Trimming clips is the basis of all video editing, but once most people have grasped the fundamentals of trimming in the Timeline, they quickly move on to Final Cut Express' more exciting features. Although a few frames can make the difference between a good and bad cut, frame-accurate editing in the Timeline is such a chore that few users can be bothered. Fortunately, Final Cut Express is endowed with a superb Trim Edit window, which makes this particular task both quick and easy.
In this masterclass, you will learn how to use the Trim Edit window to make ripple and rolling edits that adjust the edit point between two clips, and how to simultaneously edit cuts across multiple tracks. The Trim Edit window's controls enable you to quickly move from one edit to another, so you can assemble a rough cut - either trimming clips in the Viewer or the Timeline - and leave the fine-tuning until later. The next stage in the process is to use the Trim Edit window's navigation controls to jump from one edit to the next, making sure cuts appear exactly where and how you want them.
The Trim Edit window effectively lets you control two edits at once - that is, the out-point of the outgoing clip and the in-point of the incoming clip. Even more powerful and, in some circumstances more useful, are the Slip and Slide editing tools, which enable you to move a clip along the Timeline while controlling what happens at either end. The Slip tool is particularly useful for inserting cut-away shots, which you can keep together in one convenient master clip. Using the Slip tool, you can simply slip the master clip along the Timeline until the section you want comes into view.
Slipping and slidingIn addition to the Ripple and Roll edit tools, there are two other editing tools you should try to become familiar with - the Slip and Slide edit tools.
These tools allow you to work simultaneously with three clips. Let's say you have edited a clip into the middle of a sequence, but subsequently realise you have got the wrong part of the masterclip and the segment you need is earlier or later than the segment displayed. Ordinarily, the quickest way to do this would be to reload the master clip into the viewer, edit it and substitute it for the original.
You can achieve the same thing much more easily using the Slip tool. You can drag the sub-clip left or right on the Timeline; the position and duration of the clip on the Timeline remain the same, only the content changes. It is as if you are slipping the entire clip underneath the two adjacent clips. Final Cut Express shows a ghost image of the entire length of the masterclip, so you can see the limits of how far you can slide.
The Slide tool works in a similar fashion: it maintains the overall length of the three clips, but moves the central clip itself, adjusting the length of the adjacent clips.
The easiest way to visualise the difference between the Slip and Slide tools is to think of the centre clip slipping underneath, but sliding over the top of the adjacent clips. When you use the Slip or Slide tool, the Canvas displays a dual-video window. With the Slip tool, the window displays the new frames at the in- and out-points of the clip. When using the Slide tool, the left window displays the new out-point of the preceding clip and the right window shows the new in-point of the subsequent clip.
Author: Ken McMahon
How to trim in Final Cut Express 2