Assembling Clips With Snapping On in Final Cut Pro 5

Video Transcript

"Hi! This is C.J. South representing expertvillage.com. In this clip, I am going to show you how you can assemble clips in your time line with snapping turned on. Now I'll talk about a feature called snapping and I will show you how to put together a sequence of clips using snapping. First of all drag a couple of clicks like I have right in the time line so I will just drag another one in there too. Bring it right down. Notice how I am moving this. This is a very smooth movement. I can get very precise where I drop it. I can drop it there, I can drop if slightly next to it or far away from it. You know whatever I want to do, I can do it. Watch what happens when I drag this clip right next to a clip that I've already laid down. You see that. It snaps right to the edge of the clip. If snapping is turned off and I try to do the same thing, I can't. It's really hard to get precisely next to the clip and I might overshoot it and okay, now I've got some black space in between; let me try again. It's a pain in the butt. So when I want to get just right up next to another layer, you can turn snapping on and you snap right to it. Now snapping will also snap you to your play head as well. So positioning your play head and you can snap to the play head. So if I want to be not at the edge of the clip but slightly into it, I can snap to the clip and then snap past it to the play head and drop it to the play head. Now to toggle this on and off you can do two things. You can click the snapping button which is in the upper right corner of the time line. You just click that; now it's toggle off. Click it again; it's toggle on or you can just hit the end key. Watch as I hit the end key on my keyboard it toggles it on and off. So again this is a great way to just snap, clips together with each other. So you just plop it down, grab another clip and just bring that in and now you have this nice sequence of clips that are set up right next to each other. "