Apple Final Cut Pro 7 - Manual (Page 1115)

Two-Sided Bezier Handles
Keyframes that are in between other keyframes have two-sided Bezier handles. These
handles are normally locked together, so that the curve of a parameter’s keyframe graph
line has a smooth transition into and out of the keyframe, with no sudden changes.
Two-sided Bezier
handles for the
smoothed keyframe
between a beginning
and end keyframe
By default, if you change one of these handles, there’s an equal change to both sides of
the handle.
Lengthening one of the
handles automatically
lengthens the other.
Raising the height of the
curve on one side of the
keyframe lowers it on the
other, like a seesaw.
The link between these two handles can be suspended, however, to create different kinds
of sudden changes in the curve. You do this by holding down the Command key while
adjusting one of the handles.
Hold down the
Command key to change
the angle of a handle
independently of the
other handle.
Smoothing Keyframes
Smoothing a keyframe, or adding Bezier handles to it, makes the change from one
keyframe’s value to the next more gradual by applying a curve instead of a straight line.
The ability to apply smoothing to a parameter in Final Cut Pro depends on the kind of
keyframes a parameter uses.
• One-dimensional keyframes: Parameters that contain multiple values can’t be represented
by curved graph lines in the keyframe graph area. Instead, all values of the parameter
are represented by a single point on the graph. Examples of multidimensional
parameters are the Center and Anchor Point parameters (which have two values: x and
y) and the Color parameter for the Drop Shadow attribute (which has three values: hue,
saturation, and brightness).
1115 Chapter 67 Adjusting Parameters for Keyframed Effects