What is dynamic trimming, anyway?

There has been a lot of discussion on this topic lately, and today Steve Martin from Ripple Training jumps in with his take on what the term meant when applied to legacy Final Cut Pro and what it means today in Final Cut Pro X.

By the way, this is a special episod of MacBreak Studio for us today – our 300th episode! We’ve been doing this weekly show for over 6 years now so thank you for watching and enabling us to keep making it.

We mark the occasion with a new graphics look and we hope you like it.

Ok, so what’s all this about dynamic trimming? Well, Steve starts off the discussion by launching Final Cut Pro 7 (and no special tricks here, it launches on Yosemite fine) and brings up the Trim Edit window that contains a “Dynamic” checkbox at the bottom. When checked, after selecting the Out, the In, or both (by clicking on the left, the right, or near the center of the Trim Edit window or tapping the U key), and starting playback with J or L, the edit point is automatically moved to the playhead position when playback is stopped with the K key.

Having defined dynamic trimming in this manner, Steve turns his attention to Final Cut Pro X. He demonstrates that you can just as quickly select an edit point using the bracket and backslash keys (for Out, In, and both). Instead of a Trim Edit window, however, FCP X employs the Precision Editor, which can be opened with Control-E.

At this point you can now trim “dynamically”: moving the pointer (actually a hand icon) over either side of the edit point and starting playback will play just that clip and the full handle beyond the edit point so you can see exactly where you are making the cut. When you locate it, stopping playback does not initiate the cut like legacy Final Cut – rather, you need to add the Extend Edit command by pressing Shift-X. Steve remapped this command to the N key because it’s so close to the K key for stopping playback. But you don’t even need to stop playback: pressing Shift-X while looping playback will execute the edit immediately.