In this lesson we'll be taking a look at
Final Cut Pro 10.3's redesigned Project Timeline,
what Apple refers to as "Timeline 2".
This is probably Final Cut Pro's biggest new feature
and it's incredibly useful.
Let's start with the Timeline Index
because it's unique to Final Cut Pro 10
and it's been greatly enhanced.
For one, you're now able to search for compound clips
and synchronized clips.
I'll enter "sync" and all my synchronized clips are returned by the search,
and can be selected for
applying effects, adjusting audio levels
or any number of editing operations.
There's a redesigned Roles pane,
making it even easier to organize your audio
into related content.
For those of you unfamiliar with Roles,
they're nothing more than pre-assigned text labels that
defines what a particular clip is,
so it can be organized and tracked throughout the entire editing process.
If you look at this timeline
you can see that some music clips appear with effects,
and some effects appear with the dialogue.
Final Cut Pro now gives you the ability to
organize the timeline by placing all
audio clips into designated Lanes
defined by its assigned Role.
By clicking the Show Audio Lanes button,
all dialogue music and effects clips
magically (or I should say magnetically),
flows into its designated lane
and is identified by the Role's text label in the header of each lane.
If your dialogue has overlapping audio,
often called a split edit,
it appears in the lower part of the lane.
Typically however, when you're doing
sound editing you'll be working on one
part of your soundtrack at a time.
For instance, you might want to work on just
the sound effects or just the dialogue.
The circular button at the far end of
each role will bring focus to that
particular role.
Click the focus button for effects
and the dialogue and music roles will be
minimized in the timeline.
Click the focus button for dialogue
and the effects and music roles will be minimized.
In each case the audio roles
you're not working with are kept out of your way.
But here's something even cooler.
When a role has been minimized,
the individual clips can still be trimmed
and they can be selected for repositioning
or for making volume and
other changes in the Audio Inspector.
Each of the Roles can be rearranged in the
timeline. So, for instance, if you wanted
to have all your sound effects appear
closer to the Primary Storyline,
simply drag upward on the role
until you see a blue insertion line appear above the
dialogue role, then release your mouse.
The lanes rearrange themselves in the timeline.
Now focus the effects role, and
the dialogue music roles become
minimized in their new locations.
Let's move the effects role back to where it was,
then focus the dialogue
because this is where you do most of
your audio work initially.
By clicking the Show or Collapse Subrole button,
you can reveal the individual
audio channels within each clip,
what Final Cut Pro calls Components.
You can use the terms audio components and audio
channels interchangeably.
An audio component is the physical channel within each clip,
and a Subrole is the pre-assigned
text label for that component.
Here we see two Subrole lanes -
A Dialogue 1 lane and a Dialogue 2 lane.
Some of the audio for this project
resides in Dialogue 1,
and some of it resides in Dialogue 2.
Depending on what you need to work on,
Subrole priority can be changed.
I'll drag Dialogue 1 above Dialogue 2.
The lanes rearrange themselves,
in order to place the audio where you want it.
In this case, closer to the primary storyline.
If you look at each audio clip,
some of them have badges in the upper left of the audio,
indicating that you're looking
at the individual component of a clip.
Components give you an unbelievably
efficient way to sweeten your audio.
For example, I can apply an audio effect
like this Channel EQ
to one of my dialogue components,
adjust the settings in the Inspector,
then copy the settings
and paste those EQ settings to the other
dialogue components in the lane.
You can also quickly copy and paste components.
I'll select a few of these sound effects,
press command-C to copy them,
move the playhead later in the timeline,
and press command-V to paste.
It's also very easy to reassign your audio to another lane.
Let's turn off the focus for effects.
Perhaps this particular clip was
improperly assigned an effect role by the editor,
and should appear with the music.
No problem; I'll just right-click
on the clip and choose > Assign Audio Roles,
then I'll choose the music subrole from the menu.
The clip magnetically
moves into the Music lane because it's
been tagged with new role metadata.
Timeline 2 give you some
incredibly powerful ways to work with your audio,
even while playing back.
I'm going to go ahead and press the spacebar
and as my project plays,
I'm going to move the music lane to the top.
Then I'll click on the checkboxes for dialogue and effects
to mute the sound for the other audio lanes
so I can focus on just the music.
The entire audio editing experience seems so much for "fluid" now.
I agree.
I love the color coding of the roles,
and the labeling of them.
You look at your timeline and
you can tell exactly what's going on,
the ability to put everything into lanes when you want to,
the ability to expand components when you want to,
to organize them and reorganize them easily,
and be able to focus and collapse
everything down makes it so easy to
look at just what you want to look at and
have it be exactly where you want it to be.
Absolutely. If you like this information,
we've also produced an in-depth tutorial
that covers even more ground,
explores additional features,
and explains key benefits and things to watch out for.
In the next lesson, we'll look at how roles
get assigned in the first place.