Today, we’re going to go through all Final Cut Pro settings,
briefly go over what each setting does,
and what defaults I recommend changing.
There is two ways to bring up Final Cut Pro’s settings window.
You can go up to the menu bar,
click on Final Cut Pro and select settings,
or use the keyboard shortcut Command Comma.
Lets start in the General Tab.
The first setting you can adjust is time display,
and it’s fairly straightforward.
This decides the time displayed under the viewer window.
Your options here are timecode display,
timecode display with subframes,
duration in frames, or duration in seconds.
Under this we have a button to reset all dialog warnings.
These are the popups you get every once in a while,
with the do not remind me again option.
Clicking this button will bring them all back.
Next we have a button to Validate All Audio Units on Next Launch.
If you’re having issues with third party audio plugins,
clicking this button will force Final Cut Pro to validate
all installed third party Audio Units next time you launch it.
Final Cut Pro will perform a series of tests
to verify that each Audio Unit, or plugin,
is operating correctly, and notifies you if any fail.
If you’re having issues with audio in Final Cut Pro,
this is a great way to test whether third party plugins
are causing your issues them.
Inspector units let’s you select what values are displayed in the inspector
for the Transform, Crop and Distort tools.
Your options are pixels and percentages.
I find percentages to be very inconsistent here,
so I recommend sticking to pixels.
For example, when using the crop tool, with percentages,
if you crop off 50 percent of the right side,
only a quarter of your frame gets cropped off,
but if you crop off 50 percent off the top,
half your frame is cropped.
If you know your project resolution,
and have either basic math skills or a calculator, stick to pixels.
Under this we have the first setting where I recommend changing the default,
Color Correction.
This is the default set of tools you get when you go to the color inspector.
By default, this is set to color board, but let’s face it,
no-one likes using color board.
Studies show that over ninety percent of Final Cut Pro users prefer color wheels,
so changing this default to color wheels
will save you two clicks each time to go to the color inspector.
You can also set this to Color Curves, Hue/Saturation Curves or Color Adjustments,
which is actually a good alternative to color wheels, especially for beginners.
And last, in the General Tab is Automatic Color Conform for HDR clips.
With this set to automatic, if you add a clip to a project
that has a different color space, like adding an HDR clip to a SDR project,
the clips color space will automatically be converted
to the same color space as the project.
Let’s move onto the editing tab.
First up here is a couple timeline settings.
The Show Detailed Trimming Feedback decides what you see
in the viewer window when editing your clips.
With this option deselected,
when you change the edit point in your timeline,
you see only the clip you’re editing.
Selecting this checkbox shows you a two up display in the viewer,
for more accurate feedback on the edit point.
For example, on a roll edit,
this display shows the end point of the left clip and the start point of the right clip,
giving you much more precision on deciding where to place your cut.
Position playhead after edit operation
is another setting I strongly recommend changing.
By default, this is turned on,
so if you have your playhead at a specific place in the timeline,
and you add a title for example,
your playhead is moved to the end of the title clip.
If you want to preview what the clip you added looks like,
you have to scroll back in your timeline.
Turn this off.
Now, your playhead doesn’t move,
so you can make your edit, and preview what it looks like
without your hands leaving the keyboard.
Under this, we have Show Reference waveforms.
With this turned off, when you turn down the volume of your clips,
the actual audio waveform changes shape.
With this option turned on, you get a reference waveform in the background
that lets you see the sound more clearly,
so you can continue to see audio waveforms in full
for easy reference when editing, even with the volume turned down.
This setting is off by default, but I strongly suggest turning it on.
Next, we have 4 settings for default durations.
First one is for audio fades.
This is when you apply fades to the start and end of your clip.
Next one is the default duration for audio crossfades between two clips.
Still Image setting is to set the default duration, in seconds,
for still-image and freeze-frame clips.
And the transition value is to set the default duration for video transitions.
The Playback tab has a number of settings that affect the playback
and rendering performance in Final Cut Pro.
First up is background render.
Any time you modify a clip in your timeline,
Final Cut Pro creates a render file, for better playback performance.
The problem is, these render files can make your Final Cut Pro library huge.
Most of the time, especially if you have a mac with apple silicon,
you don’t need to render everything, so turn this off.
When you do run into playback issues,
and you see a dotted line above your clip,
meaning this needs to be rendered,
you can just select the clip, and manually render it with Control R.
Rendering only the clips you need
can save you a ton of space on your hard drive.
If you are on an older machine and do need to render most clips,
I recommend changing the Start After time.
This is the amount of idle time before Final Cut Pro starts rendering.
By default, this is set to 0.3 seconds,
meaning any time you pause editing for less than half of second,
Final Cut Pro starts rendering clips in the background.
Then, as soon as you start editing again, the rendering pauses.
This constant stopping and starting can make Final Cut Pro respond slower,
which at times can get a bit frustrating.
I would recommend changing this to at least 5 seconds,
so when you do take a break,
all the necessary clips will get rendered,
without the unnecessary starting and stopping.
The render/share GPU setting
decides which graphics processing unit Final Cut Pro uses
when rendering or sharing.
On most newer machines this setting is greyed out.
Under this, we have a number of playback options.
Scrolling timeline setting scrolls your timeline during playback,
so that the timeline always shows the section of your project
playing in the viewer.
I always turn this on.
Optimized media for multicam clips, is a lot like background rendering.
With this selected, Final Cut Pro automatically transcodes multicam clips
to Apple Pro Res 422.
