Reluctant Coverage of the Space Bar

Here’s a rudimentary Saturday shortcut and one that I almost hate to cover.  In another post, I dubbed N (turn snapping on and off) the “King of Shortcuts” and some shortcut aficionados might wonder why I overlooked venerable Space Bar (or “Spacebar”). Surely it is used much more and it’s a huge, impressive, conveniently located key to boot! After all, hitting it starts and stops play in the Viewer, Canvas, Timeline and Capture or Transfer windows (and adding the SHIFT modifier plays in reverse).

So why do I hate covering the wonderful Space Bar?

Well, I think it’s actually kind of evil because it’s too easy to use and it makes people develop the bad habit of playing back all their clips (in the Viewer, Canvas, Timeline and Capture and Transfer windows) by using their mouse to position the Playhead and hitting Space Bar to start and stop play. Usually, these users will then re-mouse the Playhead and start the process over. Compared to the use of JK and L for scrubbing, this is an inefficient workflow indeed.

Additionally, these bad Space Bar habits usually extend to the trimming process in the viewer when other shortcuts are more preferable there as well.

On the whole, I think it almost does more harm than good and while I admit that I myself will occasionally bang the Space Bar to initiate play on a clip (usually when I’ve opened up a fresh source clip in the Viewer for evaluation and am leaned way back in my editing chair sipping a Diet Coke and the L key is a smaller, harder-to-reach reach target), I try to avoid the nasty habit of using it as my “Play” key and I think you should too.

I hope you are having a great weekend and, unless you’re on a deadline (or you’re a fanatic), maybe you’re taking a break from the FCP keyboard? The Shortcutter is taking Sunday off and will be back on Monday with fresh content. May you never drop frames!

This shortcut was previously discussed on 2/28/2010.