A Set of Shortcuts Designed Only For Use By Robots

By Shortcutter | Published: Wednesday, July 21, 2010

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 go backwards at normal speed and similarly, you can go faster and faster backwards by using the lower CTRL F-key down through CTRL F2 (note that’s only 5 backwards speeds):

Now why on earth would anyone use these obscure and awkward shortcuts? Especially given the much easier functionality of the wondrous JK and L shortcuts (and the way that, if you tap J or L successively, you step through all available playback speeds). Who cares about these seemingly useless CTRL F shortcuts?

Well, robots do. That is to say, 3rd party devices like the Contour Shuttle Pro or other similar alternate input or control devices. These shortcuts are not really meant to be used by humans, but they provide a great way to program keys on such devices and, since these are standardized shortcuts that come stock with FCP, you can count on them to be present on any system into which you plug your 3rd party device (although you may need to download a driver for some of these helpers).

Now if you’ve read my general shortcuts rant, you know that I am generally not into the use of these devices, but I suppose there are always exceptions (like highly specialized dedicated workflow scenarios or for folks who might have some kind of difficulty accessing the JK and L keys comfortably). I generally oppose dependency on these kinds of devices because you will need to tote them around with you all the time and I submit that, once you get used to JK and L, these devices aren’t any better. The choice is yours but, if you do elect to use these devices, note that this set of shortcuts provide a great way to program the device easily.

NOTE: there is a similar set of “device oriented” shortcuts available for use with the 3-way color corrector and you can read all about it here.

Posted in Customization, Intermediate | Leave a comment

Match Frame: The Perfect Keyboard Shortcut

By Shortcutter | Published: Tuesday, July 20, 2010

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 want to look for another take and since there are hundred of clips in the Browser, you just want a quick way to pull up this particular piece of source. With the timeline as the active window (it has “focus”), simply position the playhead over the clip and hit F:

The source will open in the window and it will even have the in and out-points marked (even if you had later reset or them or set new ones). How cool is that? And mind you, this is very different from opening that clip in the timeline up into the Viewer (which gives you the little sprocket graphics along the playback indicator) because you are in the source clip now and can find a new in and out and bring that down to the timeline as a new shot–if you’d opened the timeline clip in the Viewer, you could not change the in or out without modifying your timeline clip.

Note that if you want to open the raw source clip in the Viewer (without the in and out points marked), you can hit OPT CMD F

Note that you can then hit SHIFT F to cause that source clip to be highlighted in the Browser so you can see exactly where it is.

And if it was nested in a bin, that all opens up for you as well.  Pretty neat.

And that’s not all!  If you hit F while the Viewer is active, the playhead will jump to the same frame if it is in use in the timeline! Not sure if you used that cutaway shot of the guy nodding and clapping yet? Just put your playhead on the shot in the Viewer and hit F.  If it’s not in the timline, you’ll get an error sound and if it is, you jump right to it. Pure awesomeness.

Note that if the clip you are match framing is not on video track 1, you will need to select it prior to hitting F, but that’s no biggie.

There’s a nice tip as to how to use this in a practical situation after the jump…

Read More »

Posted in Intermediate | 1 Comment

If You’re Not Using I and O, Start Today!

By Shortcutter | Published: Monday, July 19, 2010

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 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

Posted in Absolute Essentials, FCP 101 Stuff | Leave a comment

Don’t be a “Render-holic”

By Shortcutter | Published: Thursday, July 15, 2010

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 don’t be tempted to select the incoming and outgoing clips and transition, hit a “render selection” (CMD R) review it, tweak and repeat. You’re wasting time if you do (and anyone who edits HDV footage as I do really feels the pain here). Instead, why not use the handy “Quick View” Tool to quickly evaluate and sample the segment?

When you hit OPT 8 to invoke the Quick View, a new window pops up over your Viewer that starts to play a short segment of timeline around your Playhead (or Viewer content, if you like–it’s intuitive based on which window has focus, but there’s also a pop-up for you to choose). It will play slowly at first, then come up to full speed so you can see what the rendered content will truly look like without resolution loss (though that too is customizable from within the window).

It plays from a point before your playhead position to a point after which is perfect if you park on the edit point using the up and down arrows. You can adjust the range played from 2 seconds to 10 seconds (I keep it at about 3 seconds, which balances what I want to see with the time it takes to come up to speed).

Rendering is one of the most painful things we endure as editors (and God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change), so any tricks you can use to avoid it are well worth adopting. The first step to recognizing that you have an excessive rendering problem is to admit it. The next step is to seek treatment. OPT 8 is good medicine.

This shortcut was previously discussed on 3/22/2010.

