Final Cut Pro's Most Underrated Feature (I'm Serious)

It blows my mind that some Final Cut editors still don't know this feature exists, or they just don't use it to its full potential, because it will save you hours on every single edit. The feature is called Smart Collections. And if you already know about Smart Collections, I guarantee you're still going to learn something here. But we can't get to them without covering the two tips that make them so powerful.

Step one: favorite your best clips

When you bring in footage for a new video, you're typically watching through your clips to see what looks good and get an idea of how you'll build the edit. While you're doing that, select a clip and press F to favorite it. Even better, you can favorite just a section: drag a selection over the middle bit you like and press F, and only that range gets favorited.

Why is that useful? Beyond Smart Collections (coming in a second), hit the dropdown menu in your browser and click Favorites, or press Control F, and every clip you liked the most shows up in one place. It's the best way to find the best of the best, and it works best when you do it on import: watch everything through once and tap F as you go.

Step two: keywords are sticky notes for your footage

Select a clip and press Command K to bring up the keyword editor. Keywords are almost like sticky notes you put on each clip so you can find it later. For example, on clips where I'm talking to the camera, I add a TTC keyword. You can also use the number shortcuts like Control 2 if you can remember them, but I just type the keyword and press Enter.

Need to tag clips scattered around your browser? Hold Command and select them all at once. So if I know I'll want a bunch of hiking footage at some point in the edit, I make a hiking keyword now. Then mid-project, I hit the dropdown menu, see all my keywords, select the one I want, and every clip tagged with it is right there, favorites included.

Smart Collections tie it all together

Everything above is the prep work. Now the payoff. Click on your library, go to File, New, Library Smart Collection, or press Option Command N. A little gear icon pops up. By the way, the default collections alone are handy: all your stills, all your projects, your favorited clips, your audio, and your video, sorted into nice neat folders.

But the real perk comes from what we just set up. Double click the gear icon and a window appears that lets you pick exactly what this folder contains. Hit the plus icon and start stacking filters. Want the best B-roll of you hiking? Add the Ratings filter for your favorites, then add Keywords and tick only hiking.

Here's where it gets really useful. If you've already used a bunch of those hiking clips in your edit, hit the plus icon again, add Used Media, and switch it to Unused. Click the title to rename it something like "unused hiking favorites". Now you never scour your browser for a clip again: the best driving footage you haven't used yet, the best of anything, sits in a folder that builds itself.

Turn on used media ranges

One more thing worth having on all the time: go to View, Browser, Used Media Ranges. A little orange bar appears on your clips showing exactly which sections you've already used in your project. While you're scrubbing through footage you can see at a glance: used this bit, used that bit.

Use Smart Collections. Especially combined with visual search and transcript search, finding the exact footage you need becomes almost instant.