7 Tips to MASTER the Magnetic Timeline in FCPX | Final Cut Pro X Tutorial

what's up everyone its Matthew here at Midland pictures today we're gonna be talking about Final Cut Pro 10 and the magnetic timeline why you should be using it not turning it off so I'm seeing quite a few Final Cut Pro 10 editor's whether it's on YouTube videos in forums or in my local market working around the magnetic timeline it tends to look something like this where they have a big slug in the main timeline what's called the primary storyline and they're working with their footage above the storyline I also see a lot of YouTube videos out there that talk about turning off the magnetic timeline how to treat Final Cut more like a traditional nle like Premiere Pro or avid instead of like the unique and exciting editing software that it is the magnetic timeline for me is the biggest breakthrough in video editing I came over from Final Cut Pro 7 and avid as soon as Final Cut Pro 10 came out and although there were some frustrations that I had with Final Cut Pro 10 when it first came out everything else about it I've loved and I have embraced and I haven't looked back since this really is just about focusing in on the magnetic timeline itself and seven things you need to know to work with the magnetic timeline instead of working against it so the first feature in Final Cut Pro 10 that I want you to know about when working with the magnetic timeline is something called clip connections clip connections are if you look at your timeline really zoomed in we've got a clip above the primary storyline and it's connected to the primary storyline using a clip connection which is this line connecting it to this clip down here when you're editing with the magnetic timeline a lot of times you want to shuffle around clips and move them in different places well with this clip if you want wanting to move it to another spot in the Edit you're gonna have this clip go with it because they're connected so some people do this and they get frustrated because they don't want this clip to be moving so then they're you know maybe they're dragging it back over but it's not quite the same spot that it was in before let's go ahead and undo this and something that you can use is a key command to change where this clip connects so let's say we know we want to move this clip over here and at this edit point all we have to do is click on this clip have the Eero where we want to make the new clip connection and simply hold command option and then click on the clip and you'll see that this clip connection got moved over here so it's no longer attached to this clip and it's gonna stay exactly where you wanted it when you're in Final Cut Pro 10 every time you place Clips above the primary storyline you're gonna create a clip connection they're all linked to each other which in some instances can be frustrating and then in other instances it can be wonderful so we want you to embrace the moments where it's wonderful and in the instances where you don't want to use the clip connection that you can change it by hitting command option and then clicking on the clip to move that connection and then being free to move the clip so that's really an important trick is being able to manage your clip connections so the key command again is command option and then click another way that clip connections can be a little bit frustrating if you're not sure what you're doing is when you're using the slip tool so if you hit T you'll switch to the trim tool and you can see here that the clip is moving as you change the edit on your main clip here if you don't want that to happen one thing you can do is change the clip connection via command option click and change it here now you can switch to the trim tool and slide things along and that clip isn't moving well let's say you want to keep that clip connected there for later edits you want to be able to slide this but not move this clip with it so we'll switch to the trim tool and then hit the tilde key and press and hold the tilde key and you'll see that little orange icon pop up now you can slip your edit without having to worry about that clip moving so another awesome trick using the tilde key is not only for the slip edits that you want to use but to be able to move Clips around and ignore the clip connection that is there earlier in the clip connections part of this we talked about how you can move a clip connection command option click well let's say we want to skip that step and just move this clip without moving this clip if you press and hold the tilde key you can click on this clip and move it over here and you don't have to worry about this clip coming with it so the tilde key that's the second tool that you can use when trying to sort of turn off the magnetic timeline temporarily and use this trick to work with it not against it the third tip that I have for working with the magnetic timeline is knowing how to create slugs when you want to and to do that you just press option W and it'll create this sort of gray noting clip from there you can add frames to it you can move it around in between clips and it's something that comes in handy in certain situations when you're working with multiple Clips like this above your primary storyline this brings me to my fourth trick which is lifting Clips out of the primary storyline so if you click on a clip and hit command option up arrow you'll see that the clip rises above the primary storyline and it puts in an empty slug below it so your timing is preserved but you can now move this clip and make adjustments to it and move it around whatever you want to do if you want to put that clip back down into the primary storyline you can hit command option down arrow and it'll go back in place this key command also works with secondary story lines if you have clips that are in a secondary storyline and you don't want them to be there you can hit command option up arrow and removes the secondary storyline if you want the secondary story line properties put back select all those clips and hit command G and you've got your secondary storyline back again so something else that occurs commonly with editors who are struggling with the magnetic timeline is they've edited some of the score or the music that they're using for their video maybe they've shortened the song or they've doubled it up something to extend the length of it and they have like this perfect edit point that they don't want to mess with but when you start moving Clips around in the magnetic timeline that edit point gets changed and even if it's off one frame it can mess