Starting a New Project in Final Cut Pro 5

Video Transcript

" Hi this is CJ South representing expertvillage.com, and in this clip I'm going to show you how to launch final cut pro and how to start up a new project. Now if your brand spanking new to the Mac operating system, you might not know exactly how everything works. But, I'm going to go ahead and assume that you read the manual and you have already installed final cut pro. So now to open it; let's go head up to the operate corner here. Click on the hard drive that has all your applications installed. Go to the application folder and find final cut pro. You can basically hit F and that will take you right to all the F's, and then there is final cut pro right there. Now you can double click it or you can click drag it and drop in here in the dock. I already have one in there so. I like to use the dock, personally. Let's go ahead and open that up. Now you notice when final cut pro opens, you are going to get this error that says unable to locate external devices. It is basically just looking for a camera or a deck to connect to, which is what you use for capturing or exporting. You don't have to worry about it right now, so just go ahead and click continue, and final cut pro will now finish opening up. Now if this is your first time seeing this, it probably looks a little weird for you, so let me quickly let me tell you where everything is at. In the upper left corner here you have what is called a browser. Next to that in the middle is the viewer. To the right of that is the canvas and below that is the timeline. Then to the right here you also have a toolbar and audio levels. So if you notice up here at the upper left corner in the browser we have an untitled project. This tab right here. Basically that is just what final cut pro names it. It just opens up a project and gives it a default name. So let's go ahead and close that. So just go up to the tab right click, and click close tab. Okay there you go. Now our timeline and camera are both gone because those are both associated with a project. So now lets go ahead and set up our preferences. I'm not going to take you through anything hard, just a basic, easy, a wizard type set up. So come up here to final cut pro and then go down to easy set up. Now we have a few presets here that we can work with. By default it is on DV and TAC, which is what we are going to be working with. But, you can click on it and also view these different presets that you have, whether you are working in HD or HDV or if you are in PAL. Right now just leave it DV and TAC and then click setup. Again you get this error just saying hey we are not hooked up to a camera: that is okay. If you have a camera right now and you want to hook it up, go right ahead, just plug it in with a firewire and then turn it on and you won't see this anymore. Go ahead and click continue. Okay so let's go ahead and open up a new project; so I come up to file and go down to new project. Boom, new project opens up. Now you see in the tab over here that again is untitled project 2 now. So you are going to want a name. We are going to want to save this project and give it a name because organization is key. "