If you missed my Keyboard Shortcuts workflows webinar last week, you can now get 20% OFF on it through Tuesday, 8/17/2010 at 11:59pm (Pacific Time). The regular price for this package is $25, so the sale price will be $20 (that’s $5 off).

The package includes:

• The complete HD version of the webinar (my presentation was 1 hour long)
• A bonus video on how to multi-cam edit with shortcuts
• A special 16 page PDF Shortcut guide that covers all the shortcuts from my presentation and many more, grouped by function and workflow
• A podcast interview with Marcelo where we tackle a few more participant questions

If I may say so, that’s a lot for a mere $20!

In the presentation, I placed the best shortcuts into the context of organized workflows and provided groupings of shortcuts that give you the maximum payback.

To purchase at the sale price, click here and enter coupon code 20%OFF on checkout, but hurry as this sale ends on 8/17/2010 at 11:59 pm PDT.

If you were on the fence about purchasing this webinar, now is the time to take the plunge and elevate your game to the next level!

If you missed the free live version, you can still purchase and download the entire package for only $25 and it includes:

• The complete HD version of the webinar (my presentation was 1 hour long)
• A bonus video on how to multi-cam edit with shortcuts
• A special 16 page PDF Shortcut guide that covers all the shortcuts from my presentation and many more, grouped by function and workflow
• A podcast interview with Marcelo where we tackle a few more participant questions

In the presentation, I placed the best shortcuts into the context of organized workflows and provided groupings of shortcuts that give you the maximum payback.

If you like learning shortcuts on this blog in small, easy to assimilate servings, then I hope you will enjoy seeing them put together into the “big picture.”

Note that while I was using FCP 7 for the webinar, all of the shortcuts discussed (with the exception of two that I specifically discussed in the context of FCP 7) will work just fine with FCP 6

I look forward to doing more trainings like this and if you are interested in developing a training project, please contact me.

Again to all who attended or were supportive of the event, a big thanks!

In this webinar, I will be putting the most effective and critical shortcuts into the context of workflows that will make you more productive, precise and confident as an editor.

You can also opt to purchase a paid package which includes online attendance at the live webinar, a downloadable HD version of the webinar archive, an audio podcast with me answering questions not answered during the webinar, a PDF with all the shortcuts mentioned during the webinar and a bonus “how-to” video not shown during the live webinar!  The cost of this paid pack is only $25!

NewMediaWebinars.com, founded by Marcelo Lewin (also known as the “New Media Dude“), creates and produces educational based and information rich, live webinars focused on digital media creators working in Film, Video and New Media. Their webinars are NOT marketing webinars for companies. All webinars are taught by working industry professionals known in their field as experts. Along with their live webinars, they also offer on-demand webinars, a video podcast show covering the digital media scene and a blog all focused on digital media creators.

I’m really looking forward to tying the shortcuts we present here into valuable workflows that will make you a more efficient editor. I certainly hope you’ll be able to attend!

You can also opt to purchase a paid package which includes online attendance at the live webinar, a downloadable HD version of the webinar archive, an audio podcast with me answering questions not answered during the webinar, a PDF with all the shortcuts mentioned during the webinar and a bonus “how-to” video not showed during the live webinar!  The cost of this paid pack is only $25!

NewMediaWebinars.com, founded by Marcelo Lewin (also known as the “New Media Dude“), creates and produces educational based and information rich, live webinars focused on digital media creators working in Film, Video and New Media. Their webinars are NOT marketing webinars for companies. All webinars are taught by working industry professionals known in their field as experts. Along with their live webinars, they also offer on-demand webinars, a video podcast show covering the digital media scene and a blog all focused on digital media creators.

I certainly hope you’ll be there and I’ll place a few more reminders in the blog as we approach the date. I’m really looking forward to tying the shortcuts we present here into valuable workflows that will make you a more efficient editor. Mark your calendar and I’ll see you there!

