(Page 3 of 3 pages for this article  <  1 2 3)

Filed under:

Editing in Motion Part 2

The Slip Edit

The Slip tool in Final Cut Pro is one of my favorite tools that I find myself using all the time - it allows me to change the content of a clip without changing its duration or location in the sequence.

Since In and Out points on a clip in Motion are set only after you’ve added it to the project, slipping can be a powerful way to adjust the content of a clip after you’ve trimmed it (remember, you can only slip a clip to the extent that it has extra media, or handles, beyond its In and Out points).

To slip a clip in Motion, simply hold down the Option key and then drag on it either in the mini-Timeline or in the Timeline.

You’ll see a ghosted image of the handles as you slip, and the Canvas will show you the content currently under the playhead. If your intention is to change the ending frame, press Shift-O before slipping to move the playhead to the last frame of the clip (its Out point). Conversely, if you are slipping to change the first frame, press Shift-I before slipping to move the playhead to the first frame of the clip (its In point).

The Ripple Edit

Motion has a powerful tool for taking out parts of a project and closing the resulting gap, or inserting extra frames into a project - essentially, creating a ripple edit.

Let’s say you’ve edited together a series of video clips, but then discover your project needs to be 2 seconds shorter. You decide the best way to handle this is to take 2 seconds off the beginning of the third clip - in other words, you want to ripple edit the head of the clip so that all the clips following it move up by two seconds.

In the Timeline, set a marker on the clip at the point to which you want to trim. Now hold down the Command and Option keys, and drag in the ruler area - starting at the beginning of the clip, and stopping at the marker. The blue highlighted area is called a region. If you don’t place it exactly where you want, you can drag either side to expand or contract it, or drag in the middle to slide it left or right.

Now that you’ve created a region, go to the Edit menu and choose Ripple Delete.

The region is deleted and everything to the right moves over to fill the gap (you can delete without filling the gap - which in FCP you might call a lift - by selecting Delete from the Edit menu). Note also that the group has been split with the first clip in the lower group and the rest in the new Group “Video 1” above. You can avoid this “splitting” behavior by deselecting the group before performing the ripple delete.

First, undo the ripple delete, and redraw your region. Then, Command-click on the group section of the region to deselect it.

With the group now removed from the region, when now you perform the ripple delete, just the clip is deleted and the group is not split.

Now let’s say that instead of removing time, you wanted to add two seconds to the head of the third clip (assuming it has enough handle to do so), simply choose Edit > Insert Time after setting the same region and deselecting the group.

You can now drag out the head of the clip to fill the newly created gap.

The added step of deselecting elements to remove them from the region is very helpful if you have other elements in your project. For example, here’s a background group added in.

If you set your region and ripple delete, you’ll end up with this:

Both groups end up split, and you have many more layers to deal with.

To avoid splitting the background as wells as the video group, after setting your region, Command-click on each group directly in the highlighted area to remove them from the region.

Now when you ripple delete, only the video clips are affected.

Conclusion

If you have a lot of fine trimming work to do for a motion graphics project, use Final Cut Pro to do your edit, then send the sequence (or selected clips) to Motion for the rest of your work. But if you are simply building a sequence of clips or stills as a foundation for a motion graphics project, Motion has the editing tools to allow you to build your project from start to finish, including inserts, overwrites, trimming, slipping, and ripple edits. Try them all out, and have fun working in Motion.

(Page 3 of 3 pages for this article  <  1 2 3)

Name:

Email:

Location:

URL:

Smileys

Remember my personal information

Notify me of follow-up comments?