When the Timeline or Canvas has focus and a clip is selected, you can set keyframes for all the basic motion parameters at once by hitting CTL K. You can also use this shortcut in the Viewer.

You might also be aware that, if you only want to keyframe one motion parameter and don’t want to bother opening a clip in the Viewer and venturing into the rather unfriendly keyframing area of the motion tab, you can right-click the keyframe button (which you should never actually use) and you can then use the pop-up (see illustration at right) to choose a parameter.

Here’s where I use CTRL K all the time: for easily doing the old “Ken Burns” (or maybe the “Jack Cole Effect“) on photos right in my timeline. If I’m straight cutting from photo to photo, I just use Up or Down-Arrows to position my playhead on the first frame of a photo, select the clip and hit CTRL K.  Then I go to the last frame (or maybe earlier) by hitting Down-Arrow and then Left-Arrow (to back up to the last frame of the clip I’m working on–Down-Arrow always takes you to the first frame of the next clip). Then, I use my mouse to resize and/or reposition my photo directly in the Canvas and, since I laid a keyframe earlier, the new positioning automatically creates a new keyframe. Of course, if you are later adding transitions, you may need to reposition these keyframes in the motion tab.

I don’t worry about the fact that this command creates superfluous keyframes (i.e., rotation) because it simply won’t matter–that’s why I never bother with the pop-up window shown above.

When I am in this situation, I watch the entire clip in the Viewer with my finger on the M key to set markers. This gives me a chance to thoroughly review all the content and, since I hit markers at the start of each take and hit markers at the end of each take, I wind up with some rough clips marked out. Notice then how, in the Browser, you can twirl down the “disclosure triangle” (yep, that’s what they’re called) that now appears next to the clip and you can see all the markers. Select one or more of those markers and hit CMD U…

You’ll see that for each marker you select, this shortcut will create a new subclip with head of the subclip starting at the selected marker and ending at the next marker (if there is no later marker, it will end where the original clip ended). If you have named your markers when you made them (or renamed them in the browser), these will now be the new clip names. These subclips can then be opened in the Viewer as if they were separate clips and they are much easier to work with.

Making it easier to wrangle clips makes your job easier and lets you work faster. Remember it this way: don’t let long unwieldy clips COMMAND YOU, take command of them with CMD U!

Now before you get too excited about the possibilities here, there is a pretty serious caveat:  when using these shortcuts on the timeline, you can only do this within a clip that has been selected–that is to say, you can’t just surf keyframes, on all tracks and clips, up and down the timeline (though I think it would be nice if you could). Note that these also work in the Viewer and Canvas and that’s acutally pretty handy and where they wil really come in handy.

The ideal use for this shortcut is a scenario where you have keyframed some motion or filter parameters and are trying to tweak them to perfection without changing the timing. You are likely to be working in the Viewer or Canvas, so being able to quickly and cleanly snap from keyframe to keyframe in a nice timesaver.

The fact that this shortcut uses K (for Keyframes) makes it easy to remember, but I find the OPT/SHIFT thing to be a bit harder to remember. Since I use my right hand for the K keystroke and left hand for the OPT or SHIFT, the fact that the modifier used for moving to the left is the rightmost of these two on the keyboard (and vice versa) is a bit counter-intuitive, so I tend to remember this by thinking of “downshifting” in a car:  the SHIFT modifier takes you down the timeline.

Anther related tool that is very useful in dealing with keyframes is the ability to “Toggle Clip Keyframes” via OPT T.  If you want to reposition various keyframes easily without having to open clips in the viewer, this one’s a winner.

The way these work together is interesting, so let’s start with what is probably the most useful overlay for general editing, the title and action-safe guides. Note that these do not actually have an on/off toggle shortcut (but you may not care as they go away when you hit play anyway), so I would recommend turning them on and leaving them on. That being said, you do have a shortcut to toggle all “overlays” off and on and that is CTRL OPT W

So now you can turn your title and action-safe lines on and off. Good. The other shortcut is for turning the timecode overlay and it is OPT Z

So now you can easily add or subtract this (quite valuable) info with the OPT Z toggle. This means that, assuming you take my advice and leave the title safe guides on all the time, you have three possible states:

• All overlays off (CTRL OPT W to do this, but hey, when you play, they disappear and that may be adequate)
• Title and action-safe guide only on (just CTRL OPT W the overlays on and make sure you OPT Z the timecode stuff off)
• Title and action-safe guides and timecode info overlays on simultaneously (CTRL OPT W and OPT Z to suit)

So yeah, when you have ‘em all on it’s a wee bit busy, but I find it pretty easy to live with and it beats mousing up to turn on and off the title-safe stuff, right? And really, you should be aware of title and action safe when it comes to lower thirds and critical action. Sure, they’re maybe a bit conservative with today’s non-CRT TVs, but the one time you really push the limit will be the time you’ll get burned and the client will call and yell that his grandma can’t see the 800 number for his law firm on her 1984 Magnavox console TV with the doily on top (and wedding videographers, can I get an amen here?)

Bottom line: Just learn these two shortcuts and use them together to get whatever you need overlay-wise. The key here is to just keep your title and action-safe guides turned on all the time. Play with this today and try to remember these great shortcuts–that’s all you need to do today on your journey to shortcutting efficiency.

NOTE: Since this was first written, I have also covered CTRL Z for toggling the Luma Range Check on and off, so be sure to read that article as well because it ties all of these overlay commands together.

