Jump Cuts

There are two ways to end up with jump cuts in your edit.

1) Edit together two clips that are too similar.
2) Edit a portion out of a clip so that there is a jump.

Jump cuts are fine if you are making a video for Tool, but can be very distracting when you are trying to construct a smooth narrative.

So, one of the main reasons you need B-roll is to cover up your jump cuts. They also offer extra information and add dimension to your story. Not to mention earn you a better grade in this class.

In our example, we have cut at the beginning of the "um". We now cut at the end of the "um", too. If you hold down the shift key when you hit command-K, it will cut through the both the audio and the video clips, which is what you want.

If you hold down the control key and click on the little sliver of an edit we have made, you will see a menu.

Choose "Ripple Delete" and the program will take out the piece of your clip you have selected, and move the other pieces over to fill in the gap. Otherwise, you would have a moment of blackness and silence in that spot.

Now you have a jump cut. Let's grab some b-roll to cover it up.

Before we add anything, I like to use the page-up and page-down commands to line up where my b-roll should add. Otherwise, it's easy to accidentally have one or two frames in the wrong place.

I want to use my close-up of hands knitting as my b-roll, so I bring it up in my preview window. 

We want the video, but not the audio, so we can grab just the video off of the preview window. 

Drag it down to the timeline, and away we go. 

Now I can add more b-roll, and photos, and I'm on the way to being practically finished with my project.