Every Way to Cut in Final Cut Pro (Beginner to Pro)

If you like editing slowly, don't read this one, because everything here is designed to help you speed through edits and get back to doing what you love. Which I assume is watching Love Island. Kidding. It's your life, you do what you want. We'll fly through the basics first, then get to the good stuff, but don't skip ahead: some of these "basics" surprise people.

The basics (that you might not actually know)

B brings up the blade tool; click to cut your media. A brings back your select tool (the standard cursor). And here's the one people miss: with the select tool up, click a cut you no longer want and press delete. The cut mends itself and disappears.

Pro tip: hold B instead of pressing it. Make your cuts while holding, release, and you're instantly back on the select tool. No switching back and forth.

Faster cuts

Better than the blade tool: Command B makes an immediate cut at the playhead, no tool switch at all. (If you set up my custom keyboard shortcuts, you know we mapped this to a single key.)

Multiple layers stacked? Don't Command B each one. Select all the layers, then Command B cuts through everything selected. And the coolest version: Shift Command B cuts through every layer with nothing selected at all. Your skimmer becomes a death scythe going through all your media, parting it like Moses parting the sea. Or Michael Myers slashing some... that's a crazy side by side. Forget I said that.

Frame-level trimming

Select the edge of a clip and press comma or period to shorten or extend it by a single frame; hold Shift for ten frames at a time. Perfect for fine-tuning length.

Trim to the playhead

Don't like the beginning of a clip? The slow way is Command B then delete: one step too many. The fast way: Option Left Bracket instantly trims everything before the playhead. Don't like the ending? Option Right Bracket deletes everything after it.

Keep only the part you like

When you only want the middle of a clip, skip dragging both edges. Hold R to temporarily bring up the range tool, select the section you want to keep, and press Option Forward Slash. Everything left and right of your selection vanishes. Bada bing, bada boom: that river sound effect is cut up nice and neat. (One caveat: it doesn't preserve your crossfades, so re-add those.)

Slip and slide

The slip: you like the clip's position and duration, but there's better material later in the same clip. Press T for the trim tool and slide on the clip: the media shown changes while position and duration stay locked.

The slide: opposite problem, right media, wrong position. With the trim tool up, hold Option and slide left or right. The clip moves along the timeline while keeping its media and duration; the neighboring clips absorb the difference.

Delete without wrecking your timeline

Want a clip gone but scared it'll shift your music and sound effects? Shift Delete removes it and leaves a gap clip holding its place. When you find the replacement, select the part of the new clip you want, use Replace From Start, and it snaps into the primary storyline.

Uniform clip lengths

Trying to cut to the beat with equal-length clips? Select them, press Control D, type the duration (type 5 0 0 for five seconds), hit enter, and every selected clip becomes exactly that length.

Set these keys up and I promise you'll be editing so much faster. Have a great day!