- There are a lot of ways to improve your workflow process
in Final Cut Pro.
So let's look at some of the pros
of using presets in your workflow.
Ready, preset, go.
(the best royalty free intro music you've ever heard)
If you're still here despite that intro, thank you.
And more importantly,
if you're somebody who uses Final Cut Pro regularly,
but you're not using presets,
I can pretty much guarantee that you're adding in
a lot of extra time and work to your workflow.
So let's work on getting rid of that
and streamlining some stuff.
We're gonna jump in and talk about
how to create and use presets.
Then I will show you how to organize and share presets.
And then we can even talk about the difference
between a preset and the LUT,
because even though they kind of seem
like they do the same thing,
there is actually a lot that sets them apart.
So I've created a sample timeline in Final Cut Pro
with a couple of clips that I have not adjusted yet.
If you're not familiar with presets, to get to them,
you just go to the effects window,
the effects pallet thingy, and click that.
And it will open up.
I've created a custom category,
and that's where all of my presets live.
And I create presets for lots of different things.
And just like with any effect or anything,
you can click on a clip and then mouse over your preset
to see how it would look applied to that clip.
So you can see all these different things
like have even made this picture
in picture preset right here.
So since most of my videos
are filmed with the same equipment,
the same lighting and the same environment,
it's pretty easy to just have created one preset
that I really like and then apply that to all my footage,
and I'm ready to go.
Now, what you don't wanna do,
is start going through your clip
and then editing it and adjusting it
because now I've turned that one clip
into four or five different clips,
and any adjustments I make,
I'm gonna have to go through
and make to all those different clips
or create a new preset to add to that.
So, to just make things simpler,
before I start any cut editing,
cut editing, any cutting in my editing,
that's where I'm going to add in my preset.
So this clip that you're looking at right now
is from the Sony A7S3.
And this is just with the default picture profile.
There's nothing fancy happening here.
It's not S-LOG,
it's just straight out of the camera
and it actually looks pretty decent.
I really do like the way that Sony cameras
handle blues and greens.
And since my environment is predominantly blue,
it really blew me away how good it looked
when I added this preset.
And I've got this preset right here called main one.
And that is my main one that I use for all of my videos.
So I just drag that on top of this footage.
I could also just double click on the preset to add it.
And now you can see quite a difference.
If I undo it,
that's what it looked like before everything was added.
And if I redo it, that's what it looked like afterwards.
And you might've noticed that before I added the preset,
there were these black bars
on the left and right of the screen.
And that's because the camera records
in a 16:9 aspect ratio.
But I upload and publish my YouTube videos
in a 2:1 aspect ratio,
which is just a little narrower and a little bit wider.
And I like that because it fits mobile devices
a little bit better.
And I also just personally like the framing
of that aspect ratio more.
So then when I add the preset,
those black bars go away
and the clip fills the entire frame.
If you wanna know how to do the two to one aspect ratio,
I did do an entire video all about that,
it's a pretty simple process, and I really like it.
I've been doing it for like a year and a half or more
at this point.
The only thing I need to adjust
since I really like the way these colors look,
is the framing because my head
and my hair is getting cut off here.
So I can just click on the video settings
and adjust the Y axis right there.
And I usually just bring it down
so that the top of my head or my hair,
is just below the top of the frame.
And that's it.
And now I can go through and cut up this clip
and edit it the same way I would any normal clip
I have applied that preset.
So what's included in the preset that I have put together
is a color board adjustment that plays with the exposure.
There's also a color wheels adjustment
that plays with some of the saturation
and some of the coloring.
And then there's also this 114% crop.
So that's what pushes it in
and makes it fill the whole frame
and the wider aspect ratio.
And what's really cool,
it's when you make a preset,
all of these different settings, your color grading,
your color correction, your transformation,
cropping, distorting, anything that you add,
it can get included into a preset.
And the preset that I'm using right now,
was actually made for my Canon EOS R,
which was my main camera for a really long time
until I got the Sony A7S3,
and just to experiment,
I just took the R's preset and threw it on the Sony footage.
And I actually really liked the way that it looked.
So here's the Sony footage with the preset on it.
And here is EOS R footage,
just straight out of the camera with no preset applied.
It's kind of the same thing,
it's a little bit darker, it's not framed properly.
