Finally got around to learning Final Cut Pro

At least, the basics. I was a non-linear editing wunderkind a billion years ago, when Premiere 4.2 was the bees knees (as long as you could work around the audio sync drift that happened because Premiere 4.2 couldn’t properly grok 29.97 fps). I was a beta tester for Premiere 5, and Premiere 5.1 shipped with my Pinnacle DC30pro. (Back in the days when things like “miroINSTANT Video® render reducing playback plug-in” were godsends. Remembering the Rainbow Runner Studio I picked up because, at least with the bundled Ulead MediaStudio, any unaltered MJPEG clips would play directly from the timeline; only effects / transitions / etc. required rendering. In the 1990s, that was huge; rendering took even longer than it does today, even though the video was like 720x480!) We’ve come a long way from the Iomega Buz that brought MJPEG video editing to “the masses” (it was $199, but I worked at Best Buy so got it for 5% over cost, whatever that was; $150? In the fall of 1997, so like $300 in adjusted dollars. A chunk of change when I made like $7.35/hr, but, needs must.)

But when the interface got all magnetic with Final Cut Pro X, well, I never really sat down to learn it. I hacked together one small project (and glancing at that, whoops, I repeated myself almost verbatim; I’ll consolidate all the navel gazing), but otherwise, haven’t revisited. Until last night. 

I followed a few basic tutorials:

• Getting started
• Using keyframes in audio (note: option-click to set)
• Optimizing voiceovers
• A couple of multicam videos that didn’t really work for my current projects, but are something I want to remember to dive back into: Multicam 1 and Multicam 2.

There’s also the manual I need to read: Final Cut Pro User Guide 

But, yeah, I imported all my GoPro footage, gathered them up in a Compound Clip, used that to apply the same rotation, zoom, color correction, etc., and, yeah. Put it all together. Digging it. Back in the flow.