Final Cut Express 4 notes

I rarely use Final Cut Express, usually iMovie does everything I need. Whenever I come back to FCE though, I always forget how to do some of the simplest tasks. A few reminders for myself:

  • To add a transition between clips you need in and out points set first to define where the transition should start/end (on both of the clips between which you are adding the transition)
  • Double-click a clip in the timeline to load it into the viewer to edit it’s properties
  • Overlay videos by dragging each clip to a track in the timeline. You can resize, move and clip each overlaid video in the ‘Motion’ properties tab in the viewer
  • To use the Chroma Key effect to overlay a video, drag the Chroma settings tab out of the viewer, then use the ‘dropper’ to select the background color in the video clip