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Making the First Edit

This chapter is from the book

Reference 4.8 Finessing the Rough Cut

Your project is racing to the end of this phase of the workflow. The details and adjustments you need to perform become more granular as you finish addressing the major editorial issues. You may still perform some major changes, but you should now see the light shining at the end of this editorial tunnel. At this stage, a project generally needs audio adjustments and a bit more trimming. By now, your project is definitely ready for a run-through with the slip trim.

The slip trim changes the content within the clip container. You change the start and end points of the content simultaneously, revealing earlier or later source materials without changing the clip’s duration or position in the project. Think of the clip as your iPhone and the clip content as the photos on your iPhone. When you want to see earlier photos, you swipe with your finger from left to right to pull the earlier photos into view. The reverse to see later content is to swipe right to left to pull that content into view.

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Dragging right to slip earlier content into view

While performing a slip trim, the two-up display of the new start and end points appears in the Viewer. The two-up display shows your changes in real time as you drag the slip trim across the clip. When you release the mouse button, the clip is already updated in the project.

You may also slip trim audio-only clips. However, for smoothing out audio edits at this stage of the workflow, adding some transitions and audio fade handles will do the job. Every clip that contains audio content has fade handles to create audio envelopes for ramping. You can create ramps to soften the audio edits and avoid calling attention to the edit with an abrupt audio change.

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Your project has a basic music bed, the B-roll edits, and even the sound bites generally positioned and somewhat trimmed. For this first rough cut, you will adjust some clip positions and timings to coincide with the music clip’s major moments.

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