A Cut above

I am relatively new to both Macs and video work having only started producing videos over the last 12 to 18 months. Up until now I have simply had to produce a finished copy on disk but on this occasion I need to be able to show a short excerpt of about two minutes’ duration from an existing final production. Please can you advise me as to how I do this in Final Cut Pro X. Many thanks for your time, I look forward to hearing from you. Ruth Alan Stonebridge says… Jumping back and forth to copy and paste clips from your finish project into a blank one isn’t a comfortable way to deal with this task, but there are a couple of methods that make it less awkward. Both use snapshots, which are self-contained back-up versions of a project.

The first method is to create a snapshot of your finished film by right-clicking the existing project in the Browser and then choosing Duplicate Project as Snapshot. A second copy of the project will appear in the browser, which can be edited independently.

Open the duplicate project and remove the parts you don’t want until you get down to the two-minute duration you need. This is a good option for films that are already quite short – say, up to 20 minutes long.

For longer material, or if you prefer to start with a clean slate, you’ve probably already discovered that you can’t skim over a project in the Browser to add the bits of it you want to another project. The workaround is to duplicate your finished project as a snapshot and open the duplicate’s timeline. Next, click in the timeline and choose Edit > Select All, and then choose File > New > Compound Clip… and give it a name.

Notice that the contents of the duplicate project are replaced by a single clip, and that clip now exists in the Browser. Find and select it there. In the Browser, compound clips work just like the raw footage you imported into Final Cut – you can skim over one, marking in and out points and labelling them as favourites, until you’ve identified the key scenes to include in your excerpt.

Create a blank project then drag the marked ranges from your compound clip in the Browser into the empty project’s timeline to assemble a rough cut.

One use for Final Cut’s snapshots feature is as a starting point for a new project, such as a trailer, that is based on an existing one.

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