Final Cut pro X Connecting Clips

Lets briefly talk about connecting clips to the primary story line. First lets watch through this sequence of clips in this project. Press the spacebar to start playing. To help the story along lets cut away to another shot so we can see what the emergency crew is talking about. In this shot the fireman is talking about trapped workers coming out of the sewer hole. I’ll stop the playhead indicator right after that statement. Okay, now, lets go over to the event browser and look for a clip where one of the trapped workers is being lifted out of the sewer. Then you can select a range for the area within the clip that you’d like to use. It’s important to note here that this clip has sound attached to it. Pressing this connect icon will automatically connect the clip above the clip within the primary story line. You can also press the Q key to perform the same action. Notice that a connection point had been made. This indicates that the clip is now connected to the clip underneath it within the primary story line. It’s important to note that connected clips can be repositioned when the select tool or position tool is active. Also, what’s really cool, is if you move a clip within the primary story line that has a clip connected to it, they will move together in sync. Final Cut Pro will automatically splice my clip into the new position and move the other clip segments to make room for my selected clip. Okay, so let me back up and play through the project again: You’ll notice as I play through my project the connected clip has its attached sound with it. So if you don’t want the attached sound, you’ve got a couple of options to fix this problem. The first option is to right click on the clip and choose detach audio from the contextual menu. The audio portion for the clip will now appear below the primary story line. You can then select the audio portion and press the delete key. Okay, let go back to show you another method. The other option is to connect the video without audio before you press the connect button. This is done by clicking on this down arrow to the right of the primary editing tools and choosing video only. By the way, you could also choose audio only but in this case it’s the video portion that we want. So now, when you press the connect button, Final cut Pro X will only connect the video. Now lets play through the project the watch the result. Okay, A quick side note about working with connected clips. In some cases you may find it necessary to move a clip within the primary storyline without affecting the placement of any connected clips. In particular you may have a situation where you need to move a video clip without dragging the connected audio with it. To do this, first press the P key to activate the position tool. Then hold down the ‘tilde’ key on your keyboard while dragging your clip. This will allow you to move your clip within the primary storyline without affecting the placement of any connected clips. Okay, so there you go. You should now have the basics of how connecting clips works within Final Cut Pro X. And don’t forget, GeniusDV also offers classroom or onsite Final Cut Pro X training.