Introduction

INT. MUNDANE BASEMENT MEETING ROOM - LAS VEGAS

Throughout the day, a small group of people file
into the room to see a pre-release version of a new
editing application from Macromedia.

DEMONSTRATOR
Welcome. Today I’m going to show you a sneak
preview of Final Cut...

It was NAB 1998 and I was sitting in one of the demo sessions. As
an Editor and Graphic Designer, Final Cut’s blend of editing and
graphics capabilities intrigued me. Shortly after the preview at
NAB, Apple acquired the software from Macromedia, added ‘Pro’
to the name and released version 1 in April 1999. The application
that almost never saw the light of day was about to spend the
next ten years turning the industry on its head.
The timing of the Final Cut Pro launch was certainly auspicious.
With Steve Jobs back in the driving seat, and the groundbreaking
iMac turning heads, Apple was buzzing. DV cameras were making
high quality video affordable and Mac computers were starting
to become powerful enough to process effects in real time
without additional hardware. The internet was becoming a part of
daily life and a vibrant virtual community soon evolved to share
experiences and valuable knowledge.
Ever since that pre-release demo at NAB, I had been keeping a
keen eye on how Final Cut Pro was developing. The landmark
release of version 4 in 2003, showed me that Apple were serious
about professional video editing software. I made the decision to
switch from Avid and haven’t looked back since.
One of the reasons I believe Final Cut Pro has become so popular
is its wide appeal, from the beginner right up to the professional
editor. Its strength lies in its simplicity but looks can be deceiving.
The application contains a tremendous number of hidden features
and that’s where this book aims to help.
Final Cut Pro Killer Secrets is a collection of tips, techniques and
reference material that I’ve learnt, discovered or stumbled upon
since 2003. The book is written primarily for Final Cut Pro 6 but
virtually all the tips will work in earlier versions. Whether you’ve
been working with Final Cut Pro for five months or five years,
I hope you find it both interesting and useful.
My thanks to Nial Brown, Victoria Parks-Murphy, Jonathan Eric
Tyrrell, Toby Uffindell-Phillips and Byron Wijayawardena for their
help, support and invaluable feedback.
Martin Baker
March 2009
Mouse Jogging
This is a great time-saver when trying to locate to a frame on a source clip
or sequence. Simply move the mouse over the Timeline ruler or the image
area/scrubber bar of the Viewer or Canvas and move the wheel or ball to
jog the playhead.
Adding the Option key gears up and makes jogging even faster.

The One Second Hop

Press Shift-Left Arrow to move the playhead one second earlier.
Press Shift-Right Arrow to move the playhead one second later.
This works in the Viewer, Canvas and Timeline and if you hold the arrow key
down, it will repeat for a shuttling type effect.

Toggling Between Viewer and Canvas

You can quickly toggle between the Viewer and the Canvas by pressing Q.
If the Timeline is currently active, Final Cut Pro is smart and will make the
Viewer active on the first keypress, then toggle between the Viewer and
Canvas after that.

Chapter 4: Basic Editing Page 5

Text Generators Shortcuts
Here are two super quick ways to load the most common text generators
into the Viewer.
Press Control-X to open the standard Text generator.
Press Option-Control-X to open Boris Title 3D.

Quickly Setting Duration in the Viewer or Canvas

Here’s a super quick way to set an exact duration from the current in point
(or first frame of the source clip or sequence if in point is not set).
Press Tab.
Enter the required duration and press the Return or Enter key.

Play to Out Point

Pressing Shift-\ will play between the marked in and out points on a source
clip or sequence but you can also play from the current playhead location
to the out point by pressing Shift-P.
Just like Play In to Out, this shortcut works in the Viewer, Canvas and
Timeline and is very useful for long clips where you just want to check the
out point rather than play the entire marked section.

Chapter 4: Basic Editing Page 6

Locating to Timecode
It’s very easy to move the playhead to a specific timecode in the Viewer,
Canvas or Timeline. There’s no need to highlight the current timecode field
or enter colons between the hours, minutes, seconds and frames, instead
you simply type the digits in.
But it doesn’t stop there. Since timecodes always fill in from the right,
any digits that aren’t entered are assumed to be the same as the current
timecode. In addition, by entering separators in a certain way you can
reduce the number of keystrokes required as Final Cut Pro will fill in the
blanks automatically.
For example, assuming the sequence starts at 01:00:00:00, the playhead is
positioned on the first frame and no items are selected in the Timeline:

Digits Entered Interpreted as Moves Playhead to

4. 4.00 01:00:04:00
Final Cut Pro will happily accept a period, colon, semi-colon or comma as the
separator so “4.” “4:” “4;” and “4,” are all valid and give the same result.

