Creating (And Editing) Movie using iPhone, Macbook Air and Final Cut Pro.

I "clone" myself so I could play music in format trio, :)



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What we need?

Of course:

• A camera, I use iPhone Camera, I have iPad Pro but...
• A tripod, I use iPhone because my iPad couldn't be mounted on this.  
• A Mac, Final Cut Pro only run on Mac, I use Macbook Air.
• ehm, keyboard, guitar, bass guitar, whatever.
• (optional), sound recording device, my iPad have decent video-sound, but sadly my iPhone isn't (maybe defect product), so I use Behringer Xenyx with usb interface and connect it to my iPhone using usb to lightning adapter.
• a metronome, since I don't use iPad to recording, I play metronome apps an it, :) .

Okay then.

To make a video, first we have to make a video, :)

I, mean using camera. Here, the tripod is important. To be able to make a "triplet" on the same room, we have to record it sequentially using the same camera position.

So, I start with acoustic nylon guitar part from start to end, and immediately switch to bass guitar to play the bass part, and finally the keyboard part.

Keep in mind that we have to play at the different place at the room and avoid abrupt motion that could overlap each other. 

Create a virtual zone for guitarist, bassist and keyboardist and 'they' have to play the instrument on their own zone.

I have to take this session twice because the first one didn't produce audio. It turn out that I have to tighten usb cable between iPhone and Xenyx (which I should do at the beginning, :) )    

After we satisfied with the record result, transfer it to Mac, I use airdrop facility, and open Final Cut Pro app.

  Start with empty one.

Create new project.

Import our video transfered from iPhone.

Drag it to timeline 

On audio inspector I choose Music Enhance as equalization

It resulted a audio clipping, so we must turn the volume down until the clipping gone (the red one).

Next, we set the first 'musician', the guitarist. I have play it several time at this recording, and I use the last take. So go for the last take, and cut it using blade tool, select previous movie chunk and delete it.

Then go to second 'musician', the bassist. Cut using blade tool, and drag it to the top of guitar filmstrip.

We could set the panning so the guitar sound goes to the right speaker. 

The difficult part is sync the audio. Actually no problem if we se metronome when record it.

Do the same step for the keyboard part. My keyboard sound goes to the left speaker.

Okay. The sound is done (you could add sound effect you like). 

After we're okay with the sound, now we must crop the video so the three artist is shown. Start with the video on the top, the keyboardist. Crop it and we will got the bassist. And after we crop the middle layer, we have three music player on the same room, no need green/blue screen, :) 

Share it as Master File (or whatever format you want)

and done.

:)