Final Cut Pro: Layout or stay out!

• Posted By: Tim French
• Posted On: 12:15 a.m. | August 19, 2010

All right, I didn’t want to sound so harsh, but I couldn’t think of anything else that rhymed with layout, and that’s what I want to talk about, video and audio timeline track layout in Final Cut Pro. FCP lets you have up to 99 video tracks and 99 audio tracks, so you could potentially cut a video and have only one clip on each track. How awesome would that be? Answer: Zero. Zero awesome, that’s how much. Not awesome at all. Why’s that, you ask? Well, I’ve seen timelines in which it looked as if the editor was trying to use every track FCP would give him, and you know what? It was impossible to tell what was going on; on the timeline, it was a mess. Granted, you might look at the finished product and say, “That was great. They used every track on the timeline, and it looked so cool.” But the truth is that working in that way is often very difficult and rarely has any advantages. “All right, smart guy,” I can hear you say, “how many tracks should I use then?” Well it’s not just how many; you should also ask how they should be used.

When I teach people how to edit with FCP and I’m explaining the interface, I always say that the canvas is the visual representation of the movie and the timeline is the graphic representation. Graphic as in bar graph. ‘Cause it looks like a bar graph, get it? Now if you’ve ever tried to read a graph, you know that they are completely useless if you don’t separate the different types of information into different lines. You can’t tell if Starbucks is making more money than Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf if you don’t put the information into separate columns.

The first thing you need to do is figure out what are the different elements on your timeline. When I edit any kind of documentary/reality piece, I’ll break it down into interview/sound bites, B-roll (a little side note, when asked the difference between B-roll and interview/sound bite I say that interview/sound bite is when the subject is talking directly to you the shooter/the camera/the audience; everything else is B-roll), graphics, voiceover, sound effects and music, and then I give each group its own tracks, like this.

V3 = Graphics

V2 = B-Roll Video

V1 = Interview/Soundbite Video

==========================

A1 = Interview/Soundbite Audio 1

A2 = Interview/Soundbite Audio 2

A3 = B-Roll Audio 1

A4 = B-Roll Audio 2

A5 = Voice Over

A6 = Sound Effects

A7 = Music Left

A8 = Music Right

So why this order? Well, it mostly has to do with the way FCP displays video from the timeline, which is from the top, or highest track, down. If you have video clips stacked on top of each other on tracks V1, V2 and V3, FCP will show whatever is on V3. So it’s kind of like “rock, paper, scissors.” B-roll goes on top of interview/sound bites and graphics go on top of everything. Granted, that would be the lamest game ever, no matter what you throw, you get beat by graphics. I don’t wanna play anymore!

Anyway, I always make sure to put my clips on the correct tracks. This lets me look at my timeline and know what is going on and what needs to be done at a glance without actually taking the time to watch it. “What?” you ask, “how can you tell  what is on the timeline without watching it?” Easy. It’s like the old saying, “a place for everything and everything in its place.” As long as you know that everything on track V1 is interview/sound bite and everything on V2 is B-roll, then if your timeline has a lot of quick cuts on V1 and nothing on V2, you will know that your heavily edited interview still needs some B-roll to cover the cuts, or if you only have stuff on V2 and A7 and A8, then it must be a musical montage, maybe even a sports training montage.