If you add a number after the last period, you’re entering the frames:

Digits Entered Interpreted as Moves Playhead to

4.6 4.06 01:00:04:06
2.2.2 2.02.02 01:02:02:02
2... 2.00.00.00 02:00:00:00

It’s also possible to enter relative timecodes. This can be useful if you want
to select a clip or edit and move the selection by a relative amount:

Digits Entered Interpreted as Moves Playhead or Selection

+4. +4.00 4 seconds later
-4. -4.00 4 seconds earlier

Chapter 4: Basic Editing Page 7

Missing Thumbnails
If you open a project and any media files aren’t available (and you don’t
reconnect them) then the red Media Offline thumbnail gets shown on the
timeline clip.
A problem occurs if the media files are available again the next time you
open the project – the red thumbnails are not updated and still show
those clips as being offline.
The solution is to force Final Cut Pro to rebuild the thumbnails which is
usually a fairly quick process.
Use Spotlight to search for a folder named “Thumbnail Cache Files”
and move it to the Trash.
The next time you open the project, Final Cut Pro will rebuild the
thumbnails for all the source clips.

Default Number of Tracks

By default, Final Cut Pro creates new sequences with one video and four
audio tracks. If you find yourself frequently adding new video and audio
tracks you can change the default settings in the Timeline Options tab of
User Preferences.

Locking Video and Audio Tracks

Lock individual video track: Press F4 then the track number
Lock all video tracks: Press Shift-F4
Lock individual audio track: Press F5 then the track number
Lock all audio tracks: Press Shift-F5
It’s also possible to Option-click on a track’s lock icon and all other tracks of
the same type will be locked.

Chapter 4: Basic Editing Page 8

Changing the Height of Timeline Tracks
Change the height of a single track:
Change the height of all video
and audio tracks:
Change the height of all tracks
of the same type:
Cycle through four preset track
heights while resetting all tracks
to the same height:
Cycle through four preset track
heights while keeping the relative
sizes of each track:
Drag the divider
Shift-Drag any track divider
Option-drag any audio or video
track divider
Press one of the four ‘impossibly
small’ buttons at the bottom of
the Timeline The ‘impossibly small’ buttons get their revenge
Press Shift-T or Option-click on
one of the four ‘impossibly small’
buttons at the bottom of
the Timeline

The Fast Way to Delete Empty Tracks

If you’re tidying up a sequence and have many empty tracks, then deleting
each track individually may take a while. Fortunately there’s a handy way to
delete multiple tracks built right into Final Cut Pro.
1 Choose Sequence > Delete Tracks.
2 Enable deletion of empty video and/or audio tracks as required and
press OK.
Choosing the All Empty Tracks option will delete all tracks that are empty,
regardless of where they are in the stack.
The All Empty Tracks at End of Sequence option is a little confusingly
named. It will only delete empty tracks if they are at the outside of the track
stack, so any empty tracks that lie between used tracks are unaffected.

Chapter 4: Basic Editing Page 9

Track Patching
As well as the regular way of patching video tracks by dragging the source
track up or down, a super quick way to patch the V1 source track is by
simply clicking on the desired video destination track. As a bonus, if the
V1 source track was previously disconnected, it will automatically become
connected at the same time.

Track patching can also be set from the keyboard:

Patch v1 source track: Press F6 then the destination track number

Before After clicking V1
Patch a1 source track: Press F7 then the destination track number
Patch a2 source track: Press F8 then the destination track number

It’s possible to disconnect tracks by using these shortcuts:

Disconnect v1: Press Shift-F6 or F6 then “0”

Disconnect a1: Press Shift-F7 or F7 then “0”
Disconnect a2: Press Shift-F8 or F8 then “0”

Track patching can be reset to the default v1-V1, a1-A1 and a2-A2 state by
right-clicking on any Auto Select or Lock button and choosing Reset Panel
from the shortcut menu.
Finally, if a multitrack source clip or sequence is loaded in the Viewer, then
tracks on the source are only displayed if there are enough tracks in the
destination. So what can you do if you’ve got a source clip with 8 tracks of
audio but only a 6 track sequence and need to patch a8 on the source to
A6 on the destination?
Simple. Right-click on the A6 destination track and you’ll see a shortcut
menu with all the available source tracks for the current clip in the Viewer.
Choose A8 and the track will be patched.

Chapter 4: Basic Editing Page 10

Instant Play Rate
Many editors love using the JKL keys for navigating through a clip or
sequence at different speeds but aren’t aware that it’s also possible to
access the fast playback speeds directly from other keys on the keyboard.
If you open the keyboard layout window (Tools > Keyboard Layout >
Customize) and search for “rate” you’ll see a list of 12 playback rates from -6
to +6. These rates match the speeds available with JKL, so a play rate of 1 is
normal, 2 is 2x speed, 3 is 4x speed and so on, up to a top speed of 32x.
By default, all but one of these commands are mapped to the Control-F2
to F12 keys but beware…some of these key combinations are assigned by
Mac OS X and it always takes priority over Final Cut Pro. With this in mind,
you may want to remap these commands to use the Option key instead as
shown here.

