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Hey everyone, this is Richard Taylor from FCPX.TV
Do you ever wish you had guidelines to use when aligning objects titles or framing
In Final Cut Pro?
in this tutorial I am going to show you how to make a set of guidelines inside Final
Cut Pro
and of a few ways to use them.
you can also make the guidelines in motion photoshop or another application
and import them into final cut pro but for this tutorial I just wanna stay in
final cut pro
in my guides event I create an empty compound clip
I name it guides cc for compound clip
I choose custom and make it 1920 x 1080 which is my usual
video format
open the compound clip in its own timeline by double clicking it
you can also right click on it and choose open in timeline
i add a video that i want to use with guidelines in this case the u_s_ capital
in DC
select the clip and press E to append it to the timeline
Once in the timeline
press shifts z
to fit to window
select the capital video in the timeline And press X
open the generators window go to the Solids category and choose vivid
so the guidelines are nice and bright
with the vivid generated selected hit Q to superimpose it can match the
length of the capitol video
in the timeline duplicate the vivid generator by option dragging it above
itself
with the top generator selected go to the info panel of the inspector and
rename it horizontal
select the bottom generator in the timeline
go back to the info panel of the inspector and rename it vertical
select the top horizontal generator and press with the V key to disable it
select the bottom vertical generator the timeline go to the inspector
and go to the crop parameters we are going to crop everything out of this
generator except for a two pixel line in the center
for center vertical line crop left and right 9 5 9
do the same for the horizontal generator select the horizontal generator in the
timeline
and hit the V key
to enable it
go to the inspector and in the crop parameters crop top and bottom
539
this creates a two pixel centered
horizontal guideline
the formula to crop a vertical line for 1920 pixel frame
is 1920 - 2
for the two pixel line
divided by 2
which is 959 and for a 1080 frame it would be 1080
minus 2
divided by 2 which is 539
now we have one vertical and one horizontal line perfectly in the center
of the image
to turn a guide line on or off select it in the timeline and hit the V key to enable or
disable it
to move the guideline on screen
select it in the timeline and then select the viewer transform button
an on-screen control will appear
just drag the line to a new position
notice as you're moving it the guide will snap when you reach the center of
the frame either horizontally or vertically
for more precise controls drag the X-Y position in the transform
section of the inspector
to move to a horizontal guide line up or down
click and drag on the Y position
to move a vertical guide left or right
click and drag on the X position
you can place the guidelines precisely using the inspector
since these guidelines were created in the exact center any movement will be
measured from the zero position in the center of the image
moving the vertical line left will be a negative number and right will be a
positive number
moving the horizontal line up will be positive and down will be negative
to be more precise hold the option key when dragging these numbers in the
inspector
this moves one-tenth of a pixel at a time
here i've added some titles i'm going to drag the title so they touched the
guidelines for visual alignment
you can use the guide lines to visually align photos or video clips
you can change the color of the guide lines from the generator tab of the
inspector
if you want white lines you could use a white generator instead of a vivid
generator
if you want the guidelines to move on screen
just animate their position with key frames
you can as many guidelines as you'd like you can also make the guidelines into a
compound clip
And then break apart clip items
when you want to work with them in a timeline
notice that when you break a part clip items the individual clips appear in
the time line, but the compound clip you created still exist for reuse in the
browser you can make different sets of guide lines for specific framing
and group each into their own compound clip
to turn all the guidelines on or off select the compound click and choose
enable or disable
in order to reuse the guidelines in another event
just drag the guidelines compound clip to the new event
there you have it
guidelines in Final Cut Pro
thanks for watching