Moving at the Speed of Creativity by Wesley Fryer

Just In Time Video Tutorials for Final Cut Pro

While negative stories about destructive uses for online technologies continue to attract attention, I continue to find it amazing what CONSTRUCTIVE things you can teach yourself these days if you’re connected to the Internet and can use Google. I’ve recently used a variety of free, online tutorials to learn more about using Final Cut Pro video editing software.

This Metacafe video (unfortunately preceeded by a short advertisement) addresses the basics of adding text with Final Cut Pro:
Adding Text With Final Cut ProFunny blooper videos are here

This ExpertVillage video addresses inserting and overwriting transitions in FCP:


Inserting & Overwriting with Transitions in Final Cut Pro 5 — powered by ExpertVillage.com

Lastly, this video from DVDcreators addresses the common “Insufficient content for edit” error when attempting to add a transition between clips in FCP. Because it is a QuickTime Movie linked via the PodPress plug-in for WordPress, it is not embeddable.

I’ve also used some of Creative Cow’s free video tutorials for FCP in the past. After I tweeted about finding some “just-in-time” video tutorial help for FCP this evening, others suggested commercial / subscription-based tutorial sites Lynda.com and AtomicLearning.

Personally, I’m finding the need for commercial how-to guide sites like these is less as more free tutorials proliferate online. Still, it can be nice to have a more comprehensive resource for specific software programs, and I may give commercial options more serious consideration in the coming year as I seek to further develop my FCP skill set. It’s fantastic, however, to be able to access high quality, free tutorials like those I’ve linked above when I have a technological learning need. YouTube alone today has over 650 video tutorials for Final Cut Pro.

This is ALMOST “learning without limits.” It’s too bad such unbounded learning has a dark side as well.

Mirror Universe
Creative Commons License photo credit: lassassino

For better or for worse, I think that “dark side” is part of the price of digital freedom. In a world where online learners CAN choose to learn about almost anything, ethical decision-making is more important than ever. We have fewer natural boundaries to our learning than ever before, so our need for “digital discipline” is great. It’s too bad so many schools are still pursuing a myopic vision of strictly banning web content to address the needs of digital citizenship today, rather than encouraging the responsible and appropriate use of Internet resources during and after school.

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One response to “Just In Time Video Tutorials for Final Cut Pro”

  1. Mathew Avatar

    I learned FCP 1.0 by working with an editor to learn Adobe Premiere (which was then in a much earlier version) and then was able to pick up FCP with no problem. I actually find it easier than iMovie to use as it’s much less finicky and has less limits.

    I agree that there is a lot of free material available and don’t think subscription services are necessarily required though for someone who doesn’t want to hunt for the movies, it might be useful. If I was going to buy a service, I like totaltraining.com particularly for their photoshop DVDs.