Don't use time remap, ever. Unless you really know what's it's for and how to use it. You'll want to use "Fit to fill".

On the timeline, set an in point (i key), set an outpoint (o key).

On your video clip, set an in point and out point for the amount of video that needs to occupy the same amount of space as your in and out point on the timeline.

Drag your video to the "Fit to fill" edit option in the canvas.

There you go. The video is stretched or compressed to fit.

Just curious though, did you read the manual at all on this?

I was looking at time streching in general with no success in the manual. Thanks for your help!

I just checked the manual. Sure enough, they explain it a lot better than I do. The manual can be found in the help menu.

Search " fit fill"

and take it from the Final Cut master (A-Swift), this is the only way to work in FC. He turned me onto it, and i am breezing through edit and time matching now.

Mega Thanx

I just go to Modify>Speed. If you know the percentage diffence of the BPM's yer pretty darn close.

Please trust me when I say "do not do this".

Fit to fill is more accurate and quicker too. Adjusting speed by the numbers will result in sloppy sync. I'm not making this stuff up.

Also, if you want to make a quality edit, you'll stretch video ONLY where the lips are moving. This will result in a more quality edit that doesn't seem stretched. Although, since cuts occur every second or faster in music videos, you will end up with a video that has hundreds of clips in the timeline.

Or you could do what everyone else does, stretch everything.

dust off the calculators, math is fun

I don't see much of a difference in either process. But, maybe that's just me.

+1

There's really no comparison.

Kue, are you doing videos now too? I think I'm gonna have to do an edit for your break of "Lady" pretty soon...haven't stopped playing the song since I got it!

all i can say is you guys are having more luvk with modify speed than me. I was racking my brain till i got turned on to fit to fill. But to each his own.

I think you misread my quote...haha.

oh yeah....dang i need some sleep

I'd like to know the difference you are having with my method, as i seem to get it dead on. It may be a hair more time consuming, but it seems to be pretty faithful.

Tripp

I used to do it the same way (when I first started using FCP) tripp...its just not very productive. Its more time-consuming and not as accurate as "fit to fill".

posts like this make want to stop giving out free advice.

please dont make us all suffer swift....

I'm sorry, I didn't realize people were so touchy. I was just stating what worked for me. I have no complaints about my technique. And I appreciate yours as well. I just haven't noticed a difference in time saved.

You cant stop now,...you are about to save the world. You have set me on a rampage. Does anyone have James Brown - I Feel Good. Well I had my first experience with FCP and thanks to ASwift I stretched it and it was a breeze and accurate. Still have some minor edits to do on it and then I will share my results.

A Swift for president!!!!!!!
We will call u A Swift Obama.

Fuck that...u r not that great...Hail Barak Obama!!!!!...lol

lol. Yeah i am indebted to the swiftmaster as well. I like his technique better. But i am also one of those people that will say, "Hold up that one word did not match his mouth", and spend too much time trying to fix it. Even with small clips, for example. Lets say your working with a rock video and you are lucky enough to catch a drummer banging out a 4 count or maybe even a 2 count. You can clip that out, go to your remix get your in and out point for whichever loop size you can snag, drag and drop, and BAM, perfect. Then you can copy and past that to a loop size that you want. To me that makes learning the Fit To Fill worth it.

Kudos Swift!

Trust me time timelines used to have a a million clips..lol. I will fool around with ths til I get it perfect.

Fit To Fill is awesome!!! I haven't done any video editing since October, and I been using Premiere a lot more now since it runs super smooth on my MacPro. Gotta figure out how to do it on Premiere. hehe

I don't really care for Premiere so much but I was checking out the new CS4 suite (which has Premiere in it). Holy shit, CS4 has got so many features now that Final Cut Studio wish it had. I really hope Apple gets some of those features into FCP Studio ASAP.

Oh yeah, and the ENTIRE SUITE of CS4 is compatible with Mac AND PC!

What features Swift? (Sorry, too lazy to look it up.) :P

+1

ok, im gonna give it to you. (no homo)

LOL

Luv it

Yes, that's the main reason why I use Premier over Final Cut. Everything just work. Premiere isn't as picky as Final Cut is, and all of the CS4 Suite integrates seamlessly. The new 3D Tool in Flash CS4 is freakin' awesome!

Well, first of all it's expensive. That's not good. I think I paid $1200 for FCP Studio. CS4 is $1699. Not that most of you cheap asses pay for it either way, but it's worth considering.

