Need ANY Help I Can Get With FCE

[LillieDesigns]

It feels so unintuitive and I really can't figure it out. I have some useless book and tried watching a few videos on YouTube, but I feel like I just don't have the basics.

Canvas? Sequence? Rendering?

I tried to make a montage of a rainy day that matches music in the background. In iMovie 6 I could just stick everything on a timeline and cut and paste accordingly. I tried that in FCE and kept getting the 'blah blah blah isn't rendered' so I rendered it, but can't figure out how to match the beat of the song.

I'm frustrated and struggling and everything else. Please help!

 

[Poeben]

I would suggest reading the manual and using the help menu. If FCE is anything like FCP in this regard you will have a lot of your questions answered by the well written manual. It sounds like you just jumped in and tried to figure it all out and now you're frustrated, which is understandable...It should make more sense when you see/read about it on your own.

Sequences? Basically a timeline...you can have many sequences in a project
Canvas? The visual output of a sequence...
Viewer? For viewing and manipulating clips
Rendering? Rendering is part of life...Some effects, imported audio, imported video(not matching sequence settings) all require rendering.

 

[boazjoe]

go to youtube and search "final cut express tutorial"

Another place to go is http://www.apple.com/finalcutexpress/tutorials/

I agree that there is a learning curve but stick in there. It is worth it!
Joe

 

[LillieDesigns]

I don't know why I'm having so much trouble with it. I figured out Photoshop when I was 13 without instructions and iMovie 06 was a snap (as it was supposed to be).

I just have to kep working at it I guess. It's such a pain though when you know what you want to do and can't figure out how to make the program do it.

Maybe I need a class or something.

 

[LillieDesigns]

Sorry to keep asking questions, but I can't seem to figure out how to split the rendered audio form the rendered video. Like if I have people talking in a shot, but want it to be the sound for another; i.e. a scene between two people speaking and the person off camera talking, but not being shown.

 

[P-Worm]

Sorry to keep asking questions, but I can't seem to figure out how to split the rendered audio form the rendered video. Like if I have people talking in a shot, but want it to be the sound for another; i.e. a scene between two people speaking and the person off camera talking, but not being shown.

You can lock the track with the little lock button. Then when you move or delete it won't change what it is linked to.

P-Worm

 

[Poeben]

This can be done on a clip by clip basis as well.

cmd-L (Modify > Link): unlinks video and audio track so they can be manipulated separately
opt-L (Modify > Stereo Pair): toggles link between L and R audio track

 

[FerretEva]

I've been having a hard time with my copy of FCE and I went to Lynda.com and paid for a month of tutorials. Their FCE tutorial is fantastic. Of course, I wish it had troubleshooting, but many of my troubleshooting questions have been answered by the forum here.

 

[LillieDesigns]

I've been having a hard time with my copy of FCE and I went to Lynda.com and paid for a month of tutorials. Their FCE tutorial is fantastic. Of course, I wish it had troubleshooting, but many of my troubleshooting questions have been answered by the forum here.

Thanks for the heads up on Lynda.com - it's exactly what I was looking for.

I signed up for the 7 day free trial so hopefully I can squeeze in about 10 hours in the next week.