How to use ADJUSTMENT LAYERS in Final Cut Pro - WITH FREE DOWNLOAD

one of the things I find myself using loads in Final Cut Pro X is an adjustment layer an adjustment layer is not something which you get in final cut out of the box so today I want to tell you what is an adjustment layer how can you use it and how can you get your hands on one for free the Final Cut Pro X so let's get into it [Music] my friends will hear a quick tutorial for you today yeah adjustment layers so most editing software provides adjustment layers out-of-the-box they're a standard feature in Premiere in DaVinci Resolve but in Final Cut Pro they don't provide them for you now luckily it's pretty easy to make your own adjustment layer if you own Apple motion but don't worry about that because actually I've already made some adjustment layers and they're available in the description down below for free download so once you've watched the video head on down there grab an adjustment layer and hopefully you can start using them but first things first what is an adjustment layer an adjustment layer is an element which you can place on your timeline much like a title element for example and you can add adjustments to that layer hence its name and those adjustments will affect any of the layers below that layer these are really helpful when you want to apply an effect to like an entire section of your timeline which includes multiple different Clips without having to add that to every single clip and copy/paste copy/paste copy/paste so really great for that use case and really because you can have any effect to them there's really no limit to how you might use them now I'm going to share with you today a couple of scenarios that I use them for but yeah you can really get quite imaginative with them and there's there's lots that can be done with them let's dive into my screen and let's get going with this so I'm here I'm in Final Cut I've just got last week's YouTube video actually as a kind of project to sort of talk through and show how I'm using adjustment layers on a really regular basis now if you do grab the adjustment layers that I've put in the description for you the first thing you want to want to do is get them into your copy of final coat so that they're available to use you can see here in my viewer I've got under my titles I've got this adjustment folder and in there I've got four different types of adjustment layer so download the file and then what you're going to need to do is you're going to need to go to your finder go to your user folder go to movies and then you should have a motion templates folder if you don't have a motion templates folder it's because you don't own motion or you haven't used any motion templates previously so if you haven't got a motion templates folder just create one capital n capital T motion templates and Final Cut will be able to pick up on that then once you've got that folder inside that folder you may if you've already got it have these options compositions effects generators titles and transitions so we're just going to go into the titles folder and then this here this folder adjustment is the folder that I'm giving you for free for download so you just grab the folder that from the download unzip it if it needs unzipping and you put it in the titles folder there if you've already got Final Cut open at this time you will need to quit Final Cut and then reopen it and you should then when you come into this into Final Cut click on the text and generators tab at the top here and you can see you'll have all your titles generators etc you will have this adjustment category on the left and in there you will have four different adjustment layers so these four adjustment layers are adjustment layers that I've made they are all exactly the same you don't really need for one would do exactly the same thing however only have found I tend to use adjustment layers for a few certain tasks and by creating four adjustment layers and naming them by how I use them it means that when I drag them on to my timeline if I say this one's called grade layer so this is how I would apply a color gray to a set of clips if I drag this onto my timeline you can see that it is called grade layer and it's just tidy this is something quite new I've only just started doing this for you obviously you may wish to duplicate the adjustment layers that I've provided you rename them to how you use them but just very quickly I've got one that is called adjustment layer that is just a generic adjustment layer so if I was using an adjustment layer for something new then I would use that one I've got correction layer so if I'm doing color correction then I would use that layer and it would when I put it on the timeline it will say it's a correction layer I've got grade layer which is exactly as you would imagine where I would have a color grade perhaps a custom LUT for example and then I've got crop layer which is something I use which have recently started using adjustment layers for which is a really quick way of doing little croppings unlike interview footage so like this for example and then back out again that's I've just dropped an adjustment layer on there and that's how I've achieved that so let me show you quickly how I'm sort of using adjustment layers in this project very briefly this was my tripod video from a few weeks ago and I did this little intro of me just getting some b-roll of this particular tripod okay and I wanted all of these to have a style a lot applied to them so what I've done is I've grabbed my adjustment layer which is this purple layer here placed it over the top of all of the clips that I want to be affected and then I can simply add the LUT on this occasion I've used one of Peter MacKinnon's looks the kodak killer LUT just and i've got bumped up quite high on this particular