up that perfect blend that you have in your audio so this brings me to my next tip which is to use compound Clips when you can in order to work with the magnetic timeline so in this instance let's say I've got a song here that for this part of the video I need to do this blend because I've shortened the song to fit the length of my video and I need like a drum hit to be like on perfect timing with the drum hit from a later part of the song so if you look here if I start messing around with I edit it's gonna mess up the exact spot that those audio clips kinda crossfade between each other so something that you can do is create a compound clip and I always recommend doing this when you're blending songs or shortening them or lengthening them it's good to create a compound clip of that song so you're not dealing with all these different little elements if you do one edit to your primary storyline they can get off so all you have to do is select both them and hit option G and it's going to ask you to label that compound clip we'll just call it song edit and we'll put it in our audio folder and there we go now we have that clip turned into a complete clip and you'll notice down here that the clip connection is right here so let's say you're going to make this edit change you can see that everything is staying in place you can also change your clip connection and move it here so that as it goes it's moving with those clips and that's where you need to decide if there's like this perfect hit of audio here and you just absolutely have to have it stay with this clip you can change your clip connection to make sure that that stays preserved so as long as this point that I know has to be at this point in the shot as long as that clip stays connected to the shot above it you're not gonna lose the connection between that spot and the song where it hits with the piece of footage that you want it to hit to and this again is where clip connections can work to help you work with the magnetic timeline and these are things that you'll do as you sort of look into your crystal ball when you're about to make an edit is this clip gonna need to stay connected here or am I gonna have to move the connection somewhere else so that's gonna bring me to my sixth tip that you need to look at to work with the magnetic timeline and that's secondary storylines I see it very often in forums and in Facebook groups where people don't know what the secondary storyline is or how it works and really the secondary storyline is just a way to have magnetic timeline like properties two groups of clips that are above the primary storyline you can see here with these clips that they're in a secondary storyline and if I add or remove frames the whole thing moves together I can rearrange Clips move them around bring it down here everything shifts the wave you'd want it to down here when we don't have clips in a secondary storyline they move more similar to a track based editor where you know you're having to put stuff on top of each other move this down drop this clip in but it's a lot of extra steps why wouldn't you just want to go like this to move a clip we're in track based editing which this sort of simulates here you have to do something more like this grab these two drag it down plop this in it's like four extra steps when in a magnetic timeline you can just drag and move it over and you're good to go much faster and much easier I'm gonna link to an article on secondary storylines it's in the Apple support documentation for Final Cut Pro 10 I highly recommend looking through it and maybe looking at some videos that articulate why the secondary storyline is so important I love using secondary storylines but I've been using Final Cut Pro 10 so much that I know when I need to use them and when maybe I don't need to use them so this brings me to our seventh trick for working with the magnetic timeline and that's using the position tool and all you have to do is hit P to activate it and you can start moving Clips around without having them affect the magnetic timeline now you can see when using it though that you can very easily overwrite file so you want to be very careful with it but it's a great way to be able to have a little bit more control with where your Clips are going so those are the seven tricks I want to impart onto you so that you can start embracing the magnetic timeline instead of trying to turn it off and work around it let's just quickly go over what those seven tricks were the first one that we learned was clip connections the second was using the tilde key the third trick we learned was using slugs with the option W key command we also learned how to use the command option up and down arrow key commands to move clips in and out of the primary storyline as well as out of secondary storylines the fifth trick we learned was using compound clips especially as it relates to audio edits the sixth trick we learned was using secondary storylines and then the seventh trick we learned was using the position tool to move Clips around freely in the primary storyline please hit us up in the comments below if you have any additional tips or tricks on how to use the magnetic timeline to your advantage or ways that you can work with it instead of against it we'd love to hear from you if you like this video please click the like button if you're not a subscriber I know there are a lot of you watching some of our videos without subscribing please hit the subscribe button click the bell so that you can get notifications every time we upload a video as always we love having you here with us thank you for watching and until the next video I will see you soon alrighty Final Cut Pro 10 first tutorial coming at you rockin the pixel bakery swag had a nice meeting with them and I shot down in Lincoln Nebraska got me a t-shirt and a bunch of stickers I love stickers and then we're gonna slate because we always want a slate marker [Applause] [Music] save it because the station

Channel: Midland Pictures

Views: 43,353

Keywords: midland pictures, final cut pro x, fcpx, final cut pro, magnetic timeline, turn off the magnetic timeline, disable magnetic timeline, how to disable the magnetic timeline, clip connections fcpx, how to use secondary storylines fcpx, secondary storylines fcpx, change clip connections fcpx, primary storyline fcpx, video editing fcpx, how to edit video in Final Cut Pro, disable magnetic timeline fcpx, final cut pro x tutorial, fcpx tutorial, final cut pro tutorial, learn fcpx

Id: 2--nJF2q0L0

Length: 11min 57sec (717 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 24 2020