Final Cut Pro: How to Get Started

So you just downloaded Final Cut Pro for the first time and you don’t know where to start. Maybe you’ve never edited a video before in your life. Maybe you’ve dabbled in iMovie or Splice and you’re ready to try something new. If any of those sound like you, this guide will be a great tool to help get started. In this post, I will explain how to put together a very simple project, which will include the following: creating a new project, importing footage, adding clips to the timeline, raising/lower audio, cutting clips, and exporting. Keep in mind this is just the very basics. If that’s what you need, let’s get started!

The first step is to open up Final Cut. **An important note: you MUST have an Apple computer to purchase/download FCP.** Now that we have the app open, let’s take a quick tour.

The “sidebar” on the far left is home to all your libraries, events, and projects. Right next to it, is the “browser” window, where you’ll see thumbnails of all of your imported media. The large window in the center is the “viewer”, which will playback your project, clips, and other media. The horizontal window at the bottom is your “timeline” where all the magic (edits) happen. And finally on the far right, is the “inspector”, which does a lot of fun things, but unfortunately we won’t be using that one today.

Now that you know the lay of the land, it’s almost time to import our footage and get to editing. One thing that’s very important when it comes to editing is organization. Especially if you’re working on multiple projects, with multiple cameras, it’s really easy for your sidebar, your browser, and even your timeline to get messy. To help jump-start your organizational skills, I’m gonna walk you through my method of starting a project. For me, that starts with creating a new library. So you’ll head up to File > New > Library. A window should appear for you to name your library, in my example below, I’ve called it “Marketing Video”.

Your new library will automatically include “smart collections’’, which we’ll leave alone, and a new event titled with today’s date. If you single-click on the text, you can rename the event. I named mine “Gio Interview”. Events can be a great way to keep different aspects of your project separate and organized. As an example, if you shot with multiple cameras, you could name the events after the different cameras you used. For this project, I’ve only used one camera, but i will still separate all my b-roll footage and my other types of media. You can see all of my events in the photo below.

Once you have all your events labeled, it’s time to import footage. That huge button that says “import footage” might be very tempting, but i prefer a different method. Instead, open up your Finder window. From there, you can drag and drop your footage, music, graphics, etc. into their respective events. You will see their thumbnails appear in the browser as you import them.

Now that all our media is imported, I’m going to create one last event called “z.Project”. This is where my project will live, and the Z is just to keep it at the bottom of the list, since the events are listed alphabetically. Right-click on the “z.Project” event (or whatever you titled it!) and select “new project”. A pop-up window will appear for you to title your project. For this lesson, the recommended settings (below) will work fine.

Time for some fun stuff! Choose your first clip you want to use to start your video. For mine, I’ll be creating an interview with some b-roll over top. To preview your footage, click on one of your thumbnails and then press the spacebar. Once you’ve found a clip, you can click and drag it onto the timeline — if you want to use the entire clip. One of the really cool features of FCP is its ability to drag certain sections of your clip onto the timeline. Using your mouse, click (and hold) the part of the thumbnail where you want the clip to start, then drag your mouse across until you want the clip to end. You should see a yellow box highlighting your selection. At this point, you can click and drag your yellow box into the timeline.

You can continue to select clips and drag them onto your timeline where you’d like. For my project, I’m going to add some b-roll footage that i want to cut in during the interview for about 8 seconds and then cut back to the interview. To achieve this, I will simply drag my b-roll clip onto the timeline and place it above the interview footage. Now, when I press the spacebar to play back, the interview starts, cuts to the b-roll, then back to the interview. An easy way to trim footage on your timeline would be to hover your mouse over the beginning or the end of the clip until you see the mouse icon change. From here, you can click and drag to shorten or lengthen your clips.

You might have noticed when we played back our clips, we still had audio on both the interview footage and the b-roll footage. To fix this, we will lower the audio of the b-roll footage completely. On the thumbnail in your timeline, you can see audio waves rising and falling towards the lower half of the clip. Just above those waves is a thin line that controls your audio level for that clip. To lower the audio, we hover our mouse over that line until the arrow changes, at which point we can click and drag our mouse down. For my project, I’ll be lowering the audio completely.

Speaking of audio, my project would be a lot more fun with music! I head to my “audio-music” event, select my song, then drag it and drop it on the timeline below all my other footage. Using the same method as before, I will lower my audio to about -13 dB, so the music isn’t louder than the interview. FCP has a built-in way to fade audio in and it’s very easy. When you hover your mouse over the audio clip, a little circle appears at the very beginning and very end of the clip. All you have to do is click that little circle and drag it across to wherever you want the fade to end. Now you have a simple, smooth fade in.

You might have noticed the music file is way longer than my interview. Instead of scrolling all the way across to click and drag the clip, we will be using the blade tool.

The blade tool is probably the tool you will use most often in FCP. You can find it at the top of your timeline, however, the keyboard shortcut will save you LOTS of time. The blade tool is used to simply spice a clip in two at a designated point. So, in the timeline, I can click and drag my playhead (the orange color vertical line) to where I want the music to stop and then press Command+B. The clip will splice at the playhead and we can click on the leftover music and press delete on our keyboard. I’ll add a fade out of the music the same way I added a fade in.

I don’t know about you, but I’m totally satisfied with my interview and I’m ready to export it! First things first, before exporting, it’s always important to make sure all of your media and effects have fully rendered. To be sure of this, when I’m finished with a project, I go all the way up to Modify > Render All. On the top, left of your FCP window you should see a circle with a checkmark in it. That means everything has been rendered and all background tasks are complete. If your circle is not full, be sure to wait before moving on to export.

To export in FCP, go to File > Share > Masterfile. There are other destination options, but for this lesson, masterfile is perfect. In the future, if you know you’re going to export to a masterfile, you can just click Command+E. A pop-up window will appear to ask you all about your export settings. To modify your export settings, click “settings” then select from the drop down menus. The basic settings I usually use are: Computer, H.264 Better Quality, 1920 x 1080. Press “next”. One final window will appear asking you where you want to save your file and what you want to name it. I’m saving mine to my external harddrive.

You did it! Once your video is exported, it should open automatically in Quicktime so you can view your finished product. I hope this guide was helpful for beginners and remember, this is just the start! There is so much to learn about Final Cut and so many fun things you can do. Practice the basics, explore new tools, and let me know what you find!