So I'm gonna add that same preset to it,
do the same thing I did with the Sony footage
and adjust the framing on the Y axis.
And now I've got these two clips.
But as you might know, Sony and Canon,
process their colors differently.
Sony tends to lean a little more towards the greens
and Canon leans a little more towards the magentas.
Neither is better or worse, they're just different.
I have found though, that it's very, very easy
to match the two camera systems together
despite what you might have heard.
So don't be scared to make Sony and Canon cameras
if that's something you've been hesitating.
So what I've been doing
since I actually prefer the Sony footage,
it's a little cooler, it handles the blues better,
and I think the skin looks a little more natural.
So I go into the cannon footage, go to color wheels,
because even though I've added a preset,
I can still adjust it and modify it.
And then I go to tint and do a minus six.
And what that negative six
does is it shifts the Canon footage
just a little more towards the green.
And now you can see here's the Canon footage
and here's the Sony footage, they match up pretty well.
I know it's not perfect, I'm not a professional colorist,
but for me, I think this looks fine.
So now I've got both clips ready to go.
And that's basically how you use presets.
Let's talk about how to create a preset.
So, this one that I'm using for the Sony in my main shot,
I like it, I don't need to do anything with that.
But now that it's been a couple of months with the Sony,
and every time I use it,
I have to go in and add in these corrections to the Canon
to bump it over to match the Sony.
I'm just going to make a new preset here.
And the way I do that, is I've got all my adjustments
and I just click save effects preset.
It doesn't matter that I'm saving a new preset
based on an existing preset.
Makes no difference.
So here I'm gonna call it not effects preset.
I'm gonna call it EOS R main.
'Cause it's my main preset for the EOS R.
And it's gonna go in the custom category.
If you've never made a preset before,
you're not gonna have a custom category,
you're just gonna have all the standard ones.
So you just go to the bottom, click new category,
and then you can create a name,
a category, whatever you want.
I like custom, 'cause you can't spell "custom" without Tom. Ugh.
And then you can include different effects.
But one thing right now,
I don't want to include the positioning,
that's the Y access,
'cause that changes every time
depending on how I frame the cameras.
So there's no point in including that.
Scale I'm going to include,
since I publish everything in two to one,
but if I wanted to make a preset to use
in a 16:9 normal video,
I would just uncheck the scale thing
and then I won't use that.
And that's it.
And then I click save.
And now already it's showing up the EOS R
main preset is there.
And that's how you create brand new presets.
It is super simple.
And the same thing is true for audio
as well in Final Cut Pro.
So if I scroll down in the effects
and I go into the audio setting,
you can see I've done the same thing,
custom audio, and I have a few presets that I've made there,
and it works the exact same way,
you can go through your video,
you can adjust your audio,
and when you're done,
you just go into the audio tab and save the effects preset
and it works the exact same way.
So if you're doing something
like where you use the same microphone regularly
and you know what adjustments you need
to make it sound as best,
you can create a preset for that.
If you're doing a video podcast
where you and your host or your cohost,
you have different microphones and different voice sounds
and you dial it into, it sounds good,
you can make a preset for each of you,
and then every time you have a new episode,
you just drag on those presets and you're done,
you don't have to start from scratch each time.
So it can be a huge time saver
if you have a workflow like mine
where you're doing similar style videos
with the same equipment and set up over and over again.
But presets are also a great time-saver.
Even if you're just doing a one-off project,
like you're doing a client project
and you've got the audio for that project dialed in,
or the coloring for that project,
create a preset and use it for that project.
Even if you'll never use it again,
because it's super easy to organize your presets
so that way your window over here,
doesn't get just overloaded
with different presets and stuff.
So now let's look at how to organize your presets.
And the first thing you're gonna need to do,
is figure out where they are stored on your computer.
There's a few different ways to do this,
but the simplest one,
is to just right click on any preset
and select "reveal in Finder".
And that's gonna bring up the directory
where all of your final cut presets are stored,
and you can just play with them right here.
So for example, this PiP preset that I made,
it's a picture and picture preset
for another video I worked on.
I'm never gonna use that again,
not because I won't use a picture and picture effect,
but because that was so specific for the framing
of that video, I'm never gonna use it again.
So I'm going to delete it.
