Exercise 1.3: Browser and Label

Now, we will learn additional information about the browser.

First open your workstation. Open Final Cut Pro and your project. Highlight (by selecting it) one of the clips inside your bin. Control-click the clip and you will see a list of submenu that pops up.

These are shortcut submenus available in the browser.

OPEN VIEWER: this will open the clip in the Viewer.

OPEN NEW VIEWER: You can open the clip in a New Browser. Try to open all your clips using the "New Browser," this akin to opening simulataneously TV monitors for each of your clip. Galing no? Of course the View in front is the ACTIVE one, active viewer means if you do some editing, the ACTIVE viewer will only be affected. Try opening also other files, like audio, graphics, etc in a NEW VIEWER.

OPEN EDITOR: if you have installed an external editor, the file will opened by that application. For example, if you have set Photoshop to open JPG files while in Final Cut Pro, FCP will run it if you select this submenu.

CAPTURE: this is selected if you want to capture a specific offline clip from your camera to the browser.

RECONNECT MEDIA: this is to reconnect offline media (offline media means clips that either are not captured or have been transferred to another location in the hard disk and FCP cannot find it.

MEDIA MANAGER: media organizer

MAKE OFFLINE: this will render the clip offline (not available). This is done if you want to recapture a specific clip.

EXPORT: select this if you want to export a clip to a movie ot a batch.

CUT/COPY: well the usual editing - cut, copy and paste

ITEM PROPERTIES: if you want to view to edit the properties of the clip

LABEL: if you want to have color-coding for better organization of your clips. This will be very helpful if you have many clips.


EXERCISE: I will check this later. In your PROJECT, let's color code (label) your clips and bins. Go to Final Cut Pro menu bar, then to Preferences. Select the TAB LABEL. Change the labels: yellow color for audio, red for video, blue for graphics. Click OK.
Then, go to the browser, and label individually your clips and bins:

(1) Label all video clips and its bin with Red.
(2) Label all audio clips and its bin with Yellow.
(3) Label all graphics and its bin with Blue.

Save your work. Close project. See you next session.