Demystifying the “Favorites” Commands: A Week-Long Journey

Setting up and efficiently using the various “favorite” filter effets, transitions and motion settings seems simple enough, but I’ve found that because the behaviors of the commands can be a little quirky and the shortcuts are so seemingly obscure, that many FCP users don’t delve into them much beyond setting up some favorite transitions and maybe saving a color correction filter for a particular project.

Well, this week, we’re going to systematically demystify them so they can become a more powerful tool in your arsenal. To get through it all without information overload will take the whole week, but I hope that by the end of it (and we’ll close with a “bottom line” recap), you’ll use them a bit more and save some valuable time by doing so.

Today we’ll talk about saving and using favorite video and audio transitions and we’ll begin by noting that all favorites (be they transitions, filters, groups of filters or motion settings) are stored in the “Favorites” bin of the Effects Tab and you can easily bring that tab forward to admire your favorites collection by hitting CMD 6

When you hit CMD 6, the Favorites Bin opens as a new pane and you can then hit CMD 4 to bring the Browser back, but to prevent the tiled offset position of the Favorites window, I like to reposition it exactly over the Browser so you can bring up either one with CMD 4 or 6. Note that you can also open it up as its own tab in the Browser and use SHIFT CMD Left and Right Bracket to switch between tabs, but I prefer the layered windows as it’s an easier shortcut and reduces dreaded Browser tab clutter. But enough of this esoterica–we have favorites to save!

WHY SAVE FAVORITE TRANSITIONS?

In my corporate videos, I often like to use a shorter 10-frame cross-dissolve to drop back out of a cutaway sequence to a talking head, so I’ve set it up as a favorite. I also frequently use fast push slides to the left and right a lot (the stock push slide goes up) and I also like fast edge wipes that go to the left (as well as the right, which is stock). These are transitions I use all the time, so I have them stored in the Favorites bin in the Effects Tab.

SAVE BY THE PROJECT OR FOR ALL PROJECTS

Any favorites that you save in the Favorites folder of the Effects Tab are available whenever you use FCP. Sometimes however, for a particular edit where you might find yourself using a sort of “trademark” transition a lot, you can choose to store favorites in a bin you create in your Project Tab (rather than cluttering up your Favorites Folder with obscure transitions you won’t use again).  Yep, you can store favorite transitions within a single project, so you’ll only have access to them in that project–the down side is you can’t invoke them with shortcuts, so so you’ll be dragging those bad boys down to the timeline (which might still save you a lot of time).

One other tip regarding saving your faves in a project: you might want to create a special project with bins containing all your favorite transitions, filters and motion keyframes. This way, if you need to recover them after some kind of glitch (and don’t want to trash your prefs), you can load the project and drag ‘em back to the favorites Folder in the Effects tab. This also gives you a way to “import” your faves collection on any machine that you sit down at.

With an exception noted below, audio transitions work the same way and can also be saved as favorites. When it comes to audio transitions, the only favorite I have saved is a fast 5-frame cross fade for audio repair points.

SETTING YOUR FAVORITES

If you have customized a transition on the timeline and it’s a keeper, you have a couple different ways to save it. You can drag the transition to the Favorites bin (after hitting that CMD 6) or you can use the “Make Favorite Effect” shortcut:

There are a couple of caveats for using this shortcut however. Note that you must have the transition double-clicked up into the “Transition Editor” (Viewer). Merely selecting the transition on the timeline and hitting OPT F is not enough as the shortcut will try to save the filters that are applied to any clip currently opened in the Viewer (we’ll discuss this more tomorrow). Given these strictures, you may find the drag technique preferable (if I do, I certainly won’t admit it here). Note that audio transitions MUST be dragged to the favorites bin–if you double click them, you get a duration dialogue.

Be sure to take the time to rename your favorites so they’re easy to use and note that they will be arranged in alphabetical order in the favorites bin (which comes in handy in a moment).

USING THOSE FAVORITES!

OK, so you’ve set up some favorite transtions and you want to use them. You can, of course, drag them down from the bin (and note that, since FCP7, you can drag transitions to the middle of a clip to add it to both sides or you can drag them to groups of clips to add to all included edit points–very nice).

You can also invoke them by using the Effects>Favorites menu commands where you’ll see your favorites arranged in the same order in which they appear in the bin. There is a menu command for each group of favorites: video and audio transitions, video and audio filters and motion favorites–all of which we’ll cover this week. Not bad, I guess.

Fortunately, you can also invoke the first 4 of your transitions (be they video or audio) by using some handy shortcuts! Here are the shortcuts for the video transitions (in order from 1 to 4):

And here are the shortcuts for the first four audio transitions:

These are some very easy to remember and intuitive shortcuts–NOT! Well, actually, they ARE a lot more easy and intuitive than you might at first think and we’ll talk more about this on Thursday, so you’ll have to be patient… or maybe you already see the beauty?