From the course: Final Cut Pro X Guru: Keyboard Shortcuts

Top and tail editing - Final Cut Pro Tutorial

From the course: Final Cut Pro X Guru: Keyboard Shortcuts

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Top and tail editing

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- If you don't like deciding clips' in and out ranges in the event browser, there's also a way to do this in the timeline. In this movie, you'll see three clips in your timeline that have no in and out points. Let's see how we can trim them on the fly. So I'm in my 5.5 keyword collection, and I've double-clicked my projects where I see, indeed, those three clips. I'm just going to use my function, left arrow, or the home key on an extended keyboard to move to the beginning of the timeline. Nice little handy shortcut key there. I'm going to now hit the L key, which we learned in an earlier exercise, except we did it in the event browser to sort of play forward. And I'm just watching this clip play out, and I want to trim it probably about two seconds from now, so I'm going to now hit option, left square bracket to complete the trim, and a few seconds later I'm going to hit option, right square bracket to trim the out point on this exact same clip. So I'm just going to hit the spacebar to stop, but, most importantly, note that wherever my playhead was, if I hit option, left square bracket is where it trimmed the end point to, and if I hit my option, right square bracket, it would trim the out point to that location. Let's repeat this exercise with the second clip in our timeline, so navigate close to where your second clip begins, and let's hit the L key to play forward. So around here is where I want to start, so I'm going to hit option, left square bracket to trim it to the playhead's position, and right around here I want to hit where she puts her stance up in the air. Option, right square bracket. Clip is trimmed. Now, I like to encourage you guys to go forward with this third clip and try to create in and out points wherever you place your playhead, the endpoint with the option, left square bracket and the out point with the option, right square bracket. This is commonly referred to as top and tail editing, and you can use this directly within Final Cut Pro X. So whether you're in the event browser or in the timeline, there's a lot of flexibility in how you select your clips, all driven by keyboard shortcuts.

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