When you are working with a large number of video clips that you are going to be using within various projects you need as many ways as possible to help you organise these video clips.

When you import your media, the media will be added to your event library. This is the first level of organisation for your source media files. So the event in the Event Library is going to be a project or part of a project. When you’re looking at this event browser you can sort your clips in a number of ways such as the creation date, but you might also want to browse by the date imported, the real, the scene, shot duration or file type.

Sort out your Source media

It is worth getting to know all of the tools that are available to you for cataloguing and sorting your source media within Final Cut Pro X so that you can find what you need quickly when you need to put media into the timeline.

 

One of the ways to further sort your source media is to use keywords. Using keywords is a form of tagging and the best way to think of it is a way to add an extra layer of grouping certain video clips together. I would recommend that the tags that you use, don’t need to contain words that you’ve already used in the name of the file. You can already do a search to find those specific words. Where it becomes particularly useful is where you have, for example, different types of file, so audio, video and still images that you want to group together for a unique purpose.

Group video clips using Keywords in FCPX

You might have a keyword of green screen and this grouping of source media could include subject matter of all sorts, but if you had that keyword then you will make it very easy in all to find any clips that are shot with a green screen.

You can set a keyword that it will apply to the whole of the video and he also set a keyword so that it applies to only part of a video clip. So if you have a video clip that includes within the length of it some close-ups, some medium shots or shots of a particular person, you can then keyword those particular parts of the video. This could save a whole lot of time later, when finding sections within a video, you will not have to watch the video or scrub through the video in order to find what you need.

Keywords added automatically by FCPX Analysis on import.

Keywords can also be added automatically when you are importing video. If you are adding a folder with various sorts of media within it, you could have the folder name applied as a keyword to all of those bits of media imported.

If you are having the video analysed as it is being brought in there are some keywords that can be added automatically such as excessive shake. To get this to happen you just need to select the “Create Smart Collections at the Analysis” checkbox. This will let you find those clips with the excessive shake keyword.

It is even possible to use Final Cut Pro to find people and add keywords for you. The keywords that will get added to the video or still image will be one person, two persons, a group, close-up shot, medium shot and white shot. So it can be extremely useful to have Final Cut Pro create smart collections after analysis and depending upon the type of video editing that you are doing, it may well be that these functions will speed you up enormously.

There have been some changes to the way that you import media into Final Cut Pro 10 in this latest version. Now there is a unified import dialogue window to use. To get this to show, you can press Cmd I and you get a lot more options about how you bring in video clips into Final Cut Pro X. For a start off you can have it show you a list and when you click on one of the files on the list, it shows you a decent sized thumbnail track in the area above that list. You can also have the import window show you your video clips in your folders and devices as thumbnails.

 

Selecting clips and parts of video clips

In the past when I have been importing video clips into Final Cut Pro, I have always brought in the whole video clip. When I had that whole video clip in the bin of video clips in Final Cut, I would then choose the parts that I wanted from that clip to put in the timeline. I see that it is now possible to select sections of your video clips and to have them brought in to Final Cut as separate clips. If you have been shooting a long clip and there is only a couple of small parts of it that you require, then this new way to bring in video clips is extremely useful. You use the letter I on the keyboard to set your first in point and then you use the letter O on your keyboard to set the out point. To set the in points and out points of subsequent portions of the video, you use Cmd shift and I for the in point, then Cmd shift and O for the out point.

Persistent selections within your video clips

When you select a portion of your video clip, whether it is when you are importing or when you are selecting clips ready to put into the timeline, you will find that if you have selected something, then go off to do something else and then return, those selections will still be there. This can be very useful to speed up the workflow as you no longer have to mark out items again that you have already previously selected.

What are camera archives?

There will be times when you want to connect up your camera or the memory card that you took out of your camera, get the video clips off it quickly and get back to shooting video. You can make a camera archive using the import window in Final Cut Pro and then go back later to selecting the clips or parts of clips that you want to use from that camera archive. Using the camera archive tool is basically a quick way to make a complete full clone of your camera or SDHC, that you can work with later.

Favourite places to import from

It could well be that you often want to go to a particular folder on your hard drive, network attached storage or other permanently attached storage devices. For example, there could be a folder containing sound effects that you are continually adding to, you can drag this folder into the favourites, to always have quick access to these media files. Within Final Cut Pro 10 it is very easy to set up favourites to enhance your workflow so that you will be more effective and efficient.

