. I’ll link
some free adjustment layers from my buddy Dylan Bates, The Final Cut Bro, in the description.
The fifth thing you’re doing wrong is deciding what LUTs or effects you’d like on your clips
by going through the tedious process of applying, then deleting to try another one, trying that one
out, then deleting. You know how it goes. Check this out though. Let’s say I want to add a LUT
and maybe some effects to this clip, but I’m not sure which ones. I’ll select a LUT and then I’ll
press option Y to Audition this clip. Essentially Option Y, duplicates the clip to allow you to
make different changes to the clip to try out what works best. So now I’ll choose another LUT, maybe
I’ll go with Dalat. Maybe I’ll adjust the luma curve to add a bit of
contrast. And I’ll press option Y again. I’ll delete that curve and maybe go with Papua here.
And just for the example I’ll throw on an mMovie Light preset. Now that we’ve got our looks set up,
press control, option, and either right or left arrow to immediately jump between all
of your different looks. You could have 20 looks in here guys and this would allow you
to do a nearly side by side comparison to help you choose the look of your video. Something I forgot
to mention is that if you double click on your clip here, you can see what exactly Audition is doing.
And you can scroll through from there if you’d like more of a truly side by side comparison.
By the way, I realize that we’ve gone over a lot of keys and keyboard shortcuts in this video and
the previous video. And I can imagine that you probably feel very overwhelmed. So for those interested I
actually spent quite a lot of time and put together a cheat sheet of all of MY
favorite Final Cut Pro shortcuts, customized keys, and different ways that I edit faster,
so you can easily reference the cheat sheet while editing and then pop back into FCP
to apply them. It’ll cost you zero dollars too. It’s totally free. You can just go to my website and download it. I think you’ll get a
lot of benefit out of it. I’ll put link it in the comments and in the description.
The sixth thing you’re doing wrong is not using custom workspaces to help you speed up your
workflow and make your FCP interface just look better in a short amount of time. So check this
out. Let’s say when I color grade I usually have my video scopes up, by pressing Command
7. I usually go with a 2 up layout with a vectorscope on top and the luma waveform on
bottom. I’ll usually start with my color wheels so I’ll press command 6 and make sure those are selected. Maybe I’ll make the scopes a little smaller so my viewport is bigger.
I’ll push down the timeline because we don’t really need to have that big when color grading.
And this I would say is my ideal color grading setup. Instead of making FCP look like this
every time, which would take way too long to set up, go to window, workspaces, save workspace as,
and I’ll label this Color Grading workspace. Now every time I go into my workspaces and hit this,
it’ll set FCP up exactly how I want it. There’s tons of other options for useful
layouts though. Maybe one for editing audio, one for importing, organizing, and keywording media,
and maybe even just a standard workspace for editing. The seventh thing you’re doing wrong is taking
unnecessary steps when trimming and cutting your footage. I’ve seen people do this a lot and maybe
this is you. Maybe I’m specifically talking to you right now. If you’re still someone that presses
Command B to make a cut and then you select that end part that you don’t want, and then you delete,
stop doing that. Instead, press the shortcut option and right bracket. This takes two steps
out of deleting that section and just trims the clip down to your skimmer. Little side note, like
I talked about in part 1 of this video series, I used the custom keyboard shortcut editor and made
this shortcut just left and right bracket. The same thing goes for the beginning of the clip.
Instead of cutting and then deleting, just hit option and left bracket or just left bracket if
you customized your keys. I can hear some of you saying, I know that shortcut Dylan. Okay good.
That’s a very useful thing to know. Here are some other tips. With the end of your clip selected,
press period to extend a single frame and comma to cut a single frame. This allows you to obviously
make really precise adjustments so you can fine tune your shot. I use this shortcut every time I’m
editing. If one frame is too little for ya and you like to go big, hold shift and then press period
or comma again. By holding shift, you extend or cut by 10 frames. Last thing. If you’re someone
that makes cuts and then deletes the section you don’t want, speed that process up by just holding
R to temporarily bring up your range tool, drag to select, and then press delete. And like we
learned, once you release that R key, you’ll switch back to your select tool automatically.
The 8th thing you’re doing wrong in Final Cut Pro is just having your voiceover or
dialogue on the timeline and not adding any useful audio effects to make it sound better.
