From the course: Media Composer 8.7 Essential Training: 110

Using Add Edit to trim multiple tracks - Media Composer Tutorial

From the course: Media Composer 8.7 Essential Training: 110

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Using Add Edit to trim multiple tracks

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- [Instructor] One challenge when trimming more complex sequences, is that you might not always be able to see the clips that are off screen on the timeline, that might be affected by the trimming you're going to perform. I've got a sequence here called Add edits to trim. I'm going to duplicate this and produce a complete version and I'll work on the complete one for comparison and you can see in this duplicate sequence I've got three clips. I've got my Audio lined up on Audio 1 and there's this piece of music on Audio 3 and 4. And I'm just going to zoom in here on the timeline, and then scroll across a little, and here's a good example of the problem. This is the edit I want to trim. And if I click to add a trim roller, I get an indication on Audio 1, just this little triangle right by my cursor here. That tells me that there's also a trim roller on Audio 1, and that's there because my Sync Lock is on for Audio 1. What I don't know is whether there are any clips on Audio 2 that may or may not be left behind if I trim. I haven't turned on my Sync Lock for Audio 2, If I do, I can see Nope, nothing there. So this is obviously an empty track. But what do I do about this music? In fact, what do I do about this sequence as a whole when I don't know what's beyond the edge of the timeline? So this is kind of a low-down dirty trick way of getting around this problem of needing to scroll and explore and investigate the timeline when you're really up against it and in a hurry to edit. I'm going to just hold the Command key here on Mac OS or the Control key on Windows to lock my player head to this cut. And this cut is the one that I want to trim. And then I'm going to press Command-A or Control-A on Windows to select all of my tracks, including the music. Now the workflow I'm going to show you here may be one in which you would rather lock the music track or just switch it off and not work with it. And that is okay if you know, for example, that the music runs throughout your entire sequence, maybe it's just a simple montage sequence where you've got a soundtrack in the background and some visuals to go with it. But if you've got a more complex sequence, something where maybe further down the timeline you've got additional bits of music, extra things going on beyond the end of this one clip, this might be a good solution. And it's really simple. I've got all of my tracks selected, and I'm going to click Add Edit. I'll just move my play head out of the way so you can see, I've now added an edit to the filler, in the middle, and to the music clip. Now I know from looking at this timeline that if I go into a trim mode now, and let's do this, and I'll turn on all my tracks, I'm pressing Command-A or Control-A. I've got trim rollers right in front of me now, in view in the timeline window. And I'm going to click to the left to make sure that here in the Composer window, that I've got my extract to splice in rollers right in front of me on screen. And then in the timeline window, I'm going to click and drag left. What I've done is remove the need for Sync Locks. I have absolute control over what's going on in this trim. But of course, while I've done this, I've ruined my music. I've created a jump where before there was none. So the upside to this workflow is that I know for absolute sure that I'm not going to have any Sync problems in my sequence, regardless of what other media I have. Because I'm trimming every single track by the same amount. But now that I've made this quick, simple trim I'm going to need to repair the issue I've created in the music. I'm just going to deselect, and so you can see what happens here, I'm going to zoom out and there. Now I can see all of the music. So to fix this music clip, I'm just going to turn off my yellow segment mode here and I'm going to select the remains of the music clip and remove it, I'm going to hit the Delete key, and then I'm going to trim out just the music clip to the end. Now there is another way of doing this. Let me first of all show you that. So I'm going to click and I'm holding down the Shift key, I'm clicking to get to a rollers and I'm clicking to trim right out to the end of that clip. In fact, that's the end of the sequence and I can trim even further if I adjust the amount a little more, right out to the end of the music. Perfect. And there's another way of doing this. I'm going to Undo and Undo, and Undo and bring back that clip. So now I'm going to click to add these dual rollers, I'm holding the Shift key to add it to both clips and I'm going to trim all the way to the end of the music. And release the mouse and trim a little further. And if I zoom in a little more now I can do a single roller trim out to the end. So I don't need to select the second part of the clip I can just trim through it. Media Composer will allow you to trim a clip out of existence on the timeline. So I'll just zoom in a little bit here. After all that clicking, is it really such a great workflow that I'm proposing? Well, in a sequence like this, no. We've only got three clips and a piece of music. But when you're working on a sequence with a substantial number of tracks and a substantial number of clips further down the timeline, it can be a real help to know that no matter what clips or tracks you have, you are definitely trimming everything in Sync by manually adding that cut to every track. Usually you would use this workflow when there's just one clip that needs repairing afterwards, in this case, it's our music. If you had more than that to fix up afterwards, it might get a little bit muddy and complicated to repair. But very commonly you're going to be in a situation like this one. Where you've got a piece of music that's running under your visuals and you know that you're using all of the music and it doesn't matter all that much if you remove a piece of it, if the result is that you don't lose Sync anywhere else in the timeline. The key to this workflow is using the keyboard to lock to the cut, as I am now with the Command key or Control key to select all with Control or Command A and then to have a keyboard shortcut mapped to add a cut. Like a lot of editors using Media Composer I've mapped this to the H key because it looks a little bit like a cut in a track. And so now in just a few key presses, I'm ready to perform a trim that I know won't cause problems in my sequence.

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