Posted in Intermediate | Leave a comment

A Powerful Set of Ninja Level Shortcuts

By Shortcutter | Published: Wednesday, July 14, 2010

In honor of being linked on the venerable FCP Daily site (for which I am very appreciative and humbled), I want to toss out a full-on “ninja level” shortcut today that is worthy of the hardcore FCP Daily readership, so I’m reaching forward in my schedule to share a real gem: setting source destination for the Timeline. Now granted, this is a an advanced shortcut that works best for those who are already on the shortcuts bandwagon and religiously use the F9 and F10 keys (and their brethren, the F11, F12 and SHIFT F9-11 shortcuts–more on these silver bullets in a future post), but it’s a real doozy and helps dedicated shortcutters avoid “breaking the rhythm” in an otherwise all-shortcut workflow which I think is critical.

The scenario is this: you’ve opened a clip in the Viewer, you’ve trimmed it up with shortcuts and you’re ready to send it down to the timeline, but since maybe it’s a cutaway shot (a common instance), you want the video to go to video track 2 or 3 or some other track and the audio to go to audio tracks 3 and 4 or some other tracks (if stereo pair). The kludgy way to do this would be to grab your mouse and dive down to those GUI tabs (see illustration at left) and futz around with clicking and dragging the source tabs to the proper destination tabs (and clicking them off and on as needed). By this time however, you might sadly wonder if it isn’t just easier to drag the clip from the Viewer straight to the Timline and put it where you want it (realizing that this sloppy clip dragging operation is the stuff of FCP greenhorns).

So how can you finesse this? Use the unorthodox shortcut of first tapping F6 then tapping the number key of the track you want video switched to:

That’s right, you don’t hold F6 while hitting the desired number, you tap them in succession.  It will take a bit of practice and you’re only allowed a second or two to hit them both.  This switches your video track destination to the number you tapped. Play with this for a few seconds and you’ll get the drift.

Now you do the same for audio by hitting F7 for the left (or topmost) channel followed by the desired track number. Then you tap F8 for the right (or bottommost) channel followed by the track number.

There is a catch here though:  you should hit F8 first and move it down before you move the topmost (usually left channel) of audio down because you cannot jump over destinations.  The best way to really understand this is to try it a few times.

The other half of this awesome shortcut is that if you simply want to turn off the destination for audio or video (a common need), you hit SHIFT F6, F7 or F8:

Now that’s a powerful shortcut!  But there’s still a bit more (and a surefire way to improve your trip to NAB in Vegas) if you can stand it after the jump…

Read More »

Posted in FCP Ninja Level | Leave a comment

More Audio Convenience: Setting Pan With Shortcuts

By Shortcutter | Published: Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Every audio clip can be easily adjusted for pan with keyboard shortcuts. You can do this either when the clip is on the timeline or when it is open in the View. This sure beats fussing with that pan slider in the viewer, so these are definitely some valuable shortcuts to add to your repertoire.

When you adjust “pan,” you are determining, for a single channel of audio, how much of the sound comes out of each speaker. If you have a “stereo” recording consisting of two tracks, each one might panned all the way to the left or right speaker or they may have some overlap. Most often, I find myself needing to pan one, or usually a bunch of clips to the center (maybe I only want a center-panned mono track for SFX). The shortcut for panning a slected clip or clips to center is:

Of course there are shortcuts for “pan left” and “pan right” as well. Pan Left is CTRL , (comma)

and Pan Right is CTRL / (slash)

By the way, if you are already on the CTRL ,./ program, you should make sure you’re also using CTRL - and + or [ and ] to adjust audio levels on the timeline as that’s an even greater timesaver!

This shortcut is an update from one previously discussed on 3/17/2010.

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Super Easy Audio Adjustments!

By Shortcutter | Published: Monday, July 12, 2010

Whether you are working on a piece that is already laid out in the timeline OR if you have a clip opened in the Viewer, there are a couple of very powerful tools to help you get the audio levels where they need to be. The one will will discuss today is CTRL + and - and CTRL [ and ]. If you have a clip selected on the timeline, you can hit CTRL - OR + to raise or lower the level by 1 decibel:

This offers you much more control over the alternative of grabbing the levels overlay line and dragging it up or down in the timeline (this tip notwithstanding) or going to the Viewer’s audio tabs and using the slider. This method’s chief benefit (in the timeline) is that it can be applied to a group of selected clips at one time! This is useful for selecting one particular camera’s shots (where the audio levels are consistent) or for quickly adjusting a music bed. To make rough adjustments even more quickly, you can use CTRL [ or ]

which moves them up or down by 3 decibels. This is the shortcut I usually use to set “ballpark” levels for a rough cut and I later use CTRL - or + for fine tuning. To truly perfect your mix however, I highly recommend the versatile Audio Mixer tool (OPT 6) which gives you the ability to meter and adjust all aspects of your mix simultaneously and includes a master fader to adjust overall levels (which you cannot do from the timeline).

