Video

Audio

Live shot of student narrator.

“HI, my name is (Student name). I work at the ERC TV station. This video will show you how to use Final Cut Pro (FCP) to import video so that you will be prepared to edit. Let’s get started.”

Screen capture of an Apple iMac computer desktop. The cursor will click on the “Macintosh HD” icon and then the “Documents.” A folder will then be created and named.

“The first step for your video project is always creating a folder to store all your files in. Click on the hard drive icon and then click documents. Create a name a folder. We’ll call this folder ‘Tutorial.’

Live shot of student connecting a camera to the computer using a fire wire.

“Next, connect your camera to the computer using a fire wire. This is one of the cameras you might be using and this is exactly the fire wire you will be using in the studio. First, make sure your camera is plugged in. If it isn’t the battery will probably die while you are importing video. Next, insert one end of the fire wire into the slot on the camera labeled DV. Then plug the other end of the fire wire into the fire wire slot on the back of the computer. Finally, turn the camera on to its VCR setting. You are now set up to import footage from your camera.

Screen capture of Apple iMac desktop. Cursor clicks on FCP icon and shows FCP opening.

“Now we need to open Final Cut Pro. Its icon is located in the dock and looks like this. Final Cut Pro is a pretty sophisticated editing tool and will take a few moments to open.”

Screen capture of project file being created.

“Now that Final Cut Pro is open, click on ‘File’ and then ‘New’ and then ‘Project.’ We’ll name the project file “Tutorial” also and save it in our project folder we created. It’s important to create and save your project file first because Final Cut will not allow you to capture footage until a project file has been saved.”

Screen capture of sequence being created.

“Now let’s create a sequence for our project. The sequence essentially refers to the timeline for your project. Click ‘File’ again, ‘New’ and ‘Sequence.’ We’ll name this sequence ‘Logging.’

Screen capture of logging bin being created.

“Next, it is good to get in the practice of creating logging bins. A bin is basically a folder where you can store your video clips. Go to ‘File’, ‘New’ and ‘Bin’ and then name the bin as you would a folder. We’ll call this ‘Videos 01.’

Screen capture of log and capture being opened. Cursor clicks on scratch disk settings.

“We are now ready to set our scratch disk and start importing video. Go to ‘File’ and click ‘Log and Capture.’ The log and capture window will open. Click on the ‘Scratch Disk settings’ and set your scratch disk. This is important because it tells Final Cut where you want your videos and project files to be stored. Set the scratch disk as the project folder we created.”

Screen capture of log and capture window. Live shot of camera being controlled by log and capture controls.

“Now let’s log a clip. Notice here you have basic VCR buttons. You can actually control the camera using the log and capture interface. Here you can see I am fast forwarding the camera using the buttons in the window.”

Screen capture of a clip being logged.

“Once you have cued up your clip, set an ‘in’ point. An ‘in’ point is basically the start of your clip. You can click the ‘in’ button or simply press ‘I’ on your keyboard. Then fast forward to the end of your clip and set an ‘out’ point. Press the ‘out’ button or press ‘o.’ Once the ‘out’ point has been set, press ‘log clip.” You will be prompted to name the clip and enter basic information about it. Once you have done that, click ‘done.’ You can now see that a clip has been logged and appears in your project screen here. As you can see there is a red line through it. That is because it has not been captured and imported onto the computer.”

Screen capture of clip being captured.

“You have now logged a clip and are ready to capture it. If you want to log more clips you would simply continue fast-forwarded and setting in and out points. For this tutorial we will go ahead and show you how to capture. If you have just one clip like we do, you can simply press ‘clip’ under the capture settings. If we would have logged multiple clips we could click ‘batch’ and specify which logged clips we want Final Cut to import into our logging bin. I’ll go ahead and click capture clip and you can see Final Cut automatically cues up the camera and starts the capture. Logging clips takes a little bit more time but it saves you space on your computer and better organizes your project which saves you time in the long run.”

Live shot of student narrator concluding the video.

“That concludes this tutorial. You should now be able to capture footage and get to the point where you are ready to edit. If you would like to learn more about editing in Final Cut Pro, view the next tutorial in this series. Good luck!”