Greetings -- a strange new icon is showing up on my timeline when trying to do QuickTime wrap files of short clips. The icon looks like a tiny pair of sunglasses - appears when I right click on a clip dragged from the project sequence library or list. Any idea what I did - or what it is ?

Also - while in same project as noted above - when I tried to drag the video clip up to another video line (from v1 to v2) or slide along the original timeline - I could not achieve either task. The video clip became "surrounded" by a thin brown outline. Same for trying to move an audio clip around. Any idea what I did - what's going on ?

Also - after finishing and saving a QuickTime wrap file to disk - when double-clicking to open and playback via QuickTime software - the "file" wants to open in full version of Final Cut versus just opening in QuickTime software for viewing. What am I doing wrong ?

Thanks for any help - I'm still in the learning curve !

eosruss@hotmail.com

It sounds like you have selected the "slip" tool instead of the pointer. Look at the toolbar to the right of your screen and you will a similar icon which will probably be highlighted because it is active. Select the arrow tool and you'll be back to normal.

Ha -- sunglasses! I was totally confused at first, until Scott said it was the Slip Tool. Guess it does look like sunglasses. I just never thought of it that way...

Russ- one thing I forgot to mention is that a great way to get over the initial learning curve hump is to sign up for a lynda.com account and watch their Final Cut Pro 7 Essentials tutorial. The whole thing is about 7-8 hours long broken up into 5-15 minutes chunks. You could even watch the whole thing in a marathon day long session if you wanted to just use the free 24 hour Lynda trial. It's definitely a great way to quickly get a feel for the whole program.

Lynda's stuff is indeed great and useful. But for the poor man's version, there are also hundreds of free video tutorials on YouTube that show you how to use specific features of the program and of all of Final Cut Studio.

Well didn't your FCS come with a tutorial? The ones we had in school did. They were VERY helpful, especially to the students that were just starting out.

yeah I think final cut quicktime exports (as opposed to "conversion") usually want to open in final cut by default. Select the video on your desktop and "get info" (command+i) then you can change the "open with" drop down to a quicktime -and press that "change all" button. From now on it should open in QT by default.