When you are making movies for your YouTube videos it is inevitable that at some point in time you will want to include some text in your movie. Not only that, but you will also want to have animated text rather than the straightforward plain vanilla text. It is a video with moving pictures, after all so it does need movement to draw the eye, and if you animate text that is one thing you can do. It’s not going to take you long to find that you have an animated text generator available for you to use in Motion 5 and Final Cut Pro X. You can make videos for youtube look great using fancy text effects.

Make animated text effects in Motion 5 and use them in FCPX

When you are working in Final Cut Pro X you will see that there are a number of titles that are available that you view text that you can use in your YouTube videos. Some of these titles with text also include animation graphics to enhance the title for you. While you can use the built-in text effects that are available in Final Cut you will see that Final Cut is not an animated text generator or an animated text maker. For creating text that will be animated in a way that is just perfect for your video you will need to get working in Motion 5. The good thing is that you can take a title that is provided for you in Final Cut and use that as a starting point to edit and change to make your own special creation.

Animated text effects in Motion 5 – Animated text generator

The power that is within the application Motion 5 will allow you to do all sorts of things with text, it has a number of animated text generators. You will be able to combine the choices that you can make with the various styles of text, fonts as well as fillings and outlines that you can use, but you can also use this animated text maker with other behaviour and built-in effects. To a large extent the sky is the limit with regards as to what you could create, I would recommend though that you should keep it simple with your animated texts. It is too easy to get carried away with all of the possibilities. In the end you have to realise that what you want is text that is readable and yet is also a video animation that will catch the eye of whoever is watching your video.

 

 

Using Motion 5 for animating text

Although you can do simple things like changing the colour of the text, adding outlines and choosing the font, you can also add drop shadows and even use a pixie dust effect. It is also possible to add a glow to your text there are also a number of styles that you can choose which will add already pre-combined effects which might include gradients and drop shadows. You might use animated text to make a video bug and for that uses a small bit of text which sits in the corner of your video, this is the sort of thing that you might see on the TV. TV channels like to remind you which TV channel you are watching.

Animated Text Generator in Motion 5

There are transitions that are available in Final Cut Pro also that can be added to your taste which will give it a certain amount of animation. To probably get your text moving and grooving, dancing and prancing across the screen then Motion 5 is your answer. Motion 5 is an animated text generator that you can work out completely separately or you can get to from within Final Cut Pro. When in Final Cut Pro if you right click or do a two finger tap on your trackpad you’ll see option which will open up the title in Motion. Have a look at the YouTube video to get an idea of how to get started making animated text effects to add to your video animation. In Motion 5 I used a animation text generator to have the text bounce up and down a little and then I used it in final cut pro x motion is a marvellous app.

Using CrumplePop Effects

There are all sorts of extra third party Final Cut Pro X effects you can get to use in Final Cut Pro X and I found this one for free which lets you easily divide the screen up and have simultaneous things happening on the one time line, You could have a video clip running in the left side of the screen and two more video clips in playing in other boxes on the other side of the screen. In this demonstration I use one that splits the screen into three parts like that, but there are other configurations that you can make also. The TV series ’24′ did something like that to show the story where it was overlapping and was a great visual effect. You can do similar effects in Final Cut Pro X too.

When you are making YouTube video and you want it to be interesting and get more downloads then something like this could be what makes you stand out from the crowd. One of the important tricks of getting the attention of your viewers is to make the first 15 seconds of the video to be engaging to the audience. So why not tell the story in this way or use a picture in picture effect to get your message across. There are loads of other things you could try and the more creative you can be the better.

Get creative with video effects

You don’t have to use a third party effect to do this, you could also split the screen up by arranging clips on the timeline and using the scaling tools along with the cropping tool to get them where thy have to be. If you want to get even more creative still, then perhaps looking into how you can do the same in Motion 5 would be a brilliant idea too. Motion doesn’t have to only be used for making lower thirds, even though Motion 5 does a great job of it. Getting things to move around the screen and be interesting will help make your video interesting and more likely to get shared and hit the holy grail of being a YouTube viral video.

Effects in Final Cut Pro X

It has been a long time since final cut 7 and longer since final cut pro 5. I have never even heard of final pro or final pro cut or video pro x. So what can you make of that? Let’s make a video for youtube with final cut pro effects or better still use final cut pro x effects. We could do a green screen video or do some splitting of the screen into parts. Have fun with Final Cut Pro effects and learn to make your own in Motion 5. Free effects in Final Cut Pro X are available from 3rd party suppliers like CrumplePop and CoreMelt.

final cut pro effects and final cut pro x effects can be made in Motion 5 have a look at the videos on the Wizardgold Channel on YouTube