PE2_Poking Around _ But With a Guide!

Starting out with iMovie there are some major jumps that are required to work in Final Cut Pro at a comfortable level.  Just opening the program drops you right into choices that were outside the realm of my understand by asking what “sequence presets” you want to choose – which are various sets of sound, video compression, and size options when you find out some of the info later – part of my difficulty is that I don’t have a film or audio background and it does show at times with the terminology here.

Moving past that we have the various windows and panes.  These panes and how they are integrated also differs somewhat from iMovie, although some similarities are present.  The timeline window however in Final Cut is huge; I would liken it very much to the layers palette for Photoshop – except in this case it is layers of clips, text, and audio all set out on a familiar timeline for editing.  The opening tutorials I’ve been going through are mostly a tour of the areas and how to use them, importing a clip into the viewer or adding it to your timeline, how to do a transition in the timeline using the tool options, etc.  So far it has been ok, as with all new programs I am not familiar with where all the options I may be looking for are – but it is these basics that will “at least” let me edit and put stuff together in Final Cut with the chance of much more advanced editing existing a bit later.

I have to say, I dragged my feet on this task this week – but am now so very happy that we were given this task!  Final Cut is an awesome and very powerful tool – I am certain I will continue my growth in over this next year – and I am grateful to get a foot in the door of the capabilities it offers.

Working through an import tutorial.