Hello you beautiful soul, my name is Dylan John Dickerson and after watching
this video I can promise you that you’ll become a better and more proficient Final Cut Pro editor.
The first thing that you’re probably doing wrong is not utilizing the ‘save effects
preset’ feature. How is this feature useful? Check this out. Let’s say that when you edit,
you usually use the same effects, whether that be the same color grade, the same LUTs, maybe you add
sharpening to every clip. And for audio, maybe you usually use the same audio effects as well.
Instead of having to individually drag every effect that you usually use, when you start a
new project, click ‘save effects preset’ at the bottom of your inspector window. I’ll change the
category to custom, I’ll rename it. And when I go into my effects browser and head into custom,
all I have to do is drag this onto any clip I want, and I’ll automatically have all
the effects I usually like at the settings I’d like them at. The same goes for audio.
Save effects preset. Change the category and the name. And then just head down to
the audio effects or use the search bar to find that preset. This is a HUGE time saver.
The second thing that you’re probably doing wrong is not utilizing snapshots. So let me
ask you this. What happens when you can get to a point in your project where some big
changes are about to be made, and you have no idea if you’ll end up liking it later on?
Well, you can duplicate the project so you can edit the new changes in one of those projects,
but the issue is that once you edit a multicam clip or a compound clip, those changes will
be made to both projects. A duplicated project is tied to the original in that way.
This is where snapshots become really handy. Take a snapshot of your project by right clicking
and hitting snapshot project and it essentially freezes how your project looks at that moment.
If you make changes to any compound or multicam clips, it WILL NOT affect the compound or multicam
clips in the snapshot. It’ll even tell you the time and date of the freezing. If down the road,
you decide, damn these changes that I’ve made look horrible. I wish that I had that old version. Just
revert to the snapshot that you created at the right date and time and you’ll have everything
exactly how it was. This is really great for making what are essetentially ‘drafts’. If you
complete a rough edit, take a snapshot, if you complete color grading, snapshot, sound design,
snapshot. That way, you have easily accessible references of how your project developed.
The third thing that you’re probably doing wrong is still accessing your sound effects and music
from outside of Final Cut Pro. Nothing takes more time than dragging in a sound effect, listening to
it, realizing it doesn’t work, and then heading back outside of Final Cut to find one that does.
And you’re doing all of this just relying on a title while you’re outside of FCP. Well look at
this. I have all of my sound effects that I’ve ever saved, bought, and downloaded in Final
Cut Pro so I can quickly see the waveform, I can easily play the sound effect, I have all my search
functions enabled. This hack, no joke, maybe saves me hours or editing. Here’s how you can
set this up. Make a main folder with all of your sound effects. Right click and hit make alias.
This is basically a folder that’s attached to your main sound effect folder, so if you add more
sfx to the 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.
The fourth thing you’re doing wrong is using a gap clip to get rid of the magnetic timeline.
The magnetic timeline is one of the things that makes Final Cut Pro the fastest and
most efficient editing software and I highly suggest you learn to use it to your benefit.
Let me give you some quick tips that will prevent some hairpulling if it’s been
bothering you. As you may know, deleting a clip that has media connected to it,
will delete that media with it. Don’t move the sound effects and then delete. Instead, use the
grave key, also known as the tilde key, this orange icon will pop up, and then press delete.
Those sound effects or whatever media is attached will stay in that location. If you don’t see this
key on your keyboard btw, I’ll link a video in the description that shows you how to set this feature
up on your keyboard. Here’s another example. Hold down the tilde key and now you can drag any clip
you want freely. If you don’t like how the clip snaps together by way of the magnetic timeline,
maybe you want to put something in that spot on the timeline, press the shortcut P,
so you use the position tool, then hold the grave key and move that clip. Also, little
side note. If you want to change the connection point of connected media, click off it and then
select it while holding option and command. These are just a few of the ways that you can
work with the magnetic timeline and not against it. It’s an amazing feature guys. I promise you.
The fifth thing you’re doing wrong is not using your video scopes when color grading. I just did
a video recently on correcting skin tones and most people would have no idea that his skin
tones here are not correct if they didn’t use the vectorscope. Just by cropping into his skin, and
looking at the skin tone indicator line, we can see that it’s off, and we can make the adjustment
so his skin is the actual color of his skin. I did a really in depth, although slightly fast paced,
video on learning the ins and outs of video scopes so I’ll link that in the description. Definitely
check it out if you’d like better and more accurate color grades. I’d also highly suggest
using ‘range check’ which can be found by going to view, and then range check. This tells you
when your shot is overexposed or underexposed by way of zebras that pop up. Also a very handy tool.
The 6th thing you’re doing wrong is not utilizing custom keyboard shortcuts to help speed up your
editing in Final Cut Pro. Besides the inclusion of adding my sound effects into my software,
the way I’ve vastly increased my editing time is by creating custom keyboard shortcuts. So for
example, in the past, I’d have to find command and then hit B to make an immediate cut in my footage.
