Final Cut Pro – How to Color Correct with One Mouse Click

This won’t make you a colorist, but it will solve big problems in a BIG hurry!

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Have you ever been in a tearing hurry to meet a deadline only to discover that the camera operator forgot to color balance the camera and everything is gold – or blue?

While it would be great to carefully color balance each shot, you have exactly three nanoseconds to get this project done.

Here’s a single mouse-click solution that can easily fix a badly off-color image.

1. Put your playhead in the middle of the clip you want to color correct.
2. Select the clip.
3. Apply Effects > Video Filters > Color Correction > Corrector 3-way filter.
4. Double-click the clip to load it into the Viewer.
5. Click the Color Correction 3-way tab at the top of the Viewer.
6. Click the small eyedropper to the lower left of the Whites color wheel.
7. Click something in the image that supposed to be white.

Ta-DAH! Instant fix.

Extra credit: Be careful not to click something that is overexposed (blown-out). Also, if you KNOW something is mid-tone gray, you’ll have better results using the Mids eyedropper to the lower left of the Mids circle, but finding something in an image that is truly gray is much harder than finding something that is white.

Courtesy of Larry Jordan

Final Cut Pro – How to Replace Multiple Transitions at Once

replace

Christine Steele sent me this tip.

Let’s say you’ve editing a sequence and filled it with transitions.

Let’s say that some, or all, of those transitions are the same – in this case, we’ll pretend we are using the Cross-Dissolve transition.

Let’s say, further, that all those transitions are different lengths and are scattered throughout the sequence.

Finally, let’s say that we woke up one morning and realized that we needed to change all those transitions to something different — say a Fade in Fade Out Dissolve.

The challenge we face is daunting: find all the Cross Dissolves and change them without changing any durations, locations, or other transitions that aren’t Cross Dissolves.

Here’s an automatic way to do this:

1. Select the Timeline with the transitions you want to change.
2. Select Edit > Find (or press Command+F).
3. Enter “Cross Dissolve” (or the name of the transition you want to replace)
4. Press Find All
5. Final Cut will select all the transitions in the timeline have that name — something that can’t be done any other way.
6. From the Effect menu, select the transition you want to use in place of the selected transition.
7. All selected transitions will be replaced by the new transition, which will inherit the old transitions duration and location.

Very, VERY cool!

In FCP 7, Apple added the ability to add multiple transitions at once. Set an In, set an Out and type Command+T. Much, MUCH faster!!

Final Cut Pro – Moving Between Tabs

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Shift+Command+[ -- moves left one tab
Shift+Command+] — moves right one tab

This new keyboard shortcut showed up in Final Cut 5.1.2.

Final Cut Pro – Shifting Our Perspective

Here’s a quick keyboard shortcut that opens up nothing.

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Normally, when you launch Final Cut Pro, it will open the last project you were working on. (This can be changed, by the way, in User Preferences > General tab.)

However, sometimes you just want to start on something fresh.

In which case, hold down the Shift key while Final Cut launches and it will not open any past projects. You’ll just see Final Cut, all by itself.

Note: This is also a good technique when you have a project that has problems. Holding the Shift key down prevents that project from opening.

Courtesy of Larry Jordan

Final Cut Pro – Deleting a Range of Markers

Markers

Final Cut does not allow you to delete a range of markers on the Timeline, but you can in the Browser.

The secret is that they need to be clip markers.

Whenever you create markers in a clip the master clip, in the Browser, sprouts a small triangle next to it. This triangle means that there are markers in that clip.

Twirl down the triangle and the names of the markers will be revealed.

* You can jump to any marker in a clip by double-clicking the marker icon.
* You can delete a marker by highlighting it and pressing the Delete key.
* You can delete a range of markers by selecting the markers you want to delete and pressing the Delete key.
* Or, you can delete all the markers by selecting all of them and pressing the Delete key.

Cool.

Final Cut Pro – A Faster Way To Find Effects

Here’s a really fast way to tell if a clip has any effects on it.

find filters

Ever want to know if a clip in the Timeline has effects on it?

Press Option+T to toggle clip keyframes on. (It the button with green and blue stripes in the lower left corner of the Timeline.)

Any clip with a green line under it has a filter applied. Any clip with a blue line under it has a motion effect applied. For example, in the illustration on the right, the first clip has a filter effect, the second has a motion effect and the third has both a filter and motion effect.

Courtesy of Larry Jordan

Final Cut Pro – Those Hidden Voice-Over Recordings

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Ever wonder where all those voice-over recordings are stored that you make in Final Cut Pro?

Well, wonder no more.

You can find them in your Scratch Disk. Specifically, inside your Capture Scratch folder in a folder named after your project.

Assuming you use my organizational system, the path is: 2nd Drive > Final Cut Pro Documents > Capture Scratch > Project folder > voice-over recording file.

Macintosh OS – Using Cover Flow to Find Shots

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Adam Lloyd Connell sent this in:

I was just wondering, have you explored how useful the Cover Flow tool in leopard is for finding a missing shot?

In FCP 6, I am currently working on a long project with around 500 takes, and the cinematographer had only supplied one take of a particular cutaway to an object on a table. Trying to find that specific clip without the continuity notes easily at hand was a pain, and using FCP’s thumbnail view was slow.

However, opening folders with footage from the XDCAM, and selecting ‘Cover Flow mode,’ made it so easy to flash past all the hundreds of (quite large) thumbnails, and we found the shot in minutes. I’ve gotten into the habit of finding my missing shots in Finder this way.

Try it, next time you’re trying to find that elusive shot.

Final Cut Pro – Looking for Ways to Edit Faster?

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One of the requests I get most often are for tips on how to edit faster.

So, I’ve put together a short (7:45) video tutorial that tells you everything you need to know.

Take a look here.

http://www.larryjordan.biz/ztutorials/00_Faster_Editing.mov

You can see a full list of all my tutorials here.

http://www.larryjordan.biz/training/online_tutorials.html

Final Cut Pro – Exporting Multiple Audio Tracks

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Final Cut supports exporting up to 24 tracks of audio into a single QuickTime movie.
It isn’t hard, and here’s an article that tells you want you need to know.

Go to the page to read the article:

http://www.larryjordan.biz/articles/lj_mult_audio.html