Nudge that clip!

Here’s one of my personal favorites and I use it all the time:

When you have a clip selected on the Timeline and you want to nudge it forward or backward just a frame at a time, use the Comma and Period keys. To nudge one second at a time, simply add the SHIFT modifier key (SHIFT comma or period keys).  It’s worth noting that SHIFT is often added as a modifier to change a frame increment to a second (most notably with the Left and right Arrow Keys which we’ll cover in another post).

Note that apple officially refers to these actions as “trim minus” (or “trim minus many“) and “trim plus” (or “trim plus many“), but I think that’s a little confusing and have always thought of this action as a “nudge” (though there is another kind of nudge that refers to compositing which we will cover later).

Not much else to say about this little gem except to note that it works for a single selected clip or a whole group (even discontiguous selections). A nice touch is that you get an alert sound when you bump against another clip which provides a gratifying confirmation that you have closed the gap. That also means it won’t do any accidental overwriting as can happen when you drag a selection with the mouse. An additional note after the jump…

Although these are properly referred to as the “comma” and “period” keys, it will help you to think of them as the greater than/less than or even better, let the visual of the left and right pointing arrows serve as your reminder. I find it confusing when, as in some apps, they’ll tell you for example, that to increase font size you use “Command +” and to decrease you use “Command -” while you actually have to type Command Shift = to achieve the plus sign (as is the case with Apple’s TextEdit). In Final Cut Pro as with this blog, all keys are given literally and we do not ask you to assume the Shift key must be added to achieve the secondary key function.