Because of this, I have put together a Marker Cheat Sheet that you can bookmark and bring up as a quick reference for those times when you are doing a lot of work with markers. If you’re like me, there are times when you’re doing a certain kind of work and using the all the obscure shortcuts that pertain may be very valuable for that work session, but there’s no way you’re going to remember them all the next time a day filled with that kind of work arises.

http://www.fcp.shortcutter.com/markers

The cheat sheet is compact and concise and, if you click on the various shortcut graphics, you will be taken to the appropriate article that goes in-depth for that shortcut. You may wish to print it out or simply keep it up in an open browser window for easy (CMD TAB) reference.

You may notice that this cheat sheet is a sub-page of what will eventually be a complete index of all the shortcuts presented on this site, but that complete index is still a work in progress. Based on several emails I have received, I think this will be a valuable resource both for quickly finding articles here and for getting a quick, at-a-glance view of all of the FCP shortcuts.

We will be adding more of these “cheat sheets” in the weeks to come, both for “families” of shortcuts and for sets of shortcuts that are part of a unified shortcut workflow scenario. I hope they’ll be useful, but I don’t want you to use them as a crutch! It is still highly preferable, in my opinion anyway, to commit the major shortcuts that you use every day to memory and the best way to learn shortcuts is one at a time.

At any rate, enjoy the cheat sheet and bookmark it if you like as it isn’t going anywhere. You’ll see that you can also reference it by holding your mouse over the new “Complete Shortcut Index” tab at the top of this column.

We have noticed that our readers are visiting from all over the world, so we wanted to make it easier for them to read the page in their native language.

• Les lecteurs français peuvent désormais lire la page en français!
• Русский читатель может прочесть страницы на русском языке!
• Leitores brasileiros agora podem ler a página em português!

Look for this button on the right side of the page (just above the “Miss A Day?” calendar):

The example button above is live, so feel free to give it a spin. I’ve noticed that sometimes the button graphic is a little slow to load (though it does not seem to impair the loading of the rest of the page), but I will continue to monitor performance and page load times.

I hope this system proves useful to any readers who would prefer to read the site in a language other than english. I’m sure the translation is not perfect, but it worked pretty well for me on Juan Miguel Salas Rodríguez’s spanish language blog (where I first learned of this widget), but of course I welcome any feedback in the comments section of this post.

But his video chops are by no means lacking. In his “Still Hoping” (above), notice the effective handling of negative space, motion graphics elements and still montages. If you have ever wondered what the NPR sensibility would look like on video, I think Brad’s work give us a taste of that.

His “Veterans Listening Project :: John Allis and Andrew Young” (below) is an unusual and compelling video presentation of John Allis, a Vietnam vet and Andrew Young, a photographer for the U.S. military listening to a conversation they had about the lingering mental effects of war that was recorded in October, 2009.

This piece was produced in conjunction with the Veterans Listening Project, for which Brad was Executive Producer.

Brad Twitters and his work can be seen on his professional website, www.bradhornmultimedia.com and his Vimeo page.

A professor of mine once said “audio is 51% of video” and Brad’s cleanly produced pieces might be good proof of that. We asked Brad for an editing tip and its no surprise that he gave us an excellent audio pointer: “make good friends with audio filters.” As for something specific: “low cut/high pass filter can cut out mic handling noise and wind. Start out with eliminating 150Hz and below….the voice will be preserved and the wind will be gone….magic!”

Thanks for the tip Brad and now, since it’s Sunday, I’m off to listen to Weekend Edition Sunday with Liane Hansen with my wife as we do every Sunday.

This hilarious piece was written and performed by Sergio Cilli who is a part of Cream (an LA-based sketch comedy group consisting of Cilli, Eric Ledgin, Casey Feigh, and Jacob Womack) and the editor was Dylan Osborn (visit his website to see his short film “Inheritance”). We contacted him to ask if he used FCP and how shortcuts factor in his work as an editor. He replies that yes, ”We Got That B-Roll!!” was edited exclusively in Final Cut Pro, from keying to color correction including all the text and most of the graphics.”

Dylan relates that “one of the editing challenges was making everything seem naturally bad, like a local commercial by someone who didn’t know what they were doing, but still pull off the pace and comic timing of Sergio’s performance.”

