This week on MacBreak Studio, Steve Martin from Ripple Training shows us a very useful trick when retiming clips in Final Cut Pro X. The retiming features in Final Cut are extensive and rather intuitive. To get started, you can press Command-R while..

This week on MacBreak Studio, Steve Martin from Ripple Training shows us a very useful trick when retiming clips in Final Cut Pro X.

The retiming features in Final Cut are extensive and rather intuitive. To get started, you can press Command-R while the playhead is over a clip to reveal the retiming bar, click the downward-facing arrow, and select from one of the options in the menu to slow down or speed up your clip a specific amount, or select Custom to have some more options. Or, you can instead use the Retiming button on the toolbar. Or (because there are always three ways to do things), you can simply drag on the right edge of the retiming bar to slow down or speed up the clip – it will change color depending on the direction and show the new speed percentage.

The nice thing about dragging the retiming bar is that you can determine exactly how long the clip will be as you drag. Sometimes, you'll want to retime a clip not so much to create a special effect, but rather in order to have it fill a certain amount of time: to match the beat of a musical cue, or to fit perfectly between two other shots. And while you could trim a clip to make it shorter instead of speeding it up, if you don't have any handles, you can't trim to make it longer, so retiming can be a lifesaver (as long as the content will work when slowed down).

If the clip is in the primary storyline, Steve likes to first lift it (Command-Option-up arrow) to make it a connected clip so that he can freely ripple without affecting other clips in the primary storyline. While you can override this rippling behavior in the Custom menu (also directly accessible by pressing Control-Option-R), he likes to see the clip ripple to gauge the new duration.

However, you may have noticed that when you retime a connected clip, the clip always gets longer or shorter on the right side – the outgoing side. Steve shows us today why that is and how you can change that behavior.

You see, when you retime a connected clip, although it gets longer or shorter, one frame always stays put relative to the primary storyline: the connection point. Which is located by default on the first frame of the clip. But you can move the connection point by Command-Option clicking on that clip at the desired location. Then, the clip will anchor to that new frame and as you retime, and only the other frames will move. This technique makes it easy to, for example, backfill time before the clip instead of after to match a previous edit point. Watch the episode for the details and a few more useful tips.