Timeline Priority in Final Cut Pro 5

Video Transcript

"Hi! This is C.J. South representing expertvillage.com. In this clip, I am going to tell you about time line priority. Now let's talk about layer priorities. In Final Cut Pro in a sequence, there is priority between layers. If you look at a sequence I have opened up now, I have 3 layers. I have 1, 2 and 3. Three different video clips on three different layers. Now if you notice they are all stacked on top of each other and they all can't be playing at once because it is taking up the same space. They all can't occupy the same space. Well Final Cut Pro says whatever video is on the top, takes priority. That top layer takes priority. It is like a sandwich; you've got the bread on the bottom and you stack it up, stack it up and stack it up and you are looking down onto the sandwich so you move that top layer of bread, hey you see that tomato you move that tomato, see some lettuce and move that lettuce so whatever is on top you are going to see. As you can see right now that is a grungy kind of building. So let's go ahead and make this canvas a little larger for you here so you can see a little better. All right, okay so there's the building. Now if I move that, you can see the layer under it which is yet again another building. So as you can see it is just kind of like stacking. Stack on top of that, and you go ahead and stack on top of that, you stack on top of that and that is what layered priority is. By the way you noticed this little triangle with a line that I have been moving around a lot is called your play head. This is how you navigate through your time line. Wherever that line is, that is what is going to be showing up in the canvas. "