This was one of the most talked-about features of fcp 7, but for some reason I didn’t start using it until recently. If you have a timeline with a gap in video and you would like to time scale (or speed change) a clip as it sits you have few options. What I had resorted [...]
This is one of those tricks that I’ve never seen written anywhere, but it save me a TON of time. It works on 90% of the file import /save / open dialogs across all programs. If you want to export a file from say, FCP. You start out by hitting command-E and then you get [...]
The more you use your mouse, the slower you work. Some tasks are impossible to do without a mouse, but maximizing keyboard shortcuts is the clear path to speed. Keyboard shortcuts, key remapping, and droplet creation are all designed to reduce the number of steps required to do something. The difficult thing is trying to [...]
This has been one of my biggest complaints about Compressor; when you switch to it from another app by clicking into one of the compressor windows, only that window rises to the top. The rest of the windows remain mixed in with the finder windows and other apps you have open below. My big hope [...]
Based on this post by Dylan Reeve I have put together a list of mac apps that I carry around on a usb drive in order to get myself and others out of sticky situations. There is a bit of overlap, but I think that this is a great start to making a final cut [...]
Normalize effect This isn’t the primary use of normalize. The primary usage is to even out audio so that it has a more uniform volume. This usage is still very very useful. The timeline only allows you to change audio levels up to +12dB. Sometimes you have a very low clip that needs more of [...]
Here are two scripts that I recently made. I use one script at work that is remarkably similar to this, so I wrote these two up to share. FCPFolderMaker is a simple app that builds a folder structure for you to organize your project with. The structure is as seen in the photo below. It [...]
This one is also short and sweet, since last weeks tip turned out so well! Shift z – zoom timeline to fit project. No more words are needed! These are the kinds of tips and tricks you usually learn by watching someone else edit. If you have something that drastically speed up your editing, let [...]
This one is short and sweet. Not all of these tips need to be needlessly complicated. Control-V – Control-V cuts a selected clip at playhead, or cuts all clips at playhead if no clip is selected. It only does one job, but it does it well. It is also much quicker than constantly toggling between [...]
Rename Compressor presets for web compatibility. This is another smack-your-forehead tip. By default Compressor has lots of spaces in the default filename suffixes it adds to your compressed files. This turns out to be a problem when you upload those to the web because the spaces turn into “%20″‘s and sometimes can split a link [...]