This statement is very true
when it comes to video editing,
especially if you’re a professional
relying on it for a living.
Even if it’s just a hobby,
the less time you spend editing,
the more time you have to get out and film,
helping you tell a better story.
The trick is to speed up your editing,
without giving up quality, and today,
we’ll take a look at three things you can do
to speed up your editing process in Final Cut Pro.
Hey guys, whats up.
My name is Serge
and welcome back to my channel.
In this video we’ll take a look
at how you can speed up your editing workflow,
without giving up any quality in your finished product.
Let’s not waste any more time,
and take a look at three things you can do
to speed up your editing workflow.
First up is keyboard shortcuts.
Taking the time to learn these
and using keyboard shortcuts
can be a huge time saver.
For example, in Final Cut Pro,
to create a new project,
you have to go up to the menu bar,
and select File,
New and Project.
This can be done much faster,
by simply pressing Command + N.
At first it may not seem like you’re saving much time here,
but a fraction of a second here,
and a half of second there can really add up,
especially when you use these for repetitive tasks.
For example,
when you need to make a cut in your video clip,
you have to click on the tool dropdown menu,
select the blade tool,
skim your clip to the frame
where you want to make a cut,
click on the clip to blade it,
go back to the dropdown menu,
and choose the select tool again.
If you’re using keyboard shortcuts,
all you have to do is place your skimmer
on the selected frame
and press Command + B.
Your clip is now bladed in two,
and you’re back to using the select tool.
Much quicker.
If you want to zoom in on your timeline for more precision,
you have to open the clip appearance menu,
and use this slider to zoom in and out on your timeline.
This can me done much quicker
by using keyboard shortcuts,
Command & Equal sign to zoom in on your timeline,
or Command & Minus sign to zoom out.
You can also press Shift Z
to fit your entire timeline to your window.
This is just a few examples,
but there are a ton of keyboard shortcuts in Final Cut Pro,
and learning to use just a few of these
can save you a lot of time.
To see the available keyboard shortcuts,
head up to the menu bar,
click on Final Cut Pro,
select Commands and Customize,
or use the keyboard shortcut Option, Command K.
Here you can see all the actions
that have keyboard shortcuts assigned to them,
or even customize them to make your own.
If you want to know my top keyboard shortcuts I use,
I’ll link my Top 15 Keyboard shortcuts up here,
and in the video description below.
Number two on my list is custom effect presets.
You can take a number of steps you do regularly,
and save them as a custom effect preset.
For example,
when making tutorial videos,
for the finished effect,
I like to zoom in on the viewer in my screen recording.
If I simply scaled up my clip,
I would lose a lot of resolution,
and it would look like crap.
So what I do,
is I take the original video I use in my tutorial,
and add it as a connected clip
above my screen recording.
Next, I scale down and reposition my connected clip
until it lines up perfectly with the clip in my viewer.
With the playhead at the start of the clip,
I’ll add a keyframe to the transform parameters.
Next, for the nice smooth zoom effect,
I move my playhead ahead about 10 to 15 frames,
bring the scale back up to 100 percent,
set the X and Y position values to 0,
and change my keyframes from smooth to linear.
All these steps combined
give me this nice viewer zoom effect.
I do this quite often in my videos,
and as you can see it takes a bit of time.
To save time,
I can take all these steps
that I repeat in almost all of my videos,
and save them as a custom effect preset.
Select your clip you applied your effects to,
and right under the inspector window,
click this Save Effects Preset button.
In the popup window,
select all the applied parameters
you want to save in your preset.
For my example,
all the transform parameters I changed are selected,
and since I color graded my clip,
Color Wheels are also selected.
The color corrections are unique to this clip,
so I’ll de-select the Color Wheels checkbox.
Also, if you keyframed any parameters,
you can either maintain the timing of your keyframes,
or stretch them to fit the clip you apply this to.
Select the Category you want to save your preset in,
give it a name,
and click save.
Next time you need to do the same effect,
open your effects browser,
select the category you saved your preset in,
and simply drag and drop your saved preset onto your clip.
All the steps taken in the previous clip
will be applied to the clip you’re on.
This can be used for pretty much every effect
or parameter included in Final Cut Pro,
and as you can see, it’s a huge time saver.
Last on my list is Optimized or Proxy media.
Most cameras today,
record in either H.264, or H.265 codecs.
These are great,
and allow a ton of information
to be recorded to your video,
but unfortunately, not very editor friendly.
This is because the videos recorded in these codecs
are highly compressed,
to allow maximum amount of information
to be recorded in a small amount of space.
When you edit videos recorded in these codecs,
Final Cut Pro has to “decompress”
your clips as you edit.
Now, Final Cut is very efficient at this,
but it does take a lot of system resources,
especially when you’re editing
higher resolution videos.
Creating Optimized, or Proxy media
converts your video files
to a much more editor friendly Pro Res 422 codec.
These files work much better with Final Cut Pro,
and can save you a lot of time when editing.
There are two ways to transcode your media to Pro Res 422.
One, is when you import your files,
in the import window,
on the right hand side.
You can choose to create Optimized Media,
or create Proxy media.
Neither one of these will effect the quality of your export,
just the way they appear in Final Cut Pro.
Optimized media retains the resolution
and the frame rate of your original clip,
but the files sizes can be huge.
Proxy media files on the other hand,
are medium quality,
about half the original resolution,
with a low data rate.
These file sizes are considerably smaller,
so if disk space is an issue,
or you’re using an older machine to edit,
proxy files may give you the best performance.
The second way of transcoding your video files,
is by selecting your clic in the media browser,
and from the menu bar, select File,
Transcode Media….
and either Optimized Media, Proxy Media or both.
After your media has been transcoded,
you can switch between the two
in the View Dropdown Menu.
Just remember,
if using Proxy Media files to edit,
make sure to switch back to original
or optimized files before exporting.
If you don’t,
you will export your project with Proxy files,
with reduced video resolution.
These are my three tips
to speed up your editing process in Final Cut Pro.
I want to hear in the comments below
the steps you take to speed up your editing process.
I look forward to hearing all your tips and tricks,
and I’m always open to learning something new.
If you enjoyed this video,
make sure to hit the like button,
and if you haven’t yet, please subscribe.
Thanks for watching,
and I’ll see you back here next week.