Before anyone jumps on these guys for the fuzzy green screen look, note that Ryan also explained that he “fiddled a lot with the Final Cut color key to achieve the unprofessional green glow around him. We also made sure our transitions were completely inconsistent: star iris, swing, box slide, v wipe, and of course the always cheesy page peel.”

Is Dylan a Shortcutter?  Oh yeah (and we’re thrilled to hear that he is an avid reader of this site)…

“As far as shortcuts go, I’m a big fan of SHIFT Delete, especially during the rough cut stage when footage is in the timeline. Just set in and out points around the cut point, SHIFT Delete, and those excess frames are eliminated. If I want a few frames more on one side of the cut, I adjust with the ripple tool (RR) and use the Left and Right Bracket Keys to add frames to just that clip.”

Dylan says that “anytime I can avoid using the mouse in FCP is positive” and we could not agree more.

After the jump, you can see the full credit list and some bonus green screen raw footage of Sergio doing some of the lines for the video (it is sooo tempting to do something fun with this…)

“We Got That B-Roll!!” was directed By Dylan Osborn, written By Sergio Cilli, the Director of Photography was Jason O’ Malley and Dylan Osborn edited (on FCP).

Cast: Sergio Cilli, Matty Smith, Jack Allison, Chad Fogland, David Nehr, Marisa Pinson, Matt Reid, Jacob Womack, Stephen Schneider, Eileen Hsi, Will McLaughlin, Cissy Fenwick, Casey Feigh, Eric Ledgin, Julia Bensfield, Jennie Pierson, Lilan Bowden.

If you liked this one, Be sure to check out and support Cream’s latest video, “The History of Turtleneck Fighting” on Funny or Die.

You can see more skillful handing of stills in this piece on Australian supermodel Abbey Lee which Mark produced for the Sunday Times.

Notice how he goes to black and white for the the shots of the photographer shooting and then, for the subsequent montage, Mark has tinted the monochrome stills to differentiate them from the shoot sequence. Subtle and effective. Notice also the pacing of the cuts to the music and an effective deployment of the infamous time remapping function at the end of the piece.

To see more of Mark’s work, visit his YouTube page. His professional website, movingpictureTV.com has links to his blog and other creative work.

An FCP user since 2001 (having switched over from Premier), Mark admits that “Speed is often more important than quality in the multimedia news environment. Its about getting the footage out to the audience, then revisiting the edit and tidying it up before republishing.” Mark started using shortcuts aggressively after watching one of Rick Young’s demos on the MacVideo news and training site and from there, he never looked back. To those who find adoption of the shortcut method painful, Mark points out that “despite initial thoughts, shortcuts increase speed of workflow dramatically.”

Mark’s favorite shortcuts are OPT W (clip overlays) and CMD OPT W (for audio waveform) and, although I certainly have a bone to pick with him on this one, he likes that blasted Pen Tool (P) for laying out keyframes on audio. Pen Tool aficionado or not, it’s clear that in the fast paced world of ENG, the Shortcutter has the advantage. The quality of Mark Kelly’s work is a testament to that.

Francisco’s work has a clean, modernistic aesthetic and his well-paced edits mesh beautifully with the powerful camera moves and interesting framings of his shots. It’s the true mark of a pro when they can “make it look simple” as Francisco does, but when you study his work, you can see the precision and hard work that goes into every frame.

One reason that his work looks so good is that he takes his craft very seriously and recognizes the value of mastering tools like Final Cut Pro. He visits this blog from time to time and is a Twitter follower which is how I became aware of his work. I asked him if I could feature some of his videos here and I’d like to feature the work of more Keyboard Shortcutters in future Sunday feature posts.

To see more of Francisco’s work, visit his Vimeo page and be sure to follow his Tweets at camposlopez. His IMDB page is here.

I’ve really been enjoying reading the tweets and visiting the websites of our FCP Shortcutter Twitter followers (yep, those are probably my clicks from “Cox Communications” in Phoenix, AZ) and I’m proud to say that there are some really interesting folks reading this blog! If you’d like to have your work featured in this space, please email me or direct message me in Twitter. If you’re too humble to do so or miss this post, I will probably ask you anyway.