There is no equivalent for Photoshop in FCP Studio so I'll just skip that. I could almost say the same for OnLocation. Since none of you use cameras to acquire footage, this is also a non-issue.

So here's what they have in CS4 that we need in FCP.

Metadata EVERYWHERE! - CS4 made a big improvement to the way the suite handles metadata. FCP itself has awesome metadata, but where did it go once I get into Logic, Sountrack Pro, Shake and Motion. FCP needs to do exactly what Adobe did and keep the metadata there through EVERY app!

DynamicLink. - That's what Adobe calls it, and it's what allows you to use stuff from other apps WITHOUT RENDERING. This includes DVD authoring and so on. Now granted, I can do stuff like take a motion project and put it on my FCP timeline without rendering it in Motion first but it still needs to render in FCP! Most of the time I end up rendering the Motion project anyway, unless it's a template. Don't even think about using anything but rendered video to author a DVD with Apple products. You must render render render. DynamicLink is supposed to cut down on the amount of rendering you need to do. I spend so much friggin time rendering!

Speech Search - CS4 includes a utility that will scan your audio files and analyze the vocal and figure out what they are saying. The database it builds with this data is timecode accurate also. You can edit the text to fix it, where it got it wrong and the metadata again is available in OnLocatio, SoundBooth, Premiere Pro, After Effects and Encore. Although not meant for music vocals, this would still be CRAZY useful. Apple has nothing like this in any product.

Real 3D in AfterEffects. - If you're like me you got really excited when you heard that Apple's Motion 3 could now do 3D! If you're like me, you also were equally let down when you found out it's not true 3D. What Motion does is allow you place 2D items in a 3D workspace and fake the illusion of 3D by moving the camera around in the 3D workspace. They also further fake this trickery with particle effects which do in fact generate particles in a 3D workspace but it's all still 2D objects drawn in a 3D workspace with a camera. That's it. For example, in motion you can put some text in a 3D scene, turn the txt sideways and it disappears because it is paper thin. There is no way to extrude the text to give it some depth. This is a let down. While AfterEffects is not going to put Maya or 3DSMax out of business with its 3D features, it would be nice to have real 3D in Motion.

Blu-Ray DVD! - It's a well known fact that Apple hates Blu-Ray. It's just too bad that it's the ONLY HD format to take seriously right now. Anyone who owns a Mac already knows about this. Adobe however, loves Blu-Ray and let's you get down to author it like you can't in FCP.

Those are the major things. I'm also having trouble getting camera tracking data in and out of Motion (this is needed when compositing video from two different sources, so they "move" together in the composite). Yeah, I know there is an XML format and sdk that I could write my own but I think AfterEffects has this capability build in native. Motion needs to do the same.

Anyway, that's my major points. Kudos to Adobe for bringing it on this release.

Great explaiation Swift, much appreciated.

I'm gonna have to break down and get this now. I also hate how I can't use Motion files in FCP without rendering them one way or another....waste of time.

Yeah that vocal recognition is nutz.

well i crack on you guys for not paying for your softwarez but i didnt pay for my CS3 either. i did pay for FCP Studio but if I decided to dable with the CS4, i'd probably hit up toe rent.

I got money, homie!

Or good friends who already own CS4...LOL.

blhahahaa.

Good explanation SWift. I used premiere and really liked it.

they better get a lot more than a speech analyzer before i consider jumping ship on FCP.

although that 3D After Effects gives me great pause. Motion is sick, don't get me wrong but it would be sickER with 3D. i just love 3D. i think the world of capabilities for motion graphics opens up tremendously when you can work in 3D!

+1 agreed!

I can't get fit to fill to work for me?!!?!

I set the in/out points on my clip in the viewer, as well as on the timeline (while using the remixed audio markers), but when I go to drag the clip into the fit to fill field its still not synced (I mean it immediately loses sync)?!?! I see the clip squeezing into the in/out area specified, but I don't see any % for the pitch change or anything like that ???

Clearly I'm missing a step, I watched A-Swifts vid and followed what he did step for step (I think) but I can't seem to figure this out, I even paused it when he lists the 12 steps to accomplish it and followed those step by step... I hate not being able to figure out things someone please help this FCP noob out please

Any help will be greatly appreciated

The one scenario I've found where using the percentage-based speed change works easier for me than fit to fill is when doing a simple audio-replacement with no edits. Meaning, the original audio-video sync is fine, but the audio in the original video is poor and the speed is slightly different than the replacement audio.

Using the percentage-speed is easier for that because it can be applied to both the original video and audio at the same time, and quickly dialed in by listening to both original and replacement audio.

