4. A Little (More) Fire, Scarecrow?
Our fire dance would look way hotter with an extra layer of flames in front of the subject - and it’s easy to add them. Just drag the same (or a different) clip from the Browser to an empty track above the two tracks (V1 and V2) that are already there. Final Cut will designate track V3 and the new clip will appear as the top layer in the Canvas window, blocking the other layers - but that’s OK, we’ll remove most of the image anyway, down to just some flames.
Drag the Chroma Keyer onto the clip as before and use the Eyedropper tool to pick up the colors you want - orange and yellow in our case. The trick here is to invert the key, removing everything except the selected colors. To do that, just check the Invert box at the bottom of the Chroma Keyer’s Numeric control pane. Don’t forget that you can hide other layers to get a better look at what you’re working on. Just click the blue Visibility button at the far-left side of any clip in the Timeline.
Checking the Invert box removes everything but the keyed colors.
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5. Move Stuff Around
Final Cut’s motion controls are an excellent weapon in your war on bad footage. To get things moving, load a clip in the Viewer window (double-click it in the Timeline and select the Motion tab). Move the Timeline playhead to the beginning of the sequence and click the Add Motion Keyframe icon on the Canvas window, then move the playhead to where you want the character to stop shrinking (or any other motion to stop) and add another motion keyframe.
With the playhead still on the second motion keyframe, use the Viewer window’s Motion controls to tweak logistics like rotation, scale, in-frame position, cropping, distortion, and more. The effect will gradually take place in the time between the two motion keyframes. Any changes you make to frames along the Timeline will alter every frame back to the previous motion keyframe on the Timeline—but you can add all the motion keyframes you want to control the backspill.
Motion keyframes are retroactive, so always make a new motion keyframe before you start tweaking the motion.
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GO WIREFRAME
If you want to make wholesale changes to a clip’s placement, zoom level, cropping, distortion, etc, that don’t change over time, forget motion keyframes. Select View > Image + Wireframe to activate the Wireframe handlers, whereby you can manipulate the active clip.
