Well hello there!
My name is Dylan and let’s cut out the fluff and get straight into these 3 hacks.
I know this first hack is going to help minimize a lot of frustration for some of you.
Let me know if it does.
Isn’t this annoying?
When Final Cut doesn’t let you add a transition between clips?
You may already know that the reason is because there’s no more media left on the end of
one of those clips, or both.
That’s what this red edge represents.
And the transition needs extra media for it to work.
Now you could trim the clip so then the transition will have media to work with, but maybe you
want that part of the clip that you just trimmed to be visible in the project.
Maybe you pressed record and immediately started speaking, leaving no room to trim at all.
So try this out.
Select the clip and press the shortcut, option command and up arrow to lift that clip from
the primary storyline.
Head to the end of the clip and go a frame over and hit the shortcut Shift H. to make
a hold frame.
This basically pauses your clip on that frame for however long you want.
Then you just go to the end of that gap clip and trim your clip by pressing option and
right bracket or just trimming manually.
Then blast that clip back down into the primary storyline by pressing option command and down
arrow this time.
Now when you drag the transition between the clips, you won’t get the warning since the
transition is using the media in the hold frame.
The nice thing is, the vast majority of the time, you won’t be able to tell that the
clip is paused.
The fact that you made a hold frame will not be noticeable.
The only time you might be able to tell is if the transition is a really long one.
I use this hack in almost every edit one way or another.
Hack number 2 is the best way to access your personal, downloaded sound effects from directly
within Final Cut Pro.
It’s annoying to have to head to another folder outside of Final Cut Pro to drag in
sound effects.
It takes a lot of time and you can’t preview the sound effects without clicking on them.
Do this instead.
Go to the folder that has all of your sound effects.
And if you don’t have one, I suggest creating one.
After you’ve done that, right click the folder and hit make alias.
This is basically a folder that’s attached to your main sound effect folder, so if you
add more sfx into this main folder, the alias folder will get them too.
Copy this by pressing Command C. Then go to your hard drive, usually Macintosh / Library
/ Audio / Apple Loops / Apple/ Final Cut Pro Sound Effects, and press Command V to paste
that alias folder you copied.
Now you’ll have all of your sound effects easily accessible within the software.
And by the way, I’ve gotten a few comments from people saying they don’t see the Final
Cut Pro sound effects folder.
If you’re using a trial version you might not.
And if you’re not using a trial version, try this.
Hit final cut pro in the top left and select download additional content.
You may be able to download the sound effects folder that way.
The last hack is one I learned from my long haired buddy Dylan Bates, The Final Cut Bro.
Let’s say you own quite a few plugins but you only really use a few presets from each
one consistently.
For example in your videos, you may use a specific title from one plugin alll the time
and another title from another plugin.
It’s a pain to have to remember which pack those titles are in and it’s annoying having
to scroll through all the different presets to find them.
Check this out though.
Head to your motion templates folder which can be found by going to movies, and clicking
motion templates.
And just for this example let’s adjust our titles.
Create a new folder in your titles.
And label it favorites.
In order to get this folder to sit at the top, add a little something before the word
favorites.
So you can press control command and space to bring up your emojis window, add a star,
and now this folder will be sitting at the top of your titles.
Then what you’ll do is go through your titles and find the presets that you use the most.
So for example I use Pro Zooms and Pro Burns from one of Dylan Bates plugins a lot.
And to make this process easier, open up a duplicate finder window.
And then open up the favorites folder.
Then you’ll just go through and find the presets you use the most, and copy them by
pressing Command C, and paste them by pressing Command V. Then when you go back into Final
Cut and head to the top of your titles, you’ll see you have the favorite folder with all
the different presets that you use frequently.
A huge time saver.
You can do this for your effects and your transitions as well.
And for those who are annoyed at how they are automatically placed in little sections
in the folder, here’s a tip to fix that.
Pop into the preset, find the Motion file, right click and hit ‘open with’.
And select ‘other’.
Type in Textedit.
All one word.
Press Command F to find a keyword and search ‘theme’.
You then can delete or rename whatever title is in the middle of this theme sandwich which
will translate over to Final Cut.
We’ll just delete it for this example.
And then press done.
Once you’ve done this for all the presets that were in their own section and you open
up Final Cut again, you’ll notice all of them sitting nice and neat right next to each
other.
Consider subscribing if you haven’t already and check out this video all about cinematic
sound design within Final Cut Pro.
Have a great day guys.