Final Cut Pro® Portable Genius

Chapter 7. How Can I Use Final Cut Pro for High-End Effects Compositing?

Final Cut Pro provides some fantastic effects-compositing tools. The catch is learning what type of effects Final Cut Pro is good at. With certain effects, you may be better off passing them into Apple Motion. This section focuses on practical effects that you can create directly within the Final Cut Pro interface.

• Installing Third-Party Effects

• Creating Freeze Frame Effects

• Slow Motion Effects

• Understanding Composite Modes

Installing Third-Party Effects

Final Cut Pro supports a variety of third-party effects. Better yet, there are individuals who have written free plug-ins that you can download and use. One such Web site is www.mattias.nu/plugins/. This site provides a set of plug-ins called Too Much Too Soon (see figure 7.1).

Note

I recommend installing any third-party effects in the following location: Mac HD

Figure 7.1. The Too Much Too Soon plug-ins installed.

To keep all your plug-ins organized, you can place the entire folder inside the Plugins folder.

Creating Freeze Frame Effects

Creating a freeze frame is quite easy: Park over any frame within a sequence and press Shift+N. This places a freeze frame of the clip into ...