Final Cut Pro – Shortcut to Solo a Track

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Soloing is the process of making all audio tracks inaudible except the one you solo. You can do this with the Mute and Solo buttons, but here’s a fast way to do it with a keyboard shortcut.

Select a clip in the track you want to solo (that is, the tracks you want to hear) and press Control+S. This is similar to turning off clip visibility for a video clip (Control+B).

To toggle everything back to normal, select something in the same track and press Control+S again.

Final Cut Pro – One More Way to Adjust Levels

Just in case you were wondering…

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You can also adjust audio levels directly in the Timeline. To turn on Timeline audio levels, click the small black mountain range in the lower-left corner (Apple calls this the Clip Overlay button).

This displays red rubber bands all over your audio clips. Drag the rubber bands up or down to set levels for each clip.

This is the audio level setting technique that I use the most.

Note: You can use the Pen tool (press P) to set keyframes for these audio levels.

Courtesy of Larry Jordan

Final Cut Pro – Creating Split Track Audio

Here’s how to create a split-track audio output from Final Cut Pro.

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If you need to create split track audio where, say, dialogue is on the odd track with music and effects on the even track (which simplifies dialogue editing, or for news archiving), Final Cut makes it easy:

1. Open the sequence you want to change.

2. Choose Sequence > Settings > Audio Output.

3. From the pop-up menu, select the number of tracks you need to output.

4. Set each track to Dual Mono, which pans both tracks center, as opposed to the default setting of Stereo. (By the way, the gain reduction on each track of -3 dB is appropriate and should be left alone.)

5. Output your sequence.

Courtesy of Larry Jordan

Final Cut Pro – Resetting Multiple Audio Outputs

Resetting audio output tracks is time-consuming, unless…

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Shane Ross sent me this tip. Let’s say you have a source file with eight tracks of audio, and you mapped a1 and a2 to A7 and A8 on the Timeline, and a5 is pointing to A6… In other words, the track assignments are all over the place.

To get your tracks back to the proper order could take dozens of clicks; which is very time consuming! But you can just Control-click in the gray area anywhere in the left side of the Timeline and select the Reset Panel option.

All audio outputs pop back into order, and everything is properly connected.

Note: The same pop-up menu allows you to add and delete tracks as well. There is all kinds of hidden stuff in this application.

Courtesy of Larry Jordan

Final Cut Pro – Exporting Marker Lists

Exporting marker information is now a piece of cake.

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With the release of Final Cut Pro 7, we can now export marker data as a tab-delimited text file. This allows us to analyze, format, search, print, and share marker data.

Here’s how:

1. Select the sequence or clips you want to export.

2. Choose File > Export > Markers List as Text.

3. In the Save dialogue box, give the file a name and destination.

4. From the pop-up menu, select which types of markers you want to export.

5. Click Save.

Courtesy of Larry Jordan

Final Cut Pro – Compression is a Background Activity

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Compressor isn’t used to compress a clip. Just like Share, Compressor is used to determine the compression settings for a clip, then it hands the file over to another program to compress the file.

The actual compression is done by an application with no user interface called a daemon. (Daemons are Unix files that run invisibly in the background.)

So, once you submit a file for compressing, you can safely–and with a clear conscience–quit Compressor.

Final Cut Pro – Sharpening Your Stills

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Looking to add a bit of “snap” to a still image? Try using the Unsharp filter.

Be cautious adding sharpening to your video–most inexpensive cameras already apply sharpening during recording to improve the apparent focus of an image by making the edges more visible.

To change the less-than-optimal default settings for this filter, choose Effects > Video Filters > Sharpen > Unsharp Mask. Then, set Amount to 75, Radius to 0.5, and Threshold to 0.

Note: Unsharp Mask, even though it has a weird name, is the best filter in the bunch to use, Don’t use Sharpen, since it doesn’t work as well.

Final Cut Pro – Make the FrameViewer Move

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The FrameViewer (Tools > FrameViewer, or press Option+7) allows you to compare two different shots in the same window – such as the current frame with and without filters, or the current and previous shot. The problem is that when you play your sequence, the FrameViewer does not update. Unless, as Duke Bishop suggested recently, you fool it into playing.

When FrameViewer is open, the current frame will update when you use the Left/Right Arrow keys, drag with the playhead, or press Option+P.

I love tricks like this!

Note: in case you were wondering, the previous or next edit frame doesn’t update because the FrameViewer is showing the Out or In point of that clip, which doesn’t change as you move the playhead.