5 Tips to Make Your Life Easier in Final Cut Pro

I'm all about cutting the fluff, so here are five tips that genuinely make my life easier in Final Cut Pro. Small stuff, but it adds up fast.

Tip 1: Adjust a whole bunch of sound effects at once

Say you finish your video and realize every medium whoosh you layered in is way too loud. Instead of hunting down every single one, open your Index, type "medium whoosh," click one, and press Command A to select all of them. Then tap Control minus a few times to drop them all a few decibels (Control plus raises a decibel). I learned this one from my good buddy Matthew O'Brien, who's got a fantastic Final Cut channel.

Same idea for effects. If you tweak one clip and want those adjustments on similar clips across your timeline, press Command C to copy it, search the clip name in the Index, click the first clip below the one you adjusted, hold Shift and click the last one to grab everything in between, then hit Shift Command V to paste attributes and pick which effects to carry over. Boom, all those clips adjusted at once.

Tip 2: Save your workspaces

You probably like one layout when you edit, another when you color grade with your scopes up, and another when you're just bringing in footage and want a huge browser. Instead of dragging windows around every time, go to Window → Workspaces → Save Workspace As and name each layout. Then whenever it's time to switch tasks, jump back to Window, Workspaces, pick the one you want, and you're set up and ready to go. No fiddling.

Tip 3: Save your own effects presets

If you use the same LUT, the same color wheel adjustments, and the same effects on every talking-head clip, set it up once, then hit Save Effects Preset in the inspector, name that bad boy, and drop it in whatever folder you like. Next time you sit down to edit, just drag the preset onto your clip or double-click to apply, and every little adjustment you set up is instantly back. Make as many as you want. Got a jump-cut zoom you like? Save a preset with just the scale so you can double-click it whenever you want that punch-in.

Tip 4: Customize your keyboard shortcuts

If you're still heading up to the menu to grab the blade tool, perk those ears up, because I haven't clicked that since Bush was in office. Senior. Knowing your keys makes you way faster: T is the trim tool, B is the blade, A is select, R is range, and you nudge clips with period and comma. But the real tip is changing what your keys do. Instead of Command B to make a cut, map it to just B. Instead of digging through a menu for automatic speed, map it to Option backslash. Instead of Option bracket to trim start and end, map those to G and H, two keys right under your pointer fingers that you don't even have to look down for.

To set it up, press Option Command K, duplicate the default keyboard, search the function you want, and press the key you want it on. Delete the original if you don't want two keys doing the same thing, then hit save. I've also got a free cheat sheet with my favorite default and custom shortcuts you can print out and keep next to you while you edit.

Tip 5: Use Favorites like your own personal secretary

Instead of trying to remember which parts of your clips you loved, let the browser do it for you. Extend the clip duration so you can see more, and when you find a section you like, hit I for the in point, O for the out point, and F to favorite it. Now you've got a green line marking the best bits, filed neatly away in your Favorites folder, and only the parts you picked, not the beginning or end of the clip.

And if you're deep into an edit and can't remember what you've already used, go to View → Browser → Used Media Ranges. Final Cut drops an orange mark over everything that's already in your timeline. Quick add-on: to unfavorite a selection, select it and press U. Think U for unfavorite.