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Navigating Apple Final Cut Pro's Speed Options, Part 1

Mar 16, 2010 12:00 PM, By Jan Ozer

Beyond the transition options, you can also check the Ripple Sequence checkbox, which will shorten or extend the length of the clip that you're editing and ripple that edit through the content located after the affected clip. Before, if you were slowing a clip down, Final Cut Pro didn't ripple the edit through, maintaining the overall duration of the clip but deleting content from the end.

If that's what you wanted, that was OK, but most of the time, I had to manually push back all content subsequent to the clip, slow it down, then delete the gap. The new Ripple Sequence checkbox saves those extra keystrokes.

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The Frame Blending checkbox uses the eponymous technique to smooth the motion effect, particularly for slow motion. I typically enable this in all instances in which I'm slowing down footage shot at normal speed. If I shot at 60p to slow the footage in editing, I wouldn't apply Frame Blending, because it can create some tweening artifacts. Preview carefully whenever you use this filter to make sure that the cure (potential for artifacts) isn't worse than the disease (jerky slow motion).

The Scale Attributes checkbox scales all time-based attributes, such as markers and keyframed effects. For example, say you had a marker 2 seconds into a 4-second clip. When you slow down the clip to 8 seconds, checking the Scale Attributes checkbox moves the marker to the 4-second point. If you don't check Scale Attributes, the marker would stay at 2 seconds.

Finally, the Remove Speed button removes all speed effects and returns the clip to normal. As always, click OK to apply the effect and Cancel to cancel.

By adding the transition controls and Ripple Sequence checkbox, Apple made the Change Speed control much more useful and usable. It should suffice for most productions. However, all it really does is take you from 100 percent speed to your target speed and then, if desired, back to 100 percent. What happens when you want to vary the playback speed over the duration of the clip?

Well, that, dear reader, is a horse of an entirely different color. Check back in two weeks for the rest of the story.

Continue the discussion on “Crosstalk” the Millimeter Forum.
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