occasion so to do that I would simply grab an adjustment layer say I use my grade one in this instance drop it onto my timeline let me just get rid of this adjustment layer first so I would drag it out to where I want it to be that's my grade layer then I would open my effects window and I would go to color and I've got my custom light there so I dragged my custom look onto the adjustment layer and then from up here I can choose to add Kodak killer and I can then dial in the amount just like I would on any other okay so that is one use for it the reason I have the correction layer okay is quite nice if you're if you need to do some kind of corrections to your footage before you apply the grade then what you can do is you can add a correction layer let me just scroll along to somewhere that's not got anything going on so I've got this bit of footage here this little clip of the overhead camera I could add my correction layer first make that the length of that clip I could then whilst that layer is selected coming to my color and make any exposure white balance adjustments that I want to make to that clip okay I won't make any Corrections right now because I don't need to and then I would put another adjustment layer over the top as my grade now it's worth noting you don't have to use adjustment layers obviously you could add that correction and the customer directly to the clip for me I quite like using the adjustment layers because it's quite visual it also means that instead of having to copy and paste with attributes like you can do to take color grades from one clip to another it's just very visual and you can just grab that grade and you can hold alt on your keyboard and move it to somewhere else so that's one use case for those so then another thing that I've started to do recently and you might notice if you watch my YouTube videos regularly you'll notice that sometimes if I'm talking about something I like to crop in and use you know the same piece of footage but essentially to create a sort of fake second camera angle and that I used to do this very manually go to each clip and if it was a long clip I would cut the clip either side where I want the zoom to appear so if I come along here let's just let's just do so say if this clip here if I wanted to put a zoom into this clip I would say right I want the zoom to appear here for example so I would come and be cut and then I would say and I want it to end there so I would do command B cut and then in this particular clip I would then do shift t4 transform and then if I zoomed out and then I would grab the corner of it oops sorry where am I they grab the corner of it put my zoom in place like so and then say done and then that hopefully zoom okay obviously that's not a particularly great use of the zoom I just randomly chose a section of the timeline to do it to that though I found that quite time-consuming putting the cuts in and then if you decide that actually you didn't want the cut quite where it is then it's it's quite hard to tweak it so by using an adjustment layer for that it's really easy and you can see here is an example of where I've done that so I've put my crop layer adjustment layer onto the timeline where I want to zoom to be I've applied the scale to the adjustment layer so I've zoomed in by a hundred and fifty percent and slightly changed the position and that does exactly the same thing and if I said oh oh that zoom in starts a bit too early then I can just move the adjustment layer and very quick and easy what it also means is I use these crops quite regularly throughout my talking videos and I find it's a great way to sort of emphasize a point that I'm making or just add a little bit of visual interest so once I've got that one and I'm happy with the crop that I've created in this instance as I say I've cropped in zoomed in by a hundred and fifty percent I can then actually just do alt drag and move that zoom to wherever else on the timeline I want it and know it's going to give me exactly the same effect so yeah that's a real time-saver for me get one the way I like it and then obviously duplicate it wherever I want to punch in and emphasize or use that second angle obviously you can then tweak them you don't have to always use the same scale amount to achieve that little crop in effect you can change each adjustment layer differently but generally just for those quick zoom ins I find that a really effective way to do it so that is adjustment layers free adjustment layer download in the description down below hopefully this video has given you some ideas of how you can use them to get creative with your editing techniques or just as a time-saver as I say the main ways I use them is generally for color correction or for applying a grade to my footage or I've started using them recently for these crops another way actually sometimes if I want to add a vignette to an entire video then an adjustment has a really easy way to do that just drag it on top extend it to the full length of the project add that vignette dial in the settings and you know that it's going to be consistent throughout the whole video rather than adding the vignette to every single clip and then having to dial them each in yes that is another way to use it I hope you found that helpful if you did give the video a thumbs up if you like this sort of thing me chatting about video editing photography filmmaking gear reviews and my general journey as I learned filmmaking and photography then subscribe to the channel and hit the belt so you get notified when a next upload a video other than that that's everything for this week thanks for watching and [Music]

Channel: Will Chidlow

Views: 67,947

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Id: 2jLPEkKmg8w

Length: 14min 8sec (848 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 29 2020