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Monthly Archives: June 2010
Optimize Your Timeline Settings For Easier Editing
Whenever I create a new timeline, I like to immediately perform three keyboard shortcuts to quickly optimize it for maximum convenience. First, I hit OPT W:
This toggles the “clip overlays” on and off. The default is off, so I turn ‘em on. The overlays allow you to quickly adjust opacity and levels on the video [...]
Posted in FCP 101 Stuff Leave a comment
Refresh Your External Video Monitor
For any FCP editor who frequently works with tape decks (and especially if they find themselves switching decks or bouncing between HDV and NTSV or PAL modes), the dreaded “Unable to Initialize capture Device” pop-up error message is a familiar, if frustrating sight.
Usually, you go back and make some changes and often, you will find [...]
Posted in Intermediate Leave a comment
Cycle Track Heights
Here’s a simple shortcut that will give you more control over your timeline:
The SHIFT T command, when pressed repeatedly, cycles you through 4 levels of track height in the timeline. Note that the timeline needs to have focus for this shortcut to work, however.
This shortcut is very useful when you’re doing some serious audio-based editing [...]
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Quickly Shift Transition Points
If you have placed a transition on an edit point and you are not quite satisfied with the position of that transition, you can certainly grab your Roll Tool and roll the edit point one way or the other (handle permitting), but you might first want to try a quick OPT 1, OPT 2 or [...]
Posted in Intermediate Leave a comment
Best of the Track Tools: TTTT
In spite of the many powerful tools for ripple editing available on the timeline (which we will cover in time), there will be occasions when you simply have to move everything over to make room for some kind of new construction. You’ve got a 20 minute piece laid out with sync and a music bed, [...]
Posted in Intermediate 1 Comment
Add Fast Transitions with Shortcuts
Sure, you can drag transitions down from the Effects Panel in the Browser or, if you’re really looking to kill some serious time, you can wrangle them from the Effects>Video Transitions>yada yada menu, but nothing beats using CMD T and OPT CMD T for adding quick default transitions to video and audio respectively.
Start by selecting [...]
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Nest Sequences With a Shortcut
Since I tend to nest sequences frequently, I’m a big fan of the “Nest Items” shortcut:
Simply select clips on your timeline that you’d like to nest and hit OPT C. You will be presented with the nesting dialogue box and away you go. Nesting is useful in several scenarios, the most obvious being that, in [...]
Posted in Intermediate 1 Comment
I View N as the King of Shortcuts
Although it’s an incredibly basic keyboard shortcut that I think probably 95% of FCPers utilize, this blog’s mission is to present and discuss every keyboard shortcut there is and even though the N key, which toggles snapping on and off is widely known, it bears mention here as, for many people, this shortcut is the [...]
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Toggle Your Tool Bench Window On or Off
If you open any of the awesome Toolbench windows (Audio Mixer, Frame Viewer, Quick View, Video Scopes or Voice Over) you’ll notice that they open by default over the Viewer. Here’s a quick little shortcut that will enable you to quickly show or hide that Toolbench window:
Note that OPT 5 fits right into the sequence [...]
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The “Play Around” Key is All Business