This provides better performance during playback,
but the file sizes are huge.
I recommend turning this off,
and only transcoding multicam clips when absolutely necessary.
The next three settings are for when Final Cut Pro
can’t playback your clips in real time,
and drops frames. I turn all three of these off.
Pre and post roll duration value
set the amount of time before and after the skimmer position
when using the play around command.
For example, if you make an edit in your timeline,
and want to see what it looks like,
pressing Shift Forward Slash will play back a section of your timeline,
from 2 seconds before the playhead to two seconds after.
These times can be adjusted with the Pre and Post duration sliders.
Player background is just what it sounds like.
This setting let’s you choose a background for the viewer.
Your options are Black, White, or checkerboard.
This is only for editing,
and does not effect your exported clips.
Any transparency will always show up black during exports,
unless your export codec has an alpha channel.
The A/V Output popup menu
is for when you have an external audio or video device
or monitor connected to your mac.
This popup menu lets you send video and audio from your Mac
to an external video monitor.
This feature shows you how video and audio look and sound
on a reference SDR or HDR video monitor.
The Show HDR as tone mapped option
reduces the dynamic range of your video
to match the display you have connected.
Next, let’s take a look at the import options.
Whatever settings you set up in this window will be set as defaults.
So, when you import video by clicking the import button,
these are the settings that will be selected by default.
Also, any media you drag into Final Cut Pro,
will have these settings applied to it.
First, is the option to Copy Files to library or Leave Files in place.
The Copy to Library Storage Location option
makes a copy of your media, and stores it inside the Final Cut Pro library.
This does take up more space on your drive,
but since everything is contained inside the Final Cut Pro library,
you don’t have to worry about accidentally deleting
or moving your media.
If you import your media and Leave Files in Place,
Final Cut Pro makes symbolic links, also known as symlinks,
which are special files that point to the media files
without copying them.
Since your media is never copied into the Final Cut Pro library,
your library size will remain minimal,
but if you move, rename or delete the original files,
the link is broken, and you end up with missing media in your project.
For majority of people, the best option here
is to Copy Files to Library and delete the original files after import.
This way everything you need is in the Final Cut Pro library itself,
and you don’t have to worry about any missing media.
Next is keyword options.
If you have your media organized in folders, or with tags,
these folders or tags
will be converted into keyword collections in Final Cut Pro.
This is one of my favourite ways to organize my media.
When you import media into Final Cut Pro,
you are also given the option to analyze video for Balance Color.
Selecting this option will analyze colors in your entire clip during import.
When you add a clip to your timeline,
and select the Balance Color option, in an analyzed clip,
Final Cut Pro will choose a frame within the part of the clip
in your timeline that is closest to being correctly balanced,
and adjust your colors based on that frame.
If you don’t analyze your clip,
Final Cut Pro will balance color based on the frame your playhead is on.
Generally, if you use automatic color balance correction in Final Cut Pro,
you will get a better result on analyzed clips.
You can also analyze your clips in Final Cut Pro
for the number of people and shot types.
After analyzing the clip,
Final Cut Pro will add appropriate keywords to entire clips or clip ranges.
One Person, Two People or Group,
Close Up, Medium Shot or Wide Shot.
Selecting Create Smart Collections will group the similar clip types
into Smart Collections making the clips easier to find.
This can be really handy on large projects like documentaries.
Under this, you have a few options to transcode your media.
To keep file sizes manageable,
most modern cameras record in compressed formats.
This allows recording high quality video to memory cards with limited storage.
These compressed formats are fine for playback,
but can be hard to edit, especially on older machines.
Transcoding these files to optimized or proxy media
can significantly increase performance during editing.
Create Optimized media transcodes your video clips
to an Apple Pro Res 422 codec.
This retains your video’s original quality,
including video resolution and frame rate, but file sizes can get huge.
Optimized media is much easier to edit,
but it will not improve your original videos quality.
Proxy Media files are quite a bit smaller,
but you do loose quality when editing.
You can choose to transcode your media to either Apple Pro Res 422 Proxy codec,
or h.264, and either retain the original frame size,
drop it down to a percentage,
or set it to max out at a specific resolution.
But this is just during the editing stage.
When you export your video, you can switch back to Original media
and not lose any video quality.
Under this we have three audio analysis options.
Fix Audio Problems analyzes your audio
and automatically fixes common problems like hum, noise and loudness.
Separate Mono and Group Stereo analyzes audio channels
and groups them as dual mono or stereo,
depending on the results of the analysis.
Remove Silent channels does exactly what it says.
It removes any silent audio channels.
Any audio imported into Final Cut Pro,
has one of the three default audio roles automatically assigned to it.
Dialogue, Music or Effects.
You can override this feature, and manually specify which audio role
is assigned to your clips.
If your audio has iXML tags assigned to it,
selecting this checkbox will bring these into Final Cut Pro
and assign custom subroles to your clips based on these tags.
And last, but not least is the destination tab.
This is where you can add, remove and modify your export presets.
Use the plus or minus buttons at the bottom of the destinations sidebar
to add or remove share presets.
To modify an existing share preset, select it in the sidebar,
and change the presets settings on the right.
To change a preset back to it’s default settings,
right click on the preset in the sidebar
and click Revert to Original Settings.
You can also set up an export bundle
and add two or more destinations to it
to export a few different versions of your project in a single step.
I hope this video was at least a bit helpful,
and you learned at least one or two things you didn’t know.
If you did, give this video a thumbs up
and I’ll see you in the next one.