Tricks to Make You a FCP Superhero

One of the reasons Final Cut is so great is the speed you can pump videos out at. But have you actually set yours up to hit that superhero speed? Here's how.

Load up your sidebar tabs

Final Cut pulls straight from your Apple apps, so stock them ahead of time. For Photos, make an album on your phone with all the logos and PNGs you use, then after you import you'll have that album right there. For Music, make sure every song you download from Artlist or wherever lands in the Music app (usually just clicking the file does it), and it'll show up in the tab. For Apple TV, drag your overlays, film grain, and stock footage into the TV app and they'll appear in Final Cut automatically. And for sound effects, get them all inside FCP with the alias trick: make one main SFX folder, right-click and hit Make Alias, copy it with Command C, and paste it into Macintosh HD / Library / Audio / Apple Loops / Apple / Final Cut Pro Sound Effects. Now everything's a click away inside the software.

Assign key functions to one or two keys

Honestly one of the best things I've done to get faster. I set clips to automatic speed for slow motion with Option forward slash, make a cut with just B, raise and lower audio with minus and plus, and solo-select a clip with C (right next to the default mute key, so they're opposites sitting next to each other). The newest one: G to trim start and H to trim end, a swap a subscriber suggested, and holy hell has it made my life easier. To set these up, press Option Command K, duplicate the default keyboard, search a function, press the key you want, reassign, and delete the old one if you like. (If you'd rather not do it manually, you can just grab my custom shortcuts.)

Save a workspace for each job

Different tasks want different layouts, so stop rebuilding your interface every time. For color grading I pop my scopes up with Command 7, go with a 2-up vectorscope over luma waveform, pull up my color wheels with Command 6, shrink the scopes so my viewport's bigger, and push the timeline down since I don't need it big. Then I save it: Window → Workspaces → Save Workspace As, and call it "Color Grading." One click sets it all up next time. Not a color person? Make one for editing audio, one for importing and keywording, and a standard editing layout.

Use keywords and smart collections

Think of these as file cabinets and sticky notes for your media. Just imported a ton of footage and stressed about remembering what's what? Select clips (or parts of clips) that share a motion or a mood, press Command K, type a word like "sad," and hit enter. You just sticky-noted those clips into a keyword folder you can open anytime. Smart collections are the master folders: go File → New Library Smart Collection, double-click the gear, and combine rules, like every clip that's a favorite, unused, and has a marker, or clips with a certain keyword shot on a specific date. It lets you pull up really specific footage fast, which is exactly what turns you into a Final Cut Pro superhero.