Timeline Scrolling with the Mouse

Move the mouse into the Timeline and move the ball left or right to scroll
the timeline area. Just like mouse jogging, you can hold down the Option
key to gear up and scroll faster.

Timeline Scrolling from the Keyboard

This is the same as paging through the Timeline by clicking to the left or
right of the horizontal scroll bar...but much faster. It also works during
playback which can be useful.
Press Shift-Page Up to scroll the timeline to the left.
Press Shift-Page Down to scroll the timeline to the right.

Chapter 4: Basic Editing Page 11

The Finer Points of Timeline Zooming
Press Shift-Z to show all clips in the sequence.
Press Shift-Option-Z to zoom to selected clips.
With the Zoom In Tool selected, you can temporarily swap to the
Zoom Out Tool by pressing the Option key.
Get a close up view of the Timeline by mapping the Zoom 800%
command to a key.

This shortcut also works for zooming to 800% in the Viewer and Canvas
window so be careful that the Timeline is active!
Press Option-Minus or Option-Plus to zoom the Timeline even with
the Viewer or Canvas windows active. This can be very timesaving but
be aware that just like the Command-Minus/Plus shortcut, if there is
a clip or edit selected, then the playhead position will be ignored and
the Timeline will zoom to the selected item.
Another very welcome zoom command that was introduced with
Final Cut Pro 6.0.2 is Zoom In/Out on Playhead in Timeline. This has
the advantage that it always zooms around the playhead position
even if a clip or edit is selected. It isn’t mapped to the keyboard by
default, so you may want to remap it to the Option-Minus/Plus keys.

The Mysterious Case of the Lost Playhead

If you’ve ever scrolled the Timeline and wondered how to move it back to
the current playhead location, then press the Left or Right arrow buttons
and the playhead will scroll into view.

Chapter 4: Basic Editing Page 12

Clip Enable
Many editors are familiar with enabling and disabling tracks using the
green buttons, but one of the most useful editing features in Final Cut Pro
is the ability to enable or disable individual video and audio clips.
1 Select the clip or clips you want to disable.
2 Press Control-B
The disabled clips will be shown in a darker colour on the timeline. Pressing
Control-B again will enable the selected clips again.
A disabled video or audio clip remains in the same place but is not played
back, rendered or exported. This feature is particularly useful for trying out
different cutaways or music in a sequence by stacking them up on separate
tracks and enabling clips as required.
Another use for Clip Enable is for breaking links to render files if results
aren’t what they should be. Select the clip(s) then press Control-B twice to
disable then enable the clip. The links to any render files on the selected
clips will now be broken so you can try rendering again.

Disabled clip

Edit Jumping
The Up and Down keys move the Playhead to the previous/next edit across
all tracks as well as the sequence in and out points if they are set. So what if
you’re adding a series of transitions and want the playhead to only jump to
edits on a certain track? Here’s a workaround.
1 Select an edit on the desired track.
2 With an edit selected, the Up and Down keys now select the previous
or next edit on that track alone and take the Playhead along for
the ride.

Chapter 4: Basic Editing Page 13

Making, Managing and Moving Markers
There are two types of markers in Final Cut Pro – clip markers and
sequence markers.
Clip markers are locked to a particular frame in a source clip and can be
added either in the Viewer or to a clip in a sequence. When dealing with
clip markers in a sequence there are a few things to bear in mind.
To add, edit or delete a clip marker you must have the clip selected.
Note that the master clip in the Browser will not update when you
add a clip marker in a sequence.
When using the Shift-Up/Down arrows or Option-M/Shift-M keyboard
shortcuts to move the playhead to the previous/next marker, the
playhead will only stop at clip markers on selected clips. If you want
the playhead to stop at any clip marker then press Command-A to
select all clips before using the keyboard shortcuts.
If you right-click on a sequence clip then a list of its clip markers will
be shown at the bottom of the shortcut menu. Select one and the
playhead will move to it.

Bear in mind that this is a list of all the clip markers, not just those visible
in the currently used portion of the clip, so the playhead may shoot off to
some seemingly random timecode if you select a marker that isn’t visible.

Sequence markers are locked to a particular frame in a sequence.

If you right-click on the current timecode field in the Canvas or
Timeline or anywhere on the Timeline’s timecode ruler, a list of
sequence markers will be shown at the bottom of the shortcut menu.
Select one and the Playhead will move to it.

