Why the Range tool should be your favorite and why to use it more - Final Cut Pro Tutorial

- [Jeff] Well, here we are with Final Cut X Pro Weekly. - [Nick] Hi, I'm Nick. - [Jeff] I'm Jeff, and we're talking today about the range tool and why it should be your favorite tool. - [Nick] And why aren't you using it more? - [Jeff] It's brutal; I watch people. It's one of my favorite tools, the range tool, and one of the big places I use it are to duck audio, especially under interviews. - [Nick] Another place that I use it, is I like to delete selections in the timeline. Not only delete selections, but sometimes keep that selections, and delete what's outside of the selection. - [Jeff] It's definitely a great alternative for creating variable speed changes, speed ramping changes. - [Nick] And when you're looking to delete multiple keyframes in the timeline, you can select it with the range selection tool and be able to do that with ease. - [Jeff] And last, we're going to show you how to export just part of your timeline using the range tool. So, with that being said, the first thing that I just fell in love with the range tool is that I might have an interview clip, I would switch to the range tool itself, the range selection letter R, and I'd come down to that section of a timeline, and say, just this section right here, just around that clip, I just want to bring down those items. Now, instead of me having to grab the individual, create four keyframes, and lowering it, I could just grab like that and pull just everything down quickly, ducking under interviews. It becomes a great way to work. - [Nick] And just like that, Jeff has four keyframes on the timeline. And it just amazes me how quick it is for you to be able to duck the audio, let's say over that interview that you mentioned earlier, on these multiple clips. - [Jeff] Especially, if you're a documentary person. - [Nick] Now what I'm going to do is actually just click over here to deselect, and looking at this time-lapse, or skimming over it, what I like to do is remove the middle portion of it. So, I want to preface this by saying, what I usually see people do is blade this. So, they select the blade tool with the B key, and they make two incisions on the clip. They then select the clip back with the default selection tool, and remove it. - [Jeff] Why do that? You have the range tool. - [Nick] Exactly. I consider myself a lazy editor, and if I can do it in one step, I'll do it in one step versus three. - [Jeff] You're not lazy; you're efficient. - [Nick] Efficient, I love it. So, what I'm going to do is make a selection right over this middle section here, and you can see the selection's been made, and if I simply press the delete key, that section is removed. Now, it gets even better. - [Jeff] Yeah, Nick, what if I wanted to keep that middle, rather than the outsides? - [Nick] So, I'm going to press command Z. If you want to keep the middle section, you simply head up to the trim section up here on the menu, and we're going to trim this to the selection. The top and tail is going to be removed. - [Jeff] Just as a note, this only works in a single clip. You can't work across multiple clips with this. - [Nick] Exactly, and as you can see, now that middle section is kept. The top and tail end that was outside of that selection has been removed. - [Jeff] All right, let's move over to the speed changes. Here, we've got this girl with a balloon. I'm just going to play through a little bit of that. (up-tempo music) I'm going to use the range tool, select it, and I can go right up to my speed menu, here and choose any of these presets. Now, I could choose fast or slow, and I'll let you play with those on your own, but I'm going to use the normal command here so you can see those green bars, meaning that the beginning is normal, the middle is normal. - [Nick] And just like that, Jeff has a variable speed change, or can make a variable speed change, on three sections of this clip. - [Jeff] And now I can go to the middle section and speed it up to exactly the length I want, and she moves faster. - [Nick] What are those actual handles, there? - [Jeff] The sort of in between those two sections, those are speed transition ranges, just to ease it, and this is why this will look better than just blading the clip. (up-tempo music) And just like that, we've got three ranges in a single clip. - [Nick] So, now we're going to move on to, let's say, looking at deleting multiple keyframes on audio. Now, the big question is, why would you want to do that? - [Jeff] I've put down a lot of keyframes and for whatever reason, I decide I want to get rid of some, and now I'm playing with clicking and shift-clicking keyframes. What a pain. - [Nick] Exactly, so let me just take my range selection tool. I'm going to click over these, or highlight over these two keyframes, and the most important part here is I need to select one by control-clicking or right-clicking it. - [Jeff] Hitting the delete key will not help you here. - [Nick] And once I do that control or right-click, I get this little contextual menu saying delete keyframes. Once I click it, it's been removed. There are those keyframes removed from the section that you highlighted. - [Jeff] Last thing we're going to talk about, speaking of sections, is I'd like my client to see those middle two clips, and I want to do an export of just that section. So I, with the range tool selected, select these clips. Now, before I go up and say share, Nick wants to make this really important point. - [Nick] So, we want to make a couple points, here. One is that what you're exporting is 14 seconds and seven frames. Now, you may be concerned that right now, what's highlighted is just the clips on the primary storyline. But this audio that's connected underneath, or what's in between this range selection, will carry over, and keep in mind that if there was a title on top of that, that would be carried over, too. - [Jeff] So, it's everything inside that range, and now, the last part of it is I go up to the file menu, I say share; you can pick any one you want. You could sent it right to YouTube. I'll choose master file on this one, in case. This way, it's a master piece, coming out in pro res. And something Nick taught me recently that I thought was really cool. - [Nick] First thing you can see here is that you've got the 14 seconds and seven frames, but if I skim over here, that's not my entire project. That is just what has been in between the range selection, able to skim it right there. - [Jeff] My name's Jeff. - [Nick] I'm Nick. - [Jeff] Thanks for watching Final Cut X Pro Weekly.