You probably know that it brings up the System Settings panel. Big deal, right?

Well, it really is a big deal to me and it’s the first command I hit every single time I open Final Cut Pro. In fact, using the System Settings panel effectively is, for me at least, one of the most important things I do in FCP for my sanity and my business. I call it the “Shift-Q Lifestyle” and here’s the deal…

THE PROBLEM:

As you may know, the first time you open a new project in FCP, the app creates a series of folders (see image at left). These folders are, by default, created in the following location: User/Documents/Final Cut Pro Documents and this is probably on your internal hard drive. This is where FCP will now dump your captures, renders and various other files it creates as you work on your project. If you don’t point your “Autosave Vault” away to another disk (which you should really do as you hate to put your safety copies on the same disk as your project in case that disk fails), it too will be located there.

This is a problem for a couple of reasons. First of all, it’s not a great idea to store all of these hefty project files on your main internal systems boot disk. You should have a separate disk for FCP projects (which might also be internal, of course, but I often have dedicated external FW800 disks for large projects and I use secondary large internal SATA drives for multiple smaller projects). Secondly, if you are working on several projects (who isn’t?) or especially if you are part of a team that has to pass projects back and forth or access them over a network, the way FCP nests all of your projects into this single set of folders makes separating and quarantining multiple projects very tricky and time consuming. For each project you start, FCP will create folders with that name within this same set of folders such that there is no way to quickly pull one project out by itself without a lot of surgery in the Finder.

In my days as an FCP instructor at San Francisco State, I can’t tell you how many times I had to help various of my students untangle a gordian knot of convoluted, nested folders that had swallowed up their projects. It can be a real mess.

THE SOLUTION:

Here’s what I have done to streamline the workflow in my own shop. I created a comprehensive set of nested folders that not only provide a place to point my projects (using SHIFT Q), but that accomodate all the related files for my projects in one neat clean package. You can download this set of folders for yourself here or you can access it via the “Goodies” link at the top of the page. It’s a small gift to you.

Here’s what you get: A complete set of folders that will provide a parking space for every conceivable element of your project in order to give you a consistent way to organize and manage your projects. No more saving things out to the desktop for lack of a better place to put it. This will make handing files off between members of a team a snap and give an organization a consistent way to manage files so that everyone knows where to look for the things they need.

Best of all though, it gives you a place to point all your System Settings options every time you open FCP (and that’s important). Make sure that you start work on every FCP project by hitting SHIFT Q then quickly pointing your captures and renders (the stuff in the check mark boxes at the top) and the Waveform and Thumbnail Caches all to the “Project FCP Folder” and here’s a critical note: do not point them down into the folders within the Project FCP Folder (even if the Thumbnail or Waveform Caches already exist there) because it will create a new set within those and things will get messy. Again: only point to the “Project FCP Folder” and let FCP figure out the rest. I have given this folder a distinctive icon to make it easy to hit.

I do recommend that you point your Autosave Vault to a separate disk (I actually do save them to my boot disk) for redundancy. If you do, god forbid, lose the drive containing your project, at least you can rebuild by using your autosaved files.

I save my Projects to the appropriate “Project Files” folder–there are some options within the “Project Files” folder you see above. In fact, there are sub-folders in most of those folders, so check the whole thing out a bit and see where things go. I think it is pretty self-explanatory and you can, of course, modify it to suit your own needs. I keep a zipped copy of the folder set on all of my FCP disks and I unzip a fresh copy for each new project as soon as a client calls or emails me about it.

Hopefully this folder set will help you keep your own FCP projects well organized and neatly contained in separate, easy-to-move buckets for each project and I also hope you will now see the importance of using SHIFT Q every time you open FCP and join me in living the “Shift-Q Lifestyle!”

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 steps you can go back with CMD Z (I set mine to 99 out of habit, but that’s pretty arbitrary).

Bear in mind that there’s also a shortcut for “re-do” (undoing an undo) and it is SHIFT CMD Z:

Yes, CMD Z and maybe even SHIFT CMD Z are pretty well known, but at least if you didn’t know about OPT Q for user prefs and upping your undo queue, you do now. Hey, It’s a weekend basic.  Happy editing!

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 will now display a 2 minute clip of the freeze frame with an in an out set in the middle for the duration you’ve specified in your user prefs (10 seconds by default). You can re-trim and edit this to the timeline as you would any clip or you can drag it to the Browser for future use.

You can also make a “run and freeze” from a clip already on the timeline. Simply position your playhead over the appropriate frame in the timeline clip and hit SHIFT N. Your freeze frame will appear and you are now free to edit that down to the timeline as an overwrite edit–note that you will need to have your playhead in its original position on the timeline. Master trainer Diana Weynand described a great workflow for accomplishing this in her Apple Pro Training Series: Final Cut Pro 6 text for the Apple Pro Training series (it’s probably in the newer edition as well, but I do not have it handy). She suggests that, after you SHIFT N to create the freeze frame, set an in-point on the timeline where the playhead is the ad an out point where you want the freeze to conclude. Now you can just hit a quick F10 and overwrite your freeze into the timeline as a 3-point edit.

