Diana Weynand - Apple Pro Training Series: Final Cut Pro X

Apple Pro Training Series

Diana Weynand

Apple Pro Training Series: Final Cut Pro X
Diana Weynand
Copyright 2012 by Diana Weynand and Shirley Craig

Published by Peachpit Press. For information on Peachpit Press books, contact:
Peachpit Press
1249 Eighth Street
Berkeley, CA 94710
(510) 524-2178
www.peachpit.com
To report errors, please send a note to . Peachpit Press is a division of Pearson Education.

Apple Series Editor: Lisa McClain
Editor: Bob Lindstrom
Production Coordinator: Kim Elmore, Happenstance Type-O-Rama
Contributors: Brendan Boykin, James Alguire, Lisa Hendricks, and Susan Merzbach
Apple Reviewers: Christopher Phrommayon, Liza Patnoe, Anne Renehan
Technical Editor: Brendan Boykin
Technical Reviewer: Mary Plummer, Klark Perez
Copy Editor: Darren Meiss
Proofreader: Darren Meiss
Compositor: Chris Gillespie, Happenstance Type-O-Rama
Indexer: Jack Lewis
Cover Illustration: Kent Oberheu
Cover Production: Chris Gillespie, Happenstance Type-O-Rama
Media Producer: Eric Geoffroy

Notice of Rights

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. For information on getting permission for reprints and excerpts, contact .

Footage from Delicious Peace Grows in a Ugandan Coffee Bean used with permission. 2010 Jemglo, Inc. All rights reserved.
Footage from Zero to Hero used with permission. 2011 NHRA/Pullin TV, Inc. All rights reserved.
Footage from Mobileviz Minutes used with permission. 2011 Silverdraft, Inc. All rights reserved.
Footage from Fairly Legal used with permission. 2011 Open 4 Business Productions, LLC. All rights reserved.
Footage from I Think I Thought used with permission. 2011 Cinco Dedos Peliculas. All rights reserved.
Stills of Baja Whales used with permission. 2011 2nd Side Adventures, LLC. All rights reserved.
Still from GoPro HD HERO camera used with permission. 2011 GoPro. All rights reserved.

The projects and footage supplied with this book may only be used for educational purposes in association with the lessons included. Any other use, including but not limited to incorporating footage into another project, duplicating or distributing footage, is expressly forbidden and requires explicit permission from the copyright holders listed above.

Notice of Liability

The information in this book is distributed on an As Is basis, without warranty. While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of the book, neither the authors nor Peachpit Press shall have any liability to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the instructions contained in this book or by the computer software and hardware products described in it.

Trademarks

Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book, and Peachpit was aware of a trademark claim, the designations appear as requested by the owner of the trademark. All other product names and services identified throughout this book are used in editorial fashion only and for the benefit of such companies with no intention of infringement of the trademark. No such use, or the use of any trade name, is intended to convey endorsement or other affiliation with this book.

ISBN 13: 978-0-321-77467-5 ISBN 10: 0-321-77467-1
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed and bound in the United States of America

My deepest gratitude to all who provided footage for this book: for the Fairly Legal footage, thanks to Sarah Shahi and Gerald McRaney (http://www.usanetwork.com/series/fairlylegal/) and the folks at NBC-Universal; for the Zero to Hero footage, Stephen Pullin (www.pullin.tv) and Tom Compton, President of NHRA (www.nhra.com); for the Delicious Peace Grows in a Ugandan Coffee Bean footage, Curt Fissel and Ellen Friedland (www.deliciouspeacethemovie.com); for the Mobileviz Minutes footage, Amy Gile, Founder and CEO of Silverdraft (www.silverdraft.com); for the short film, I Think I Thought (http://tinyurl.com/3asgbbk), Matthew Modine, Terence Ziegler, Adam Rackoff, and the Cinco Dedos Peliculas production company; to GoPro (www.gopro.com) for their car-racing image; and to 2nd Side Adventures for the Baja Whales still images.

I would like to gratefully acknowledge the non-stop, tireless efforts of my teamJames Alguire, Lisa Hendricks, Susan Merzbach, and Hubert Krzysztofikfor their contributions to this book. I couldnt have done it without you.

Special thanks to the Peachpit editorial and production staff for their Herculean efforts producing this book under a challenging schedule: Lisa McClain, Bob Lindstrom, Darren Meiss, Kim Wimpsett, Chris Gillespie, and Eric Geoffroy. I see your hard work throughout these pages.

Huge thanks to Brendan Boykin for going above and beyond his normal tech editing role to help bring this ship to shore and for sharing his Alaska images, and to Mary Plummer and Klark Perez for their careful attention to dotting Is and crossing Ts during quality control. Id also like to thank Shannon L. Hartman and Joe Hackett for their contributions.

At Apple, special thanks to Anne Renehan for her continued support and editorial advice, and to Steve Bayes, Christopher Phrommayon, Liza Patnoe, and the developers who created this extraordinary software. And to Kent Oberheu for the cover art.

Finally, to my business partner, Shirley Craig (www.weynand.com), my grateful thanks.

to go to last page in this eBook for the download location and instructions.

Welcome to the official Apple Pro Training course for Final Cut Pro X.

This book is a comprehensive guide to editing with Final Cut Pro. It uses exciting real-world footage from the USA Network series Fairly Legal, behind-the-scenes digital effects filmmaking with Silverdrafts Mobileviz, the award-winning documentary Delicious Peace Grows in a Ugandan Coffee Bean, exciting Zero to Hero racing footage from Pullin TV, and Matthew Modines short film, I Think I Thought, all to demonstrate both the features of the application and the practical techniques youll use daily in your editing projects.

For those who have edited on earlier versions of Final Cut Pro, or who edit on other NLE (nonlinear editing) platforms, you may ask yourselves: why make the jump to Final Cut Pro X? The answer lies not only in what Final Cut Pro X has the power to do, but what it has eliminated: many of the stumbling blocks that slow down the editing process. So lets start by taking a closer look at how that power will affect you as an editor.

Final Cut Pro X is not an upgrade, but a completely new application integrating some of the best of the latest OS X technologies. What this means for the editor is significantly better performance, workflow improvements, and the ability to perform many tasks simultaneously. For example, gone from Final Cut Pro X is the wait time for rendering and ingest. In the past, these activities halted the editing process. Now, rendering and importing, even analyzing and fixing, go on in the background as you continue to edit.