There is a related set of commands that can make equally quick adjustments to the pan for clips on the timeline, and it’s covered here.

This shortcut is an update from one previously discussed on 3/16/2010.

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Favorites Part 5: A Final Word on Using Favorites Shortcuts

By Shortcutter | Published: Friday, July 9, 2010

All week, we have been examining the process of saving favorite effects and how keyboard shortcuts can make that process easier. By “effects,” we refer to “transitions,” “filters,” and motion tab settings. There is a whole lot going on here and you may have noticed that not all the processes and shortcuts are easy or straightforward, so today, I want to give you the “bottom line” as I see it and recap the best aspects of favorite saving and applying. This is the “take away” post, if you will.

FAVORITE TRANSITIONS ARE ESSENTIAL

If you like to use non-standard transitions regularly, as I do, you should know how to set them up and how to use them with shortcuts.  Setting them up is simple: double-click your transition open in the Viewer and hit OPT F

This will add it to the Favorites bin and you MUST then re-name the transition so it will be clear when you call it from the menus or use a shortcut to invoke it. Your naming scheme should take into account in what order your named favorites will appear in the list (they’re alphabetical) as this will determine which shortcuts invoke them.

Examples of favorite transitions I like and recommend are: setting up a shorter 10-frame cross-dissolve (the full 1 second cross is often too lingering for me), setting up faster push slides to the left and right (the stock push slide goes up) and I also set up faster edge wipes that go to the left (as well as the right, which is stock). These are transitions I use all the time, so I have them stored in the Favorites bin in the Effects Tab.

Setting up favorite transitions takes a little time and effort, but it’s well worth it to be able to call them up easily using shortcuts from that point forward. Think of all the time you’ll save by considering how much time you currently spend adjusting a 1 second crosses to be shorter. For me, that’s a significant time savings and a huge convenience.

FILTERS ON A PROJECT BASIS

There are very few filter settings that I set up on a universal basis. Since I usually wind up keyframing effects like a blur, I don’t bother with these favorites much because the application of keyframed filters is dicey in FCP. I prefer to set up a clip with my keyframed filters and use paste attributes (OPT V) to apply them to other clip in a project. Remember that you can also save favorites to a bin in a project and have them available for just that project. Yes, you will need to drag them onto clips, but I think it’s worth the effort. If you are setting up filter favorites, there are some quirks and caveats involved, so be sure to review the posting on this topic.

MOTION FAVORITES

“Favorite motions” give you a way to save all the various settings you find on a clip’s Motion tab (such as scale and opacity). As with filters, there are very few motion faves that I save on a universal basis. To see some practical examples of the ones I save, see my post from a couple of days ago. If you’re going to set some motion favorites, remember that you need only select the clip on the timeline and use the CTRL F shortcut:

KNOW THE KEYS!

Please review the post from yesterday where I provided a graphic to show you how the shortcut keys for applying favorite effects are layed out on the the keyboard–this will make it very easy to recall the shortcuts and, given what I have said above, the main ones to remember are the transition-related shortcuts (though your own usage and work habit will, of course, vary).

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Favorites Part 4: A Recap of All Favorites Keyboard Shortcuts

By Shortcutter | Published: Thursday, July 8, 2010

As promised all week, I am going to round up and attempt to render much clearer, the various shortcuts related to setting up and using the various Effects Favorites which include Transitions, Filters and Favorite Motions.

Fist of all, let’s recap the shortcuts for setting up favorite transitions and favorite filters. To set a favorite transition, use OPT F

For transitions, you must have the transition (tweaked the way you like it) opened in the Viewer (which, is actually called the “Transition Editor” when a transition is opened in it).

For filters, if you have one or more applied filters selected in the clip’s Filters Tab in the Viewer (or all, for that matter), they will be saved as individual favorites. If you have none selected, they will be saved as a group.

To save motion favorites (read more here), you use CTRL F

All you need to do is make sure the clip containing your motion settings is selected on the timeline. Note that keyframes will be saved as well, but they will scale when you apply them to other clips!

To call up the first 4 of your various effects favorites (as they appear in the Favorites Bin in the Effects tab of the Browser), use the following keys:

For video transitions:

For audio transitions:

For video filters:

For audio filters:

And finally, for favorite motion settings:

So why all the crazy random characters? How will you remember all these?  Here’s how:

Tomorrow, I’ll recap the whole favorites subject again, but with a few bottom line recommendations that will help you to use this large family of shortcuts in an efficient way.

Posted in FCP Ninja Level | Leave a comment