The Methodology

This book is first and foremost a hands-on course. Every exercise in this book is designed to help you begin editing in Final Cut Pro at a professional level as quickly as possible. Each lesson builds on the previous lesson and continues to step you up through the program's functions and capabilities. If you are new to Final Cut Pro, start at the beginning, and progress through each lesson in order. If you are familiar with an earlier version of Final Cut Pro, you can pop into a specific section and focus on that topic, since every lesson is self-contained.

Course Structure

This book is designed to get you up and running with the basic Final Cut Pro editing and trimming functions first, then give you a broader understanding of how to customize and use the program for your own purposes, and finally to immerse you in the more advanced features of Final Cut Pro effects, titling, and output. The lessons fall into the following categories:

Lessons 1 7	Basic editing and trimming
Lessons 8 9	Customizing and capturing
Lessons 10 13	Video and audio effects and audio mixing
Lesson 14	Multicam editing
Lessons 15 16	Titling and final outputting

Each lesson begins with a "Preparing the Project" section, which shows you what you will create in that lesson. In addition to the exercises contained within each lesson, most lessons include a section called "Project Practice," which gives you an opportunity to stop and practice what you've learned before moving on to new material.