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 2 timecode (which can be very useful in some workflows).

If you are not hunched directly over your interface (and even then, the timecode fields in the Viewer and Canvas are brutally small), or you are viewing footage with other people in the room, this is a very convenient way to easily see the timecode for the purpose of taking notes or logging footage.

Note that the window can be resized and, unlike a “timecode burn,” can be positioned so that its not overlapping the footage.  Seeing as I have made a lot of quick timecode burns for the purpose of getting an easily-to-log version on the screen for a small group, this is a very nice new feature.

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 N to create new folders in the Finder, then you should commit this one to memory right now and start using it right away–the value of that shortcut in the finder actually exceeds the value it has as an FCP shortcut!

This will arrange the columns with the most useful information to the far left side so it will be readily visible without scrolling the Browser window over. The key change is that you can see the “Media Start” and “Media End” columns easily.

To switch back to the “Standard” Browser column layout, simply hit SHIFT B

This moves the “Duration” column to the far left as the gurus at Apple feel this is the most important thing to see for general editing.

I realize that this is probably a highly personal thing, but I tend to prefer the “Length” column as the “Duration” column reflects the trimmed duration of clips (i.e., if you have set ins and outs on the clips, the trimmed time is shown). When I’m scanning through my source material, I find I am more often looking for “that big long master clip” or something like that and, since I might be setting ins and outs on the same clip for several editable chunks on my timeline, I don’t pay much attention to the “duration” as it is kind of arbitrary for me.

If you want to, you can always set up customized bowser layouts, but for me, it’s not usually worth the effort and I am disinclined to become too dependent on customized settings (as regular readers may already know–hey, it’s just me).

If you want to learn more about Browser shortcuts, you can also read my post on being a “Browser Ninja.”

Just add SHIFT for Log and Transfer (for use with P2 cards or other non-tape captures):

If you work with lots of different media formats and find yourself going to the “Easy Setup” menu (Final Cut Pro>Easy Setup…), then before you hit CMD 8 or SHIFT CMD 8, you’ll want to hit a quick OPT Q to set up your format:

Here’s another little tip on the “Log and Cap” window: if you want it to open up at 100% size, make sure your Canvas window is set to 100% first. Of course with HD formats, this is impractical, but the bottom line is that the Log and Cap window mimics the Canvas size.

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!

The proper workflow for setting up a rough cut is to select a clip in the Browser, open it up in the Viewer (which you can simply do by hitting RETURN with the clip selected) and then “trim” it, which means you set the in and out-points. From there, you should use F10 (or maybe F9) to send it to to the timeline (we’ll discuss these keys in a future post). The fast and efficient way to trim the clip in the Viewer is to use two simple shortcuts:

Use JK and L to scrub your clip and when you find the perfect in-point, simply hit I. Scrub on down to the end point and hit O. That’s all there is to it. If you’re using the GUI buttons on the Viewer, you’re wasting time and breaking the smooth flow of your ideas to the timeline.

If you hit X, you essentially mark the entire clip (sets in-point on first frame and out-point on last frame), but since that works the same as setting no in or out-points (you don’t have to have ‘em), there’s rarely a need to use X (we will however, cover its powerful usage on the timeline in a later post). If you want the whole clip sent to the timeline, just send it without trimming at all.

Change your mind about the in or out points? Just hit I or O again and they’re replaced. No need to delete the previous in or out as there can only be one and every time you hit I or O, the edit point updates.

OK, so you’ve trimmed your clip. What to snap your playhead to the in-point to play forward from there to see if you got it right?  Hit SHIFT I. Want to snap to the out-point?  SHIFT O.

Want to clear the in or out-point?  Hit OPT I or OPT O to clear them:

Want to clear both the in-point and the out-point at one time (I use this one quite frequently)? Use the OPT X shortcut:

These shortcuts are easy to remember as a group because they are all I and O. Add SHIFT to “go to” and OPT to delete.

Once you’ve mastered this and want to take your trimming operations in the Viewer up a serious notch, read this post.

This shortcut was previously discussed on 3/19/2010

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 and audio tracks respectively and they’re pretty handy if you like to make little tweaks directly on the timeline as I do. When they’re turned on, you can see the horizontal black line at the top of video clips for opacity and a sort of fuchsia horizontal line across the middle of each audio track.

Next, with my fingers still on OPT W, I add the command key for OPT CMD W:

This toggles on the “waveform display” which adds audio waveforms to the audio clips. I like to have these on most of the time for most simple edits (I mostly do short form work with 6 audio tracks) because I like the quick visual reference as to audio characteristics and it aids in making audio-centric edits. Note however, that if you are working on a very complex, long duration timeline with many audio tracks, you may see some delays as these are “drawn” on each track and the load used to be something of an issue, but nowadays with powerful machines, I rarely have a problem.

Finally, especially if I’m laying down a fresh rough cut, I like to adjust the track height with SHIFT T and you can read a whole FCP Shortcutter article on that shortcut here.

This shortcut was previously discussed on 3/9/2010.