These Cool Effects Come With Final Cut Pro

I've been going over plugins a lot lately, so I wanted to balance the scales and show you some genuinely useful effects you already own and might not know about. Every single one of these lives in your Effects folder in Final Cut Pro.

Frame

First up is Frame. It gives you 12 options to instantly drop your video or photo inside a frame. Some are a little too fancy and cheesy for my taste, but some are really nice, and you can adjust how much it fills the shot with the amount slider. Here's a fun tip: use option 1, then double-click to add the built-in Super 8mm effect. Just make sure the Super 8 sits before the frame so it doesn't affect the frame itself. Boom, a cool vintage-looking shot in a few clicks.

Simple Border and Photo Recall

Want something simpler? Simple Border does exactly what it says, adds a border you can adjust the width and color of. Throw your drop shadow effect on it to give a picture-in-picture some depth, or just use it as a clean way to frame your B-roll.

While we're on borders, Photo Recall duplicates your video or photo, blurs and desaturates the background, and lets you adjust the scale. It's a neat way to recall a memory in a video, or to set up a side-by-side with your shot and some text since you can reposition it really easily.

Crisp Contrast and Vibrancy

This one's for folks who don't want to mess with full color grading. If all you care about is a bit of contrast and some saturation, add Crisp Contrast and then throw Vibrancy on top. Vibrancy is nice because it keeps your subject's skin tones at a reasonable level while adding more saturation to the rest of the shot. I'd still suggest learning to color correct and grade, but if you're pumping out stock clips or just don't care, these two are great.

Noise Reduction

Noise Reduction knocks down the noise and digital artifacts in your shot, so it helps if you filmed in low light. You've got low, medium, maximum, and high, plus a sharpness setting on top. It's not perfect though, it struggles once there's movement in the frame. What I've found is the stock denoiser does fairly well when the camera's static, but starts to fail once things move. For static interview shots it's honestly fine, but if you need to seriously kill noise, the plugin Neat Video is the way to go, it works amazing every time.

Crop and Feather

Crop and Feather lets you quickly crop your videos or photos, round the corners, and add a bit of feathering. Want a filmic border without paying for a plugin or overlay? Just tweak the parameters here and you'll get something similar. From there you can drop a built-in generator underneath to change up the look.

Audio effects you already own

Final Cut also ships with a pile of audio effects most people never touch. Telephone makes a voice sound like it's coming through a phone. Walkie Talkie gives you that radio-static sound. Pitch shifts a voice higher or lower. Monster makes it deep and gnarly (go easy, use it mild). Cathedral and Modest Cathedral add echo and space. Underwater muffles everything like you're submerged. And Voice Over Enhancement is a pretty solid one-click way to instantly get better-sounding voice audio.