This one is pretty straightforward in that you type in the new duration (preferably by using timecode entry “shorthand” with numbers and periods to replace sets of zeros, i.e, “3.” for 3 seconds or “1..” for 1 minute), hit enter or return twice (once to flesh out the timecode and once to activate) and your clip or transition will be changed.

Note that if you are doing this to a clip or still, the effect will ripple–that is, all clips to the right of the selected clip will move accordingly and no gap will be left.

I particularly like using this with a series of stills where I need to quickly go through and change their durations. When it comes to changing the duration of clips, I prefer the Ripple edit tool as you can see the new final frame in the two-up display in the Canvas that appears when you use the Ripple tool (you do not get this if you use brackets to adjust a selected edit point).

When you grab a levels clip overlay line with your Selection Tool (see below) and try to tweak an audio level by just a decibel or two, you may have noticed (by observing the little yellow pop-up indicator), that it can be pretty darn hard to make such fine adjustments. By “gearing down” with the addition of the COMMAND key (hold while mousing), you will be able to easily hit any desired audio level.

Note that the Gear Down function also works in the 3-Way Color Corrector when you’re trying to pull the “balance indicators” (see illustration below) in the center of each color wheel, but it kind of works in reverse. When you use the 3-Way Color Corrector, you have probably noticed that the balance indicators are very hard to move quickly–that’s because they’re very precise. Add COMMAND and you’ll find you can move them around easily.

By the way, if you’re intimidated by the 3-Way Color Corrector and missing out on its nearly miraculous shot-saving and creative capabilities, you should read legendary FCP guru Ken Stone’s excellent guide to its use.

As with OPT V, this shortcut is a particular timesaver when you apply it to a group of clips.

Suppose you have color correction in place on all clips in a timeline that is destined for broadcast and you want to duplicate the timeline and make a version for computer screens. Once you’ve copied your sequence, just select all clips (make sure you only select the video portion of the clips unless you want to remove audio attributes as well), then hit CMD OPT V. Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy.

This means that you can copy (CMD C) a clip and then apply its attributes (filters and motion tab settings) to another clip or clips. Much easier way to bring up the Paste Attributes dialogue box than doing the whole Edit>Paste Attributes menu surfing thing, isn’t it? What does that take you?  About 3 seconds?  It all adds up. This was very nicely covered on FCP Daily not too long ago, so I suggest you check out their article if you want the juicy details.

Focus on OPT V today, remember SHIFT V from yesterday and tomorrow, we’ll round out the time-saving “V Collection.”

What’s nice is that when you copy and paste clips, all the attributes of the copied file go with the newly pasted file, so if you’ve re-sized, color-corrected, added filters and what-not, you won’t have to do it all over again. Copying and pasting clips in FCP is very handy indeed.

And of course all FCP editors and Mac users are well aware of the CMD C (copy), CMD V (paste) and CMD X (cut, but retain in clipboard) commands (and no, I won’t be giving them additional mention on this blog other than here), but did you know that in FCP you have an additional powerful variation called “paste insert” (SHIFT V)?

This is particularly handy if, say, you have created an opening sequence in one timeline and want to add it into another timeline at the head. Just copy the clips then hit SHIFT V to paste insert them wherever you want–it will paste ‘em in starting at the playhead position and you should also be aware that it will by default paste on the same track that the originals were copied from (unless you use our old pal “Toggle Auto select” to manage this). The result will be a ripple edit that moves everything down to the right to accomodate your paste-in.

There are a couple more variations on the paste command and we will cover them over the next two days, so stay tuned, but for now, just burn SHIFT V into your brain and you might be surprised how often you use it–I use it all the time, myself.

Hitting OPT CMD 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6 will change the color of your selected clip or clips to the following:

• 2 – Orange (good)
• 3 – Red (best)
• 4 – Blue (alternate)
• 5 – Purple (interview)
• 6 – Green (b-roll)

And importantly, OPT CMD 1 removes the label.

Note also that OPT Q takes you to the User Prefs pane where you can hit the “Labels” tab to change the descriptive field to something else.

I tend to work alone and am rarely an Assitant Editor or use one, so when I use labels, I don’t pay much attention to the actual descriptions (i.e. “interview”), but mostly just want to assign some color to certain clips to set them apart in the browser or timeline. I often work with HDV footage which means I get a lot of clips from a single tape. Because I mostly do corporate videos, I’m usually getting interview shots and b-roll. I tend to assign the b-roll a color (any color, really) to set those shots apart (I also tend to create a timeline called “All B-Roll” where I lay down all the b-roll for easy review).

If you are working as an Assistant Editor or are part of a larger editing team or workflow, I would strongly suggest using the labels a little more formally. If the descriptors do not suit you, then by all means customize them. Just as a conscientious Photoshop pro uses the color coding to help make their layers clear for the client, you should too–even if it was not asked for. It’s a nice pro touch that will be noticed and almost certainly appreciated.

Finally, one reason I would recommend customizing the descriptive labels is that the existing “good” label is actually a bit redundant with another great Browser feature, the “good” column which allows you to easily add a check mark (and this checkbox is also available in the log and cap process). That is a great way to identify “good” or “best” clips. Some suggested custom labels might be for camera angles, identification of specific interviewees, types of b-roll (audience reaction, local flavor, etc.), product shots and so on.

Since the color coding is the real thing here (I rarely see the actual label descriptors unless I am using them in a browser search), I don’t worry too much about the fact that this kind of customization creates a problem when you transfer the project to a different workstation (as I do when it comes to keyboard shortcut customization).