But by pressing option command k, duplicating the default keyboard, creating a custom keyboard,
searching blade, and swapping command B for B, and vise versa now all I have to do is press a single,
easy key to make a cut. And it doesn’t stop with that shortcut. I’ve made - and + the shortcut to
lower and raise the volume a single decibel. And I've made quite a few other changes actually. I’ll link a video of
of mine in the description that goes over 3 of my favorite custom keyboard shortcuts.
The 7th thing you’re doing wrong is when it comes to replaying your footage. Chances are that if you
just made some changes to a clip, maybe you added a title, a transition, a speed ramp maybe, and you
want to go back and see how it looks when it plays out. You could take the time to go to a position,
press the space bar and then return to that point if you want to make further changes,
OR you can press the shortcut, shift and question mark. This will play out your timeline a few
seconds before your playhead, play that part that you’re editing and play through that point
for a few seconds after your playhead. Then it’ll return to your playhead position so if you didn’t
like the changes you made, you can quickly adjust them. I realize that these tips in this section
seem like they shave off only a little bit of time, but trust me when I say that all these
little shavings of time can add up to create a big heap of time saved. Little side note with this
tip, I added this as a custom keyboard shortcut by changing it just to the question mark key.
The 8th thing you’re doing wrong is keeping background render on
in your preferences. Press command and comma, which brings up your preferences, go to playback, and turn this off. Not only will this
slow down your computer while you’re editing, but it’ll also cause your libraries to become
absolutely massive in size. And frankly, it’s not really needed because Final cut will just render
out your project when you export. Now if there’s a clip that’s giving you some issues with playback,
what I usually do is select that clip and press the shortcut Control and R. This renders just
that specific clip so you can have smoother playback. If you’re saying behind your computer,
but Dylan, my computer is old and it can’t handle my new camera’s footage. I have to
background render. No you don’t. Instead, make proxy files. Click on the clip or clips
you want to run smoother in your library, right click and hit transcode media. Then hit, create
proxy media. And the option you select here is totally going to depend on how slow your computer
is and how much storage you have. Generally speaking, creating pro res proxy files at 50%
is going to offer you better performance while editing compared to native camera footage
and it’s going to do a good job at keeping decent resolution in your viewport. If that confuses you,
basically, all this does is create temporary files that are easier for FCP to edit. So
after it transcodes, you’ll go to view and proxy only, IF you created proxy files for all your
media. You’ll see here that since I didn’t transcode these surrounding clips, they're not showing up. Only the transcoded clips are showing up and
transcoding them will allow us to edit them easier. All you have to do is
switch back to optimized/original media before you export and you’re set.
Now if it’s one or a few particular clips that are having trouble, like in this example,
make proxies for that clip or clips and then go to view and proxy preferred. I would actually just hit this most of the time instead of proxy only. This will allow you to
see both the original media AND all the proxy media on the timeline, which is pretty handy.
The 9th thing you might be doing wrong in Final Cut is adjusting audio in this manner. You’ll
struggle to raise or lower the audio to the right decibel. It’s way too fidgety. And when
you want to lower a certain part of the audio, either you don’t know how, or you cut it and
then lower that cut section. Well fear not fellow editor, it’s simple. For precise
adjustments with your audio, hold down command and drag up or down. This will greatly reduce
how fast Final cut raises and lowers the volume of your audio. It’s a night and day difference.
If you want to lower or raise a specific section of your audio, let’s say there’s
a loud part that’s just too much, pull up the Range tool by pressing R, select that section,
and then press the shortcut, control and minus to lower a decibel
or control and plus to raise a decibel. Remember, I adjusted these keys as custom keyboard shortcuts
so I just have to press plus plus plus or minus minus minus to adjust by one decibel.
The last and final thing, and thank you for sticking around if you have, I appreciate you, is
not utilizing Final Cut’s organizational features. This is one of my favorite things about the
software, alongside the magnetic timeline. For one, while perusing your footage in your library,
you can press the shortcut F to favorite a clip. Then you can easily find all of the clips that you
like after clicking favorites in this drop down menu. You can select a clip or clips, hit command
K and type in keywords that could help you find clips like that down the road while editing. Then
you have specific folders tom make it much easier for you when you're editing. And last thing and probably my favorite way
to utilize FCP’s organizational features, you can create a new smart collection, rename it,
double click the gear icon, hit the plus sign,
and click ratings. Now this smart collection will have all of your favorited clips in it. But wait,
there’s more. Hit the plus sign again, and hit used media. Then switch this to
unused. Now you’ll have every single clip that you favorited and have not used in your project,
in one, easy to access location.
I hope you guys enjoyed this. And if you did, if you found this at least a little bit useful,
do me a huge favor and leave a comment down below and hit the thumbs up button. And if you want to see a video
on 10 FREE Final Cut Pro plugins, click this video right here. Have a great rest of your day guys.