FCP5 questions
 

I have a couple of questions for FCP5 users.

1. How do I split a stereo audio track? I recorded a boom in the right track and wireless on the left track but now they are seperated and play in each side of the speakers. i want to combine them so they are both playing ouyt of both speaks, and there must eb a way to split the audio stero tracks into mono tracks you can copy and paste to other audio tracks.

2. What is the best way to fade in to a clip but also fade to black. I tried Video Transitions (Fade in and Out dissolve) but not working right. There has to be an easy way to fade a clip in and out to black.

Thanks

There's an option under one of the preferences menu to add audio as eparate mono channels. Alternatively you could just unlink the tracks (apple-L ?) and pan them to the centre.

1. As Dylan suggests, highlight the clip in the timeline, go to Modify > Link and then also go to Modify > Stereo pair. Now click outside the click to deselect, then double click on one of the audio tracks. You can then adjust pan and level as desired. Repeat for the other track.

2. Not quite sure what you're trying to do here. But instead of using the transitions I prefer to just manually adjust the opacity. First enable the rubber band lines (sorry, can't remember the correct name for these) by clicking on the little graph icon on the lower left of the timeline window. Now either select the pen tool or just hold down the option key and on the line that run through your video clip at the spot where you want the fade-in to be complete. Now click again near the beginning of the clip on that same line. Go back to the arrow tool and you can drag that point to the beginning of the clip at the bottom, so that it forms a ramp from 0% to 100% opacity.

If you want to do a cross-dissolve, create a second video track and you can stack these effects with one track ramping up at the same time as the other one ramps down.

Thanks guys that helped.

One more question. How do I get BLACK frames to run between clips or in the beginning of the movie?

Several easy ways:

1. Slide the clips apart on the timeline and you will go to black.
2. Use the "slug" clip from the effects tab.
3. At the beginning or end you can specify how much black you want using the print to tape dialog.