Chapter 4: Basic Editing Page 14

For both clip and sequence markers, the following shortcuts can be useful.
Press Command-` (grave key) to delete the clip or sequence marker at
the current playhead location.
Press Control-` to delete all markers on the current clip or sequence.
Press Shift-` to move the nearest marker on the left hand side of the
playhead to the current playhead location.
Press Option-Command-M to edit the nearest marker on the left hand
side of the playhead.
This last shortcut only works with sequence markers and does strange things if
clips are selected.
If you’re using markers to quickly identify interesting sections on a source
clip but want to avoid the complications of subclips, then see Fast Copying
of Timecode Fields on Page 15. This allows you to use the marker list in the
Browser as a reference, then locate the master clip to a marker’s timecode
by Option-dragging it from the Browser’s In point column to the current
timecode field in the Viewer.

Closing All Sequences

Got too many sequences open and want to clear the decks a bit? There’s
no need to close each sequence individually, just close the Canvas window
and all the open sequences will be closed.

Chapter 4: Basic Editing Page 15

 Starting with a Blank Slate Selecting Multiple Items Making a Fast
Closing Tabs from the Keyboard Useful Folders Time Machine for a Clip
Importing Image Sequences DPI and Video Mouse-Free Browsing Sel
Ready to Edit Importing Files or Folders Directly into a Bin Dabbling with D
Mixing Aspect Ratios Exporting Multiple Still Images Custom Video G
Zip It Up Moving Items to the Top Level of a Bin or Project Fast Copying
The Complete Guide to Delete, Cut, Copy and Paste Exporting a Single Still Ima
Going Large Quickly Changing Properties for Multiple Clips Super Quick
Adding Audio Keyframes from the Keyboard Real-Time Audio Syncing
Normalize This Quick Filters Editing Moving Clips to Start at a Specific
Counting Clips Demystifying the RT Popup Menu Adding Transition
GET OVER

150
Previewing Non-RT Effects Scale Attribute Times Jumping to Ke
Comparing QuickTime Export Choices Reference vs Self-Contained
Nudging a Clip in the Canvas Exporting a Movie with Multiple Au
Waveforms Gone AWOL? Super Fast Importing Viewing Alpha Tr

MORE TIPS No Nesting Viewing Both Fields in the Canvas Interactive Point
IN THE COMPLETE BOOK Using Replace Edit to Sync and Overwrite Finding Timeline Clips
Super Fast Effects Editing with Playhead Sync Pasting Clips to Differen
BUY NOW Quickly Trimming the Previous Edit Selection Tool vs Roll Tool Trim
Recording Multiple Takes with the Voiceover Tool Mute and Solo Aud
Scaling a Clip to Fit the Sequence Saving Custom Effects Fading
Become a Blade All Ninja Slipping a Clip in the Trim Edit Window To
Alpha Types Gimme More Gain Adjusting Audio Levels During Playbac
Martin Baker
Martin is the Founder and Managing Director Final Cut Pro Killer Secrets (Sample Chapter)
of Digital Heaven, one of the leading third party Written and designed by Martin Baker
developers for Final Cut Pro and Motion. Supermeet Edition – Published 21st April 2009
Publisher: Digital Heaven Ltd
After starting his editing career at the BBC, he worked
www.digital-heaven.co.uk
as a freelancer through the nineties on music concerts,
promos and graphics intensive short form projects
using a wide variety of systems - from tape editing to Lightworks and Company registered in England and Wales:
Avid Media Composer. Digital Heaven Ltd
55 Lynwood Drive
In 2000, he set up Digital Heaven as a post production facility and Worcester Park
designed, specified and supervised the installation of the company’s Surrey
infrastructure and edit suites in West London. As the company’s Senior KT4 7AE
United Kingdom
Editor, Martin worked on projects for the BBC and other broadcasters
using Avid Symphony and DS. He gained extensive multicamera editing
experience through music performances for T4 and major projects such To report errors please email info@digital-heaven.co.uk
as The Fast Show Farewell Tour.
In 2003, he made industry headlines by switching the company from Avid Final Cut Pro is a trademark of Apple Inc.
to Final Cut Pro. Martin was responsible for post production on the iconic
weekly BBC music show, ‘Top of the Pops’ for the next two years. © 2009 Digital Heaven Ltd
In the same year, he moved into software development and launched All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced
a range of Final Cut Pro plug-ins. These were followed by a number of or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information
highly innovative and unique Mac OS X applications including the first storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing
multicamera editing solution for Final Cut Pro. from the publisher.
Recent years have seen Martin involved in website design and
development with the launch of avid2fcp.com in 2007 and a new
community site for editors due for launch in Spring 2009.
Martin has been an Apple Certified Trainer for Final Cut Pro since 2006.
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