And that way it's not gonna be taking up space
in my preset.
High-Pitch Removal is an audio preset I made,
but that's again for video
where that was a very specific setting.
So I'm gonna delete that.
Main 1, this is the main preset that I've been using.
Now, since I'm using different cameras and things,
I'm gonna call this the A7S3 main.
So I renamed my preset there and then I've got EOS R main,
S-LOG Canon 50, I don't need to play with that.
I was trying to learn how to color grade S-LOG.
And if I go back into Final Cut Pro,
in real time, it has already changed those things.
So now there's only presets in here.
There's A7S3 Main, Blue Border.
That's when I have like a picture in picture thing,
and I just wanna have the window
have a blue border around it and my EOS R Main preset.
So it's very easy to keep things clean and organized,
which is really important for your workflow,
but also it becomes very easy to then share preset.
So this A7S3 Main 1,
I'm gonna duplicate that
and I'll just rename this Tom Buck FCP Preset.
I should make a whole bunch of these videos
about presets and put them all in one place
where you can learn about them at the same time
and I could call it "pre-school."
All right, so the reason I did that,
is so I can take this preset,
which is a duplicate of the main one that I use,
and I'm gonna put this as a downloadable link
in the description to this video,
totally for free,
but just so you can experiment with it if you want.
It probably won't look amazing on your setup
because it's dialed in for my specific setup,
but I'll also include like the camera settings
and stuff that I use.
So if you wanna try to match it, you can,
but at least it gives you an idea of how easy it is
to share presets and stuff like that.
So you can see using presets,
creating them and organizing them, even sharing them,
is an actually really simple process.
And I love that.
The last thing to talk about is what the heck then
is the difference between a preset and a LUT,
because on the surface,
they kind of seem to do the same thing.
You have a preset, you add it to your footage
and it changes the way that it looks
based on some pre-designated settings.
If you have a LUT,
you add it to your footage and it changes the way
that it looks based on some pre-designated settings.
What is the difference?
And the simplest way to think about it is that,
a preset is program specific.
So my final cut preset is not gonna work in premiere,
it's not gonna work in resolve or anything like that,
but it also gives you a lot more flexibility
to go in and dial things around.
Once I've added the preset,
I can still go in and see everything that it did.
So, just like I added it to the Canon EOS R footage,
I can go into the color wheels and still change everything.
If I need to modify it,
I can have granular control over everything.
I could decide that I didn't want the crop
and take that off,
you can break down all the separate components
of the preset.
A LUT on the other hand is a lot different,
because it is sort of just a one and done thing.
Like everything is baked in,
you can adjust the intensity of the LUT,
but you can't open it up, this is as far as I know,
and look at all the individual things.
However, you can use a LUT on a lot of different programs,
basically anything, Final Cut, Premiere, Resolve,
anything else you can even use LUTs in Ecamm Live.
So here's my preview window in Ecamm
that I'm using to just monitor the recording of this video
and you can see down here,
I actually do have a LUT,
based on the same preset that I made right here.
And that's the footage straight out of the camera.
But if I wanna record or stream through Ecamm,
I can just add a LUT and go right there.
Now that's all I can do though,
is just turn the LUT on and off
or adjust the intensity of it.
I can't then open it up
and go play with all those different settings.
And that's the biggest difference.
If you wanna know how to create your own LUTs,
I did make a video all about creating LUTs for Ecamm Live,
so you can check that out.
Even if you're not using the LUT with Ecamm,
it still walks you through the process of creating LUTs,
which again can be used with any other program
or shared very easily online and stuff like that.
This is one of those videos
where I'm hoping you can learn from my mistake
because I didn't really start using
final cut pro presets until about a year ago,
but I've been using Final Cut Pro
pretty much exclusively for like 9 years or 10 years,
and I don't know why it took me so long
to get on the preset bandwagon.
So, if you're using Final Cut Pro,
trust me, presets will make your life a lot easier.
Don't forget you can download for free
my main preset that I used here,
I don't know if that's actually gonna be super helpful
or not, but at least you could poke around with it.
And if you want to learn more about Final Cut Pro,
'cause this really just scratches the surface of it,
it's an incredibly powerful program,
I have an entire playlist of Final Cut Pro videos
so that you can become the Final Cut Pro, yo.
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