TRIMMING and EDITING WITH THE SELECTION TOOL
The “Tool Palette” is the vertical bar at the far right end of your timeline.This is where you can choose which editing tool to use while working on your projects.
(NOTE: you can only see Tool Palette when the Final Cut Pro windows are 'active', so if your Firefox window is currently 'active', you'll have to click onto a Final Cut Pro window to see it.)
The “selection tool” is the arrow / cursor that you’ve already been using. It is at the top of the tool palette and is the easiest, most basic tool to use. It not only can move clips around from the browser to viewer to timeline, but it can ALSO be used to adjust the length and edit points of your clips once their in the timeline.
The “selection tool” was automatically selected from the tool palette when you started, but if you want to return to it after using another tool, it’s the arrow at the top of the tool palette, click on it and you will have the “selection tool” again.
If you grab the end of the clip with the selection tool (your mouse pointer) and drag it, you can make your clip either longer or shorter. This will only affect ONE clip. So if you grab an edit point BETWEEN two clips, you will end up leaving an empty space between the clips. You can then extend the other clip to fill the empty space.
-- Using the selection tool, grab the tail of the “Emery” clip –(the VERY end of your entire sequence) and drag it with the pointer.
-- Grab the edit point between the head of one clip and the tail of the one adjacent.
-- Shorten and lengthen the various clips in your timeline to familiarize yourself with the selection tool's editing abilities.
-- Use the selection tool to move clips around in the timeline as well.
You may have noticed that the clips will “snap” to each other. This “snapping” function can be very helpful to ensure that you do not accidentally leave black ‘flash frames’ between your video clips. Because your clips will also snap to the PLAYHEAD, you can play through the video in your timeline, stop the playhead exactly where you want an edit to be made, and be assured that the clip you’re moving will snap right into place.
While the snapping function is invaluable, there are times that you want to make a precise trim or movement, but the snapping keeps pulling the clip further than you want it. These are times that you will want to turn the snapping function OFF.
The SNAPPING function can be turned on and off by a little TOGGLE at the top right of the timeline window. It’s on the handout I gave you and it’s called the “SNAPPING CONTROL”.
It can also be toggled on and off by using the keyboard shortcut "n"
Overall, I’d recommend leaving the snapping function turned ‘on’ as long as it’s not disrupting your editing. You do not want random black frames to appear in your projects between your shots.
FORWARD TO PAGE 17 – “The Razor Blade”