For anything more complicated than that, fit-to-fill makes more sense to me.

Maybe I'm totally handicapped but I don't see a "Fit Fill" or "Fit to Fill" explanation in my FCP Help and I'm not seeing how this can work on my version. I don't see any thing in the whole software that says fit to fill and I'm totally lost. lol

if you are using final cut rookie x it does not have fit to fill anymore. and don't hold your breath for an update. fcpx may be getting the axe

these workarounds may work for you.
www.dvxuser.com

also here's a list of other things fcpx can't do
fcpx.tv

Thanks!



Thanks. I just need to find something for mac.

FCP 7 and below has fit to fill.
Not sure what else on a mac besides premiere, but I don't know how to use that.

Yes just to be clear my comments were specific to Final Cut pre "X" (which of course was not out at the time I posted).

I keep hearing Adobe Premier is the preferred Mac Tool for video editing these days, and if I was plunking down the $$ in 2012 rather than in 2009 when I bought FCP, I'd be getting and learning Premier.

For the time being, FCP7 is mostly just fine for me. Has some irregularities that need working around. I don't think FCP X is looking like a good investment at this point.

And actually I don't do it that way anymore. If the replacement/remastered audio is within a couple percent speed of what's in the video, I varispeed the AUDIO, not the video. For a straight "replacement", normally the speed variation is within a few tenths of a percent (some older stuff deviates more).

My logic is that when DJ-ing, the audio is usually being varispeeded anyway within a few percent. And varispeeding the audio keeps the video from having dropped/repeated frames...or, god forbid, frame-blending :-O.

it's so easy in premiere pro with the rate stretch tool.

Interesting.

How does the audio stretching in FCP or Premiere sound compared to Ableton Live though?

Is it worth exporting your stretched audio to Live, stretching the original to match it in Live, then importing the 'Live-stretched' version back into your NLE?

Just musing... ;-)

if it's just a straight audio replacement without video cuts or clip rearrangements, the stretch algorithm in DAW or ableton is much better. i'll use it then.

but for complex editing where i'll chop up a video, it's easier and faster to use the rate stretch tool. sounds amazing even with extreme speed changes.

I found the audio stretching in Vegas to be easy hell, it's not a quick "fit to fill" but you just line up a beat in the beginning and go towards the end of your track and hold ctrl and drag the clip until the beats at the end line up.

I usually go about 30 seconds in from the beginning and work outward and afterward pick 3 or 4 points throughout the song and look and see if the beats are lined up.

Can't figure out how to do that in FCP.

I don't normally "stretch" the audio at all, simply varispeed it. Same effect as a pitch control with no keylock.

If the needed change is within a couple tenths of a percent (as is the case most of the time) the speed/tonal difference is inconsequential.

There's been some older videos that needed a more drastic adjustment. At some point, it becomes a judgement call whether to speed change the audio or the video.

where is this nifty video tutorial? :)
I have been using Final Cut Studio 3 and I generally just slow or speed up the original video to match the new audio remix.
however - as mentioned - that isn't the best way sooo I saw Fit to Fill mentioned and I do think I'm gonna try this out.

one question:

do you just go section by section?
for example - the talking/moving mouths portion must be synced with the audio (as mentioned) so do you set one 'in' and 'out' point per section per 'singing head' clips?

Totally depends how the remix is structured in comparison to the original, and how much of a speed difference there is.

If the speed difference is minor (within a couple percent) like I said before I think it's best to varispeed (NOT time-stretch/compress) the audio. That way you can avoid frame-blending or dropped/duplicated frames in the video.

That approach of course will not be workable when synching an "original" video to "remix" audio that's at a way faster or slower tempo.

Is there a 2019 solution to stretch the old video to fit the new Ableton Live Remixed Audio where the tempo warped music in Final Cut Pro X, Vegas Pro or Adobe etc ?

I am talking about fluctuating live drummer tempo made to a steady tempo. a song like Earth Wind and Fire - September Music Video.

Is there a 2019 solution to stretch the old video to fit the new audio (Ableton Live Remixed Audio where the tempo was warped) in Final Cut Pro X, Vegas Pro or Adobe etc ?

I am talking about fluctuating live drummer tempo made to a steady tempo. a song like Earth Wind and Fire - September Music Video.

Any of those editing progams you mentioned will do it just fine. It's not automatic though, you'll have to do some chopping up if structure of the song has been altered in some way (verses, chorus, et al).

Thank You