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Hidden in Motion is the ability to display a grid in the Viewer, which greatly simplifies aligning elements.
To reveal it, choose Grid from the View menu in the top right corner of the Canvas (Viewer).
EXTRA CREDIT
To adjust grid spacing and color, go to Preferences > Canvas.
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Saving effects presets can save a lot of time, if you find yourself using the same effects settings over and over. But creating them isn’t obvious. Here’s what you need to know.
EXTRA CREDIT
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The Skimmer in Final Cut Pro X allows us to quickly review clips in the Browser. But, did you know it has a hidden feature that’s just a keystroke away? It does.
Type Control – Y.
This displays the skimmer info panel, displaying the name of the clip and the timecode location of the skimmer. This makes controlling the skimmer much more precise.
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The Precision Editor in Final Cut Pro is an incredibly useful teaching tool in Final Cut Pro. If you haven’t played with it, you are missing a treat. Here’s what it does.
To access the Precision Editor, double-click any edit point in the timeline. The Out-going clip is displayed on top.
The darkened portions of each clip are the “handles,” extra media that we need for trimming and transitions. Trimming ends when we run out of handles.
This is the best illustration of trimming I’ve ever seen, making it understandable even to people who are new to editing. I use it in every class.
To close the Precision Editor, press the ESC key.
EXTRA CREDIT
The reason I don’t use the Precision Editor for my own trimming is that it does not allow me to trim audio separately from video; which is a technique I use all the time.
Still, from a teaching point of view, the Precision Editor is unequaled.
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This article is an excerpt from an Apple KnowledgeBase article.
The Path layout method lets you place text on a baseline path that you can warp to create curving or angular trails of text. After you create text on a path, you can modify or extend the path, add or remove control points, or animate text on the path.
CREATE TEXT ON A PATH
NOTE: Step 3 is important—the Text tool must be selected to view or edit the text path.
NOTE: To add a control point, Control-click the path and choose Add Point.
Read the rest of the article to learn how to adjust, extend or modify the path.
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Looking for a fast way to evenly light a green-screen background?
Move outside.
Let the sun light both your talent and background. However, to avoid screaming at your screen during editing, make SURE your green – or blue – background is as smooth as possible. Wrinkles are almost impossible to key well.
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One of the big benefits of Final Cut Pro X is its ability to instantly save whenever you do something. Which is fine, most of the time. But, what if you want to make a protection copy of just a single project? Now you have two options:
Which do you use? Duplicate Project as Snapshot. (To view this menu, Control-click the Project image or name in the Browser.)
These each create an identical protection copy until you are using multicam or compound clips. When you duplicate a project as a snapshot, Final Cut Pro embeds copies of compound or multicam “parent” clips in the duplicate, so any changes to other instances of those clips do not affect the duplicate.
If you work on projects that contain compound clips and multicam clips, you can use the Duplicate Project as Snapshot command to create a self-contained backup version of a project that includes referenced compound clips or multicam “parent” clips. Changes you make to other instances of the compound clips or multicam clips do not affect the versions in the duplicate, so your project is protected from accidental changes.
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Tip #392 showed how to use a second computer monitor attached to your Mac when editing with Final Cut Pro X. One of the benefits of using a second monitor is that it allows us to display both a larger video image in the Viewer and much larger video scopes. Here’s how.
NOTE: Displaying Final Cut Pro X to a second monitor is always full-screen; you can’t scale the interface.
Depending upon the size of your monitor, you can display a 4K image full screen, and still have room for the scopes.
Cool.
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This tip was suggested by a comment from Mark Spencer to Tip #93.
In that original tip, I wrote that the gradients in Motion are not particularly smooth; rather, I recommended that you create smooth gradients in Photoshop, then import them into Motion. While this works, Mark pointed out that we can create much smoother gradients if we “play with the numbers.”
For instance, in this screen shot, I’ve created a gradient where the same color (lower blue bar) fades from transparent to fully opaque (top white bar).
The problem is that the default settings for a gradient create a very abrupt change.
To fix this:
For example, to create a smooth gradient that fills the frame, change Start to a positive value equal to 1/2 the horizontal width of your project and End to a negative value equal to 1/2 the width of your project. In this screen shot, I created a smooth gradient for a 1280 x 720 project. Half of 1280 is 640.
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The best way to control the levels in your dialog is to use the Multiband Compressor filter. This raises the softer passages in your audio, without causing the louder passages to distort. Here’s a simple way to use it.
Don’t be intimidated by how this looks! You only have three settings to change.
That’s it. The difference in the quality and levels of your dialog is amazing!