Favorites Part 5: A Final Word on Using Favorites Shortcuts

All week, we have been examining the process of saving favorite effects and how keyboard shortcuts can make that process easier. By “effects,” we refer to “transitions,” “filters,” and motion tab settings. There is a whole lot going on here and you may have noticed that not all the processes and shortcuts are easy or straightforward, so today, I want to give you the “bottom line” as I see it and recap the best aspects of favorite saving and applying. This is the “take away” post, if you will.

FAVORITE TRANSITIONS ARE ESSENTIAL

If you like to use non-standard transitions regularly, as I do, you should know how to set them up and how to use them with shortcuts.  Setting them up is simple: double-click your transition open in the Viewer and hit OPT F

This will add it to the Favorites bin and you MUST then re-name the transition so it will be clear when you call it from the menus or use a shortcut to invoke it. Your naming scheme should take into account in what order your named favorites will appear in the list (they’re alphabetical) as this will determine which shortcuts invoke them.

Examples of favorite transitions I like and recommend are: setting up a shorter 10-frame cross-dissolve (the full 1 second cross is often too lingering for me), setting up faster push slides to the left and right (the stock push slide goes up) and I also set up faster 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.

Setting up favorite transitions takes a little time and effort, but it’s well worth it to be able to call them up easily using shortcuts from that point forward. Think of all the time you’ll save by considering how much time you currently spend adjusting a 1 second crosses to be shorter. For me, that’s a significant time savings and a huge convenience.

FILTERS ON A PROJECT BASIS

There are very few filter settings that I set up on a universal basis. Since I usually wind up keyframing effects like a blur, I don’t bother with these favorites much because the application of keyframed filters is dicey in FCP. I prefer to set up a clip with my keyframed filters and use paste attributes (OPT V) to apply them to other clip in a project. Remember that you can also save favorites to a bin in a project and have them available for just that project. Yes, you will need to drag them onto clips, but I think it’s worth the effort. If you are setting up filter favorites, there are some quirks and caveats involved, so be sure to review the posting on this topic.

MOTION FAVORITES

“Favorite motions” give you a way to save all the various settings you find on a clip’s Motion tab (such as scale and opacity). As with filters, there are very few motion faves that I save on a universal basis. To see some practical examples of the ones I save, see my post from a couple of days ago. If you’re going to set some motion favorites, remember that you need only select the clip on the timeline and use the CTRL F shortcut:

KNOW THE KEYS!

Please review the post from yesterday where I provided a graphic to show you how the shortcut keys for applying favorite effects are layed out on the the keyboard–this will make it very easy to recall the shortcuts and, given what I have said above, the main ones to remember are the transition-related shortcuts (though your own usage and work habit will, of course, vary).