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Category Archives: FCP 101 Stuff
Don’t Forget to Up Your Undo Queue!
Although it’s time for a basic Saturday entry, I guess I risk insulting everyone’s intelligence with the uber-obvious CMD Z shortcut (which is the beloved”Undo” command),
but I want to make sure FCP novices are aware that by hitting OPT Q, which brings up your user preferences pane, you can should must increase the number of [...]
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Create Freeze Frames in a Flash
You can create a freeze frame in either the Viewer or with a clip on the timeline. The shortcut to so this is the same either way:
When you’re making a freeze frame in the Viewer, the process is quite straightforward. Park the playhead on the frame you want frozen and hit SHIFT N. Your Viewer [...]
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Invoke the (FCP7) Timecode Window With a Shortcut
With Final Cut Studio 3 (containing FCP 7), a new feature was introduced: the Timecode Window. Happily, this handy window can be invoked via a shortcut, CTRL T
The timecode window can be used with the Viewer or Canvas and if you right-click on the window itself, you can opt to show AUX 1 or AUX [...]
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Creating a New Project Shortcut Should Be Easy to Remember
Here’s a super-basic Saturday shortcut: creat a new project by hitting SHIFT CMD N
Now a dedicated Mac shortcut user might recognize that this is the same shortcut that creates a new folder in the Mac Finder, so this should be pretty easy to remember.
If you are a Mac user who does not use SHIFT CMD [...]
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A Modest Browser Nicety For Log & Cap Tasks
Depending on your personal preferences, today’s simple shortcut might be worth remembering for whenever you are ingesting content. When you begin a log and cap or log and transfer operation, hit OPT B to set up the “logging” Browser column layout:
This will arrange the columns with the most useful information to the far left side [...]
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Access Log & Capture or Log & Transfer
Following on with yesterday’s post about using SHIFT C to “capture now,” it’s worthwhile to review the commands for initiating a tape or solid state media capture. Whenever you have to initiate a Log and Capture from a tape deck or attached video camera in FCP, simply hit CMD 8:
Just add SHIFT for Log and [...]
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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 [...]
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If You’re Not Using I and O, Start Today!
This set of shortcuts, which all work together, is pretty basic, but if you’re not using them for some reason, you absolutley need to start and if you’re an FCP newbie, this is probably one of the most important habits to form early on. Learn it, live it.
The proper workflow for setting up a rough [...]
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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 [...]
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The “SHIFT-Q Lifestyle”