Bad audio is one way to not have a good video. The two built-in tools I use all the time,
every single time I edit pretty much, is the compressor, which essentially takes the quietest
and loudest parts of your voice and gets it to a more even level. So if you talk quietly,
it’ll end up being the same volume as when you’re talking at full volume.
I also use the limiter to help make sure that if my voice gets too loud and peaks,
it’s brought down to the level of my choosing and I also use this to supplement the
compressor and just get my entire voice audio to a level I’d like it to be at. Now I could go through
and tell you the specific settings you should use, but that would add another 6 minutes added on to
this video and I know you value your time. So I will link a specific video I created on this topic
and place it in the comments and the description for those interested. If you don’t really care
about mastering your voice audio and you just want it to sound better with the click of a button,
go into your effects browser, type in voice over enhancement, which is a free, built in effect by the way,
and double click this to apply to your clip. From here you can select one of these four options, as
well as the amount of the effect that you’d like on your voice. Extra tidbit, if you have a lot of
echo or background noise in your shot, you can use the newly added feature called ‘voice isolation’.
The 9th thing you’re doing wrong is thinking that the color board and the color wheels are the only
useful built-in color grading tools in Final Cut. Those of you that are subscribed and watch
my color grading tutorials know that I love the color curves. Say you have a shot that’s too blue.
You could manually select that color blue by heading into this drop down menu,
or you can use the color picker here, select an area of the shot,
and the color curve will not only change to the color of that selection, but it’ll also place
this line here which corresponds to how bright that selection point is. Shadows at the bottom of the curve,
highlights at the top, midtones in the middle. If I just pull down on the curve, I can get rid
of some of that cyan in the shot to help balance out the shot. Quick bonus tip here, if you hold
down option when dragging, it’ll help you to make a much slower adjustment. Similar to how command
and drag for audio volume helps you to adjust the volume on your audio clips slower. That’s more of
a color correction example though, but the curves are also really fantastic for color grading as well.
Check this out. I’ll create a really quick complimentary color color grade by selecting cyan,
and orange. I’ll double click the top of the inspector to extend it so we can see the curves
better. I’ll push some cyan into my shadows and decrease the cyan in my highlights. Basically
just tilting this curve. Then I’ll do the reverse on this orange curve. I’ll decrease the orange in
my shadows and increase it in my highlights. Then we can go up to our luma curve which only
adjusts brightness, which is why it’s just white and I’ll create what’s called an S curve to help
us add some contrast. And maybe I’ll add a bit more orange into our midtones by pushing up
and drag this part of the curve down to lower the amount of orange in the highlight area. And now we
have a simple color grade that you made in just a few seconds. It doesn’t look incredible, but it’s
just a quick example. Bonus tip, if you want to make sure your darkest shadows and your brightest
highlights look clean, open a hue/sat curve, head down to luma vs sat. Use the dropper to
select the darkest parts of your image. And I’ll decrease the saturation in our darkest shadows by
making a nice gradual drop off here. I’ll also do the same for our very brightest highlights.
And this just helps to make our color grade look cleaner, tidier and more natural.
It’s a precision adjustment that you cannot do with the color wheels or color board.
The 10th thing you’re doing wrong is having really messy and unorganized audio on your timeline. Do
yourself a solid and use audio roles and subroles. The nice thing is, once you get these set up,
you can open your index, you can move these bad boys around, you can collapse
every role except one so it’s easier to see and you can do things like mute entire roles. This
is really useful when you have big projects that have intricate sound design but also
useful if you just create smaller videos. I’ll right click my music, go to assign audio roles,
and select this as music. Now for the typing and dog sounds, I’ll put in my role that I labeled
as foley. How you make your own roles is hit ‘edit roles’, then from here you can hit this
plus sign to add another audio role, label it, maybe change the color, and you can select that
new audio role if you’d like. Like we went over, I’ll head into my index and move these around.
I usually like dialogue at the top, hard sound effects or foley below that, then ambience,
then music. And now we have a beautiful looking color coded timeline that’ll keep you organized
and make it much easier for you to edit and make potential changes to your sound design later.
If you appreciate the work that I put into this video, do me a huge favor and leave me a comment down below letting me know that you did.
And subscribe if you like this video because I make videos just like this all the time and hopefully I will see you next week. Have a great day.