Blog Archives

Final Cut expects all cameras to shoot audio at 48 kHz. But, what happens when they don’t? Well, you get audio drifting out of sync, or no audio at all. Many low-end cameras record audio at 32 kHz. This technique shows you what you need to know to capture your audio accurately.

There are very few things that cause as much confusion to video editors as working with audio. In this technique, I show you a very efficient technique for structuring where to place audio in your timeline and suggest audio levels that can make your project sound GREAT! If you read only one audio article this month, this is the article to read!

This article shows the best way to get audio out of FCP so you can finish your mix in your favorite audio program.

Here’s a neat trick to make a constant speed change to a video clip without changing the sound of the audio.

This is a quick simple technique to automatically create keyframes for an audio filter. Basically, audio key-framing in real-time.

Audio in FCP is clip-based, rather than track-based. This article describes a variety of ways to change the levels of more than one clip at once.

Ever wonder what levels to set your reference tones to? Should you output tone at 0 dB, -12 dB,-18 dB, or -20 dB. In this discussion, Larry is joined by Woody Woodhall, president of Allied Post, to get a better understanding of the issue. And, yup, it’s just as confused as we thought!

Final Cut Pro hates compressed audio. This article explains the problems you will having working with it, as well as providing a simple conversion process that solves the problem.

Using Pro Tools to mix your Final Cut Pro project is a great way to achieve excellent audio. However, there are some tricks you need to understand in this process, as explained here.

Setting the correct audio recording levels on a video camera is crucial to obtaining the best sound during production. This short article explains some of the choices and what you need to know.

Here is a great trick to solve one of the features of FCP that drives me nuts — we can’t slip keyframes. But, here, in this article, I’ll show you an undocumented way to slip audio keyframes. Very cool and very quick.

It’s easy to create burned-in timecode for video clips. But what about visible timecode for audio clips? The answer is “maybe,” but probably not.

Understanding how auto-render works can save you hours on each project. Here’s a step-by-step that explains it.

With FCP version 4.1, Apple changed the rules on how copy and paste work. You now need to know about “auto-select.” This article explains it.

Every clip in Final Cut supports up to three timecode tracks — a primary and two auxilliary tracks. This article describes how to access them, change the timecode they contain, and idea on what to use them for.

Here’s something to try when Final Cut won’t open after an upgrade. Most likely, it’s due to bad plug-ins. This article describes what to do to fix it.

Faster is always better, when you can maintain control and quality. Here’s a VERY fast way to reset clip durations in the Browser that can save you tons of time, when compared to doing it one clip at a time.

I have a client who’s beginning to edit to documentary that has over 100 hours of material to be edited into a 30-minute documentary. What he wants to do is log each clip, then copy that logging information out of Final Cut so he can load it into Excel. The advantage of exporting all this data is that he can think about his clips, and share this information between producers, without running Final Cut.

There are two questions I get asked a lot: what’s the best camera, and what’s the best hardware. This article explains why answering the hardware question is so difficult. It isn’t that there’s no answer, its that the answer is TOTALLY dependent on what YOU need. Take a look here at why.

Keyframes and motion paths are used in Final Cut to move images around the screen. However, every keyframe contains additional Bezier controls if you know where to look. This article shows you where they are and how they work.

Folks that have worked with video for a long time are often confused about where to set the black level for digital video. This article explains what you need to know — and, relax, it isn’t that hard.

Ever wonder about those black bars on the edges of DV? They are about 9 pixels wide and they are always there. How can you get rid of them? SHOULD you get rid of them? This article explains what you need to know and when you need to worry about it.

Even an iSight camera can be pressed into service for capturing video when nothing better is available. This tutorial shows you how fast and easy this can be.

The problem is that both 16:9 and 4:3 SD video have exactly the same number of pixels. This is true in both NTSC and PAL. And, sometimes, you need to convert from one to the other. What’s the best way to do this? What’s the fastest? Why is it necessary? This article answers those questions.

One of the common problems that inexperienced Final Cut editors run into is audio that slowly drifts out of sync. While the problem may appear to be within Final Cut Pro, the cause is actually due to mismatched audio sample rates between the video you shot and the way you are capturing it. What makes this worse is that many consumer cameras default to an audio sample rate of 32 kHz, while Final Cut expects 48 kHz. In this step-by-step tutorial, I’ll explain what an audio sample rate is and how to change your Final Cut settings to capture your audio accurately.

Stereoscopic 3D video is not just for theatrical release. Cable and satellite channels, even YouTube, now display images in 3D. In this musing, I reflect that even if 3D isn’t the future, we can make money on it now – without spending a ton of money.

The simplest definition of rendering is to convert an effect or image from its native format to match the video format of your timeline.

Need to find some new fonts — or looking for a way to add them to your system? Here’s how.

Traditionally, effects were recorded to DigiBeta tape in two cuts. The first cut was the hold-out, which defined the alpha channel and the second cut was what went into the matte. However, creating an alpha channel from tape is not obvious. However, it’s easy to do and this article shows you how to do it.

Setting the Anamorphic Flag to tell FCP how to treat your footage.

It’s hidden in plain sight, near the top of the Motion tab in Final Cut Pro: Anchor Point. But, what does it do?

In Final Cut Pro, filters process before motion effects. Most of the time, this is fine. However, this order prevents creating certain effects. This tutorial shows how to create nests, how to change this processing order, and how to blur both a clip and the edges of a clip.

HDV is the latest video format craze, but it isn’t like DV; or any other video format we are used to working with. This article explains how HDV is different and what you need to know to use it successfully.

Here is a fast way to use anchor points in the Motion tab to create motion effects quickly, while saving keyframes.

Sometimes, the best of plans suddenly go awry and you need to remove plug-ins from your FCP 7 system.