5 Tips to Improve Your Final Cut Pro X Experience

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If you use Final Cut Pro X regularly, here are five tips that can help improve your experience and optimize your workflow.

1. Adjustment Layers

You’ve placed several clips in your timeline, and you want them all to have the same look and style. You could go through these clips, one by one, and add the same effects and colorizations to them, but that would take a lot of time. Fortunately, Final Cut lets you use adjustment layers. So you can apply a single layer, which contains the effects and colorizations you need, to as many clips as you want. This tip will not only save you time, but also help you achieve a consistent look for all your clips.

However, Final Cut Pro X does not include adjustment layers. You can purchase Motion or use this free Motion Array plugin. Once the plugin is downloaded, copy it to /USER/Movies/Motion Templates (where USER is your MacOS username), and restart Final Cut Pro Titles > Adjustment Layers. You can then drag the adjustment layer onto your timeline and extend it over all the clips you want. Once the layer is placed, add any effects you need.

2. Favorites and keywords

If you have a lot of clips in your library and use them regularly, there are two features you need to learn how to use. Favorites and tags make it much easier to find the right clip to add to the video you’re editing. This approach makes reusing clips much easier. And as your clip library grows, you’ll be happier and happier knowing these tools.

To favorite a clip, simply select it from the Clip Library, which is located directly to the left of the preview pane, and press the F key. You will then see a green outline around the clip for it. find quickly.

To add a keyword to a clip – such as a location or a person’s name – select the clip in the library, click the key icon in the top left of the Final Cut Pro X window, and add the keyword(s) you want to assign to it. These keywords will appear under the project in the left sidebar.

3. Store media and library separately

I learned this trick the hard way. Final Cut Pro libraries can quickly take up a lot of storage space. Sometimes some libraries can reach almost 1 TB, and that’s in a single file. If you store everything, including media, on the same disk as a project’s library, you’ll quickly fill it up.

The best technique is to store your project library on an external drive and the media on an internal drive (if it’s a small project) or on a different external drive (for larger projects) . Of course, this tip may require a financial investment, but it will save you from having to deal with the consequences of a full disk, notably the inability to record in a library.

4. Use keyboard shortcuts

To optimize your work on Final Cut Pro X, it is necessary to know the keyboard shortcuts. Indeed, certain features are only accessible via a keyboard shortcut, and others are very difficult to find using the menus.

To get you started, here are some essential Final Cut Pro X keyboard shortcuts:

• HAS : activate the selection tool
• B : activate the razor blade tool
• R : activate the selection tool by range
• Command + L : enable or disable loop playback
• Option + S : isolate selected elements in the timeline
• Option + W : insert a blank at the hover or playhead location
• Capital letter + Z : resize content to fit browser size, viewer, or timeline
• Capital letter + Command + B : Cut all clips at hover or playhead location
• V : enable or disable playback for selection
• Q : connect the selection to the main scenario
• W : insert selection at hover or playhead location
• E : add the selection until the end of the scenario
• I : set the starting point for the range
• O : set the end point for the range
• P : activate the Position tool

If what you’re looking for isn’t in the list below, Apple offers an exhaustive guide listing all the Final Cut Pro X keyboard shortcuts. Be careful, there are a lot of them!

5. Create a template library

To use a template, you must copy it from one library to another: select the template you want to copy, then click File > Copy to Library. Select the destination library from the list that appears to copy the template. You can then use it for your new project.

With this tip, when you create complex clips, you can reuse them across multiple projects or libraries.

Source: ZDNet.com