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How do I keep clips locked into place?
Hey guys,
Started our first edit today on a promo. Getting the hang of it, but I have a silly question that’s probably just too obvious to figure out.
For a :20 promo, you have certain ‘locked’ elements to work with like end pages, sponsor pages, network logos, and a hard out at 20 seconds. You always put the end page, network, and sponsor in successive order ending at :20. It’s immensely helpful to drop these things in and forget about them as when you edit you can visually gauge how much you have left to fill before you hit the end page.
My question is – how can I lock these certain elements from moving around as we play with clips in the middle? I keep making changes and realizing I just moved my time to 19 seconds, forcing me to rethink the edit, which then leads to a cascade of confusion.
It’s also helpful to have markers on the timeline, but I can’t seem to figure that one out either.
Other than my own ingorance – certainly liking lots of things about X.
John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.
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9 Replies
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Short answer: I don’t think you can lock something in place in the way that you want. But this is one approach that might help…
Use the position tool (‘P’) to drag your end clip into place so it ends at :20. FCP will pad out the empty timeline with a blank gap clip.
Right-click this gap clip and choose ‘New Compound Clip’.
Double click on that new compound clip, delete the blank clip inside it, and you’ve got a sub-timeline of exactly the right duration to play in. The diagonally-shaded areas show you where the in and out points are in the main timeline.
Click the left arrow below the ‘import from camera’ button to step back out to your main timeline.
That’s the most elegant approach solution I can think of. I’d be interested to hear if anyone else has found a better way.
Markers are easy — just tap ‘M’ to add one at the playhead or skimmer position. Control-click it to open a menu to delete etc.
James
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Use Jim’s trax template. Edit these elements to the secondary story lines. Work in the position mode.
Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
If you make a compound clip or secondary storyline and connect them to the first frame of the timline it stays locked that way with the connection.
The difference is the secondary storyline behaves like the primary with ripple mode. -
Let me know if you’d like a project file of the template John.
It’s the one simple way I’ve come up with to lock things in place as you’re looking to do.
Jim -
I think I’d put your non-changing elements inside a secondary storyline. You can connect it to your slate, leaving your entire primary storyline open.
By having the right length of gap in the secondary storyline, it will allow the footage in the primary to be revealed until you get to the end graphic. You can even put a transition on your end graphic.
Now you can edit away on the primary. You can visually see where the end graphic comes in by looking at the secondary storyline.
You could also put the graphical elements along with music, sound effects, what-have-you inside a compound clip above your primary storyline, again connected to the slate, and wherever you have gap in your compound clip, the primary footage will be revealed. I believe you can even put graphics with alpha channels in the compound clip. Place a marker on the compound clip to indicate your hard hit for the end graphic, and you’re in business.
FCPX is quite flexible, once you get past the idea of the plyable nature magnetic timeline.
Good luck.
You can also put the elements BELOW the primary timeline, and trim the footage on the primary to reveal the end graphic.
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Don’t live your life in a secondary storyline.Mark Morache
FCPX/FCP7/Xpri/Avid
Evening Magazine,Seattle, WA
https://fcpx.wordpress.com -
You know, I think I figured it out. Just had to make a gap clip the length I wanted and then it all fell into place. It’s a little backwards intentionally editing outside of the primary storyline, but I guess it could be worse. We cut two spots today, so that’s not too shabby.
John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.
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Thanks guys. Previous post got moderated for some reason but we figured out just to leave the primary storyline with a gap the length we needed and then everything went great. We cut two spots today and we’re pretty relieved/pleased that this works.
One really cool thing was bringing in our video copilot sfx in turned out to be pretty fantastic due to key worded folders. I think the music browser is really good for lots of things, but for quickly going through sfx it seems like a dedicated event just for SFX is perfect for us.
Thanks again!
John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.
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John, if SFX searches are important for your work, you owe it to yourself to look at Audiofinder. Simply brilliant search/modify tool. One of the best aspects if you have a lot of SFX (I’m over 100GB at this point, and that’s as MP3s!) is the ability to Refine and Exclude words in your searches. EG, search on “horn”, Refine with “car”, Refine with “long”. Go from 3000 hits to 500 to 50. Play in the tool, pitchshift if needed, drag result to your editing app.
“Constituo, ergo sum”
Bob Woodhead / Atlanta
CMX-Quantel-Avid-FCP-Premiere-3D-AFX-Crayola
“What a long strange trip it’s been….” -
Abstolutely. We have a massive iTunes database that searches it very easily. The video copilot ones get lots of airtime here so a specific project for them made things even faster. I like the combination approach!
John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.
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