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Category Archives: Intermediate
The Sweet “Log Clip” Workflow [UPDATED]
In another post, I talked about using SHIFT C to “capture now” and I discussed the scenarios where that was appropriate. I also alluded to the fact that, if you have lots of “takes” or repetitive material where you will only actually need to ingest some of the footage, you might prefer to “log” clips [...]
Posted in Intermediate 3 Comments
Make “Capture Now” Just a Little More “Now”
If you cap a lot of tapes (and I still do), perhaps, like me, you often simply start the tape rolling and hit “Capture Now” to ingest everything and you sort out the bodies later in the Browser. This is especially useful when capping tapes that are comprised of many clips due to broken timecode.
Capture [...]
Posted in Intermediate 1 Comment
Toggle Range Check
When you’re finishing an edit it’s important to make sure that your luminance levels are “legal.” This ensures that your brightest whites won’t be “hot” and cause problems in a broadcast scenario (and that really applies to any video that might be shown on a consumer TV even if it’s not being broadcast per se).
Most [...]
Posted in Intermediate 3 Comments
A Set of Shortcuts Designed Only For Use By Robots
OK, here’s an interesting group of shortcuts that allows you to play clips forward or backward in various speeds. If you hit CTRL F7, your clip plays normally. Hit CTRL F8 through CTRL F12 and your clip plays faster and faster with each successive CTRL F-key. That’s 6 forward speeds. Hit CTRL F6 and you [...]
Also posted in Customization Leave a comment
Match Frame: The Perfect Keyboard Shortcut
Here’s one of the greats: the Match Frame functionality. Let’s say you have a clip on the timeline and you want to quickly pull up the source clip from which it was taken in the Viewer. Perhaps you want to use another clip that you know is in the same piece of footage or you [...]
Posted in Intermediate 1 Comment
Don’t be a “Render-holic”
So you’ve added a fancy transition to an edit point and want to see how it plays. Is it over the top? Is it smooth enough? Have you added a superimposed lower third or graphic treatment or perhaps a heavy duty filter and want a quick reality check? Well, if this is the case, please [...]
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Move Clips Up or Down From Track to Track
Say you want to move a clip or group of clips straight up (or down) into another track while retaining timecode position. You might do what I used to do when I started out using FCP: you click and drag the clip while holding the SHIFT Key down. That works OK, but I’ve always found [...]
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The “Play Around” Key is All Business
One of my all-time favorite shortcuts is the “Play Around” key:
Also known as the “backslash,” this elegant shortcut can save you a lot of mouse work and editing time. When you hit the \ key, your playhead jumps back several seconds from its current position, plays forward and past your original playhead position for a [...]
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Refresh Your External Video Monitor
For any FCP editor who frequently works with tape decks (and especially if they find themselves switching decks or bouncing between HDV and NTSV or PAL modes), the dreaded “Unable to Initialize capture Device” pop-up error message is a familiar, if frustrating sight.
Usually, you go back and make some changes and often, you will find [...]
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A Fast Path to the Text Generator