Keyframe and Scratch Disc question

[DVX100Shooter]

What are key frames used for? How do I know when or when not to use them in a project. Can I get buy without using them?

In the manual it talks about scratch discs a lot. Is this disc my Hard Drive? I remember reading that you can select up to 12 scratch discs....I just have 2 hard drives in my G5 but for now only one is devoted to handle the video projects. The other is the system drive.

[Zoomforce]

dude.. your not serious are you?

[Flintstone]

LOL!

[DVX100Shooter]

Did I say something funny? I simply asked a question as I am a newbie to the whole Non linear editing scene.

[ccdemon]

Shooter, in a less sarcastic answer...

Keyframes are primarily used in animation, or post-production motion. A keyframe is a marker set by the editor to distinguish a new motion path or vector. In other words, let's say you have a clip you digitized and you want it to be zoomed in, but the image is not. After you have the clip in your timeline, you would double-click the clip and go to your canvas window. In that window there is a tab called "Motion." This tab refers to setting motion vectors like scale, cropping, motion blur, drop shadow, etc. In the Motion tab, there is a little timeline, the clip you are working on highlighted. When you set a keyframe, you're setting a point in which the clip will start to do something (i.e. zoom in, crop, spin around, whatever). Normally you would set the keyframe at the in point of the clip and move on to the next point you want to set. So then you would go to the out point of the clip and set another keyframe. The clip at this point won't move until you set it. On the second keyframe, set something like scale at 200 %. After you render the clip, it will zoom in the twice it's original size from its in point to out point. Also, there's no limit to how many keyframes you can set and how many different things can go on in the keyframes. That's the best way I can explain it.

I know this is a long post, but stay with me.

Scratch disks refer to where your media, your render files and your audio render files will be saved on your hard drive. In User Preferences, the default setting for your scratch disks is on your main hard drive under Final Cut Pro Documents folder. You can set this whatever you want. You say that you have two hard drives on your G5? You could set the scratch disks to save snd store the capture scratch (media) files on one drive (in a folder of your choice) and your render files in the other drive. But anyway, it's really nothing big. It's just a setting for you to store your files in a place of your choosing.

Hope that was helpful, I know it can be tough just reading like this, but keep at it. NLE systems are monsters and the best way to learn is just keep editing and editing and editing. take care.

[DVX100Shooter]

Thanks for your reply that made sense and I now understand!