What's a good program for trimming .mov files?

Hi PS, thanks for taking the time to read and reply to my inquiry. Please excuse my ignorance as I'm a newbie and be patient with my question which may seem dumb. I've just bought this iMac 27" running El Capitan 10.11 and it seems it came loaded with many programs including Final Cut Pro and Quicktime but it specifically says Quicktime Player and when I tried to use it as you suggested, well, I don't see it offering any editing ability. I thought that may be correct since it does say "Player" in the title so are you speaking about a different program than what I've got installed? When it comes to Quicktime, all I got is Quicktime Player. Is that it or is there something else?

Tony

Hi again PS, and thank you ever so much for your continued assistance. I'm very glad to hear I don't require an additional piece of software. However, you must think I'm really dumb to say I am unable to figure out how to open QuickTime on my desktop without automatically loading video with it. I have the large blue Q QuickTime icon located in the center of my Dock and I have a tiny black dot below it that's supposed to indicate the program is open and running but for the life of me, there is nothing on my desktop whatsoever except my background image and the Dock at the bottom. Every time I click or double click on the big Q, absolutely nothing happens. If I right click, I'm given options none of which says, "Open." In fact, I'm offered, "Quit," "Hide," "Show All Windows," ""Options (none of which seem meaningful at this time)", "New Screen Recording," "New Audio Recording," "New Movie Recording (which if I click, opens the camera and now I'm looking at my ugly self at the keyboard - lol)," and two unwanted video files at the very top. So I don't even know how to open the QuickTime Player onto my desktop, let alone use it. What the **** am I doing wrong?

Hi Luis, thank you very much for taking the time to help me. You seem like an experienced FCP user who knows what he's talking about and how to use the program. If you can take yourself back to the day when you were brand new to video editing, you might recall how intimidating this powerful program is with all its various editing capabilities. As a brand new digital video editor coming from the days of VHS editing, and being 64 years old and 75% blind, maybe you can imagine what a hassle it might be for me to perform such a simple, repetitive, mundane task. Dropping the unedited .mov files onto the timeline I'm sure works, but my having to then trim them as well as time them so the clips start precisely on the downbeat of the appropriate song's lyric, is a lot to take care of without making a mistake that may adversely affect the rest of the music-video. Oh, I didn't mention that is what I'm doing, producing a music-video. I had to insert a "gap" at the beginning, and I had to insert a time countdown, too, and the song begins during the countdown with the lyrics not starting until the first video begins, so it's all this timing and positioning that's very difficult to deal with all the while keeping the clips trimmed properly. The way I figured it, if I deal only with clips that are complete and not in need of any additional editing, I could concentrate more on positioning the clips sequentially correct, and move 'em around without my sometimes seeing portions of the clip I already know I don't want to be part of the project. Am I making any sense to you? It's a complicated program made more difficult by my disability so I want to work with a simple program that can produce perfect clips I can later drop and place on the timeline without confusing the issue of making the clips synch with the downbeats and changing lyrics of the song. I welcome any further feedback from you, Luis.

Tony

Oh, I see now - I'm so accustomed to seeing a user interface appear on the screen when I open ANY application that I didn't know where the interface was! So now I've learned another difference between Mac and Windows is on a Mac, running apps may not actually appear on the screen and I need to examine the hidden toolbar at the top to see what program's open. Okay, I got it. Now I'll go back to using your previous instructions on how to use it to edit the .mov files I've captured via this "VIDBOX for Mac" video capture device I have connected between the Mac and an external DVD player's output. Much appreciated, PS and Luis, too.

Tony

Thanks for your continued help and understanding, Luis. While you're probably correct in saying there's no way I can ruin anything unless I explicitly move things, that's exactly what I seem to constantly have to do due to several reasons such as the song on the bottom of the timeline keeps getting lost to the left with the start of the song accidentally getting CLIPPED OFF when all I was trying to do is re-position it, then having to UNDO the edit, then after moving the time countdown at the very beginning began to conflict with the beginning of the first clip so I had to move it down so there was a proper gap between the zero and the start of clip 01 (of 86). There are just so many different handles and pointers and indicators that keep changing with the slightest mouse move, that I felt it would be easier on me to deal only with video clips that have been pre-trimmed to precisely how long I want them to be. In actual usage, I may discover some clips need to be shortened down a bit and I can do that in FCP but none will be needing to be longer, and those that may require further shortening will be in the vast minority. You see, I've already produced this particular music-video 30 years ago using VHS editing so I already know the timing and sequence of scenes that parallel the lyrics in the song and everything should fit fairly well once I get all the individual clips trimmed down to their individual scene length. I'm not using ANY dissolves between scenes, just straight razor cuts from one classic movie scene to the next. I utilize my existing DVD library with thousands of the world's greatest films as the source material for my clips. Nearly every scene throughout the music-video will be instantly recognizable to any film expert or true film buff. I've got all the movies memorized so that's how I'm able to select appropriate scenes that complement lyrics of a song. Thanks again for your time and help. You and PSkilton are very nice and I appreciate both your time spent helping me.

Tony

Hi Luis, I'm now using QuickTime to trim the clips I've selected for my music-video project and imported them into FCP using copies of the files instead of manipulating the original files themselves in their original location. As I assemble the clips on the timeline, I've done some additional trimming to reduce the length of some of the longer clips so clips start and end on the song's downbeat or lyric start. I'm using the SNAPPING feature to facilitate the clips flowing without gaps. Everything is going along fine so far, even though I've only got the first 5 clips out of 86 perfectly configured. What I'm asking now is do you know if there is something I can do to guarantee I won't lose the way everything is right now? There isn't a "SAVE" button so I'm afraid of accidentally doing something that will throw everything out of whack, forcing me to re-do my work. I'm also so afraid of ZOOMING the timeline to elongate it to facilitate precise clip placement. With the entire 5 minute song appearing across the bottom of the screen, you can imagine how thin the clips appear above the music track since there will eventually be 86 clips placed sequentially above the audio track so obviously the beginning and end points of each clip are difficult to manipulate. The width of each clip is only about a quarter inch wide, so if I ZOOM the timeline, clip widths can be more easily manipulated but I fear as soon as I start zooming the timeline, I won't be able to return to seeing the way how perfectly my project presently appears. Any thoughts on this subject? As always, any assistance is greatly appreciated.

Tony