Part 1: Time Remapping: Final Cut Pro 5 Tutorial

Video Transcript

" This is C.J. South representing expertvillage.com. In this clip, I will be explaining time remapping. Remember that you have constant speeds and variable speeds. We already talked about constant speeds so let's move on to the variable speeds or as it is called in Final Cut Pro, time remapping. Now time remapping is a pretty large topic so it might take us a while to get through this but just stick with me and we will push all the way through. We'll make it. We'll do it. It'll get there. So applying variable speed to a clip allows you to dynamically alter the speed of a clip over time; in forward or reverse motion. So variable speed allows you to create sophisticated motion affects in which subjects appear to smoothly shift across a variety of different speeds. Like ramping from slow to fast instead of just that hard cut from slow to fast it goes slow, faster, faster, faster, faster, faster, fast. So it gradually gets there to make it look more natural; it flows better. So you are not really going to see that in many many commercials or what not but if you ever look at music videos, they do it a lot. They do it in action movies too. It is always in that normal panning around somebody and then it goes really fast and then slow, slow and fast again. It is a great way to emphasize certain frames. Time remapping can get a bit confusing if you don't have a goal for your footage. If you just jump into it and you try to play around with it, you will be totally lost as to how time remapping works. So first you need to ask yourself a couple of questions. Question one. At what point and time do I want this media frame to occur? Question two. What media file frame do I want this clip to start or end on? Once you have decided that, working with time remapping is a lot easier. So let's look at how you can actually apply time remapping. First we need to select a clip in the time line. So let's go ahead and select a clip in the time line. Put your play head over or select it or both, whatever and then we are going to bring up the speed window so you can hit Apple J or you can go to modify and you can right click it and go to speed. So now we are up here, this pop up window at the top here, we are going to change that from constant speed to now variable speed. If you notice you can't change the speed percentage because your percentage is going to be constantly changing with a variable speed. Click okay."