Bet You Don't Know These 14 Final Cut Pro Tips & Tricks

Welcome to "Did You Know," the Final Cut Pro game show where you tally up how many of these tips you already knew and drop your honest score in the comments at the end. I'm your host, Dylan John Dickerson. Let's play.

1. The slip edit

Press T to bring up your trim tool, then drag on a clip to adjust which part of it shows in your video without changing its length or position.

2. The slide edit

Hold Option while using the trim tool and you can slide the whole clip left or right along the timeline. Slide to the left, slide to the right, one hop this time. It's a great way to make a clip start sooner or later while keeping the same duration for both the clip and your video as a whole.

3. Skip the tool buttons

You don't need to press the button at the bottom to switch between your transform, crop, or distort tools, or memorize shortcuts. Just right-click the viewer and select from there.

4. A bigger inspector

Double-click the top of the inspector window and it drops to the bottom of the UI, giving you a nice big interface to work with.

5. Drag colors between boxes

With the inspector nice and large: if a color in one palette box should also go in another box of the preset you're adjusting, just drag the color from one box to the other.

6. Proxy media for slower Macs

Right-click your footage, go to Transcode Media, and create proxy media: low-quality copies of your footage that are much easier for your computer to handle. Switch your viewer to Proxy Preferred for smoother playback while editing, then back to Optimized/Original when you export.

7. Mend cuts instantly

Click an unwanted cut and press the delete key. The two pieces join back together.

8. Color curves, any hue

In your color curves, hit the dropdown and change the hue of a curve to whatever you want, which makes both correction and grading a breeze. (On that note: the video isn't sponsored, but it is brought to you by everyone who's joined the FCP Color Grading Masterclass, which also fully covers Color Finale 2 Pro.)

9. One-click audio meters

Don't dig through menus. Just click the little audio meter bars and the full meters pop up.

10. The grave key kills the magnetic timeline

Hold the grave key (the ` under Escape, next to 1) and you can freely move and adjust media without the magnetic timeline sucking everything along with it. Fun fact that doesn't count toward your score: hold grave and press Shift and it stays on without holding the key.

11. Instant crossfades

Select a clip (or several) and press Option T to instantly create audio crossfades, instead of dragging those small annoying fade markers manually.

12. Fast J and L cuts

Press Control S with two clips selected to expand their audio, then trim the end of one or the start of the other to create a J or L cut for a smooth audio transition between clips.

13. Reset one parameter, not everything

Want to reset just one slider on a color wheel? Don't hit the reset button, which wipes hue, saturation, and luma all at once. Double-click the individual slider you want to reset. (Also: switching to Geico could save you 15% or more on car insurance. Kidding. Deduct that one from your score, Steve.)

14. Auditions and the index

Not sure which clip fits best in a spot? Drag clips onto each other and hit Add to Audition, then cycle through options with Control Option and the left/right arrows to see which works best. And final point: use your index to search and select clips, sound effects, whatever, across the whole timeline. Double-click an effect to apply it to everything selected at once, or strip things off with Edit, Remove Attributes. Saves you a boatload of time versus sifting through your timeline manually.

Okay, tally it up and tell me your honest score in the comments. If you enjoyed this one, let me know and I'll make a part two. Have a great rest of your day!