Notes on using Final Cut Express

Once you have clips organized, the general idea is to place pieces of them in the timeline. This is where in and out points can be very handy. You can use in and out points to easily define the portions of a clip that you want to appear in the timeline. With a clip visible in the clip viewer, use in and out points to define the segment you want in your movie, then drag the image into the movie viewer and chose overwrite. Later if you want to add transitions, depending on how you chose your in and out points, the clip may have enough footage on either side of the in and out points to allow for the transition.

Creating a transition with Text can make for some strange math in terms of clip timing. For instance, for a 5 second transition consisting of black screen, text fades in then out, then black screen, then the video continues, you could assemble the following:

black screen, text, black screen 0:15 2:15 0:15

insert the following transitions at the black screen/text clip junctions: fade in, fade out 1:15 1:15