A Nearly Archaic Shortcut?

Post production guru, commentator and all-around nice guy Philip Hodgetts recently declared in his excellent blog that “tape is dead” (or, more accurately, he said “deadish” but he promised that it was getting deader all the time). Although I have lots of work that still comes in on tape (I get DVCAM and HDV from corporate clients all the time), I kind of agree with him that the end of the tape era is clearly visible on the horizon.

Likewise I find that I very rarely edit to tape these days (unless in certain broadcast workflows) and even more rarely print to tape (which is the quick and dirty tape output method that does not read the timecode on a blacked tape). I used to do quick prints to tape with timecode burn on VHS all the time for client review. I’d run a VHS, go to the client’s office and we’d review. Nowadays, I upload quicktime movies or flash movies and review them on my website or on Vimeo.

Given this evolution, I think today’s shortcut for “print to tape” is something very few of us will use much even though, back in the day, CTRL M was one of my first memorized shortcuts:

Hit this and the “Print to Tape” dialogue box pops up which allows you to add all kinds of bells and whistles like a countdown leader, closed captioning, etc. If (and that’s a big “if”), printing to tape is a part of your workflow–and I realize there may be some clients who still like a tape–this gets you going quickly.

Although I am in the process of covering each and every shortcut found in FCP for this blog and I rerun them (after all, this is really just a sort of glorified daily flashcard site), I think this may be the only appearance of this shortcut and, if Phil’s plea is heard, maybe FCP won’t be dealing with tape much longer. Makes me feel old!